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.
ABC Chinese–English Dictionary
The "ABC Dictionary" includes 5,425 different Chinese characters and a total 71,486 lexical entries. The dictionary's most notable feature is being entirely arranged by pinyin in the alphabetical order of complete compound words. For example, "kuàngquán" 矿泉 "mineral spring" immediately precedes "kuángquǎnbìng" 狂犬病 "rabies", which in turn immediately precedes "kuàngquánshuǐ" 矿泉水 "mineral water", even though the first and last words begin with the same character and the middle word with another (Sawer 2001: 224).