The Outlier Dictionary of Chinese Characters comes in three “flavors”: - The Mini Edition - The Essentials Edition - The Expert Edition
So what are the differences, and which one is right for you?
The Mini Edition
The Mini Edition contains:
- 2000 characters, both Simpilfied and Traditional
- Full, detailed entries for all semantic components
- 300+ entries with ancient forms (all semantic components and characters which can’t be broken down into components)
- Monolingual
Here’s a typical entry from the Mini Edition:
And here’s a semantic component entry:
The Mini Edition is great for beginners and those who just want an introduction to the Outlier approach to characters. If you decide to upgrade later, you’ll only pay the difference in price!
The Essentials Edition
The Essentials Edition contains:
- 4000 characters (2000 more!), both Simpilfied and Traditional
- Full, detailed entries for all characters
- 300+ entries with ancient forms (all semantic components and characters which can’t be broken down into components)
- Bilingual: Chinese plus either English or German (other languages to be added later!)
- The System Tab: See the connections between characters! Want to know all characters using a given component as a form component or sound component? It will be in this tab, along with much more!
Here’s a typical entry from the Essentials Edition:
All entries will contain this level of detail, and semantic components will also have ancient forms:
车
The Essentials Edition contains everything you need to know about each character without overwhelming you with extra detail. It’s great for students of all levels and background. And again, if you decide to upgrade to the Expert Edition later, you’ll only pay the difference in price!
The Expert Edition
The Expert Edition contains:
- 4000 characters, both Simpilfied and Traditional
- Full, detailed entries for all characters
- Ancient forms for all characters
- Detailed historical and etymological information for all characters
- Bilingual: Chinese plus either English or German (other languages to be added later!)
- The System Tab: See the connections between characters! Want to know all characters using a given component as a form component or sound component? It will be in this tab, along with much more!
The Expert Edition will contain the same information as the Essentials Edition, plus the “Expert Info” section. Here’s an example of what that section will look like:
All 4000 characters will have this level of detail in the Expert Info section.
The Expert Edition is perfect for students who enjoy being able to dive deep into the history and etymology of the Chinese language. All of the Essentials information appears in the main entry, and the Expert Info is just one tap away! This is the ultimate tool for Chinese character etymology enthusiasts. We make use of cutting-edge academic research on the language and writing system, so you’ll find information here that isn’t available anywhere except academic publications in Chinese!
Yes, Korean has a LOT of Chinese words in it. The actual percentage depends on how many words you’re taking into account, but even common words like 감사합니다 “thank you” [감사 is 感謝] and 안녕하세요 “hi!” [안녕 is 安寧] have Chinese in them. I agree that knowing the Chinese roots (especially if you already know Chinese) is very helpful. I have some books on this, but they’re all in Chinese. If you do read Chinese, you can check these out:
謝國芳《破解韓國語單詞的奧秘：3000常用韓國語漢字詞速記》
畢玉德《韓語初階詞彙3000詳解》
佐藤貢悅、嚴錫仁《日中韓同字異議小辭典》
北京書同文數字化技術有限公司《中日韓常用漢字對比分析》
鄭吉成《超好背韓語漢字語》
王永一《韓文漢字檢索》
And, to answer your question, I would love to add Korean to our dictionary. The only issue is, I have no clue when we’d be able to do that. If you know a southern Chinese topolect (also called dialect), specifically ones that retain the entering tone (入聲) from Middle Chinese, it’s a lot easier to see the Chinese words in Korean (or Japanese, Vietnamese, etc.).
Wonderful and useful website to learn Chinese
Can you send me pdf for learning Chinese !?
Hello, I am a Kickstarter backer for the Expert Kanji Outlier dictionary. I am currently learning Korean which I heard is made up of 60% Chinese origin words… I would like to use your product when learning the Chinese root to Korean words. Which version of the dictionary would be a better match for that? In the future can you add a Korean version of your dictionary to teach the root form of Korean words? Korean is great in that it uses a simple phonetic writing system. However there are so many words that sound the same I believe looking at the Chinese roots of Korean word could be a very valuable study method to help cement Korean words into long term memory… Your thoughts?