Chinese Etymology
GREAT WEBSITE. I believe that this is the best site on the web for searching for Chinese character etymology. This site gives very good etymological information about thousands of characters, and explains often the history of characters. In this site, you search for the etymology of single characters. It will give the etymology of the traditional character, and will talk about the difference (if there is any) between the simplified version(s) of the character, and the traditional version. The site gives many oracle bone pictographs, seal script pictographs, and other ancient pictographs of the character that you searched. It will usually give dozens of examples of ancient forms of the character. Often one of the best ways to remember a character is to learn its etymology, and so this character will likely make learning and remembering Chinese characters easier.
One of the best online dictionaries that includes etymology information. After you paste in a Chinese character, the Character etymology tab of the output gives information about the character, and will do so both for the simplified and traditional form of the character.
Another great source for Chinese character etymological information. This site seems to have a slightly smaller database than yellowbridge.com or chineseetymology.org for etymological information of characters, but it is still a great source. Like chineseetymology.org, this site also will often show you pictographs of the Ancient and Archaic forms of the character.
This is one of the best Chinese to Chinese dictionaries and sources for Chinese etymology on the web. Assuming that you search for individual characters such as 馬, it includes Chinese etymological information, pictures of ancient scripts of the character, and shows variations of the character in different fonts. This will also give very basic translations into English, but this site is best used as a Chinese to Chinese dictionary. In addition, this site will convert the characters that you type into pinyin and bopomofo after you search. This site also allows you to search Chinese idioms.
This site gives good Information about the evolution of Chinese characters.
This site gives the etymology of roughly 100 common characters sorted alphabetically.
This site talks about why one would would benefit from studying Chinese etymology.
Free Web Counters
Please email me at mandarinportal@gmail.com for any advice, comments, or suggestions about this website, and websites that you think should be included on this website.
If you can, please help this site by linking to it. Also, please email me if you find any errors or broken links on the site. Thanks.
copyright © MandarinPortal.com 2009-2013