New: Collins Chinese Dictionary (Third edition)

[Gharial]

I spotted this today in the bookstore, and had a quick browse:

http://www.collinsed...dary&from=HC-UK

http://www.collinsla...LatestNews.aspx

The CCD3 is quite an impressive-looking tome, being about 50% thicker, and with somewhat larger pages and appreciably more example sentences (all of them now fully-Pinyinized) than the Pocket Oxford Chinese Dictionary say (which was sitting right next to the CCD3 on the shelf in the bookstore).

About the only thing I could find wrong with the CCD3 from my quick browse was that although it now definitely includes bracketed traditional equivalents for the simplified characters in all head entries (though see the mistakes highlighted towards the end of the third paragraph of the detailed review in post #4 below), the radical index doesn't appear to include those traditional characters, so one can't actually look them up (unless one already knows the pronunciation and/or simplified form and can thus go straight to the relevant entry). This is a bit of a silly omission (you'd think they'd have realized the error of their ways by the time this THIRD edition was being compiled), and will doubtless continue to lose Collins quite a few customers to Oxford, or to the ABC ECCE (etc), both of which include traditional as well as simplified characters in their indexes in addition to in their (head) entries. Still, there are probably just about enough customers who are more or less content to confine themselves mainly to simplified characters, and the most important thing I suppose is that the traditional forms are now supplied at all in a Collins!

The RRP is £13.99, but Amazon UK is offering it for just over £9, which seems a bargain.

[Gharial]

I've just bought the CCD3. I'm hoping I'll be able to have a good look at it over the weekend, with a view to perhaps posting a proper review of it (but shorter than the one I wrote for the ABC ECCE!) here sometime next week.

[Koxinga]

Can you do a short comparison of CCD3 and ABCECCE in the review?

[Gharial]

OK, here's the review! Which isn't in fact much shorter or less detailed than the one for the ABC ECCE…but never mind! (NB: There is a quick summary comparison of the CCD3 with the ABC ECCE in post #5 below).

The CCD3 is quite a big book, measuring about two inches thick, and weighing in at almost 1.2kg; it is therefore about twice as thick and heavy as the (so-called!) Pocket Oxford Chinese Dictionary (POCD), though the two are in terms of cover and paper surface dimensions cut to exactly the same size (approx. 8 x 4 inches). The paper used is of a very good quality, very white, crisp and reasonably thick, and the print is excellent: English font is sans serif and clear, whilst Chinese characters (all in clean elegant modern Chinese sans-serif font) are as heads (roughly 24-point font size) and in compound subentries (roughly 12-point font) both printed in a very easy-on-the-eye navy blue. (Example sentences in comparison are printed in plain black, roughly 10-point font, but this is still pretty legible thanks to the high-quality printing and paper). One should therefore have absolutely no problems reading any of the font in this dictionary, even if you have "bad" eyesight!

