Online Teochew Dictionaries
When learning a language, one of the most important resources to have is a dictionary. In this post, we’ll introduce some of the online dictionaries that can help Teochew learners.
Before we do so, a reminder that there are two kinds of Chinese dictionaries: character dictionaries 字典 (T: ri7diang2, M: zìdiǎn) and word dictionaries 词典 (T: se5diang2, M: cídiǎn). Character dictionaries only deal with individual characters (e.g. pronunciation, etymology) but if you want to learn a language it’s best to have a word dictionary. That’s because Chinese words (词) are made up of one or more characters.
Teochew pronouncing dictionaries have been around since the early 20th century, starting with 《潮声十五音》 (“Fifteen sounds of Teochew”) by 张世珍 (Dion1 Si3diang1, M: Zhāng Shìzhēn), published in 1913. (In the 19th century there were also dictionaries by Christian missionaries, for training new missionaries in the language.) However, dictionaries like the “Fifteen Sounds” were character dictionaries, organized by stroke count. They were mostly used for learning how to pronounce specific characters in written texts, instead of looking up the definitions of unknown words by their pronunciation, as we are accustomed to do with modern dictionaries. (Read more about Teochew dictionaries
Here’s our review of some online Teochew dictionaries:
1. Mogher.com
The main database is a character dictionary, with lookup by character input, Teochew peng’im, or Mandarin pinyin. The entries give definitions in standard written Chinese and also Teochew meanings if different.
Although the main database does not contain words (词), there is a separate community-edited vocabulary list of words on the website, including words that do not have standardized characters.
The website also hosts online resources, e.g. scans of old dictionaries and articles, for download
2. Czyzd.com
Also a character dictionary, with lookup and browsing by character input, Teochew peng’im or Mandarin pinyin.
3. Wiktionary
Wiktionary is a public wiki project like Wikipedia, only instead of an encyclopedia, the aim is to have a community-edited dictionary. The English language Wiktionary also includes entries for non-English languages, including Chinese (both characters and words).
Entries for Chinese words also include their pronunciations in standard Mandarin and other Chinese “dialects”. Main entries are under the traditional characters, although simplified and variant characters are cross-referenced. In addition, there are extended tables on “dialect” synonyms for some words, including maps of regional usage. Therefore, as a Chinese-English dictionary it is surprisingly useful. For example, see the entry on 貓鼠 (“mouse”)
However, the disadvantage is that you can look up Chinese entries only by character, not by pronunciation (Mandarin, Teochew, or otherwise). This makes it difficult to use, because if you don’t know a word then you probably don’t know what character to write it with, either. Furthermore it means that Chinese “dialect” words without a standard character will likely not be included in this dictionary.
Nonetheless, Wiktionary is still a useful resource, that is furthermore community-edited and constantly expanding, To aid learners who want to look up Teochew words by pronunciation, we have indexed all the Wiktionary entries containing Teochew terms by their Teochew pronunciation (using Peng’im)
Do you know any other online resources for Teochew vocabulary? If so, do leave a comment below!
Posted on 2020-10-15 00:00:00 +0000