A Dictionary of the Chinese Language

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A Dictionary of the Chinese Language: in Three Parts …
File:MorrisonDCL.1815.0.pdf
Morrison's Chinese Dictionary Part I Vol. I title page (1815:0)
Author Robert Morrison
Country Macau
Language Chinese, English
Publisher Peter Perring Thoms
Publication date
 1815-1823
Media type Print
Pages 4,595
OCLC 500112156

A Dictionary of the Chinese Language, in Three Parts … (1815-1823), compiled by the Scottish missionary Robert Morrison, is the first Chinese-English, English-Chinese dictionary. This groundbreaking reference work is enormous, comprising 4,595 pages in 6 quarto volumes and including 47,035 head characters, taken from the (1716) Kangxi Dictionary. However, Morrison's encyclopedic dictionary had flaws, notably failing to phonologically distinguish aspirated consonants: the pronunciation taou is given for both aspirated táo 桃 "peach" and unaspirated dào 道 "way; the Dao".

History

From left to right: Li Shigong, Chen Laoyi, and Robert Morrison translating the Bible into Chinese

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Main article: Robert Morrison (missionary)

Robert Morrison (1782-1834) is credited with several historical firsts in addition to the first bidirectional Chinese and English dictionary. He was the first Protestant missionary in China, started the first Chinese-language periodical in 1815 (Wilkinson 2015: 850), collaborated with William Milne to write the first translation of the Bible into Chinese in 1823, helped to found the English-language The Canton Register in 1827, and compiled the first Western-language dictionary (1828) of a regional variety of Chinese.

Morrison joined the London Missionary Society in 1804 and they chose him to lead a mission to China. They sent him to study at Gosport, and introduced him to Yong Sam Tak 容三德, a young Cantonese student learning English in London, who taught basic Chinese to Morrison. In 1807, the LMS instructed Morrison to sail to Canton (present-day Guangzhou) and continue studying until he had "accomplished your great object of acquiring the language", whereupon, he would "turn this attainment into a direction which may be of extensive use to the world: perhaps you may have the honour of forming a Chinese Dictionary, more comprehensive and correct than any preceding one", as well as translating the Bible into Chinese (Morrison 1839 1: 70).

Upon his arrival in China, Morrison learned that the Chinese were prohibited from teaching their language to foreigners, forcing him to secretly study Chinese and hide his books from sight. Morrison eventually found two tutors, the scholar Ko Seen-sang and Abel Yun who had learned Latin from Catholic missionaries, and they began to translate the scriptures and compile the dictionary. In 1809, the East India Company employed Morrison as a translator, which provided sufficient income to continue working on the dictionary project and Bible translation. He translated and printed the Acts of the Apostles in 1810, and completed his Chinese Grammar in 1811. The situation worsened in 1812 when the Chinese government issued an edict making the printing of books on Christian religion a capital crime (Wu and Zheng 2009: 3). The LMS sent the missionary William Milne to assist Morrison in translating and printing the scriptures. In 1814, the East India Company sent a printing engineer, Peter Perring Thoms, and they created the Chinese character font for the dictionary. Morrison worked on producing A Dictionary of the Chinese Language for more than 15 years with "extraordinary perseverance, industry, and ingenuity" (Wu and Zheng 2009: 5).

Morrison described the bilingual Chinese dictionaries that he used as sources for his own lexicographical work: "several MS. Dictionaries of the old Missionaries, in English and French, and, latterly, the printed copy of Father Basil's Dictionary" (1839.II: 454). This refers to the 9,000-entry (1698) Dictionarium Sino-Latinum manuscript of the Italian Franciscan Basilio Brollo, or Basilio de Glemona (1648-1704), which the French orientalist Joseph de Guignes (1759-1845) translated as the (1813) Dictionnaire Chinois, Français et Latin, without any attribution to the original author (Yang 2014: 306). Brollo's innovation was to provide a Chinese character dictionary, alphabetically collated by transliteration, with a user-friendly index arranged by radicals and strokes, successfully combining Chinese and European lexicographic traditions (Yang 2014: 313). This lexicographical macrostructure was adopted in Morrison's dictionary, and most bilingual Chinese dictionaries up to the present day.