Excluding front matter, index, and appendices, the C-E section (which comes first) is 507 pages long, and the E-C section (which appears denser, due no doubt to the English compounds and phrases not being given a separate new line each time as they are in the C-E section) 611 pages. In terms of general content, it is pretty much exactly the same as the online nciku E-C and Reverso[1] E-C/C-E dictionaries, except for the obvious and very useful addition of printed Pinyin for every sub-sense and example sentence (whereas previous print/paper editions of the CCD had IIRC quite limited Pinyin, similar in fact to the Reverso's relative lack of it). However, "For consistency, changes of tone in pinyin are not shown in this book" (from the explanation of tone sandhi heading the list of compounds for 一 yī on page 444 of the CCD3's C-E section), which is a policy that is now obviously lagging behind the innovations introduced in the ABC ECCE (which has worked out a way to keep canonical tones but also indicate when and how they should change - see my review here: http://www.chinese-f...post__p__237924 ), and IMHO one that should at least be replaced by printing the necessary tone changes in those compounds that need them (obviously the user can simply refer back to the head character for the canonical tone), as for example the Oxford Chinese Minidictionary does. Still, in this regard at least, the CCD3 is no different to the POCD. The indication of Chinese bound forms meanwhile is about as limited/ultimately lacking as in the POCD (and with both as compared to the ABC ECCE's much more extensive treatment of bound forms). With regard to the number of C-E compound subentries, the POCD seems to have more overall, but the CCD3 surely has more examples (and many of those examples seem a bit more suited to speech i.e. to being potentially reiterated whole or at least in part in a learner's own utterances...and again, the provision of complete Pinyin really helps in this regard); then, there is the occasional new example added (see third paragraph up from the end of this post, excluding the notes). There could however on the other hand be a number of puzzling (worrying?) omissions in the CCD3 - just going here by the fact that on the very first page I noticed that 啊 is not given a 2nd tone entry, nor even a toneless one (despite toneless being the most frequent realization of/for this particular character!), only 1st, 3rd, and 4th tone entries. The sloppiest aspect of the CCD3 seems however to be its failure to distinguish between, that is its lumping together and "overmapping" of, the original meanings of certain forms and their later simplified uses (when being borrowed for their sound rather than their original meaning): 几 jī 'small table' isn't given a separate entry to 几(幾) jī 'nearly' (so any unaware user will likely assume that the 'small table' meaning also has the complex form 幾), nor is the 里 lǐ 'neighbourhood; hometown; 0.5km' meaning kept separate from the one of 里(裡) lǐ 'lining; in(side)' (more about this one here: http://www.chinese-f...post__p__237077 ), which is a problem that's carried over into other entries (for example, at 公 gōng, the compound gōnglǐ 'kilometer' is given as 公里(裡), which is clearly wrong); as for 谷 gǔ 'valley' versus 谷(穀) gǔ 'cereals', the two are conflated into a single entry that, due to that conflation, lacks (indeed, "logically" has to lack) the complex form as a 24-point font large head, and only includes it (unclearly/confusingly/quite missably) in the two much smaller 12-point compounds, 谷(穀)物 gǔwù 'grain' and 谷(穀)子 gǔzi 'millet', following the head. (It would of course have been far better to simply provide two completely separate entries for the separate 'valley' versus 'cereals' form-meanings, "wasteful" of space though that might seem). But the CCD3 does get at least some of these "trickier" items right: for example, 斗 dǒu and 斗(鬥) dòu are kept apart and distinct in separate entries (the difference in tone obviously necessitates this).

The CCD3's front matter contains the following:

1) An 8-page introductory sketch of Mandarin by (an?) Esther Tyldesley of the University of Edinburgh. This isn't bad, and may help reassure and give some general study tips and sense of direction to those completely new to the language (or at least give them something to read to distract them from more serious study), but it doesn't ultimately say that much despite its not-exactly-trivial length, plus it contains or omits a few points that one could take issue with: for example, we are told that Pinyin "isn't a substitute for learning characters, but is a good, accurate guide to pronunciation once you are used to it" (my italics), yet there is no guide to Pinyin in the dictionary or even a mention of its principle bugbears (namely zh, c, x, q) for the English learner of Chinese (though to be fair, no other recent dictionary includes such information either, other it seems than the POCD, which has a too-technical chart of Pinyin and its corresponding IPA symbols); mention is made of the utility of radicals, but none really of the phonetic components of characters (presumably it is felt these will become obvious to the learner, though they equally may well not for quite a while!); the learner is not told by Tyldesley (nor to again be fair, by whoever compiled the index and its very scant instructions) that the dictionary's index does not include or therefore allow for looking up traditional characters (these are, as was mentioned in the first post in this thread, only to be found bracketed in actual entries), indicating that Tyldesley did not see or much refer to the CCD3 whilst writing her sketch; then, English apparently has three tenses ("The English tense system is based on the idea of before and after the point of view of the narrator. Things that happened before the time in which we are talking take the past tense, those that are in the process of going on, the present, and things that have yet to take place, the future. This is shown by a change in the verbs"), although most linguists and even most EFL teachers (who in order to teach well, must grapple with the various means in English of expressing futurity, which include present forms, with the pure modals viewed as, well, modals!) would disagree on formal/form-based grounds (but then, I guess Tyldesley's 'verbs' there nicely fudges the issue of exactly what verb(s) she is really talking about in a true inflectional sense (modals certainly don't inflect in the true sense of the term!)); and finally, saying in the short discussion of measure words that "you occasionally see something similar in English...In Chinese, however, measure words are mandatory when giving a number of nouns" could leave the reader confused (still) as to how mandatory MWs are in Chinese - 100%, or less? (What Tyldesley probably ought to say is "when giving a number FOR/BEFORE nouns"). Overall however the introduction is reasonably well-written and informative, and there are some parts that many will probably agree with, such as when Tyldesley says of learning characters: "One of the most cheering things about learning the Chinese writing system is that most words are made up of two or more characters. This means that once you get beyond a certain point, you encounter more and more characters you know already, just in different combinations. New words and expressions consequently become easier to learn. For someone who is not learning characters, however, every new word will just be a collection of vowels, consonants and tones - the element of meaning that the characters give is lost. They also lose out on the enjoyment involved in reading and writing Chinese, which is rather like the pleasure of doing a crossword puzzle or a difficult jigsaw."

