Words and phrases not marked are common to the written and spoken languages; N. was originally used to indicate new terms and O. for obsolescent terms belonging to the old regime, but it was found impracticable to always make such distinctions. Character Analysis. Chinese characters may be thought of as the result of combining two different and parallel “alphabets.” One “alphabets” consists of 214 “letters” or units, known as radicals or cê-buô 字部. A complete list of these is given with their chief meanings immediately following the main body of the dictionary. Most of these were probably originally crude pictures, and the resourceful students can usually find without difficulty some association which makes them not difficult to remember. In most Chinese dictionaries characters are arranged according to these radicals, as is done in the index of characters in the back of this dictionary. The student should begin with the very common radicals, which are easily located by noting which have the most characters listed under them in this index of characters. The common practice of memorizing the number of the radical with it is of doubtful utility. One should learn to recognize the radical whether separately or in combination, to know its meaning and what is generally indicates in the characters of which it forms a part. The radical used in a given character usually gives some clue – albeit often a vague one – to the meaning of the character.
The other “alphabet” consists of a larger number of “primitives” or “phonetics,” i.e., parts of a character which give a more or less distinct clue to the sound of the character which they form a part. There are said to be about 1,700 primitives in the whole language. For example the characters 愛 噯 曖 嬡 靉 僾 and 瞹 are all pronounced “ái” because they all have the same primitive which in this case is itself a character. They have different meanings, as shown by their different radicals. Comparison of the meanings as given in the dictionary is suggestive. Often the clue to the sound thus given is far from exact as the same primitive may be used to represent different tones or even different Romanization.
In short a radical may be a separate character or part of a character; a primitive likewise. The typical Chinese character is, however, made up of one radical and one primitive, the one giving an inexact clue to meaning and the other an inexact clue to sound. Books on character analysis, such as the pioneer work or Weiger, the work of Dr. Wilder and Dr. Ingram from the Peking Language
