A Syllabic Dictionary of the Chinese Language
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''A Syllabic Dictionary of the Chinese Language: Arranged According to the Wu-Fang Yuen Yin, with the Pronunciation of the Characters as Heard in Peking, Canton, Amoy, and Shanghai'' or the ''Hàn-Yīng yùnfǔ 漢英韻府'', compiled by the American sinologist and missionary
Samuel Wells Williams Samuel Wells Williams (22 September 1812 – 16 February 1884) was a linguist, official, missionary and Sinologist from the United States in the early 19th century. Early life Williams was born in Utica, New York, son of William Williams (178 ...
in 1874, is a 1,150-page bilingual dictionary including 10,940 character headword entries, alphabetically collated under 522
syllables A syllable is a unit of organization for a sequence of speech sounds typically made up of a syllable nucleus (most often a vowel) with optional initial and final margins (typically, consonants). Syllables are often considered the phonological "bu ...
. Williams' dictionary includes, in addition to Mandarin, Chinese variants from
Middle Chinese Middle Chinese (formerly known as Ancient Chinese) or the Qieyun system (QYS) is the historical variety of Chinese recorded in the '' Qieyun'', a rime dictionary first published in 601 and followed by several revised and expanded editions. The ...
and four regional
varieties of Chinese Chinese, also known as Sinitic, is a branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family consisting of hundreds of local varieties, many of which are not mutually intelligible. Variation is particularly strong in the more mountainous southeast of main ...
, according to the 17th-century ''Wufang yuanyin'' 五方元音 "Proto-sounds of Speech in All Directions".


Title

The lengthy English title ''A Syllabic Dictionary of the Chinese Language: Arranged According to the Wu-Fang Yuen Yin, with the Pronunciation of the Characters as Heard in Peking, Canton, Amoy, and Shanghai'' refers to the influential
rime dictionary A rime dictionary, rhyme dictionary, or rime book () is an ancient type of Chinese dictionary that collates Chinese character, characters by tone (linguistics), tone and rhyme, instead of by radical (Chinese character), radical. The most import ...
of Chinese varieties compiled by Fan Tengfeng 樊騰鳳 (1601-1664), the ''Wufang yuanyin'' 五方元音 "Proto-sounds of Speech in All Directions". A Chinese rime dictionary (as differentiated from a
rhyming dictionary A rhyming dictionary is a specialized dictionary designed for use in writing poetry and lyrics. In a rhyming dictionary, words are categorized into equivalence classes that consist of words that rhyme with one another. They also typically suppor ...
) collates characters according to the phonological model of a
rime table A rime table or rhyme table () is a Chinese phonological model, tabulating the syllables of the series of rime dictionaries beginning with the ''Qieyun'' (601) by their onsets, rhyme groups, tones and other properties. The method gave a significa ...
, arranged by initials, finals, and the classical
four tones This article summarizes the phonology (the sound system, or in more general terms, the pronunciation) of Standard Chinese (Standard Mandarin). Standard Chinese phonology is based on the Beijing dialect of Mandarin. Actual production varies widel ...
of
Middle Chinese Middle Chinese (formerly known as Ancient Chinese) or the Qieyun system (QYS) is the historical variety of Chinese recorded in the '' Qieyun'', a rime dictionary first published in 601 and followed by several revised and expanded editions. The ...
pronunciation. The Chinese title ''Hàn-Yīng yùnfǔ 漢英韻府'' (lit. "Chinese-English Rime Dictionary") combines two words that commonly occur in dictionary titles. ''Hàn-Yīng'' 漢英 means "Chinese-English" and ''yùnfǔ'' 韻府 (lit. "rime storehouse") means "rime dictionary". For example, the
Yuan dynasty The Yuan dynasty (), officially the Great Yuan (; xng, , , literally "Great Yuan State"), was a Mongol-led imperial dynasty of China and a successor state to the Mongol Empire after its division. It was established by Kublai, the fifth ...
(c. 1280) ''Yunfu qunyu'' 韻府群玉 "Assembled Jade-tablets Rime Dictionary" compiled by Yin Shifu 陰時夫, the
Qing dynasty The Qing dynasty ( ), officially the Great Qing,, was a Manchu-led imperial dynasty of China and the last orthodox dynasty in Chinese history. It emerged from the Later Jin dynasty founded by the Jianzhou Jurchens, a Tungusic-speak ...
(1711) '' Peiwen yunfu'', and especially Morrison's ''A Dictionary of the Chinese Language'' Part II or ''Wuche yunfu'' 五車韻府 "Erudite Rime Dictionary".