2) A reasonably extensive (12/24-page) guide on 'How to use the Dictionary', which explains the features of both sections of the dictionary. This guide is given twice in back-to-back E-C and C-E versions (though it is only the Chinese version that lists, in both English and Chinese, the part of speech labels, subject field labels, and register labels, and includes a guide to the phonemes of English and a list of irregular verbs). The head-character entry-arrangement of the C-E section (the same as used in the POCD and most other Chinese dictionaries, versus the "head-character jumbling" of compounds in the ABC's single sort by full alphabetic string), which is of course very intuitive to the beginner (though the oral/aural limitations will not be quite so apparent, which is where the ABC dictionaries can really come in), is nevertheless still made explicitly clear in the guide. Then, Chinese main entries (i.e. the characters) are explained as being subordered as follows: characters identical in tone are subordered by the number of strokes in each character, and any characters identical in number of strokes are subordered by the zhá 札 method (i.e. 一 through 丨丿丶乚), with characters starting with 一 coming before those starting with 丨 and so on. In theory, this should give especially those sections that contain a lot of homophonous characters (e.g. the shi's and yi's) a simple-to-complex look, but it might have been more straightforward to just have a second sort for such homophones that was based simply on the type of first stroke (and then recursively the second stroke and so on) as in the POCD, than these 'number of strokes' then 'type of initial stroke' multiple sorts of the CCD3. Ultimately, the end user will need to make up their own mind which is best, but cidian like these probably don't have quite enough characters in them (versus zidian proper) to make this that much of an issue really! Traditional variants are given for not only the subsequent characters in compounds, but also for the same head character in each and every compound, which seems wasteful of space (when the user could have been reasonably expected to simply refer to the large characters heading the overall entry for the traditional version of the same character heading each compound!), and can make the entries start to look a bit cluttered when traditional variants abound. For example, compare the compound yāsuìqián [at 压(壓)] in the CCD3 to the POCD: 压(壓)岁(歲)钱(錢) versus 压岁(歲)钱(錢) respectively - the POCD's is slightly cleaner-looking. Both the CCD3 and the POCD pale in comparison with the ABC ECCE however, which doesn't interrupt the simplified chains of characters and instead provides any traditional afterwards thus: 压岁钱[壓歲錢]. (In those cases where only some of the characters in a compound were simplified and thus have traditional equivalents, the ABC ECCE indicates just those and leaves the rest [i.e. those that were the same pre- and post-simplification] marked simply with a dash or dashes thus: yǎsúgòngshǎng 雅俗共赏[-賞]; Yà-Tài 亚太[亞-]; Yà-Tài Dìqū 亚太地区[亞-區]; yějī dàxué 野鸡大学[-雞-學]; and so on). This slight clutteredness in the presentation of traditional forms is also found in the examples in the E-C section (e.g. a/an INDEF ART: a Mrs Blair telephoned 一位布(佈)莱(萊)尔(爾)夫人打电(電)话(話)了 yī wèi Bùlái'ěr fūrén dǎ diànhuà le), though there it could actually be a good thing (in that it will give the English learner of Chinese plenty of chances to become familiar with quite a variety of traditional forms right alongside the simplified), but is not found in the examples in the C-E section (which present only simplified characters), which probably has more than enough clutter (what with the traditional forms given alongside the heads and in every compound subentry, as outlined above). The parts of speech are given in Chinese in the C-E section (applying as they do to the Chinese head and subentries), and in English in the E-C section, all just like in the POCD, though this system would seem a little counterintuitive (surely it should be the other way around at least, and why couldn't both, or indeed just one system, which on balance would be the English for its relative ease, be supplied throughout the entire dictionary (although for me personally, learning the characters for the Chinese parts of speech wasn't at all difficult)), considering that certainly the native user of each section will probably have an instinctive feel for what the part of speech is in each case, but the learner obviously will not! One contrasts this with the POS labels used in the Oxford Chinese Minidictionary and ABC ECCE (all English letters only, and in both sections). Helpful further information and context (typical noun objects and subjects for verbs, typical noun complements for adjectives, usage labels or other words that help further define or restrict the headword) is supplied in brackets (in Chinese [though this particular Chinese, just like the Chinese POS labels, doesn't have Pinyin provided for it] in the C-E section and in English in the E-C section, which could be further input for post-beginner learners of each language) following the headword, a practice similar to that used in native speaker/monolingual English dictionaries (which Collins also produces). In fact, the CCD3's clear definitions and supporting examples are perhaps its strongest feature, certainly compared to the ABC ECCE (whose lack of definitions and/or context for disambiguating the various meanings that many words may have has been justifiably criticized - again, see my separate review). The E-C grammatical codes used for nouns (i.e. their countability and plurality or not) and, in a relatively wide sense of the term 'phrasal verb', for phrasal verbs (especially the VT FUS label, which expands on the common verb VI and VT labels, thus giving the phrasal verb VI, VT FUS, and VT labels respectively the meanings of: intransitive and non-separable regarding the verb and particle e.g. 'melt away'; transitive but fused and therefore non-separable e.g. 'laugh at sb' [but how about 'Here's something to laugh at' LOL]; and transitive but [unfused and therefore] separable e.g. 'laugh off' - He laughed it off/*off it; He laughed the criticism off/laughed off the criticism) are succinct and clear. Chinese measure words are supplied in square brackets for countable nouns (e.g. knife 刀 [把]) in the E-C section, but not in the C-E section, which is a little strange, but then it isn't too unreasonable I suppose to expect English learners of Chinese to a) have read the guide to the dictionary and b] thus understand that they'll need to consult the E-C entry for 'knife' in addition to (and ultimately rather than) the C-E entry for 刀 (which doesn't give the measure word) if the measure word is indeed what they're seeking. (But it really must again be said that that is still all a bit of an unnecessarily roundabout way of getting to and learning the measure words!). Lastly, in the E-C section of the dictionary, American pronunciations are only supplied when they differ significantly from the British (which is taken as the standard) e.g. vase - /va:z/ versus /veis/.