The first volume of Morrison's Chinese dictionary was published in 1815 and the last in 1823. All 6 volumes were printed by P. P. Thoms in Macao, published and sold by Black, Parbury, and Allen, booksellers to the East India Company. The dictionary was printed in a run of 750 copies, sold at the "princely sum" of 20 guineas (Wilkinson 2015: 84), published at a total cost of ₤12,000 (Broomhall 1927:173) or ₤10,440 (Yang 2014: 300). This was more than the LMS could provide, but the directors of the East Indian Company agreed to pay because they recognized the dictionary's incalculable benefit, not only to missionaries, but also to their own employees (Wu and Zheng 2009: 5).

A Dictionary of the Chinese Language marked a new era in the compilation and publication of bilingual Chinese works. Before the 19th century, Catholic missionaries, such as Basilio Brollo, had compiled many bilingual manuscript dictionaries, but their circulation was inevitably restricted by the difficulties of copying a dictionary by hand. The initial edition of 750 copies and subsequent reprints enabled Morrison's dictionary to reach a wider readership and have a far more profound impact on later dictionaries (Yang 2014: 316).

A Dictionary of the Chinese Language publication information (Ryu 2009: 7)
Part/Volume Publication year Pages (+ Preface)
I/I 1815 930 + 20
I/II 1822 884
I/III 1823 908
II/I 1819 1,090 + 20
II/II 1820 483 + 6
III 1822 480 + 5

Morrison’s dictionary is composed of three parts or six quarto (306 mm x 242 mm) volumes published in different years. Part I has 3 volumes with Volume I published in 1815 containing 18 pages in the preface, 930 pages in the dictionary proper, and 2 additional pages consisting of advertisements. Volume II, published in 1822, is composed of 884 pages, and Volume III, published in 1823, is composed of 908 pages. Part II has two volumes: Volume I published in 1819 contains 20 pages in the preface and 1,090 pages in the dictionary proper, and Volume II published in 1820 contains 6 pages in the preface, 178 pages in the first section, and 305 pages in the second section of the dictionary proper. Part III was published in 1822 with only one volume containing 5 pages in the preface and 480 pages in the dictionary proper (Wu and Zheng 2009: 6).

The publication of Morrison's dictionary attracted the attention of scholars worldwide, and Part II was reprinted from 1865 until 1913. The revised preface (1865: i) says, the second part of "has been generally commended by experienced Sinologues as the most perfect and useful of the whole." In 1865, Trubner and Co first republished Part II in 2 volumes, totaling 1630 pages. In 1913, Zhonghua Book Company reprinted Part II in a pocketbook size, which made it much more affordable and easier to carry (Wu and Zheng 2009: 6).

Morrison's lexicographical legacy is reflected in two facts: his dictionary's macrostructure and microstructure became the model for many later Chinese-English dictionaries, and his transliteration system was adopted as the basis for Wade-Giles romanization (Yang 2014: 321).