History

Samuel Wells Williams (1812-1884), known as Wèi Sānwèi 衛三畏 in Chinese ( Wei 衛 is a surname), was an American
missionary A missionary is a member of a Religious denomination, religious group which is sent into an area in order to promote its faith or provide services to people, such as education, literacy, social justice, health care, and economic development.Tho ...
,
diplomat A diplomat (from grc, δίπλωμα; romanized ''diploma'') is a person appointed by a state or an intergovernmental institution such as the United Nations or the European Union to conduct diplomacy with one or more other states or internati ...
, and
sinologist Sinology, or Chinese studies, is an academic discipline that focuses on the study of China primarily through Chinese philosophy, language, literature, culture and history and often refers to Western scholarship. Its origin "may be traced to the ex ...
. In 1833, the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions sent Williams to manage their printing press of at Canton (present-day
Guangzhou Guangzhou (, ; ; or ; ), also known as Canton () and alternatively romanized as Kwongchow or Kwangchow, is the capital and largest city of Guangdong province in southern China. Located on the Pearl River about north-northwest of Hong Kon ...
) China. After a productive 40 years spent in China, Williams returned to the United States in 1877 and became the first Professor of Chinese language and literature at
Yale University Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the wo ...
. Williams was a prolific writer, translator, lexicographer, and editor. For English-speaking students of
Chinese as a foreign language Chinese as a foreign or second language is when non-native speakers study Chinese varieties. The increased interest in China from those outside has led to a corresponding interest in the study of Standard Chinese (a type of Mandarin Chinese) as a ...
, he wrote ''Easy Lessons in Chinese: or Progressive Exercises to Facilitate the Study of that Language''. Prior to compiling ''A Syllabic Dictionary of the Chinese Language'', he published two specialized dictionaries. The (1844) ''An English and Chinese Vocabulary in the Court Dialect'', or '' Ying Hwá Yun-fú Lih-kiái'' 英華韻府歷階 "English-Chinese Mandarin Rime Dictionary", was intended to replace Morrison's (1828) ''Vocabulary of the Canton Dialect: Chinese Words and Phrases'', which was out-of-print. "Court Dialect" refers to ''guānhuà'' 官話 (lit. "official speech") or the late imperial Mandarin koiné spoken in Beijing. Williams' (1856) ''A Tonic Dictionary of the Chinese Language in the Canton Dialect'' or ''ˌYing ˌWá ˌFan Wanˈ Ts'ütˌ Lúˈ'' 英華分韻提要 ("English-Chinese Summary of Tonal Divisions") includes 7,850 characters commonly used in
Cantonese Cantonese ( zh, t=廣東話, s=广东话, first=t, cy=Gwóngdūng wá) is a language within the Chinese (Sinitic) branch of the Sino-Tibetan languages originating from the city of Guangzhou (historically known as Canton) and its surrounding are ...
. Samuel Williams spent 11 years compiling ''A Syllabic Dictionary of the Chinese Language''. The dictionary preface explains that he first planned to rearrange ''A Tonic Dictionary of the Chinese Language in the Canton Dialect'' and "fit it for general use" but he soon realized that its "incompleteness required an entire revision". Williams began compilation in 1863, when he was
chargé d'affaires A ''chargé d'affaires'' (), plural ''chargés d'affaires'', often shortened to ''chargé'' (French) and sometimes in colloquial English to ''charge-D'', is a diplomat who serves as an embassy's chief of mission in the absence of the ambassador ...
