Do you have Quaille's Practical Chinese-English Dictionary ?

[kentsuarez]

I am also very curious, has anyone actually seen Quaille's Practical Chinese-English Dictionary ? What I want to know is whether it is pinyin ordered, does it have a pinyin index, and are the entries of good quality? Feedback in general?

Tks.

K

[Learner]

I have it. Quaille's Practical Chinese-English Dictionary. Edited by Yu Shaosheng, Sheng Peilin, Yin Peijie, Ding Feng, Yu Rui, Chen Yijing..

Asia 2000 Ltd. & Maison d'editions Quaille. Hong Kong, 1999. 924 pages.

1) The entries are ordered by pinyin. Under each main character entry, compounds are given. For example, under men2, you have men2chi3, men2dang1hu4dui4, men2di4, men2fang2, etc. (I use the numbers here for easier typing, but the dictionary uses the proper diacritic marks to indicate the tones). For each compound, it gives the characters, pinyin and the English meaning(s).

2) Traditional characters are used throughout. The only place where simplified characters are used is in the heading of each main entry, where, in addition to the traditional character, the simplified character, if it exists, is given in brackets. However, all the compounds are in traditional characters only. Thus, in the above example, both the traditional and simplified version of men2 are given in the heading, but all the compounds are in traditional characters only.

3) For each main character entry (but not for the compounds), the stroke order is given (but only for the traditional form).

4) The dictionary has both a pinyin index and a radical and stroke order index.

5) I personally do not find the dictionary very useful because it does not contain any usage examples or give any indication of the context in which the word can be used. It is just a list of words with English equivalents. I find the Cheng & Tsui Chinese Pinyin-English Dictionary much more useful, since it include many phrases and even full sentences as illustrative examples (all in both simp. characters and pinyin).

However, the Cheng and Tsui dictionary, unlike Quaille's, uses simplified characters. That suits me just fine, but if you prefer traditional characters, you will want something else.