A Student's Dictionary of Classical and Medieval Chinese

[Auberon]

I've just noticed this, which came out on Boxing day:

 

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Students-Dictionary-Classical-Medieval-Chinese/dp/900428365X

 

I thought it might be of some interest to people on this forum. Here is the publisher's website, with sample pages:

 

http://www.brill.com/products/reference-work/students-dictionary-classical-and-medieval-chinese-0#BIONOTE_1

[Dani_man]

Should be the most reliable Classical Chinese to English dictionary available, providing with interpretations prevalent during the period between the Warring States period until the Tang. No more mixing modern and classical in translations while using Far East, ABC and all the rest (if you haven't switched to the Hanyu Da Cidian yet  ). It is already licensed by Pleco, by the way.

 

It follows the model of 古汉语常用字字典 - dictionary of individual characters (my 古汉语常用字字典 has 6400 characters not including variants, this one has more than 8000 according to the webpage). Looking at the sample pages, it doesn't have example sentences for each character. I found the latter to be quite useful when working with Classical Chinese though.

 

But this is indeed a great leap forward.

[mikelove]

Licensed and already released in Pleco. Not too many example sentences, but it does include them for grammatical particles like 然 since those are tricky to understand without them.

[Auberon]

"Should be the most reliable Classical Chinese to English dictionary available" -- so far as I knew it is the only expressly Classical-English dictionary available.

When did Pleco release it? Perhaps I shouldn't have rushed off to buy a paper copy.

" Looking at the sample pages, it doesn't have example sentences for each character. I found the latter to be quite useful when working with Classical Chinese though."

If you have the 古漢語大詞典 on Pleco, then that has example sentences aplenty. But still, it will be very good to be able to look up a character in English to check I've got the right end of the stick.

[OneEye]

so far as I knew it is the only expressly Classical-English dictionary available

 

Well, there's Matthews, but it's nearly a century old. It does still have its uses though. But it's certainly true that we're long overdue for a good Classical-English dictionary.

 

Anyway, I haven't had a chance to check it out yet, but I know the scholarly community is really excited about this release. Kroll apparently put a lot of effort into rectifying traditional, but inaccurate translations. Here's my favorite example so far. Supposedly they've also paid a lot of attention to stratifying meanings by time period, which is of course really helpful.

[tooironic]

Any chance you could make that example accessible to us users in China for whom Twitter is blocked?

[imron]

It's a picture of Pleco with two dictionary entries for the same word '豺’.

 

ABC dictionary translates it as jackal.  The new dictionary translates it as 'dhole, Asian wild dog N.B. not 'jackal'.

[xuexiansheng]

I recently discovered this dictionary and I love it. This is what I have been looking for for the last two years while studying Classical Chinese. Highly recommended! Even better that it is available on Pleco, I didn't know that and bought a softcover for $60 on Amazon. I can finally stop using my copy of Rouzer' A New Practical Primer of Literary Chinese as a dictionary.