What is the Outlier Dictionary of Chinese Characters?
and more importantly, can it help you learn Chinese?
by Dr. Ash Henson
So, what is the Outlier Dictionary of Chinese Characters?
First and foremost, it is a dictionary for people learning Chinese characters. It was built from the ground up with the principles of effective memorization in mind. I won't go into those here, but let me at least name them to give you an idea of what it's about:
The number one, most important factor in effective memory is meaning. Does the thing you are trying to learn mean something to you? The number one way to have something mean something to you is to understand that thing. Other principles include organization, association, visualization, attention, repetition, interest.
With this as basis, the Outlier Dictionary of Chinese Characters explains how characters actually work.
The Outlier Dictionary of Chinese Characters explains how characters actually work.
When you understand how they work, you maximize the meaning characters have to you. Our dictionary explains how they work:
- on the individual character level, as an answer to the question: “Why does this character look like this?”
- and also on the system level, it shows you which connections between characters are real, and which ones are just apparent.
So, the best way to have a character have a meaning for you is to understand that character, and to understand its place in the system of Chinese characters.
The dictionary accomplishes this by showing how individual characters express sound and meaning, as well as how they don't. And, by showing how that character relates to other characters that express sound and meaning with the same or similar components. The rules of effective memory in play here are meaning (via understanding), organization, association, and hopefully attention as well as interest.
The Outlier Dictionary of Chinese Characters makes learning easier and more effective in a few ways:
- It presents character explanations in a very simple, systematic way.
- Explanations use a simple and consistent framework. We call this framework the Functional Component Framework. There are only four possible component types which can be used to describe how a given character works.
- The research that goes into this is cutting edge academic research, so it's as reliable as it gets, BUT, this information is presented in a very simple way. Like I said, this dictionary is made with learners in mind.
- When it is helpful for visualization, we show ancient character forms, since they are in general more picture-like.
Once you become familiar with the Functional Component Framework, you will very quickly build up an intuition for how characters work. In turn, many times, when you learn a new character, you'll look at it and be able to make intelligent guesses about its possible sounds and meanings.
Stop and think of that for a second.
How much easier is learning when you have a good idea of a character's sound or meaning before you even study it?
Reading the dictionary entry for that character will confirm or deny your intuition, thereby sharpening it.
This is one of the advantages to understanding how characters actually work.
Another advantage is that you'll be able to use your understanding of characters as a system to recall individual characters.
You're not left on your own to come up with a character based solely on your experience with that character, but will be able to use your understanding of how characters represent sound and meaning to recall that character.
Learn characters as a system by learning individual characters—
understand individual characters better by understanding the system.
Let's go over that again.
Using the functional component framework, you'll understand how characters actually work.
Understanding how characters actually work, and learning them in a systematic way reduces the amount of mental work on your part to learn a character.
You don't have to figure the character out.
You don’t have to figure out how a character works.
It’s explained for you in a simple, systematic, and reliable way.
Additionally, having learned this way, you'll be able to recall characters more easily, given that you can use your understanding of how characters express sound and meaning to recall a given character. And as a bonus, you'll also be able to make intelligent guesses about the sounds and meanings of characters you've never learned before!
It should be obvious now that the Outlier Dictionary of Chinese Characters is designed for learners.
If that's the case...
Why do people call it an etymological dictionary?
That's because if you want to understand how a character works, you need to understand its functional components.
The research that we do to determine a character's structure, i.e., its functional components, is etymological research.
But, YOU as a LEARNER do NOT need to understand anything about etymology. Your job is just to understand how a character represents sound and meaning. I.e., its functional components.
I want to reiterate that last point:
As a LEARNER, you do NOT need to understand anything about etymology to use our dictionary.
You don’t need to understand etymology.
You just need to understand how a character represents sound and meaning.
But, it should also be obvious by now that the Outlier Dictionary of Chinese Characters not only can help you learn characters, but do so in a way that removes most of the pain.
You don't need to figure out how any given character works or relates to other characters. We've already done that part for you, so that you can focus on learning.
What kind of information does the Outlier Dictionary of Chinese Characters provide?
Now that you know what the dictionary is, let's go into what kind of information it provides.
But, in order to understand that, let me very briefly go over the four functional component types and what they do.
It's not important that you immediately understand. Rather, you just need to have the information in the back of your head, so that it will become clearer over time.
As previously stated, there are four types:
1) form components – these are components that express meaning via their picture-like quality.
2) meaning components – these are components that express meaning via a meaning they acquired over time.
3) sound components – these components that express a sound.
4) empty components – these are components that give neither a sound nor a meaning.
If you forget what any of these are, their explanations are easily accessible within the dictionary.
