FANQIE - AN IMPORTANT METHOD IN SEARCHING SINO-VIETNAMESE

Abstract

Chinese characters are of ideographical writing system, as a result of that it is not always easy to figure out the pronunciation of all words. Before the recent pinyin system appeared, Chinese in the past had created many phoneticizing ways for Chinese char acters. Among those methods, fanqie was the most popular one with the longest time  in  existance. Fanqie played an important role in searching sino-vietnamese of Chinese characters. Almost all dictionaries give us the common pronunciation of usually-used words; the rarely-seen or having special pronunciations words are hardly found out, therefore, it is necessary to rely on the  fanqie  method.  In  this  report,  we  would  like  to  introduce  some  most  basic  steps  in searching Sino-vietnamese with fanqie method.