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.
Chinese dictionary
The second system of dictionary organization is by recurring graphic components or radicals. The famous 100–121 CE "Shuowen Jiezi" (說文解字 "Explaining Simple and Analyzing Compound Characters") arranged characters through a system of 540 "bushou" (部首 "section header") radicals. The 543 CE "Yupian" (玉篇 "Jade Chapters"), from the Liang Dynasty, rearranged them into 542. The 1615 CE "Zihui" (字彙 "Character Glossary"), edited by Mei Yingzuo (梅膺祚) during the Ming Dynasty, simplified the 540 "Shuowen Jiezi" radicals to 214. It also originated the "radical-stroke" scheme of ordering characters on the number of residual graphic strokes besides the radical. The 1627 "Zhengzitong" (正字通 "Correct Character Mastery") also used 214. The 1716 CE "Kangxi Zidian" (康熙字典 "Kangxi Dictionary"), compiled under the Kangxi Emperor of the Qing Dynasty, became the standard dictionary for Chinese characters, and popularized the system of 214 radicals. As most Chinese characters are semantic-phonetic ones (形聲字), the radical method is usually effective, thus it continues to be widely used in the present day. However, sometimes the radical of a character is not obvious. To compensate this, a "Chart of Characters that Are Difficult to Look up" (難檢字表), arranged by the number of strokes of the characters, is usually provided.