Turning to 3) the radical index, the instructions are admittedly very concise but thus rather inadequate (woefully so, even?): "Use pages 3-4 [i.e. the radical chart - Gharial] to identify the radical. Note the number preceding it. Then, in the index on pages 5-42, use this number to find all the characters appearing in this dictionary which contain the radical. Characters are ordered according to the number of strokes. The pinyin given will lead you to the correct entry." Hmm, no mention made there of what exactly constitutes a stroke, or the general principles of stroke order, and most damningly, nothing about the notion of RESIDUE (i.e. residual strokes besides the radical). Still, perhaps enough learners of Chinese invest in a whole sackful of resources and will come to this dictionary knowing exactly how to count strokes, and that the radical isn't meant to be included in the number of strokes counted (that, or the hopefully intelligent "average learner" will be able to work all that out pretty quickly through a bit of trial and error, and without giving up in the process). I am somehow still always surprised though when these dictionaries supposedly at least halfway-designed for English learners of Chinese so regularly and spectacularly fail to explain much if any of this stuff (the Oxford Chinese Minidictionary is a notable exception, but even its guidance on such matters could be bettered. I guess that the only dictionary that really provides more than halfway-adequate guidance on strokes, look-up and radicals is now the ABC ECCE (see here: http://www.chinese-forums.com/index.php?/topic/35274-dictionary-look-up-skills-a-crash-course/?p=263045 )). Anyway, what is the CCD3's radical chart and index itself like? The chart includes 185 radicals, essentially the CASS 189/POCD 188, but with a few differences and with the items generally arranged in the aforementioned zhá 札 (一丨丿丶乚) rather than the CASS/POCD 丶一丨丿乚 order (so the position of 丶 has simply switched places in the otherwise identical orders). One oddity that I spotted right away was the addition of the Kangxi 匕 ("spoon") radical, but placed between 二 and 十 in the chart (which makes no sense in terms of stroke order, as 匕 has 丿 first i.e. the (right-to-)left-falling stroke rather than a L-R horizontal (heng) or even rising (ti) stroke; again, supplying a detailed and relatively sophisticated set of instructions would avoid the need for this apparent fudging and inaccuracy). Perhaps the analogy that was being posited (to exist in the mind of at least the relative beginning learner?) was with 七? Another oddity is the addition of the Kangxi 隶 radical at the start (一?!) rather than the end of the 8-stroke section of the chart (in fact, the ordering there doesn't make much sense generally: 隶 非 [which is another Kangxi addition] 齿 金 青 雨 隹 鱼). But then, I'm assuming that there is some sort of totally consistent and logical second-sort being applied, when there may in fact not be. If one thought however the radical chart was bad, the index is even worse in terms of trying to make sense of what its subsorting/subarranging method might be beyond establishing the radical and residual number of strokes. I have in fact queried something like this before (see here: http://www.chinese-f...idt-dictionary/ ), and once again note that Lexus Ltd, the people who compiled the Langensheidt/Berlitz dictionary, are given on the acknowledgements page of the CCD3 as having had a hand in compiling at least the E-C half of the CCD3 also. It probably would've helped therefore if the Special Consultants that the CCD3 lists (who include Jack Halpern of SKIP and the CJK Institute fame) had been consulted a bit more!