Morrison's Chinese dictionary became the prototype for other 19th-century works. The English Congregationalist missionary and Bible translator Walter Henry Medhurst compiled the (1842, 1847 revision) Chinese and English Dictionary: Containing all the Words in the Chinese Imperial Dictionary, Arranged According to the Radicals. Medhurst claimed this was an original translation based on the Kangxi zidian, but it was in fact just an abbreviated and edited copy of Morrison's dictionary, a "plagiarism rather than an original compilation" (Yang 2014: 318). The American sinologist and missionary Samuel Wells Williams compiled (1874) A Syllabic Dictionary of the Chinese Language 漢英韻府, with a Chinese title echoing Morrison's Wuche yunfu 五車韻府 for Part II. The preface says that although many similar Chinese-English dictionaries by Medhurst, Elijah Coleman Bridgman, and others were published in small numbers, they became "very scarce, while the number of students has increased tenfold", and learners of Chinese relied on reprints of "Morrison's Syllabic Dictionary" (1874: v). Williams explicitly identified "Dr. Medhurst's translation of the K'anghi Tsz'tien" as a more important source for his own work than Morrison's dictionary (1874: vi). The British diplomat and sinologist Herbert Giles edited (1892, 1912) A Chinese-English Dictionary. Giles (1892: vii-viii) praised Morrison as "the great pioneer" of Chinese-English lexicography, but criticized his failure to mark aspiration. He said Medhurst "attempted aspirates" but omitted some and wrongly inserted others. While Williams correctly marked aspiration and tones, Giles says "he provided too few phrases, and mistranslated a large number of those". Ironically, Yang's (2014: 318) textual analysis finds that Giles' dictionary is more closely linked to Williams's than to Morrison's.

Morrison's Chinese dictionary introduced a systematic transliteration system that was used for over four decades until it was replaced by Thomas Francis Wade's romanization scheme in 1867; that became the basis for the Wade-Giles system of 1892-1912, which was widely used, and still survives alongside Pinyin romanization. Morrison's system was almost forgotten after being replaced by Wade romanization, but James Legge adopted it virtually unchanged into Legge romanization used in his (1861-1872) Chinese Classics series (Coblin 2003: 355). Morrison's romanization system influenced the Wade, Legge, and Wade-Giles schemes (Yang 2014: 313).

Robert Morrison's dictionary is still in use two hundred years after its publication. For example, the American sinologist W. South Coblin (2003) analyzed Morrison's romanization of Mandarin for clues about the pronunciation of early 19th-century standard Chinese. Morrison's pronunciation glosses followed the lower Yangtze koiné as the standard Mandarin of the time, "what the Chinese call the Nanking Dialect, than the Peking" (1815: xviii).

Content

The full title of Morrison's magnum opus is A Dictionary of the Chinese Language: In Three Parts, Part the First, Containing Chinese and English, Arranged According to the Radicals, Part the Second, Chinese and English Arranged Alphabetically, and Part the Third, English and Chinese, and it is commonly called Morrison's Chinese dictionary. Each part of the dictionary is a complete and independent unit in itself (Wu and Zheng 2009: 6).

Part I, Chinese-English by radical

File:MorrisonDCL.1823.513.pdf
Morrison's Chinese Dictionary Part I Taou 道 entry (1823:513)

The title of Part I uses English and Chinese zìdiǎn 字典 "character dictionary": 字典 A Dictionary of the Chinese Language.

Morrison collated this part of the dictionary by the lexicographical standard 214 Kangxi radical system popularized by the (1716) Kangxi Dictionary, graphic components which range from 1 to 17 strokes. Volume I (1815) starts with Radical 1 一 "one" and ends at Radical 41 寸 "inch; thumb"; Volume II (1822) starts with Radical 42 小 "small" and stops at Radical 119 米 "rice"; and Volume III (1823) begins with the Radical 120 糸 "silk" and ends the dictionary with the last Radical 214 龠 "flute".

The Introduction (Morrison 1815: ix) says the Kangxi dictionary "forms the ground work" of Part I, the arrangement and number of characters are according to it, plus the definitions and examples are derived chiefly from it. The total number of entries in the Kangxi zidian is 47,035 Chinese characters, and the same number of entries is found in Part I of Morrison's dictionary, Zidian, since Morrison based the entries exactly on the Kangxi dictionary (Yang 2014: 313).

Chinese scholars have found that the majority of Kangxi zidian usage examples were taken from books dated before the 10th century, while it ignores vulgar forms and expressions. Morrison noticed this and chose examples better suited to his intended readership (Yang 2014: 315). The dictionary contains vulgar, humorous, colloquial, and modern examples. For instance (Wu and Zheng 2009: 9), Morrison describes 王八 [wángba "tortoise; cuckold; son of a bitch; man who works in a brothel"] and 烏龜 [wūguī "tortoise; cuckold"] as "terms of abuse; denoting one who lives on his wife's prostitution; one lost to virtue", and translates 王八蛋 [wángbadàn "turtle's egg; son of a bitch"] as "'a bastard', in opprobrious language" (1815: 188) .

