3 ways to look up Chinese characters in a normal Chinese dictionary. 1. By Pinyin, which is quite easy since Pinyin is composed of English letters. The problem is one seldom knows the Pinyin of a new character. Then use the 2nd. 2. By radicals. All Chinese characters have their structures refering to the ways how the characters are composed by appearence. So one have to learn the ways how they are built, then he/she can seperate their strctures to find out what the radicals are. For example: 1.他 2.它 1. 他 has the structure of left-right. 他 consists of 亻and 也. So one should find the character by 亻 2. 它 has the structure of up-down. 它 consists of 宀 and 匕. So one should find the character by 宀 By learning the structures of the characters one can easily recognize the radicals. But if he/she is a really beginner and hardly recognize the radicals, then it comes to 3rd way. 3. By strokes. All you have to do is count the strokes of the character and find out the first stroke. For example: 1.他 2.它 1. 他 has 5 strokes and the first stroke is 丿. So one can find 5 stroke characters starting with 丿. 2. 它 has 5 strokes as well and the first stroke is 丶. So one can find 5 stroke characters starting with 丶. The first stroke can be considered to be the first one from left to right or from up to down. Commen radicals: 冫,冖,讠,厂,匚,刂,冂,亻,勹,厶,廴,卩,阝,氵,丬(爿),忄,宀,广,辶,土,艹,廾,尢,扌,口,彳,彡,夂,犭,饣,子,纟,巛,灬,火,礻,王,木,牛,夂,疒,衤,,罒,皿,钅,禾,癶,米,虍,,

Yeah, you need to just know them. Hey, there are only 244 radicals so it's not such hard work. I learnt the radicals along with learning the characters. So give yourself plenty of time. About 6 months should do it.

In Japan, some dictionaries have a writing panel so you can use a pen to just write Chinese characters on it and look up. But the explanations are in Japanese..

Radicals are not really that useful. It's helpful on some characters, but not helpful on most. I ignore them altogether. If I come across an unknown character in a book or so then I use this link to draw the char on the screen with the mouse: http://www.chinese-tools.com/tools/mouse.html PS: There are 200+ radicals, but only around 100 are frequently used.

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