Differences

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--- syntax_v2 [2026/04/23 13:53] – Move section about non-Chinese entries kbaiko
+++ syntax_v2 [2026/05/16 09:39] (current) – Handling numbers with multiple digits kbaiko
@@ Line 35: / Line 35: @@
 <code>
 Traditional Simplified [[pin1yin1]] /gloss; gloss; .../gloss; gloss; .../
-</code>
-For example:
-<code>
-皮實 皮实 [[pi2shi5]] /(of things) durable/(of people) sturdy; tough/
 </code>
@@ Line 57: / Line 52: @@
 ==== Pinyin ====
-The pinyin should be in accordance with standard pinyin orthography, except that numerals are used to indicate tones instead of diacritics, and apostrophes are not indicated.
+The pinyin should be in accordance with standard pinyin orthography. For a comprehensive reference, we recommend //Chinese Romanization: Pronunciation and Orthography// by Yin Binyong.
+For the majority of entries, an entry can be converted from v1 to v2 by simply removing the spaces within words (see 二次方程 above). In addition, a hyphen can now be included in the pinyin when appropriate.
-Proper nouns should be capitalized, and spaces or hyphens should be inserted when appropriate. For example,
 <code>
-蘋果手機 苹果手机 [[Ping2guo3 shou3ji1]] /iPhone/
 師生 师生 [[shi1-sheng1]] /teachers and students/
+柴米油鹽醬醋茶 柴米油盐酱醋茶 [[chai2-mi3-you2-yan2-jiang4-cu4-cha2]] /lit. firewood, rice, oil, salt, soy sauce, vinegar and tea/fig. life's daily necessities/
 </code>
-Other rules about our pinyin format:
+Rules about our pinyin format:
-  - The neutral tone uses the numeral "5", which should not be omitted.
+  - Tones are indicated with numerals instead of diacritics. The neutral tone (轻声) uses the numeral "5", which should not be omitted.
-  - ü, also known as the umlaut, is written as “u:”. For example, 女 -> nu:3
+  - Because we use numerals, the boundary between characters is clearly established and apostrophes before vowels are not needed
+  - ü (the umlaut), is written as “u:”. For example, 女 -> nu:3
   - 儿 as the “retroflex final” is written as r5
   - Raw tones should be used:
-      - Tone sandhi is **not** indicated (e.g., ni3 hao3 is not changed to ni2 hao3)
+      - Tone sandhi is **not** indicated (e.g., 你好[ni3hao3] is not written as [ni2hao3])
-      - Although "yi" and "bu" have various modifications in tone, depending on what follows them, these are **not** indicated in writing (e.g., "one horse" is pronounced "yi4 pi3 ma3" but written "yi1 pi3 ma3", and "not enough" is pronounced "bu2 gou4" but written "bu4 gou4")
+      - 一 and 不 have various modifications in tone depending on what follows them, but these are **not** indicated in the pinyin (e.g., 一半[yi1ban4] is not written as [yi2ban4], 不是[bu4shi4] is not written as [bu2shi4])
       - Word-related changes to neutral tone, however, **are** indicated. These are especially common with reduplicated forms (e.g., use ma1 ma5, not ma1 ma1; ba4 ba5, not ba4 ba4; kan4 kan5, not kan4 kan4; xiang3 xiang5 ("take under consideration"), not xiang3 xiang3). This isn't limited to reduplicated forms, e.g., ming2 bai5, not ming2 bai2; cong1 ming5, not cong1 ming2.\\ It's best to keep in mind that Pinyin is about Mandarin words, not Chinese characters.
-  - Non-Chinese characters: Letters should be written as they are, while numbers should be written out using pinyin, for example, 3C becomes “san1 C”.
+  - xx5: Represents an entry where pinyin does not apply. There are very few entries with this pinyin and we do not expect to add more.
-  - xx5: There are very few entries where the pinyin is xx5, which represents unknown pinyin or characters where pinyin does not apply.
 <code>
-々 々 [xx5] /iteration mark (used to represent a duplicated character)/
+々 々 [xx5] /iteration mark indicating repetition of the preceding character in horizontal writing (rare in modern Chinese)/
+〻 〻 [xx5] /iteration mark indicating repetition of the preceding character in vertical writing (rare in modern Chinese)/
 </code>
 ==== Definition ====
-Definitions should be written in American English.
+A definition is made up of senses, and a sense is made up of glosses. Senses should be separated using a slash "/", while glosses should be separated with a semicolon ";". This means that you can not use / or ; within a definition - for example, "w/o" as an abbreviation of "without" would incorrectly split the definition into two senses.
