Index for Chinese etymology character posts

Hi mandarinboy,

I forgot to tell you about the most amusing etymology book among ones I have. It contains about 900 characters with a short explanation, a "hilarious" picture, and twelve kinds of 甲骨文，金文，小篆，隶书 etc in a row for every character. You can see the historical transition of a Chinese character at a glance. I guarantee you won't regret buying it! There are a few sample pages in this web page.

http://www.amazon.cn/dp/zjbk454141

Thanks changyu, that seems to be a perfect book for me so i did order that one as well:-) I have more thn 6 shelfs with Chinese books by now but there is always something new to learn in every book. I my self started with this book: http://www.amazon.com/China-Empire-Symbols-Cecilia-Lindqvist/dp/0201570092.

Very interesting book even thought it is not an dictionary, more like an journey into the history of Chinese characters. My first book bougt in China is this serie: http://www.amazon.com/Chinese-Characters-Straits-Times-Collection/dp/1932457003/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1221295590&sr=1-1.

Really fun and with good and fun pictures.

Right now I just add etymology for characters that i feel for my self. If anyone have any requests, please feel free to suggest. I have started to desing  a software that will be able to print flash cards with the character/word on one side and etymology,pinyin,stroke order on the other. Now it is just a matter of time or the lack of time to finish it. Sometimes the intentions are good but the reality stops you when you realizes that there still only is 24 hours per day.

For all German-speaking people here:

There is a website with now more than 950 "explained" characters (key words, explanations for characters and non-char. components, ethmological hints, collocations, links to other web ressources...).

You may test yourself or do some "super learning" or download the stuff for your favourite flashcard program. There is even a PDF version to read in bed before you fall asleep ;-)

It's here.

Have fun! -- Everything may used freely according the Creative Commons "Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Germany" license.

Thanks Hape! It is really very nice and interesting site but my question is, why is it only in German? I guess that you are the author and your clearly do speak English. It seems like some sort of limitation to only aim for the German speaking population. I love the linking that I can do and drill down on each component. Much like the zhongwen.com style but with more information. Fast and easy navigation with lots of information and very useful for those of us speaking German but that is still a limited amount of the users on the net that do speak German.  For you who do speak German, check out the site! It is well worth the time!

mandarinboy:

thanks for your kind words. Why am I doing it in German? Because nothing of this kind exists in German. To do it in English seems impossible for me because the project in German alone needs quite a lot of time. The first 950 characters were done in 14 months, and to go to 2000 char. will need another 2 years.

And: there are some very good websites in English which offer nearly the same:

• Zhongwen.com
• Chinese Characters (chinese-characters.org)
• Chinese Etymology (chineseetymology.org)
• Yellowbridge (yellowbridge.com/language)

mandarinboy,

Thanks for this index;it's awesome.

hape,

Thanks for the links.Cheers.