ABC Chinese-English Dictionary

Desk Reference Edition. 2000.
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John DeFrancis, ed. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 1996. xix+897 pp. 71,436 entries. Paperback, 1996, Hard-cover, 2000.

This dictionary ushers in a new era in Chinese lexicography. The first Chinese-English Dictionary strictly alphabetically ordered by Hanyu pinyin and available in both print and electronic formats, it offers the simplest and quickest way to look up a term whose pronunciation is already known. User-friendly radical and stroke indexes are provided for those cases when pronunciation of a term is not known. Each entry provides Chinese characters (in both simplified and traditional form), part of speech, environment (area and level of usage), definition in English, and, possibly, examples of usage.

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Pocket edition. 1999
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“[An] important work. John DeFrancis and his Associate Editors, the Editorial Board, and Computer Associates are to be congratulated for their roles in producing the dictionary, which is quite likely to become a standard reference work for English-speaking students of Mandarin, and to remain so for quite some time.” — China Review International

It is a path-breaking effort in Chinese dictionary compiling.” — Prof. Feng Zhiwei, State Language Commission, People’s Republic of China

It is wonderful ... This is really a triumph. —Prof. J. Marshall Unger, Ohio State University