Morrison lists additional manuscript and printed sources for Part I, especially Sha Mu's 沙木 (1787, 1807 reprint) "E-wǎn-pe-lan" or Yiwen beilan 藝文備覽 "Literary Writings for Consultance" dictionary, which was used as the orthographic standard for his dictionary's font, "The form of these Radicals, and of the large Characters throughout the work, is taken from an excellent Dictionary" (1815: 1). Comparative study of the annotations in Morrison's copy of Yiwen beilan (now in the SOAS Library) and the text of Morrison's published dictionary confirms that Kangxi zidian contributed more to Morrison's dictionary than Yiwen beilan (Yang 2014: 312).

Morrison's dictionary Part I (1823: 513) entry for "taou" 道 lists the character under Radical 162 辵 or 辶 "walk" with the roman numeral IX denoting 9 logographic strokes in the remaining element shǒu 首 "head" (animated stroke order is shown here). This boldface entry 道 TAOU gives the regular script character and pronunciation, corresponding small seal and cursive scripts, English translation equivalents, and usage examples. (Note: Part I did not mark tones and a dictionary user wrote this accent-marked TAÒU over the original TAOU.) The equivalents are: "A way; a path; being at the head; the way that leads to; a thoroughfare on all sides. A principle. The principle from which heaven, earth, man, and all nature emanates." Of the 22 words and usages given, the first 6 examples are medical terms (e.g., "Seaou pëen taou 小便道 the urinary passage; the vagina"—usually mìniàodào 泌尿道 "urinary tract" and yīndào 陰道 "vagina") and the last 13 are dao 道 in the historical political division meaning of "circuit" ("河南道 Ho-nan taou" for the Henan circuit). The remaining 3 Chinese usage examples are flattery of the Daoguang Emperor (r. 1820-1850), "Taou-kwang yuen nëen 道光元年 the first of Taoukwang, 'reason's glory,' title of the reigning emperor of China (A.D. 1821)"; the common word dàoxǐ, "Taou he 道喜 to congratulate, an expression used amongst equals"; and a literary allusion to the Confucian Analects, "Taou tsëen shing che kwǒ 道千乘 之國 To rule or govern a nation that can send forth a thousand war chariots".

Morrison's dictionary gives Chinese usage examples and quotations from a wide range of sources, including the Four Books and Five Classics of Confucianism, Daoist and Buddhist texts, classical literature, law, medicine, novels, and numerous unidentified sources.

Part I Volume I of his dictionary is "notoriously abundant" in encyclopedic examples and quotations, while the other two volumes of Part I just provide brief definitions and a few examples (Yang 2014: 314). When Morrison published the first volume of Part I in 1815, after 8 years of hard work, he realized that if he tried to compile the rest of the dictionary on such a comprehensive scale, he might never be able to finish the dictionary in his lifetime. So he changed course, and rapidly published Part II in 1819 and 1820. His dictionary's alphabetically arranged Part II, with concise definitions and brief usage examples, proved to be more useful for learners of Chinese, but it lacked the rich quotations that made the first volume of Part I a model of an "encyclopedic and culturally rich bilingual dictionary" (Yang 2014: 315).

To exemplify Part I Volume I of the dictionary's marvelously "grand scope" and "many surprises", Xian Wu and Liren Zheng (2009: 10) cite the 40-page entry for 學 HEO [xue "study"] (under Radical 39 子 "child") "to receive instruction, to practice, to imitate, to study, to learn, the place where people study" (1815: 746-785). The usage examples and illustrations range across the traditional Chinese educational system from xueguan 學館 "private school" to fuxue 府學 "government school at the prefecture level", includes the imperial examination civil service system from xiucai 秀才 "county candidate" up to hanlin 翰林 "member of the royal Hanlin Academy". This lengthy entry touches upon a variety of terms related to learning, including 100 rules for schools, details of examination systems, and a list of books for classical study. Wu and Zheng conclude that the dictionary's "richness of information was unprecedented".