The main value of this dictionary however (certainly, to the offline user - as in the low-tech talk 'n' chalk classroom, say) will be its examples, of which there are plenty, and all (as previously mentioned) with complete Pinyin now provided. Although the way in the E-C section in which English fixed phrases and collocations versus freer examples are presented is not as entirely consistent as quality EFL learner dictionaries (freer examples in the CCD3 are sometimes lumped in with and presented as if they were fixed phrases or collocations, that is, in bold rather than italic font), this is only a minor quibble and won't be much of a problem for most users. There are occasional usage notes, generally useful, but a few of which miss the mark, are missed opportunities if not completely misleading: take for example the usage note at the entries for 不 bù and 没 méi (the latter of which amazingly doesn't actually provide a link to the related entry of 没有 méiyǒu!?), which states that "Constructing negating [negative? - Gharial] sentences in Chinese is very straightforward: just use 不 bù before the verb, e.g. 我不喝酒。 Wǒ bù hējiǔ. (I don't drink alcohol). [Hmm, shouldn't this particular verb and its object be written separately in Pinyin? - Gharial.] The only exception is the verb 有 yǒu, to have, for which you must use 没 méi, e.g. 我没有钱。 Wǒ méiyǒu qián. (I don't have any money)." Now all that may be perfectly true of this very basic sense of 'to have', but it says nothing explicitly about the (albeit potentially viewable as extended or metaphorical) use of 没(有) méi(yǒu) as a negator of OTHER VERBS, that is, 没(有) méi(yǒu)'s use in forming negations of (what would otherwise be) "completed" actions or past experiences, or the use of only 没 méi by itself for also negating an ongoing aspect (e.g. 他没在看电视。 Tā méi zài kàn diànshì. He wasn't watching TV [an example taken from the Oxford Chinese Minidictionary, though I suspect that 不 bù would probably be the more usual negator in this type of example, and the context make clear whether past or present was meant]), nor anything about the indicating of negative potentiality (i.e. won't rather than just simply "not") that is often the essence of 不 bù (though much depends of course on the exact context - 会 huì especially adds the meaning of "can-" to the "-not", with the 'cannot' thus formed modifying the next verb along...which in the following example is 开 kāi in the VO construction 开车 kāichē: 他还不会开车 Tā hái bú huì kāichē, He still can't drive/He can't yet drive/He can't drive yet), all as made a lot clearer and explicit in the Oxford Chinese Minidictionary (and to a slightly lesser extent the POCD). But I'll leave the reader to judge for themselves whether the examples offered at the CCD3's entries for méi (in the Reverso linking, this includes the compound méiyǒu towards its end), méiyǒu and bù would allow the studious user to actually work out what its usage notes didn't make at all explicit:
http://www.nciku.com...6%B2%A1/1310171
http://www.nciku.com...6%9C%89/1310181
http://www.nciku.com...4%B8%8D/1301193
http://dictionary.re...glish/%E6%B2%A1
http://dictionary.re...glish/%E4%B8%8D

Similar E-C usage notes, and selected cultural notes (e.g. on Guy Fawkes/Bonfire night, Halloween, the Ivy League, the Proms versus prom, etc) are to be found in the E-C section of the dictionary, though a few of the usage notes are for some strange reason (limitations of space, perhaps?) placed in the C-E section, yet without any apparent cross-references pointing to them from the E-C section, so the Chinese learner of English might only come across those more by chance than conscious cross-referencing.

