“A great advance over previous dictionaries... Sets a new standard for convenience and usefulness.” —Andrew G. Walder, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology

“A major, pathbreaking effort... Professor DeFrancis and his colleagues are to be congratulated for adopting courageously the revolutionary principle of making the entries based on Chinese as a living, spoken language.” —Anthony C. Yu, University of Chicago

“Unlike the conventional character (zi) approach adopted by most dictionaries, this dictionary lists words (ci) in strict alphabetical sequence according to pinyin orthography. This arrangement permits students of Chinese to find the meaning of words quickly, especially Western students who are used to alphabetical ordering of words.... Highly recommended.” —Choice

“Definitely a welcome addition to current offerings.” —Language

“Quite likely to become a standard reference work for English-speaking students of Mandarin, and to remain so for quite some time” —China Review International

This dictionary, also available in a pocket edition, ushers in a new era in Chinese lexicography. The first strictly alphabetically ordered and Pinyin computerized dictionary, it offers the simplest and quickest way to look up a term whose pronunciation is known. User-friendly radical and stroke indexes are provided for those cases when pronunciation of a term is not known. Each entry provides Chinese characters, part of speech, environment (area and level of usage), definition in English, and, possibly, examples. An innovative typographical format packs more than 71,400 entries into a handy, portable size without any sacrifice of legibility.

John DeFrancis (1911–2009) was emeritus professor of Chinese at the University of Hawai`i.