INTRODUCTION
Arrangement. The arrangement of the main body of this dictionary is strictly alphabetic except that ch and ng are treated as separate letters. The spelling follows the accepted spelling of Foochow Romanized which is described below. Each group of Romanized words identical in spelling is subdivided according to the tones, and within each tone group subdivided according to the different Chinese characters. The arrangement of the Chinese characters of the most phrases being first.
For each new character introduced the Romanized pronunciation is first given. If followed by “Coll.,” this is the colloquial and not the reading pronunciation. If followed by another Romanized word in parentheses, the same character will be found with that spelling elsewhere in the dictionary. Next comes the radical and then the character itself, sometimes in more than one form. The National (Mandarin) pronunciation then appears in the phonetic script. Tone marks are omitted but the proper Mandarin tone with rare exceptions can be calculated from the Foochow tone as follows: Foochow 1st tones become Mandarin 1st tones; Foochow 2nd tones become Mandarin 4th tones; Foochow 4th and 8th tones become Mandarin 5th tones; Foochow 5th tones become Mandarin 2nd tones. If the phonetic is followed by a small 文 this character and the phrases under it are literary and not used much, if at all, in spoken discourse. If on the other hand it is followed by a small 俗 the character itself and all its phrases are unused outside of Foochow. Such characters are of course not permitted in literary compositions even in Foochow. Next come the most important meanings of the character in English. Additional meanings are sometimes found under the phrases below. Additional Romanized words in parenthesis either after the single characters or after the phrases are to be taken as cross references. They may mean another word or phrase of equivalent or related meaning, or merely an important expression found elsewhere in which this character appears. All such cases are to be decided by looking up the expression in its proper place in the dictionary. Where no character is available, a circle takes its place. All such words are of course purely colloquial and limited to Foochow. S. indicates a surname; Num. indicates a numerative adjective or classifier; R. a radical.
Under each main character introduced the phrases are arranged alphabetically. The use of Coll. or 文 or 俗 is the same above.