Another example this volume's richness is the Daoist quotations in the first entry of Volume I, 一 Yǐh [yī "one"] (Yang 2014: 316):

The Secl [Sect] Taou affirms, that 道生一一生二二生三三生萬物 … "Taou produced one, one produced two, two produced three, and three produced all things." If it be asked, what then is Taou? They reply, 靜極乃道也 … "Extreme quiescence, or a state of perfect stillness is Taou." The Three, when speaking of their external appearance, they call 天之秀氣地之生氣感和風之清氣 … "The heaven's adorning principle, earth's life giving principle, and the pure principle of the exciting harmonizing wind"; or as they define it, "That aerial principle, or influence, by which the heavens and earth act on each other." The internal Three, they call 氣之清神之靈精之潔靜裏分陰陽而精氣神同化於虛無 … "The clear unmixed influence, the intelligence of spirit; the purity of essence; in the midst of quiescence separated the Yin and Yang. Essence, influence and spirit, together operated in a state of vacuum." (Taou tĭh king). Their notions of the great One Cause of all things, are very fanciful and obscure. (Morrison 1815: 12–13, romanizations omitted)

The first quote is from Daodejing (42) and the others from commentaries.

Part II, Chinese-English by pronunciation

File:MorrisonDCL.1819.820.pdf
Morrison's Chinese Dictionary Part II Taou 道 entry (1819:820)
File:MorrisonDCL.1820.229.pdf
Morrison's Chinese Dictionary Part II variant scripts for Taou 道 (1820:229)

The title of Part II uses English and the Chinese name Wuche yunfu 五車韻府 of a rime dictionary: 五車韻府 A Dictionary of the Chinese Language. A rime dictionary collates characters according to their initials, finals, and tones.

The Wuche (or Wuju) yunfu "Erudition Syllabic Dictionary" was compiled by Chen Jinmo 陳藎謨, but he died before its publication and gave the manuscript to his student Han Yihu 含一胡, who corrected and expanded it. Han gave unpublished manuscript to the editors of Kangxi Dictionary, who made considerable use of it, and definitions are often verbatim in both (Morrison 1819: v). Wuche 五車 lit. "five cartloads [of books]" is a metaphor for "extensive learning; erudite" and first occurs in the Zhuangzi (tr. Mair 1994: 343). The (1592) Wuche yunrui 五車韻瑞 "Erudition Rhyme-inscribed Jade Tablets", compiled by Ling Zhilong 淩稚隆, was an earlier Ming dynasty rime dictionary.

Morrison (1819: v-vi) says that in 1812 he rearranged the Wuche yunfu rime dictionary, which contained about 40,000 characters, according to syllables instead of pronunciations and tones. With the aid of a small Chinese dictionary titled Fenyun 分韻 "Divisions of Rimes" and Basilio Brollo's alphabetic dictionary, Morrison compared side by side the sound-based Wuche yunfu with the radical-based Kangxi zidian. He assiduously worked for 7 years on modifying the original Wuche yunfu, using the Kangxi zidian, and adding contemporary words from his readings, creating Part II 五車韻府 A Dictionary of the Chinese Language (Wu and Zheng 2009: 7). Despite Morrison's Wuche yunfu claims, Yang's (2014: 312) comparative study of the definitions in the dictionary's Part I and Part II, shows that the definitions both parts are similar, and both clearly being based on Kangxi zidian. Part II of the dictionary has little in common with the homonymous Wuche yunfu 五車韻府.