for the United States in Beijing, and after realizing that foreigners required more than a wordlist of common Chinese terms, he decided to produce a successor to Morrison's dictionary. Sources that Williams consulted include Part II of Morrison's dictionary, Gonçalves' (1833) ''Diccionario China-Portuguez'', De Guignes' (1813) ''Dictionnaire Chinois'', and his ''A Tonic Dictionary'' of Cantonese. Although he said, "Dr. Medhurst's translation of the K'anghi Tsz'tien" has been much used", the principal source for definitions was the original ''Kangxi zidian'', which "imperfect as it is according to our ideas of a lexicon, is still the most convenient work of the kind in the language". The explanations of character origins ("etymological definitions") are taken from Sha Mu's 沙木 (1787) ''Yiwen beilan'' 藝文備覽 "Literary Writings for Consultance". Samuel Williams describes the ideal Chinese bilingual dictionary.
The plan of a Chinese lexicon to satisfy all the needs of a foreigner, should comprise the general and vernacular pronunciations, with the tones used in various places, and the sounds given to each character as its meanings vary. The history and composition of the character, its uses in various epochs, and its authorized and colloquial meanings should be explained and illustrated by suitable examples. All this knowledge should be methodically arranged so as to be accessible with the least possible trouble. But even when arranged and ready, the foreigner would find it to be incomplete for all his purposes by reason of the local usages, ...
Yong and Peng interpret this desideratum as Williams' explanation for including regional pronunciation variants in ''A Syllabic Dictionary'', and say, "As good as his intention was, it was highly doubtful whether he could achieve his goal.". In an 1865 letter to his son, Williams compares working on the dictionary with his camel ride from Cairo to Gaza, a "monotonous travel through a dreary sameness, relieved by a few shrubs, and sometimes a flower", and says he finds Chinese literature so "destitute of imagination" that "making a dictionary to elucidate it is indeed a drudgery". In November 1871, Williams traveled to Shanghai to oversee printing of the dictionary, and returned intermittently until publication in 1874. After thieves stole 250 stereotype printing plates of the dictionary from the Mission House in 1879, Williams made corrections and additions for the revised pages, which were used in a new 1881
edition Edition may refer to: * Edition (book), a bibliographical term for a substantially similar set of copies * Edition (printmaking), a publishing term for a set print run * Edition (textual criticism), a particular version of a text * Edition Recor ...
. The American Presbyterian Mission Press continued to reprint Williams' original ''A Syllabic Dictionary'' for 30 years up until 1903. In 1909, a revised edition that replaced Williams' romanization system with standard Wade-Giles was published In the history of bilingual Chinese lexicography, Williams' ''A Syllabic Dictionary of the Chinese Language'' was published 51 years after Robert Morrison's 4,595-page ''
Dictionary A dictionary is a listing of lexemes from the lexicon of one or more specific languages, often arranged alphabetically (or by radical and stroke for ideographic languages), which may include information on definitions, usage, etymologies ...
'' and 32 years after Walter Henry Medhurst's 1,486-page Dictionary. Williams adapted and incorporated from both dictionaries. Williams' 10,940 Chinese character head entries compare with the 12,674 numbered entries in Part II of Morrison's (1815-1823) ''A Dictionary of the Chinese Language, in Three Parts'', which is likewise collated alphabetically by pronunciation of 411 syllables, and with the approximately 12,000 head entries in Medhurst's (1842) ''Chinese and English Dictionary: Containing All the Words in the Chinese Imperial Dictionary, Arranged According to the Radicals''.