Now let's get an overview of the kind of information you'll find in the dictionary. I'll come back and show you examples of each of these as they appear in the dictionary, but first, I want to introduce you to the concepts.
Form Explanations
All entries have a form explanation.
What is a form explanation? It describes why a character looks the way it does.
If the character can be broken into components, it tells you what the components are and what they are doing in the character. If not, it tells you what the character depicts. This is the character-level explanation.
Component analyses
Characters that can be broken down into functional components will have a component analysis for each unique component.
Each component is listed, as is its component type. You can also click or tap on a component to go to its dictionary entry.
Obviously, this is the component-level explanation. Note that the component explanations give basically the same information as the form explanations, but from a different perspective.
Meaning Trees
A meaning tree is a diagram of the various meanings a character has in modern Mandarin and the relationships between those meanings. Since a character's original meaning, i.e., the meaning that the character was created to represent, is the only meaning directly related to the character's form, it is always given regardless of whether it is used in modern Mandarin. The main purpose of the meaning tree, in addition to showing what meanings the character is used to represent, is to show the relationship of the original meaning to the character's form, and the relationships between meanings, allowing you to associate one meaning with another, thereby increasing your understanding and lowering the amount of mental work you need to do to recall these meanings later.
System data
As its name suggests, the system data shows system-level information. So, when you look up the system data for a given character, it shows you how that character relates to other characters. The relations are split up according to component type, including by form and meaning components, sound components, empty components, and even the traditional radical category. This allows you to quickly see both how Chinese characters work as a system, and how a given character fits into the system.
Ancient Character Form
Some entries have an ancient character form at the beginning of the entry. These are limited to characters whose ancient form helps to visualize what the character represents, something that is often not easy to do just by looking at the modern form.
Expert Entry vs. Essentials Entry
All of the information above appears in the Essentials version of the dictionary. This is the information you need, i.e., is essential, for you to master a given character. Beyond that, we also have an Expert version of the dictionary, which includes everything from the Essentials version, plus detailed information on how the character evolved over time, showing its earliest forms and how those forms evolved into the modern form. We separated the Expert data because it's not strictly speaking necessary to know, but many people that use the Expert version have told us that reading the Expert entry really helps to solidify a character in their mind.
Once again, notice how all of this information is in accordance with the rules of memory. By reading the Form Explanations and Component Analyses, you will be crystal clear on the working parts of that character and how they work. This understanding gives the character meaning to you personally.
Learning characters moves away from memorizing random strokes, to having a mental framework in place to receive new characters, new characters that you fully understand.
The system level data provides both organization and association.
The meaning trees provide not only understanding, but organization and association as well.
The ancient forms help you to visualize what the modern character form represents. And, understanding makes things more interesting, thereby increasing your level of attention and interest.
As you can see, this dictionary has the rules of effective memorization in its DNA.
Additionally, learning characters using the Functional Component framework not only reduces the amount of thinking required to understand a character, it also quickly builds up your intuition for how characters express sound and meaning (not to mention how they do NOT express sound and meaning).
In other words, learning characters using the Functional Component Framework builds your intuition for remembering and recalling characters.
This intuition is what will give you predictive ability, i.e., the ability to guess the range of possible sounds and meanings a character may have BEFORE you even learn it.
It also helps with long-term recall. You can use your understanding on the sound and meaning of the word you want to write to pluck your memory strings and recall the character's form.
If you want to learn Chinese characters in accordance to the Rules of Effective Memory, in a way that is systematic (read: easier and less chaotic), and in a way that builds intuition about how characters express sound and meaning, then the Outlier Dictionary of Chinese Characters is for you!
Now we can answer the questions we set out to answer at the beginning:
What is the Outlier Dictionary of Chinese characters? It is a dictionary for learners of Chinese characters that has the Rules of Effective Memory in its DNA.
It is based on a wealth of information (more than 100 academic sources are quoted), but all information is presented in an easy to understand and systematic way.
It allows you to quickly build your intuition for how characters represent sound and meaning, which leads to predictive ability (an intuition about the possible sounds and meanings of a character that you haven't learned yet) and long-term recall (allowing you to use the sound and meaning of the word you want to write to aid you in recalling the character's form). The foundation for predictive ability and long-term recall is your understanding of how characters ACTUALLY work (a made up system cannot get you there), which is more simple than people generally believe.
Can the Outlier Dictionary of Chinese Characters help you learn Chinese?
Yes, it can.
It is built upon the Rules of Effective Memory, helps you understand individual characters in a systematic and simple way, as well as showing you real sound and meaning connections between various characters with the system-level data.
Try it! You'll be surprised at how fast that intuition builds up!