-Senses should be separated using a slash "/", while glosses within a sense should be separated with a semicolon ";". This means that you can not using / or ; within a definition - for example, "w/o" as an abbreviation of "without" would incorrectly split the definition into two senses.
+Generally, glosses within a sense are synonyms and can be included to remove ambiguity, while senses represent wholly different meanings or uses of a word. Here's an example of an entry with multiple senses and glosses.
-Do not add definite or indefinite articles (e.g. "a", "an", "the", etc) to English nouns unless they are necessary to distinguish the word from another usage type or homonym
+<code>
+算 算 [[suan4]] /to calculate; to figure out/to include; to count in/to count; to be valid; to carry weight/to regard as; to consider (to be ...)/
+</code>
-Don't use parts of speech. Instead try to give an indication of grammatical usage within the English definition. CC-CEDICT is a human readable descriptive dictionary, not a resource intended for machine processing.
+Rules to follow when writing a definition:
+  - Use American English.
+  - Do not add definite or indefinite articles (e.g. "a", "an", "the" etc) to English nouns unless they are necessary to distinguish the word from another usage type or homonym
+  - Don't use parts of speech. Instead try to give an indication of grammatical usage within the English definition. CC-CEDICT is a human readable descriptive dictionary, not a resource intended for machine processing.
+  - The singular form is preferred over the plural form, unless the word is typically used in its plural form.
+  - Entries for people should include dates if possible (birth, death, years in which the person was active in a certain role etc) and why this person is of interest (was famous writer, took part in a revolution, was murdered etc). If a person isn't particularly famous and isn't related to China or Chinese culture, please don't include them.
+  - Names of plants, animals, musical instruments should give common name and scientific name when appropriate; there is a particular problem of how specific the word is -- a plant may mean a minor variety within a species, or may refer to an entire taxonomic family. Different writers will use it to mean the common family, or the particular item of salad on their plate at present.
-Abbreviations etc cf e.g. i.e. do not need any further punctuation.
-Extended meanings indicated by lit. .. fig. combination when appropriate or when a common expression refers back to a classical incident or chengyu, one can refer to it with cf (incident in Records of the Historian).
+=== Ambiguity due to homonyms ===
+Many words in the English language have multiple meanings. If such a word is used to write a definition, additional information should be provided to prevent ambiguity.
+<code>
+首都 首都 [[shou3du1]] /capital (city)/
+</code>
+The text between the parentheses is "meta-information"; it is not a direct part of the translation, merely to prevent ambiguity.
+=== General principles of translation ===
+The English should be meaningful, not horribly ugly, and bear a close relation to the Chinese meaning. It should correspond to something that could be used naturally by an English speaker (I think Arthur Waley has some advice saying that just because a text is about magnetohydrodynamics, it doesn't follow that it has to be horribly ugly).
+On the other hand, a translation always loses something, and the translator can compensate by substituting an English equivalent (e.g. a biblical or Shakespearian allusion in place of a Confucian idiom).
+Most words have more than one meaning, and more than one grammatical function. Care is needed not to concentrate only on a specific occurrence to the exclusion of others. e.g . the actual occurrence may be a verb in the past participle (say "overthrown") whereas the word may also mean "destruction", "to topple" etc.
+There are tens of thousands, if not a hundred thousand, Chinese characters that have ever been created in Chinese history. Many of them are archaic, obscure, and have not been used in centuries, perhaps millennia, and it may not be possible to provide a definition. If you can't find a character in common dictionaries, or examples of the character in modern use, it's a sign that it's not worth including.
@@ Line 105: / Line 127: @@
 Taiwanese GuoYu sometimes prefers not to use the neutral tone, so we do not list Taiwan pronunciations when they consist only of saying "don't use the neutral tone". When a character has a "Taiwan pr." notice, then all of its compound need not mention it.
+==== Labels ====
-==== Ambiguity due to homonyms ====
+See [[labels]]
-Sometimes words used in the English definitions can have multiple meanings. If the Chinese word does not have these additional meanings, additional information should be provided to prevent ambiguity:\\
-首都 首都 [shou3 du1] /capital (city)/
-The text between the parentheses is "meta-information"; it is not a direct part of the translation, merely to prevent ambiguity.
 ==== References ====
@@ Line 119: / Line 137: @@
 ==== Classifiers ====
-Classifiers (also called "Measure words") can be listed using the following syntax:\\
+Classifiers, or "measure words", can be listed using the following syntax:
-避風港 避风港 [bi4 feng1 gang3] /haven/refuge/harbor/CL:座[zuo4],個|个[ge4]/
-Classifiers follow the 'reference' syntax, are prefixed by 'CL:' and separated by a comma (no additional spacing).