Part II has two volumes. The Preface of Volume I explains the dictionary's compilation, purpose, and orthography for the "Canton Dialect" of Standard Chinese; and the main section (1819: 1-1065) is a "Syllabic Dictionary" in which transliterated romanized Chinese words are collated in alphabetical order. Part II of the dictionary contains 12,674 numbered Chinese character entries, far fewer than the 47,035 entries in Part I (Yang 2014: 313).

Volume II (1820) is composed of two major sections. The first section (1820: iii-179) contains a table of the 214 Kangxi radicals, a radical-and-stroke index of the characters in Volume I, and an English-Chinese index of words that gives the character numbers in Volume I. The second independent section (1820: 1-305) "A Synopsis of Various Forms of the Chinese Character" (called "Tung-wǎn" 同文 [tóngwén] "same writing") giving the regular script, semi-cursive script, cursive script, clerical script, small seal script, and bronze script forms.

Part II, unlike Part I, phonologically marked tones, but the classical four tones of Middle Chinese pronunciation used in rime dictionaries, instead of the four tones of Mandarin Chinese spoken by Morrison (1 "high-level", 2 "rising", 3 "dipping", and 4 "falling"). The dictionary indicates píng 平 "level" tone as unmarked (a), shǎng 上 "rising" tone with grave accent (à), qù 去 "departing" with acute accent (á), and rù 入"entering"tone with "short accent" (ǎ). As a result of using 17th-century Wufang yuanyin pronunciations, early Chinese-English dictionaries were much concerned with the "entering" tone, which had already ceased to exist in 19th-century Beijing pronunciation (Norman 1988: 173).

Morrison's preface says, "The Author’s object has been, and the intention of the Dictionary ought to be, to communicate the Language to Europeans" (1819: viii). Another improvement in Part II is giving an analysis of Chinese characters’ formation, which greatly helps foreign students of Chinese to comprehend and memorize characters. For instance, take the logograph 仰, which is a compound ideograph combining rén 亻 "person" and áng 卬 "high" (Wu and Zheng 2009: 7). Morrison gives YANG 仰, from man and to look upwards. To raise the head and look upwards with expectation or desire" (1819: 994). In the two centuries since Morrison compiled his dictionary, scholarship has greatly increased understanding of how Chinese characters originated. A modern Chinese-English dictionary Wenlin (2016, v. 4.3) says the character "Originally 卬 depicted a person standing next to 卩 (jié) a person kneeling. Another 亻 (人 rén) person was added later, forming 仰."

Morrison's Chinese Dictionary (Part II 1819: 820) head character entry for 道 gives a graphic variant 衟, the entry number 9945, the acute accent "departing" tone, the character origin "From to walk and head", translation equivalents, and 12 usage examples. The English translation begins with the Part I equivalents (with a misprint) and adds more meanings, including the philosophical contrast between dao and lǐ 理 "principle".

A way; a path; being at the head; the way that leads to; a thoroughfare on all sides. A principle. The priuciple [sic] from which heaven, earth, man, and all nature emanates. Le 理 is a latent principle; Tanu [sic] is a principle in action. Correct, virtuous principles and course of action. Order and good principles in a government and country. A word; to speak; to say; the way or cause from or by which; to direct; to lead in the way. To accord with or go in a course pointed out. The name of a country. Used by the Buddhists for a particular state of existence, whether amongst human beings or amongst brutes. (1819: 820)

The usage examples include words from Daoism and Chinese Buddhism: "Taou 道 in the books of Laou-tsze is very like the Eternal Reason of which some Europeans speak; Ratio of the Latins, and the Logos of the Greeks."; and using zhì 帙 "cloth case for a book", "Taou těë 道帙 a certificate by which the priests of Buddha are entitled to three days provision at every temple they go to."

Before Robert Morrison, manuscript bilingual dictionaries contained few examples or quotations in Chinese. Basilio Brollo's manuscript Chinese–Latin dictionaries presented examples in romanization instead of Chinese characters. By contrast, Morrison's Part II Wuche yunfu gives an estimated 20,000 quotations and examples, all of which are given in Chinese characters, accompanied with romanization and English translations (Yang 2014: 314).