Content

The 1150-page ''Syllabic Dictionary'' is preceded by the front matter with a 6-page preface and an 84-page introduction. The latter introduces the ''Wufang yuanyin'', orthography, aspiration, tones, Middle Chinese ("Old Sounds") pronunciations, the range of regional Chinese varieties, a table with 8 regional pronunciations of an extract from the (1724) ''
Sacred Edict of the Kangxi Emperor In 1670, when the Kangxi Emperor of China's Qing dynasty was sixteen years old, he issued the Sacred Edict (), consisting of sixteen maxims, each seven characters long, to instruct the average citizen in the basic principles of Confucian orthodoxy ...
'', a table of the 214
Kangxi radicals The 214 Kangxi radicals (), also known as the Zihui radicals, form a system of radicals () of Chinese characters. The radicals are numbered in stroke count order. They are the most popular system of radicals for dictionaries that order Traditio ...
, and a table of 1040 character phonetics ("primitives"), for example, 'zhōng''中 "middle", 'shǎo''少 "few", and 'zhù''宁 "vestibule". Williams' preface to ''A Syllabic Dictionary of the Chinese Language '' explains, "The number of characters in this work is 12,527, contained in 10,940 articles, and placed under 522 syllables, which follow each other alphabetically, aspirated syllables coming after the unaspirated. Those syllables which begin with ''ts'', on account of their number, are placed by themselves after ''tw'an''". The additional 1,587 characters are differently written variant characters. For instance, the standard character for ''yī'' "medical doctor" has "wine vessel" indicating medicinal wine, but the earlier variant character has
''Wu'' () is a Chinese term translating to "shaman" or "sorcerer", originally the practitioners of Chinese shamanism or "Wuism" (巫教 ''wū jiào''). Terminology The glyph ancestral to modern is first recorded in bronze script, where it coul ...
" Chinese shaman" indicating shamanic healing. Rime dictionaries are arranged in terms of the classical
four tones This article summarizes the phonology (the sound system, or in more general terms, the pronunciation) of Standard Chinese (Standard Mandarin). Standard Chinese phonology is based on the Beijing dialect of Mandarin. Actual production varies widel ...
of
Middle Chinese Middle Chinese (formerly known as Ancient Chinese) or the Qieyun system (QYS) is the historical variety of Chinese recorded in the '' Qieyun'', a rime dictionary first published in 601 and followed by several revised and expanded editions. The ...
pronunciation: ''píng'' 平 "level" tone, ''shǎng'' 上 "rising" tone, ''qù'' 去 "departing" tone, and ''rù'' 入 "entering" tone. Most western-language dictionaries of Chinese represent tones by marking vowels with diacritics, Morrison's dictionary, for instance, indicates "level" tone as unmarked (''a''), "rising" with
grave accent The grave accent () ( or ) is a diacritical mark used to varying degrees in French, Dutch, Portuguese, Italian and many other western European languages, as well as for a few unusual uses in English. It is also used in other languages using t ...
(''à''), "departing" with
acute accent The acute accent (), , is a diacritic used in many modern written languages with alphabets based on the Latin, Cyrillic, and Greek scripts. For the most commonly encountered uses of the accent in the Latin and Greek alphabets, precomposed ch ...
(''á''), and "entering" tone with "short accent" (''ǎ''). As a result of using 17th-century ''Wufang yuanyin'' pronunciations, early Chinese-English dictionaries were much concerned with the "entering" tone, which had already ceased to exist in 19th-century Beijing pronunciation. Williams' dictionary represents the four tones in the same uncommon method as his ''Easy Lessons in Chinese'': semicircles written in one of the four corners of a character (the linguistic term ''fāngkuàizì'' 方塊字, lit. "square character", means "Chinese character; square print") or pronunciation. He explains that Chinese schoolmasters mark the tone of every character in their students' printed books in order to facilitate reading aloud; with a semicircle in the character's lower left corner for "level" tone, in the upper left for "rising", in the upper right for "departing", and in the lower right for "entering" tone. The head entry format in Williams' dictionary is the
regular script Regular script (; Hepburn: ''kaisho''), also called (), (''zhēnshū''), (''kǎitǐ'') and (''zhèngshū''), is the newest of the Chinese script styles (popularized from the Cao Wei dynasty c. 200 AD and maturing stylistically around the ...
character over the Peking Mandarin pronunciation (and an empty space "if one wishes to write the local sound beside the Pekingese"), both character and pronunciation are marked with a corner semicircle to indicate tone, an explanation of the character's origin, English translation equivalents, and usage examples (totaling about 53,000). The Chinese character for ''dào'' "way; path; say; the
Dao Dao, Dão or DAO may refer to: * Tao (Chinese: "The Way" 道), a philosophical concept * Dao (Chinese sword) (刀), a type of Chinese sword * Dao (Naga sword), a weapon and a tool of Naga people People and language * Yao people, a minority ethnic ...