+<code>
+麵包 面包 [[mian4bao1]] /bread/CL:片[pian4],塊|块[kuai4]/
+麵包店 面包店 [[mian4bao1dian4]] /bakery/CL:家[jia1]/
+</code>
-The classifier words itself can be described using:\\
+They follow the reference syntax of traditional|simplified[pinyin], are prefixed by "CL:" and separated by commas.
-/classifier for small round things (peas, bullets, peanuts, pills, grains etc)/
+We typically omit general classifiers like 個|个[ge4] which can be applied to almost every single noun.
+A classifier itself can be described like so:
+<code>
+/classifier for small round things (peas, bullets, peanuts, pills, grains etc)/
+</code>
 ==== Bound forms ====
@@ Line 133: / Line 159: @@
 ===== Punctuation =====
+==== Dashes and hyphens ====
+We do not use the em dash (—). Ranges of numbers, dates, times etc should be separated by the en dash (–). In other cases, either the en dash or hyphen (-) should be used following standard English grammar.
 ==== Middle dot ====
@@ Line 164: / Line 193: @@
 </code>
-===== Retroflex finals =====
+===== 兒|儿, erhua and rhotacization =====
-There are 3 kinds of R-ised words that use the 兒/儿 character:
+The 兒|儿 character can be used in three different ways
-  - 兒/儿 is not-optional because it's its own syllable (usually meaning "son," so daughter is actually "girl son") - 女兒/女儿 nǚ'ér
-  - 兒/儿 is not-optional because it changes the definition of the word and is tacked on to the preceding syllable - 头兒/头儿 tóur (leader) as opposed to 头 tóu (head)
-  - 兒/儿 is an optional northern pronunciation (er2hua4) and is tacked on to the preceding syllable - 花兒/花儿 huār (flower) as opposed to 花 huā (flower)
-These 3 cases should be formatted as follows:
+. 兒|儿[er2] is not-optional because it's its own syllable (meaning "child" or "son")
-  - 女兒 女儿 [nu:3 er2] /daughter/
-  - 頭兒 头儿 [tou2 r5] /leader/
-  - 花兒 花儿 [hua1 r5] /erhua variant of 花/flower/
-//Please note: words ending with 'r5' (such as 'hua1 r5') are presented as a -r joined with the previous syllable (eg. 'huar1') in some dictionaries using CC-CEDICT, such as the [[http://www.mdbg.net/chindict/chindict.php|MDBG Chinese-English dictionary]].//
+<code>
+女兒 女儿 [[nu:3er2]] /daughter/
+</code>
+. 兒|儿[r5] is a non-optional suffix because it changes both the pronunciation and meaning of the word
+<code>
+頭兒 头儿 [[tou2r5]] /leader/
+</code>
+. 兒|儿[r5] is an optional suffix, changing the pronunciation of the word but not the meaning
+<code>
+花兒 花儿 [[hua1r5]] /erhua form of 花[hua1]/
+</code>
+//Please note: words ending with 'r5' (such as 'hua1r5') are presented as a -r joined with the previous syllable (eg. 'huar1') in some dictionaries using CC-CEDICT, such as the [[http://www.mdbg.net/chindict/chindict.php|MDBG Chinese-English dictionary]].//
 ===== Choice of entries and translations =====
@@ Line 188: / Line 225: @@
 </code>
 //(the +"" combination forces Google to match both a whole word and to ignore variants)//
-===== General principles of translation =====
-The English should be meaningful, not horribly ugly, and bear a close relation to the Chinese meaning. It should correspond to something that could be used naturally by an English speaker (I think Arthur Waley has some advice saying that just because a text is about magnetohydrodynamics, it doesn't follow that it has to be horribly ugly).
-On the other hand, a translation always loses something, and the translator can compensate by substituting an English equivalent (e.g. a biblical or Shakespearian allusion in place of a Confucian idiom).
-Names of persons should say dates if possible (birth, death, years in which the person was active in a certain role, etc), what interest the person has (writer, general, pop star, etc), brief indications of CV (e.g. took part in a revolution, was murdered, wrote famous book, etc). For example:\\ 胡錦濤 胡锦涛 [Hu2 Jin3 tao1] /Hu Jintao (1942-), president of PRC from 2003/
-Names of plants, animals, musical instruments should give common name and scientific name when appropriate; there is a particular problem of how specific the word is -- a plant may mean a minor variety within a species, or may refer to an entire taxonomic family. Different writers will use it to mean the common family, or the particular item of salad on their plate at present.
