4 ms·

Hmm, could be, but if you're relying on stroke order for lookup, that sounds like the SKIP method to me. You have to have knowledge of the stroke order, and be

by SllX 6y ago

Hmm, could be, but if you're relying on stroke order for lookup, that sounds like the SKIP method to me. You have to have knowledge of the stroke order, and be able to figure out the exact stroke count by looking at a Kanji in order to use SKIP effectively. I'm not overly familiar with other lookup methods, possibly because I shaped my biases around using SKIP for lookups back when I studied Japanese. This is a little off topic, but since I don't often get occasion to bring this up, let me drop it off here that there's also an alternative sort order which is an archaic (mostly, there are places that still use it), but cool sorting order called いろは ("iroha")[1] which is a poem which uses each character of the syllabary, each kana in other words, exactly once. Also, if you open TextEdit on a Mac in Rich Text mode and create a list from the toolbar, there's an option to "Show More" which allows you to use いろは and other Japanese sort orders as bullet points. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iroha https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iroha

unscaled 6y ago
The SKIP method is indeed a modern invention. It was invented by Jack Halpern and used in his Kanji dictionaries which were published by Kodansha and Kenkyusha - I guess this is where the 'single publisher' idea is coming from. These dictionaries are all 'Learner's dictionaries', and I'm not sure if SKIP was ever used in a dictionary aimed at native speaker - although it is probably the best method for paper-based Kanji lookup. The more traditional stroke-count based lookup, OP was referring to is probably the radical+stroke count lookup, which is of Chinese origin and considerably older[1]. Using that system, you would first find out the kanji's radical (部, basically just a "part" in Japanese), find the radical in the index, count the remaining number of strokes in the kanji and then find the kanji. Both the radicals themselves and the kanji listed below each radical heading in the index are ordered by stroke count, which qualifies this system as stroke count ordering. This system is unfortunately much more confusing than SKIP (especially for learners), since there is a good chunk of kanji where the radical is not apparent, some radicals have multiple variants - and of course you'd have to first learn all the 214 standard radicals in the first place. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kangxi_radical https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kangxi_radical

by SllX 6y ago

unscaled 6y ago

The SKIP method is indeed a modern invention. It was invented by Jack Halpern and used in his Kanji dictionaries which were published by Kodansha and Kenkyusha - I guess this is where the 'single publisher' idea is coming from. These dictionaries are all 'Learner's dictionaries', and I'm not sure if SKIP was ever used in a dictionary aimed at native speaker - although it is probably the best method for paper-based Kanji lookup. The more traditional stroke-count based lookup, OP was referring to is probably the radical+stroke count lookup, which is of Chinese origin and considerably older[1]. Using that system, you would first find out the kanji's radical (部, basically just a "part" in Japanese), find the radical in the index, count the remaining number of strokes in the kanji and then find the kanji. Both the radicals themselves and the kanji listed below each radical heading in the index are ordered by stroke count, which qualifies this system as stroke count ordering. This system is unfortunately much more confusing than SKIP (especially for learners), since there is a good chunk of kanji where the radical is not apparent, some radicals have multiple variants - and of course you'd have to first learn all the 214 standard radicals in the first place. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kangxi_radical https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kangxi_radical