Glossika 10-Language Dictionary of Chinese Characters

[Gharial]

Not sure if this has been mentioned before (did a search, drew blanks) but thought it might be of some interest:

https://ai.glossika.com/blog/10-language-dictionary-of-chinese-characters

 

From the book's Introduction:

 

"The order in which the languages appear in this publication follow [sic?] these considerations: Vietnamese, together with Taiwanese, are very conservative and are closest with the structure of the Middle Chinese readings, and are placed first for easy comparison. The rest of the Chinese languages are placed in order of conservative pronunciations (all spelled in Glossika Unified Pinyin), then followed by the Korean and Japanese readings."

 

Here then are the abbreviations used in the dictionary:

 

 

And here's a random entry:

 

 

A(n absolutely zero-frills, and thus rather superfluous) Kangxi radical index precedes the (identically-ordered) character entries, while at the rear are pronunciation indices for all the featured languages, but these indices too list only the relevant forms rather than actual entry or page numbers also (as supplying all those numbers repeatedly, especially for 10 languages~indexes, would require far too much work for a freebie), so Kangxi radical (look-up~)ordering needs to be followed each and every time unfortunately (even when one knows the required pronunciation(s)). There is however apparently an electronic edition of the dictionary with one-click look-up floating around somewhere but I'm not sure how much that might be or indeed if it's even really available (I'd need to do a bit more digging but will leave that to others!).

 

Japanese onyomi (Chinese-derived readings) are given completely in katakana, and kunyomi (native Japanese, more polysyllabic readings) completely in hiragana, and each have separate indexes, but those unfamiliar with Japanese will probably still need other dictionaries to know precisely which of the kunyomi's syllables apply to the character (which is thus a stem of sorts, and in practice usually replaces the applicable hiragana), versus those which are actual okurigana (=endings indeed written in hiragana), as no breakpoints are indicated. (One way to indicate them would be to use period marks to divide the kanji's syllable or syllables from whatever okurigana. For example, in relation to 斷 there the たつ tatsu is obviously た.つ ta.tsu, while the ことわる kotowaru is less obviously ことわ.る kotowa.ru; that is, 斷つ and 斷る respectively in full-on native form).

 

Note also that only traditional Chinese characters are given as these have had the wider currency; that is, no simplified Chinese forms, or purely Japanese or whatever other variants, are provided. And as one can see from the sample entry, this dictionary only deals with the various readings and essential meanings of single characters rather than with any wider words or phrases, which may differ markedly between the languages:

 

[Michaelyus]

The download has quite a few lexical entries missing for e.g. Fuzhounese and Wenzhounese. 

[Gharial]

Unfortunately I'm only really up on Mandarin and Japanese, so can't comment on whatever gaps there may be in the coverage of the other languages or topolects. I did notice a few readings missing for the Japanese, and haven't yet checked e.g. any Mandarin 多音字, but I don't think what's ultimately a freebie aiming to provide such broad coverage can be held to possibly too high a standard.