-Most words have more than one meaning, and more than one grammatical function. Care is needed not to concentrate only on a specific occurrence to the exclusion of others. e.g . the actual occurrence may be a verb in the past participle (say "overthrown") whereas the word may also mean "destruction", "to topple" etc.
-There are 20,000 Chinese characters in the more advanced dictionaries, of which many are obscure, never used, and will not have correct definitions in online or paper dictionaries. This is the boundary of knowledge. (Exactly the same applies to big English dictionaries.) These obscure characters appear on modern websites, and one sometimes needs to give a definition. It is reasonable to admit (precise meaning unknown), and give an indication of what one can deduce.
-===== Variants =====
-Many characters have variants, sometimes more than one, sometimes with identical meaning or quite different meanings. Some choice of variants found in texts on websites will arise because of the different input methods, and the user may have had no intention of using the variant.
-You can get rough usage frequency information by searching the alternative word forms in Google. Please use this syntax to make sure that Google doesn't perform any automatic variant translations:
-<code>+"word"</code>
-Additionally you can use Google's advanced search to specify the language to either 'Chinese (Traditional)' or 'Chinese (Simplified)' to prevent Japanese web pages from influencing the results. For example:\\
-Chinese (Traditional) pages for +"撐竿跳高"\\
-,700 Chinese (Simplified) pages for +"撑竿跳高"\\
-,750 Chinese (Traditional) pages for +"撐杆跳高"\\
-,900 Chinese (Simplified) pages for +"撑杆跳高"
-It often happens that Google tells you that +"Xx" occurs 200 times more frequently than +"XX", in which case Xx should be in CC-CEDICT as a regular entry, and XX only as "XX XX [pin1 yin1] /variant of Xx/definition/".
-When there are alternative forms of the same expression, and the less common form is at most 5 times less common, the less common entry should have /also written ../ referring to the more common form, e.g. 撐竿跳高 撑竿跳高 [cheng1 gan1 tiao4 gao1] /pole-vaulting/also written 撐杆跳高|撑杆跳高/.
-**PROPOSED CHANGES**
-(Summary: (1) Get rid of "also written", using "variant of" instead; and (2) Format "variant of" entries in line with points 2a and 2b below.)
-(THE VARIANT RULES ABOVE CAN BE DELETED IF AND WHEN THESE CHANGES ARE ACCEPTED.)
-(Also, the following notes can be tidied up and edited to remove references to "I" and "me".)
-Regarding "also written..."
-According to our wiki, there are two kinds of variants.
-https://cc-cedict.org/wiki/format:syntax#variants
-) Where the less common form is relatively common (> 20% of the frequency of the more common form).
-) Where the less common form is much less common (< 20% of the frequency of the more common form)
-For the first type, the def of the less common form should look like this (according to the wiki):
-<code>/definition/also written .../</code>
-And for the second type, the def of the less common form should be
-<code>/variant of .../definition/</code>
-In practice, what has been happening in recent years is this:
-. We have been ignoring the "also written ..." syntax, except maybe when we edit existing entries
-. With variants,
-a) if it's a full variant (i.e. exactly the same definition), we use /variant of .../ without adding the definition.
-b) if it's a partial variant (i.e. only some of the senses of one form apply to the other form) we use
-<code>/definition (variant of ...)/</code>
-Part of the rationale for these changes is this: It's a hassle to check whether entries satisfy the "20% criteria", and the percentage probably changes over time, and depending on which corpus you use to get the percentage.
-Using the Editor website's search function, I got about 3600 results for "variant of" and only about 360 results for "also written".
-One idea that I've had in mind for a while is to clean up all these by
-a) rewriting "also written" definitions by using "variant of"
-b) regularizing the format of the "variant of" entries in line with points 2a and 2b above.
@@ Line 276: / Line 235: @@
 If an alternative romanization method is more popular for a certain word, that version can be added as an additional translation.
-===== Non-Chinese entries =====
+===== Non-Chinese characters =====
-There are a very small number of entries that use symbols, numbers, or other non-Chinese characters in the word, for example
+On occasion the Chinese language uses English letters or numerals to write a word. For example, we have
 <code>
-% % [pa1] /percent (Tw)/
+# English letters
-C 3C [san1 C] /computers, communications, and consumer electronics/China Compulsory Certificate (CCC)/
+ky ky [[ky]] /(slang) socially tone-deaf; unable to read the room (from Japanese KY, acronym of 空気が読めない "kuuki ga yomenai")/
-421 [si4 er4 yi1] /four grandparents, two parents and an only child/
+coser coser [[coser]] /cosplayer/
-K人 K人 [K ren2] /(slang) to hit sb; to beat sb/
+# Mix of English and Chinese
+e人 e人 [[e-ren2]] /(slang) extroverted person/
+勿cue 勿cue [[wu4-cue]] /(Internet slang) don't call on me; don't drag me in/
+# Numbers
+D打印 3D打印 [[san1-D da3yin4]] /to 3D print; 3D printing/
+後 95后 [[jiu3wu3hou4]] /people born between 1995-01-01 and 1999-12-31/Gen Z (abbr. for 95後|95后[jiu3wu3hou4] + 00後|00后[ling2ling2hou4])/
+996 [[jiu3jiu3liu4]] /9am–9pm, six days a week (work schedule)/
 </code>
-**Below are some notes on how these entries are handled in v2.**
+As a general rule of thumb:
+  - When writing the Hanzi fields, non-Chinese characters should stay the same.