" or ''dǎo'' "guide; lead; conduct; instruct; direct" (or clarified with
Radical 41 Radical 41 or radical inch () meaning " thumb" or "inch" is one of the 31 Kangxi radicals (214 radicals total) composed of three strokes. In the ''Kangxi Dictionary'', there are 40 characters (out of 49,030) to be found under this radical. is ...
寸 "thumb; inch") is a good litmus test for a dictionary because it has two pronunciations and complex semantics. Williams dictionary sample entry 道ʼ, shown to the right) gives the
regular script Regular script (; Hepburn: ''kaisho''), also called (), (''zhēnshū''), (''kǎitǐ'') and (''zhèngshū''), is the newest of the Chinese script styles (popularized from the Cao Wei dynasty c. 200 AD and maturing stylistically around the ...
character over the ''taoʼ'' pronunciation gloss (both marked with a semicircle to the upper right indicating ''qù'' 去 "departing" tone), explanation of character origin, English translation equivalents, and usage examples. The dictionary's phonological section headings are according to standard
Beijing dialect The Beijing dialect (), also known as Pekingese and Beijingese, is the prestige dialect of Mandarin spoken in the urban area of Beijing, China. It is the phonological basis of Standard Chinese, the official language in the People's Republic of ...
pronunciation, and note variant ones from
Middle Chinese Middle Chinese (formerly known as Ancient Chinese) or the Qieyun system (QYS) is the historical variety of Chinese recorded in the '' Qieyun'', a rime dictionary first published in 601 and followed by several revised and expanded editions. The ...
("Old sounds") and four regional
varieties of Chinese Chinese, also known as Sinitic, is a branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family consisting of hundreds of local varieties, many of which are not mutually intelligible. Variation is particularly strong in the more mountainous southeast of main ...
spoken in
Treaty ports Treaty ports (; ja, 条約港) were the port cities in China and Japan that were opened to foreign trade mainly by the unequal treaties forced upon them by Western powers, as well as cities in Korea opened up similarly by the Japanese Empire. ...
where Protestant missionaries were active. "Swatow" or
Shantou Shantou, alternately romanized as Swatow and sometimes known as Santow, is a prefecture-level city on the eastern coast of Guangdong, China, with a total population of 5,502,031 as of the 2020 census (5,391,028 in 2010) and an administrative ...
in
Guangdong province Guangdong (, ), alternatively romanized as Canton or Kwangtung, is a coastal province in South China on the north shore of the South China Sea. The capital of the province is Guangzhou. With a population of 126.01 million (as of 2020) ...
refers to Shantou dialect, a
Southern Min Southern Min (), Minnan (Mandarin pronunciation: ) or Banlam (), is a group of linguistically similar and historically related Sinitic languages that form a branch of Min Chinese spoken in Fujian (especially the Minnan region), most of Taiwan ( ...
variety, "Amoy" or
Xiamen Xiamen ( , ; ), also known as Amoy (, from Hokkien pronunciation ), is a sub-provincial city in southeastern Fujian, People's Republic of China, beside the Taiwan Strait. It is divided into six districts: Huli, Siming, Jimei, Tong'an, ...
in
Fujian province Fujian (; alternately romanized as Fukien or Hokkien) is a province on the southeastern coast of China. Fujian is bordered by Zhejiang to the north, Jiangxi to the west, Guangdong to the south, and the Taiwan Strait to the east. Its cap ...
to Amoy dialect, another
Southern Min Southern Min (), Minnan (Mandarin pronunciation: ) or Banlam (), is a group of linguistically similar and historically related Sinitic languages that form a branch of Min Chinese spoken in Fujian (especially the Minnan region), most of Taiwan ( ...
variety, also in Fujian province, "Fuchau" or
Fuzhou Fuzhou (; , Fuzhounese: Hokchew, ''Hók-ciŭ''), alternately romanized as Foochow, is the capital and one of the largest cities in Fujian province, China. Along with the many counties of Ningde, those of Fuzhou are considered to constitute t ...
refers to Fuzhou dialect, the prestige form of
Eastern Min Eastern Min or Min Dong (, Foochow Romanized: Mìng-dĕ̤ng-ngṳ̄), is a branch of the Min group of Sinitic languages of China. The prestige form and most-cited representative form is the Fuzhou dialect, the speech of the capital of Fujian. ...
, and "
Shanghai Shanghai (; , , Standard Mandarin pronunciation: ) is one of the four direct-administered municipalities of the People's Republic of China (PRC). The city is located on the southern estuary of the Yangtze River, with the Huangpu River flow ...
" to
Shanghainese The Shanghainese language, also known as the Shanghai dialect, or Hu language, is a variety of Wu Chinese spoken in the Districts of Shanghai, central districts of the Shanghai, City of Shanghai and its surrounding areas. It is classified as ...
, a variety of
Wu Chinese The Wu languages (; Romanization of Wu Chinese, Wu romanization and Romanization of Wu Chinese#IPA, IPA: ''wu6 gniu6'' [] (Shanghainese), ''ng2 gniu6'' [] (Suzhounese), Mandarin pinyin and IPA: ''Wúyǔ'' []) is a major group of Sinitic languag ...