Incidentally, I noticed a new example in the CCD3's 'II [副] [adverb - Gharial] [尚未] not yet' subentry for méiyǒu that doesn't appear to be in the nciku or Reverso (so the CCD3 must have at least a few new examples scattered throughout it!): 她还没有到。 Tā hái méiyǒu dào. She hasn't arrived yet.

The CCD3 is rounded off by a 'Language in Action' section, split into a 14-page 'Chinese in Action' part (that covers greetings; Chinese names and forms of address i.e. formal vocatives; making introductions and farewells; examples of business cards; telephone phrases; examples of personal and business letters; how to write a Chinese address on an envelope; emails; CVs and covering letters; numbers - cardinals, ordinals, fractions and percentages; days, months, dates, times, and other time expressions), and a 63-page 'English in Action' part that covers a lot of the same things (though with more examples), and then stuff such as English morphology and spelling. The final 9 pages of the 'English in Action' part - a chart of nations and nationalities - will however be of some use for the English learner of Chinese, if only because it supplies the characters for each country listed.

In conclusion, I should say that despite all the apparent criticisms above, I am still glad I bought the CCD3, and will be making no small use of it in the future for its examples at least, some of which do seem rather good - for example, at that entry for 不 bù above, there is the dialogic exchange 你不忙吧？ 不，很忙。 "You're not busy, are you?" - "Yes, I am."[2] And doubtless a lot of these criticisms are, retrospectively-speaking, "answered" (negated, nullified, invalidated) in the previously published Collins Easy Learning Mandarin Chinese Dictionary (CELMCD) - see here: http://www.amazon.co.../dp/0007261136/ - though that would appear to be a less comprehensive work overall compared to the CCD3, and it didn't really occur to me to buy the CELMCD as I already had pretty good lower-level dictionaries in the form of the Oxford Chinese Minidictionary (etc), which is essentially the Oxford Beginner's Chinese Dictionary minus its appendical material, and would be about the best dictionary around if one were a complete beginner to Chinese; as for going on intermediate learners, I suspect they might be better served in the long run by the ABC ECCE than the CCD3, but both are inexpensive enough that learners could consider investing in both really. The CCD3 would certainly be a good buy for the EFL teacher in China say, who'd be getting not only the plentiful examples for each language, and all with Pinyin provided, but also a good deal of phrasal-collocational detail for all the English in the E-C section. (Ultimately however, any person wanting a very thorough E-C dictionary should really invest in one of the bilingualized (E-E-C) editions of the leading advanced English learner dictionaries from the likes of Oxford or Longman i.e. the OALDCE or the LDOCE, even though such dictionaries are entirely lacking in Pinyin).

More book reviews here: http://www.chinese-f...post__p__266600

Notes
[1] Note however that the electronic format of certainly the Reverso produces search results in which the character in question is found in more than head position, which is obviously very useful for exploring the range of a character and generally expanding one's vocabulary. For example, 开刀 kāidāo is only found in the paper CCD3 at the entry for 开 rather than 刀, but the Reverso will present you with 开刀 and more even when you search for just 刀. Incidentally, the example at 开刀 in the CCD3 has in some respects been simplified (but may in the process have become a bit snappier): it is now just "她开刀了。 Tā kāidāo le. She had an operation", rather than the Reverso's "她的背部开过刀。 She had an operation on her back."

[2] I think the English answer there is a bit bare, it could perhaps do with a softening 'Well' or 'Actually' at the start, and maybe something like 'a bit' at the end. The question after all isn't just a question but rather a prelude to a request or something, so the answerer will need to apologize somewhat if they're too busy to help!

[Gharial]

Can you do a short comparison of CCD3 and ABCECCE in the review?

 

Hi Koxinga, I somehow didn't see your request until today, but luckily the review nevertheless ended up containing a fair number of comparisons to the ABC ECCE. I'll provide a quick summary below though, for convenience's sake. The scores are obviously new, and were given some thought, but they shouldn't be taken too seriously ultimately!

