Oriental Taiwanese Dictionary 2nd Edition

Product Description

A long-awaited revised edition of the authentic Taiwanese dictionary! This is the second edition of a comprehensive Taiwanese dictionary that includes vocabulary related to unique Taiwanese customs, new words, and many foreign words from the Japanese language. The second edition contains approximately 14,500 words, with around 1,300 new words added by referring to the recently published online version of the Dictionary of Taiwanese Common Words and a trial book of Taiwanese words with explicit difficulty levels certified by the National Cheng Kung University's Taiwan Language Testing Center.

It contains the regular vocabulary of Taiwanese (Minnan), which is the mother tongue of about three-quarters of Taiwan's population. The notation is a combination of Chinese characters and the "Baiwa (church Roman alphabet)," which has a long historical tradition and is widely used in dictionaries and teaching materials. The arrangement of headwords is based on syllables, and they are listed alphabetically by syllable. A detailed Japanese index is included to make the dictionary useful as a small Japanese-Taiwanese dictionary.

The Appendix contains important proper nouns and commonly used particles such as the names of dynasties in China, major places in mainland China and Taiwan, and major countries and places in the world, as in the first edition. Additionally, a new list of major reference works is included.

Author's Words

In the second edition, the following four points have been paid special attention:

(1) Expansion of the regular vocabulary. Since the Taiwanese language is a spoken language, it is extremely important to include the common vocabulary that is used in everyday life. For this reason, new vocabulary has been added by referring to various recently published Taiwanese literature and the daily conversations of Taiwanese speakers.

(2) Review of headwords. New words and slang that have become established in Taiwanese in recent years are included in the second edition as much as possible. On the other hand, old words and words with a documentary flavor that are used infrequently have been deleted.

(3) Reworking of example sentences. In principle, the example sentences in the first edition were taken from earlier Taiwanese documents in their original form. Some of them were somewhat awkward. With the cooperation of Taiwanese speakers, such sentences were reworked to make them more appropriate as example sentences.

(4) A list of major reference works. A list of references used in the compilation of this dictionary is included at the end of the book to serve as a reference for learners and researchers of the Taiwanese language.

(From the "Preface to the Second Edition")

Composition

Preface to the Second Edition

Preface to the First Edition

Legend

For the User of This Dictionary

Pronunciation of Taiwanese

Syllable Index

Main Text

Japanese Index

Appendix (Comparative Table of Weights and Measures / List of Regularly-Used Quantifiers / Comparative Table of Dialectal Differences / List of Dialectal Differences between Baiwa (church Roman alphabet) and Taiwan Minnan Rumaji Pinyin Dialects)