The content of Part II is wide-ranging. Morrison wrote in the preface, "There are beautiful pieces of poetry, interesting and instructive portions of History and Biography; and important Moral Maxims, in Chinese that is a language amongst the most ancient and the most extensively known on earth, … it is the living language of five nations, which together, constitute one third of the mankind." Wu and Zheng (2009: 7) say, "Far more than a mere dictionary of the Chinese language, Morrison’s dictionary is a history book, a biography, a collection of idiomatic expressions and common sayings of the Chinese people, and, last but not least, full of the Christian evangelical message expressed in many ways." One example is mentioning the invention of paper by Cai Lun (50-121 CE) twice, once with an incorrect date: "Paper was invented in China, by a Person named蔡倫 Tsae-lun, about the end of the first century." (1815: ix), 紙 CHÈ "Paper, 蔡倫 Tsae Lun (A.D. 940) cut to pieces old cloth, pounded and made paper of it." (1819: 37). Another is the cāi 猜 "guess; suspect" entry description of cāiquán 猜拳 "a finger-guessing drinking game": 猜 CHAE, "To conjecture, to guess; 猜拳 to guess the number of fingers thrown out, or stretched straight from a previously folded hand, which is a drunken amusement of the Chinese. When the opponent guesses the right number of fingers thrown out, at the instant he speaks, he wins, and the person throwing out his fingers has to drink as a forfeit" (1819: 8).

Part III, English-Chinese

The title of Part III only uses English: A Dictionary of the Chinese Language.

Morrison's English-Chinese dictionary is alphabetically collated from the first page (titled An English and Chinese Dictionary), "A, 英文音母碎字之第一 Ying wǎn, yin moo suy tsze che te yǐh, The first letter of the English Alphabet." (1822b: 1); to the last, "ZONE, a girdle, 帶子 tae tsze; 圍帶 wei tai.", with zone meaning "belt; sash; girdle; band" (1822b: 480).

Continuing the above example of Morrison's dao "way" entries, Part III gives: "WAY, road, or path, 路 loo; 道 taou; 途 too. A method or means, 法 fa." (1822b: 463) and "ROAD, 路 loo; 道 taou; 道路taou-loo." (1822b: 369).

Some English-Chinese entries are highly specific, such as this one for names for gods in Chinese, which includes shen 神, shangdi 上帝, and tian 天.

GOD or the Deus of the Chinese was originally, and is still most generally 神 Shin; in the plural, Dii, 神鬼 Shin kwei, and神祇 Shin ke. A sort of Supreme God, is in the ancient books expressed by 上帝 Shang-te. Genii of particular places are also expressed by 神 Shin, as 河神 ho shin, God of the river; 山神 shan shin, god of the hill, &c. All these gods are in Chinse notions inferior to 天 Ten, Heaven. (1822: 189-190)

Reception

Robert Morrison's Chinese-English dictionary has received both blame and praise. Considering that he was a self-taught lexicographer, who compiled a dictionary of such a colossal size and scope, working with assistants who did not speak English, it would inevitably fall short of perfection, such the typographical errors and misprints noted above.

The publication of Morrison's Chinese dictionary did not bring him universal acclaim, but instead triggered a controversy as to the authorship (Yang 2014: 300). The German orientalist Julius Klaproth (1818, 1830) accused Morrison of merely translating Chinese dictionaries rather than compiling a new or original one. In response to Klaproth's challenges, Morrison wrote an 1831 letter to the Asiatic Journal that describes the dictionary's compilation in detail.

