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'Comprehensive Chinese Word Dictionary'), also known as the Grand Chinese Dictionary, is the most inclusive available Chinese dictionary. Lexicographically comparable to the Oxford English Dictionary , it has diachronic coverage of the Chinese language , and traces usage over three millennia from Chinese classic texts to modern slang.
The meaning of a Chinese character is the morpheme meaning recorded in it. The meaning of a single-character word is its character meaning. The meaning of a multi-character word is generally derived from the meanings of the characters. The main ways to combine character meanings into word meanings include: [16] [17]
As with function words, there are many differences between the content words of Classical Chinese and those of Baihua. Below are synonyms used in the two registers. Some Classical Chinese words can have more than one meaning. However, Classical Chinese words still exist among many chengyu, or Chinese idioms.
A page from the Yiqiejing yinyi, the oldest extant Chinese dictionary of Buddhist technical terminology – Dunhuang manuscripts, c. 8th century. There are two types of dictionaries regularly used in the Chinese language: 'character dictionaries' (字典; zìdiǎn) list individual Chinese characters, and 'word dictionaries' (辞典; 辭典; cídiǎn) list words and phrases.
A Chinese-English Dictionary: 1892: Herbert Allen Giles' bestselling dictionary, 2nd ed. 1912 A Dictionary of the Chinese Language: 1815–1823: First Chinese-English, English-Chinese dictionary, Robert Morrison: A Syllabic Dictionary of the Chinese Language: 1874: First Chinese-English dictionary to include regional pronunciations, Samuel ...
Classical Chinese did not distinguish number in some of its pronouns, for example, 我 wǒ could mean either 'I, me' or 'we, us'. There was no 3rd-person personal pronoun form that could be used in subject position, but the distal demonstrative 彼 bǐ 'that, those' and the anaphoric demonstrative 是 shì frequently take that role.
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Loanwords have entered written and spoken Chinese from many sources, including ancient peoples whose descendants now speak Chinese. In addition to phonetic differences, varieties of Chinese such as Cantonese and Shanghainese often have distinct words and phrases left from their original languages which they continue to use in daily life and sometimes even in Mandarin.