Radical First, Then Count the Strokes — Epoche A2
Dear Ling, A small victory to report from my kitchen table. Yesterday Grandfather finally taught me to use his Chinese dictionary — the little fat one with the worn red cover. You know the problem. When an unknown character stands in front of you, you cannot say it, so you cannot search for it by sound. And there is no alphabet to follow. A character has to be found by its shape. He showed me with 湖, "lake". First, find the radical: the three little drops on the left side, the water part, three strokes. Second, look up "water, three strokes" in the radical table at the front. Third, count the strokes that remain in the character — nine. Fourth, run a finger down the nine-stroke list until 湖 appears; the number beside it is the page. Radical, then stroke count, then page: three steps for any character in the language. My first try took two minutes. I timed the second: fifty seconds. Grandfather needs about ten — he learned the steps in primary school, like every child here, and his hands still remember them at eighty-one. If you already know how a character sounds, you can find it by sound, fast as any alphabet. But an unknown character gives you only its shape. The shape is the address. Come in June. Bring your own dictionary; Grandfather bets he is still faster. Mei