部首 Inconsistencies between Pleco and standard dictionaries
- Thread starter 罗大伟
- Start date
Thanks. Yes, I know there is often disagreement about the proper radical. The 现代汉语词典, and its derivatives such as 新华字典 are from 商务印书馆 and are the biggest sellers in mainland bookstores. If you watch programs such as 汉字英雄 where children compete to write characters, these are the references used by the judges. These dictionaries list some characters under alternate radicals, marked with a small circle. For example 申 is shown with radical 丨but also listed under 田 as an alternate. But none of the characters using 申 on the left side, e.g., 畅, are not also listed under 田, only under 丨. I don't know who sets the standards, each dictionary company by itself? or a ministry? For Unicode, I didn't think there was any concept of radicals, only strokes, so its placement in Unicode would not have any implication for which radical. But I am not a Unicode expert by any means. U+2F65 is 田 and U+2F01 is 丨 but these do not start any blocks of characters. I have no special interest in this, except as loyal and satsfied Pleco user, so I want the information I get from Pleco to be accurate.
Unicode does group characters by radical, actually; 畅 is U+7545 in a block that starts with U+7530 田 and ends with U+758A 疊. Their Unihan database also has 畅 classified under radical 72 日 in 《康熙字典》 though I don't have a copy handy at the moment to check.
It may be worth our adding a couple of alternate takes on radicals at some point for situations like this - I can see there might be some benefit to having the authoritative PRC and Taiwan radical tables (which I believe are indeed standardized by the government) accessible in Pleco too.
It may be worth our adding a couple of alternate takes on radicals at some point for situations like this - I can see there might be some benefit to having the authoritative PRC and Taiwan radical tables (which I believe are indeed standardized by the government) accessible in Pleco too.
Thanks for the explanation. I looked at the Unicode table (file U4E00.pdf from the consortium), and indeed there doe appear to have a relation between radical and character. For example radical 丨 as a character is at U+4E28, followed by several characters which indeed use this radical, e.g., 丩， 个，丫. However some that are listed in the Pleco radical list (i.e., look for the radical and then stroke, not directly for the character) are not at that part of the Unicode table, but further down. This includes our friend 畅 but also 书 and 由，甲 which are listed under 丨 in Pleco radical+stroke, but in their Pleco main entry are under other radicals: 田 for 由，甲 and the 'ya' (kwukyel) for 书 -- this one is U+4E66, indeed in the block with U+4E5B (the 'kwukyel'). The Pleco radical + stroke also has these characters under their Unicode-block radicals -- 由，甲, 畅 also listed under 田 and 书 also listed under 'ya'. From the 现代汉语词典 these are shown as alternate radicals for the characters. Pleco radical+stroke list shows both entries with no indication which is primary and which alternate. But at least we can find the character under either one.
Sure - not arguing that our table is totally consistent, honestly I'm just reluctant to change something when a) we have other sources attesting to the accuracy of our version and b) we've never had anyone else flag this as incorrect; making changes that way can quickly get you into a pushing-down-bubbles-on-wallpaper type scenario where it turns out that other people think it ought to be a different radical and are now unhappy that we changed it 
Oh absolutely, I agree. You have much more important things to do. I was just curious. I absolutely love Pleco, it has revolutionized my Chinese study -- I began back with the radical+stroke tables in Chinese dictionaries, which is why I still sometimes think that way. My Chinese friends are much more likely to simply count strokes. And with handwriting input in Pleco I use that almost all the time.