Synonyms & antonyms

kasim

秀才
Hello everyone,

I am currently exploring additional resources and I'm particularly interested in dictionaries that offer extensive lists of synonyms and antonyms. Does anyone have recommendations for dictionaries that can be imported to Pleco? Any suggestions or insights would be greatly appreciated!

Thank you in advance for your help!

Best regards,
 

Shun

状元
Hello kasim,

I also think that's a worthwhile thing to do. I once tried to create a semantic tree of Chinese vocabulary, but then left it for a later day because my feeling for the gradations in meaning and different usages of many Chinese words was still insufficient. There seem to be a large number of sites with 同义词 and 反义词 when you google for them, though from what I've seen, their quality is variable, the search results are spartan, and they often come up with very wide-ranging synonyms which have hardly anything to do with your search terms.

One high-quality work that @sobriaebritas had recommended to me on the forums, «The Chinese Lexicon» by Yip Po-Ching (who also wrote a detailed and systematic Chinese grammar in English), isn't exactly a book on synonyms or semantic relationships between words, but more on their inner structure and formation, which can also be very useful if your goal is to extend your vocabulary. Here is the book's cover:

The Chinese Lexicon - Cover.jpeg


The question with this book is, while you can easily read in it and remember interesting facts, you should also be able to package the information in flashcards. Perhaps whenever you come across something you consider memorable, you make a flashcard from its examples.

Amazon has excerpts of it:

https://www.amazon.com/Chinese-Lexicon-Comprehensive-Survey-ebook/dp/B09QNS8S94/

Another, possibly more accessible resource is «A Thematic Dictionary of Contemporary Chinese» (2019, Routledge), which is geared towards intermediate to advanced learners and groups about 9,000 vocabulary items, with explanations on each, in 300 thematic categories, with some exercises.

https://www.amazon.com/Thematic-Dictionary-Contemporary-Chinese-ebook/dp/B07BWPH55B/

Kind regards,

Shun


PS: The following book is also quite useful, it points out the differences in usage between words similar in meaning and gives example sentences, but it's repetitive and does not offer a conceptual framework:

1700 Groups of Frequently Used Chinese Synonyms.jpeg
 
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