BOOK REVIEWS
107
In addition to the above merits over which it has no exclusive claim, Goodrich's dictionary has two special assets which are not commonly shared by other dictionaries. First, each character is immediately followed by its radical. This indication of the character's radical improves the value of the book as a tool for learning Chinese, especially for those who learn it by the inductive method. Radicals help the student understand the etymologies of the characters, and facilitate the process of associating the character and its meaning. Thus, they help, to some extent, remove that utterly 'lost' feeling which sometimes develops in the beginner who is tempted to think that Chinese characters are just so many arbitrary symbols.
Secondly, abbreviated characters now in official use in Communist China are inserted in the new edition. This makes the dictionary particularly valuable to the student of contemporary Chinese problems, who must read source materials coming from Mainland China.
Nevertheless, the dictionary is not without its share of imperfection. It was probably considerations of space that led the author of this pocket-size book to keep the number of "terms" or "expressions" given as illustrations of the use of the various characters, to a bare minimum. Among its very limited number of illustrative expressions, some are obsolete or wrong or otherwise not commonly in use in China. The following are but a few examples:
The term shuikuo2 (or jui kuo2) (literally "Shui-country") given on page 177 to mean 'Sweden' is no longer in use at present. Chinese people coming across these two characters today would be at a loss as to what the user wants to say: Sweden (# shui tien3) or Switzerland (shui shih) or some obscure newly created state in some remote corner of the earth.
The expression hsi fu4 is given on page 71 to mean 'bride, wife'. This is a colloquial use confined to Peking and its neighbouring areas. Elsewhere in China, these two characters put together mean 'daughter-in-law'. Other expressions such as cha2 cheng1 for 'exerting oneself' (page 3) and cheng1 ching4 for 'wrangling' (page 39), which are in colloquial use in Peking, are unheard of in other parts of China. The usual related expressions in ...