Written Chinese
Written Chinese () comprises Chinese characters used to represent the Chinese language. Chinese characters do not constitute an alphabet or a compact syllabary. Rather, the writing system is roughly logosyllabic; that is, a character generally represents one syllable of spoken Chinese and may be a word on its own or a part of a polysyllabic word. The characters themselves are often composed of parts that may represent physical objects, abstract notions, or pronunciation. Literacy requires the memorization of a great many characters: educated Chinese know about 4,000. The large number of Chinese characters has in part led to the adoption of Western alphabets as an auxiliary means of representing Chinese.
Zhongwen Da Cidian
This encyclopedic dictionary includes 49,905 Chinese characters arranged under the traditional 214 Kangxi radicals. Each character entry shows the evolution of graphic forms (such as small seal script), gives pronunciations, and chronological meanings with sources. Words, phrases, and four-character idioms are given under the head character entry, arranged according to the number of strokes in their components. "There are many phrases under some characters," note Teng and Biggerstaff (1971:133), for example, 3,417 under "yi" (一 "one") and 1,398 under "huang" (黄 "yellow").