Number and order of Chinese entries: The ABC has far more single-character entries (and allied indicating of bound forms), and very likely the greater number of compound entries too. Its single-character entries that are idential in pronunciation (i.e. in syllable and tone) are ordered by frequency (by means of a superscript number before the item, a practice borrowed from western lexicography), which is ultimately far more useful than simply ordering, as in the CCD3 and other dictionaries (POCD etc), according to the strokes of the character. Compound entries in the ABC are ordered by full alphabetical string regardless of head character (which is very useful for looking up items that one already knows the pronunciation of or has only heard), and again with items identical in pronunciation ordered by frequency (whilst an asterisk following the Pinyin indicates the most frequent rough Pinyin homonym if tones are ignored; these rough homonyms thus help form slightly larger sets than the tonally-exact homonyms preceded by superscript frequency numbers do), but many students (especially beginners) may prefer compounds with the same head character to all be found arranged in one place (i.e. under the head character), as in the CCD3 (and POCD etc). Score: ABC 4, CCD 1.

Character indexing: The ABC's is unquestionably far, far superior in every respect. The CCD3's biggest failing however is the complete lack of traditional forms/look-up in its index. Score: ABC 3, CCD 1.

Tone sandhi: The CCD3 doesn't indicate tone sandhi at all; the ABC indicates each and every instance (whilst at the same time retaining the canonical tones). The ABC is therefore the clear winner here too. Score: ABC 1, CCD 0.

Number of examples, and extent of Pinyin provided: The CCD3 consistently appears to have more examples (on the other hand however, the ABC has more entries). Both dictionaries provide full Pinyin. Score: ABC 1, CCD 2.

English(-Chinese) entries: The CCD3 wins this one hands down, thanks primarily to its clear disambiguation by way of definitions, extra context labels, and wealth of examples, plus its phrasal verb codings and greater similarity overall to EFL learner dictionaries (COBUILD, Longman, Oxford etc) rather than to too-concise supposedly bilingual ones. Score: ABC 2, CCD 4. (NB: The disambiguation isn't such a problem in the ABC ECCE in its C-E section, due obviously to the definite need there to supply English translations. It's just a shame more help wasn't supplied to the English user using its E-C section, which could be accused of catering more for Chinese learners of English, given its lack of clear definitions/disambiguation of the Chinese translations of English sense-meanings (which will often be little more than numbers ultimately, to the English reader)).

Grammar and Measure word information for Chinese entries: The ABC here has more extensive and clearer codes, and includes MW information in the C-E section (which would seem more logical than including it in the E-C section). Score: ABC 2, CCD 1.

Miscellaneous: The CCD3 has omissions that the ABC doesn't. The ABC's formatting is more consistent, and it has a less cluttered way of showing traditional equivalents in compound entries (the CCD3 however provides traditional equivalents in the examples in its E-C section, thus providing a bit more recognition practice (assuming that's needed)). The ABC's appendical material will probably be the more useful overall and in the long term. Lastly, the CCD3 has some usage notes, but the ABC doesn't. Score: ABC 3, CCD 2.

Overall production values: Both are high quality, but the ABC packs in more overall for its size (i.e. it's less thick or weighty); that being said, the ABC's font is smaller, which may make it hard for some to read. Then, the ABC's much thinner paper is a lot less durable, but that is perhaps offset by its having a plastic flexicover to protect it. Score: let's call this one a draw then! 2 points each.

Praise versus criticism in each review: It was far easier for me to be excited, positive, and generally collect my thoughts when writing the review for the ABC than for the CCD3. So the ABC was much more of a "must buy!", and made much more of an impression (by which I mean a positive one) once I'd bought it and examined it in detail. Score: ABC 2, CCD 1.

TOTAL SCORES: ABC 20, CCD 14. The ABC is the overall winner then (for the going on intermediate student, at least!). There is something to be said however for the CCD3 being a good E-C resource, and the ABC ECCE being the better C-E resource, even though each is ostensibly a two-way, E-C/C-E dictionary.

[Guest]

Erase personal profile and all posts.

[Gharial]

Hi Miko. Unfortunately I don't have that recent an edition of the POCD, but knowing OUP I doubt if the 2009 has FULL Pinyin throughout and for all the examples. Hopefully somebody else will post soon and clarify further. Edit: Ah, I see you've posted a similar query in other threads, and received some replies concerning the Oxford/CP Concise at least (which is very similar if not identical to the POCD, give or take some updating of a few vocabulary items here and there in the POCD).

[mikelove]

The 2009 POCD does not have any more Pinyin than previous versions - they revised the content a bit but they didn't really change the basic entry format. So examples in the C-E half are still Pinyin-less.