. Thus, the TAO heading says, "''Old sounds'', to, do, tot, ''and'' dok. ''In Canton'', tò; – ''in Swatow'', to ''and'' tau; – ''in Amoy'', tò ''and'' tiau; – ''in Fuchau'', to ''and'' t'o; – ''in Shanghai'', to ''and'' do; – ''in Chifu'', tao." The
logographic In a written language, a logogram, logograph, or lexigraph is a written character that represents a word or morpheme. Chinese characters (pronounced '' hanzi'' in Mandarin, ''kanji'' in Japanese, ''hanja'' in Korean) are generally logograms, a ...
explanation of 道 (which combines Radical 162 辵 or 辶 "walk; go" and
Radical 181 Radical 181 or radical leaf () meaning "leaf", "head" or "page" is one of the 11 Kangxi radicals (214 radicals in total) composed of 9 strokes. In the ''Kangxi Dictionary'', there are 372 characters (out of 49,030) to be found under this radical ...
首 "head";
stroke order Stroke order is the order in which the strokes of a Chinese character (or Chinese derivative character) are written. A stroke is a movement of a writing instrument on a writing surface. Chinese characters are used in various forms in Chinese ...
is animated
here Here is an adverb that means "in, on, or at this place". It may also refer to: Software * Here Technologies, a mapping company * Here WeGo (formerly Here Maps), a mobile app and map website by Here Television * Here TV (formerly "here!"), a TV ...
) says, "From ''to go'' and the ''head''; q. d. being at the head"; and "occurs used with the next and last" refers to the subsequent two variant character entries, with
Radical 144 Radical 144 or radical walk enclosure () meaning "" or "" is one of the 29 Kangxi radicals (214 radicals in total) composed of 6 strokes. In the ''Kangxi Dictionary'', there are 53 characters (out of 49,030) to be found under this radical. ...
行 "go" instead of Radical 162 "From ''to walk'' and a ''head''; interchanged with the preceding", and 導 with Radical 41 "From an ''inch'' and ''road''". The 24 English translation equivalents include both common ''dào'' meanings and specialized ones in
Chinese geography China has great physical diversity. The eastern plains and southern coasts of the country consist of fertile lowlands and foothills. They are the location of most of China's agricultural output and human population. The southern areas of the ...
,
traditional Chinese medicine Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) is an alternative medical practice drawn from traditional medicine in China. It has been described as "fraught with pseudoscience", with the majority of its treatments having no logical mechanism of action ...
,
Chinese philosophy Chinese philosophy originates in the Spring and Autumn period () and Warring States period (), during a period known as the "Hundred Schools of Thought", which was characterized by significant intellectual and cultural developmen ...
,
Chinese Buddhism Chinese Buddhism or Han Buddhism ( zh, s=汉传佛教, t=漢傳佛教, p=Hànchuán Fójiào) is a Chinese form of Mahayana Buddhism which has shaped Chinese culture in a wide variety of areas including art, politics, literature, philosophy, ...
, Daoism (calling Daoists "Rationalists"), and
Chinese grammar The grammar of Standard Chinese or Mandarin shares many features with other varieties of Chinese. The language almost entirely lacks inflection; words typically have only one grammatical form. Categories such as number (singular or plural) and ...
.
A road, path, or way; in ''geography'', a zone or belt; in ''medicine'', anal and urinal passages; a circuit; the officer who oversees a circuit or region; a principle, a doctrine, that which the mind approves; and used in the classics in the sense of the right path in which one ought to go, either in ruling or observing rules; rectitude or right reason; in early times up to A. D. 500, the Buddhists called themselves , 人 men eeking forreason or intelligent men, denoting thereby their aspirations after ''pu-ti'' (Sanscrit, ''boddhi'') intelligence; the Reason or Logos of the Rationalists, denoting an emanation, the unknown factor or principle of nature, the way it acts in matter and mind; to lead; to direct, to follow out; to go in a designated path; to speak, to talk, to converse; as a ''preposition'', by, from; the way or cause a thing comes; a classifier of courses at a feast, edicts and dispatches, gateways, walls, rivers, bridges, &c.; a coating, a layer.
The entry's 39 word and usage examples—which use Morrison's ", " abbreviation for the head character 道—include common expressions (''bùzhīdào'' 不知道 "I don't know", ''dàolù'' 道路 "a way; a road"), Chinese Christian expressions (''zìgǔdào'' 自古道 "as saith the proverb"), Chinese Buddhist terms (''dédào'' 得道 "to become perfect and enter ''nirvana''; used by Buddhists "), and literary set phrases (''Dàoxīn wéi wēi'' 道心惟微 "the principle of right in the heart is small" comes from the ''
Book of Documents The ''Book of Documents'' (''Shūjīng'', earlier ''Shu King'') or ''Classic of History'', also known as the ''Shangshu'' (“Venerated Documents”), is one of the Five Classics of ancient Chinese literature. It is a collection of rhetorica ...
'' contrasting the 人心 "human heart-mind" and the 道心 "Way's heart-mind": "The mind of man is restless, prone (to err); its affinity to what is right is small".Tr. Legge.