I know of no better way of writing a Dictionary of any language, than that which I pursued; namely, to make use of all the native Dictionaries I could collect, with the original books referred to in them; to employ native scholars to assist me in consulting those several works, and in ascertaining their exact meaning. […, switching from the first to the third person] In the whole of the work, there was no mere copying from one book into another; no mere translation from one language into another; but an exercise of judgment and choice, throughout: and if any man may be called the author of a Dictionary, Morrison may justly be called the author of the Dictionary attributed to him. (1839.II: 453-454)

A "major flaw" (Coblin 2003: 352) in Morrison's dictionary is the failure to distinguish the phonemic contrast between aspirated and unaspirated consonants (examples here). Herbert Giles's A Chinese-English Dictionary says Morrison (1819) gave no aspirates, "a defect many times worse" than would be omitting the rough breathing in a Greek lexicon, and Medhurst (1843) attempted aspirates, but omitted many and wrongly inserted others (1892: vii). Samuel Wells Williams' (1874) A Syllabic Dictionary of the Chinese Language was apparently the first dictionary to get this distinction sorted out ( Norman 1988: 173).

Another flaw is Morrison's treatment of some characters that have more than one pronunciation and meaning: 臭 can be pronounced chòu 臭 "foul; stinking; disgusting; disgraceful" or xiù 臭 "odor; smell; scent" (Wu and Zheng 2009: 9). Morrison listed this character 臭, with 自 "nose" over 犬 "dog", in Part II of his dictionary, and tried to demonstrate that it has two distinctive connotations, both smell in the neutral sense as well as a smell of disagreeable nature.

臭 Chow Smell or flavor generally; scent; offensive smell; disagreeable odours; fume or effluvia. Stink; to smell; that which is morally offensive. The character is formed from Keuen 犬 A dog, in allusion to that animal finding its way by the scent. 香臭 Heang chow, a fragrant smell; 惡臭 Gŏ chow, a bad smell; 遺臭萬年 E chow wan nëen, to leave an eternal reproach on one's name; 其臭如蘭 Ko chow joo lan, it smells fragrant as the Lan-flower. (1819: 94, abridged)

While it is correct to give "chow" or chòu in èchòu 惡臭 "stench", yíchòuwànnián 遺臭萬年 "leave a name that will stink to eternity", and xiāngchòu 香臭 "good and bad", it should be glossed "heu" or xiù in qí xiù rúlán 其臭如蘭 "it is as fragrant as an orchid". Another example is under the 招 Chaou entry "to invite with the hand; to beckon … Chaou lang juh shay 招郎入室 inviting a bride to enter a cottage", but láng 郎 means "bridegroom" indicating that the son-in-law is invited to live in the house of his wife’s parents. (1819: 23, Wu and Zheng 2009: 10)

A recent book on Chinese lexicography (Yong and Peng 2008: 386) says that although Morrison's dictionary "contained numerous errors" when examined from a modern perspective, "the dictionary delineated the basic configuration of a bilingual dictionary and shed a good deal of light upon the design and compilation of English-Chinese, Chinese-English, and other bilingual dictionary types."

On the other hand, Morrison's Chinese dictionary has won critical acclaims from scholars all over the world since the publication of the first volume in 1815. Alexander Leith Ross wrote to Morrison that his dictionary had an extensive circulation in Europe, and would be "an invaluable treasure to every student of Chinese" (Morrison 1839: 494). The French sinologist Stanislas Julien described Part II as "without dispute, the best Chinese Dictionary composed in a European language" (Morrison 1865: i). The American missionary William A. Macy said all the missionaries and scholars of Chinese had used Morrison's dictionary as the "common fountain" from which they could "obtain the knowledge they desired" (1860: 568). One modern scholar calls Morrison's dictionary "the greatest achievement of any researcher of Chinese" (Ryu 2009: 9). Another describes the comprehensive bilingual dictionary compilation and publication project as "unprecedented and unsurpassed in 19th-century China" (Yang 2014: 303). Wu and Zheng (2009: 3) say Morrison's was the first widely used Chinese-English dictionary and has served as a "milestone in the early promotion of communications between China and the West." Morrison’s obituary notice summarizes his dedication and contribution to the world, "In efforts to make this [Chinese] language known to foreigners and chiefly to the English, he has done more than any other man living or dead" (Anon 1835: 178).

References

External links

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