Reception

Scholars have both praised and criticized Williams’s dictionary. One of the first reviewers did both. Willem Pieter Groeneveldt praises Williams for "surpassing all those before him, he has given us a dictionary better than any existing before" and advises every student of Chinese to buy this "great boon to sinology"; and yet he criticizes Williams for including "fanciful" etymological definitions based on character components instead of scientific philology, the "indiscriminate introduction of the colloquial element", and presenting yet another new system of romanization. The American missionary Henry Blodget's 1874 review in ''
The New York Observer ''The New York Observer'' was a weekly newspaper printed from 1987 to 2016, when it ceased print publication and became the online-only newspaper ''Observer''. The media site focuses on culture, real estate, media, politics and the entertainmen ...
'' says, "this Dictionary, as a whole, is a treasury of knowledge in regard to China and Chinese affairs, a treasury accumulated by many years of study both of Protestant and Roman Catholic missionaries". The British consular officer and linguist
Herbert Giles Herbert Allen Giles (, 8 December 184513 February 1935) was a British diplomat and sinologist who was the professor of Chinese at the University of Cambridge for 35 years. Giles was educated at Charterhouse School before becoming a British dip ...
published a 40-page brochure ''On some Translations and Mistranslations in Dr. Williams’ Syllabic Dictionary'', saying that it is "though in many ways an improvement upon its predecessors, is still unlikely to hold the fort for any indefinitely long period". As an example, for Williams' translation of '' zhúfūrén'' 竹夫人 as "A long bamboo pillow", Giles gives, "Literally, a bamboo wife. A hollow cylindrical leg-rest, made of bamboo. Commonly known to Europeans as a 'Dutch wife'". However, Williams did not reply to Giles’ challenges, but consistently reprinted his dictionary until 1909. Giles criticized Williams as "the lexicographer not for the future but of the past", and took nearly twenty years to compile his (1892) '' A Chinese-English Dictionary''. Censuring Williams' dictionary for transliterating pronunciation from a "general average" of regional variants rather than Peking pronunciation, James Acheson wrote an index arranged according to Thomas Francis Wade's orthography, citing the frustration that many dictionary users who after "repeated failures to find the commonest characters without reference to the radical index or, failing here as often happens, to the List of Difficult Characters". The American sinologist Jerry Norman credits Williams' ''A Syllabic Dictionary of the Chinese Language'' as apparently the first dictionary to properly distinguish between aspirated and unaspirated stops. A recent book on Chinese lexicography says Williams' ''Syllabic Dictionary'' was the first dictionary of its kind to contain pronunciations from four regional
varieties of Chinese Chinese, also known as Sinitic, is a branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family consisting of hundreds of local varieties, many of which are not mutually intelligible. Variation is particularly strong in the more mountainous southeast of main ...
: Pekingese,
Cantonese Cantonese ( zh, t=廣東話, s=广东话, first=t, cy=Gwóngdūng wá) is a language within the Chinese (Sinitic) branch of the Sino-Tibetan languages originating from the city of Guangzhou (historically known as Canton) and its surrounding are ...
, Xiamenese, and
Shanghainese The Shanghainese language, also known as the Shanghai dialect, or Hu language, is a variety of Wu Chinese spoken in the Districts of Shanghai, central districts of the Shanghai, City of Shanghai and its surrounding areas. It is classified as ...
.


Editions

* * *


References

* * * * * * * Footnotes


Further reading

* Broomhall, Marshall (1927),
Robert Morrison, A Master Builder
', Student Christian Movement. * *Su, Ching 蘇精 (1996),
The Printing Presses of the London Missionary Society among the Chinese
', Ph.D. dissertation,
University College London , mottoeng = Let all come who by merit deserve the most reward , established = , type = Public research university , endowment = £143 million (2020) , budget = ...
.


External links

{{Dictionaries of Chinese Chinese dictionaries