+  - When writing the pinyin, for English letters use the same letters in the pinyin (ky -> ky), but for numbers write out the pinyin for the corresponding Chinese character (9 -> jiu3)
-Let's take "e人" (extroverted person) as an example.
-There are several ways one might like to render "e人" in pinyin, such as
+==== Technical details, and the use of {} ====
-  - e-rén
-  - erén
-  - yìrén
-The Editor website attempts to match the parts of the headword with the parts of the pinyin, and will, if necessary, treat some parts as "unparsed".
+When parsing the traditional and simplified fields, Hanzi and numbers are treated as individual sections, while consecutive English letters are grouped together into a single section. For example a hypothetical headword "甲abc123乙丙" would be parsed into 7 sections: 甲, abc, 1, 2, 3, 乙, 丙.
-For example, in the following entry, "e" is an unparsed element in both the headword and the pinyin, while 人 is matched with "ren2".
+The pinyin is first split by spaces and punctuation, and then parsed based on valid pinyin syllables. One way of writing pinyin for the hypothetical headword above could be "jia3 abc yi1-er4-san1 yi3bing3". Note there are many valid ways that the pinyin could be segmented, for example "jia3 abc yi1er4 san1yi3bing3" or "jia3-abc-yi1-er4-san1-yi3-bing3" (these may not make sense from an orthographic point of view, but will be parsed correctly by the CC-CEDICT website). The only requirement is that the "abc" is separated "yi1". Any of the above examples will be parsed into 7 pinyin sections.
-<code> e人 e人 [[e-ren2]] /(slang) extroverted person/ </code>
-If the Editor website https://cc-cedict.org/editor/ cannot unambiguously match up the elements of the headword and the pinyin, the entry will not be processed. That is what happens in the following case, where the proposed pinyin is "eren2" rather than "e-ren2".
+It is a requirement that the number of parsed sections in the Hanzi matches the number of parsed sections in the pinyin. For the vast majority of entries, this does not pose a problem. Almost all Chinese characters are one syllable in length, and due to how the parsing logic works, numbers and English letters will be parsed correctly as long as the pinyin is segmented correctly. Problems arise in rare situations such as
+<code>
+兡 兡 [[bai3ke4]] /.../
+</code>
-<code> e人 e人 [[eren2]] /(slang) extroverted person/ (Invalid format!)</code>
+where a single character corresponds to two syllables. In these cases, {}'s may be used to manually group a section, so we can write
-To specify "erén" (as opposed to, say, "e-rén"), it is necessary to use braces to guide the Editor website in parsing. The following would work:
+<code>
-<code>e人 e人 [[{e}ren2]] /(slang) extroverted person/</code>
+兡 兡 [[{bai3ke4}]] /.../
+</code>
-... as would several other forms, including
+which indicates "bai3ke4" is a single pinyin section, matching the single Hanzi section of 兡.
-<code>{e}人 {e}人 [[{e}ren2]] /(slang) extroverted person/</code>
-Here is a link to a webpage where a proposed entry can be tested to see if it can be parsed correctly.
+Another problem arises for entries with a number with multiple digits. Consider a hypothetical entry such as
-"Parse entry" webpage:
+<code>
-https://cc-cedict.org/editor/editor.php?handler=ParseEntry
+11 [[shi2yi1]] /eleven/
+</code>
-To specify "yìrén" as the pinyin for e人, no braces are necessary. The following entry can be parsed, as one can verify at the "Parse entry" webpage. "e" will be matched with "yi4", and 人 will be matched with "ren2".
+which implies that the first 1 is pronounced "shi2" and the second 1 is pronounced "yi1". Or the entry
-<code>e人 e人 [[yi4ren2]] /(slang) extroverted person/</code>
+<code>
+21 [[er4shi2yi1]] /twenty one/
+</code>
-Generally, it is regarded as preferable not to indicate the pronunciation of non-Chinese parts of a headword (such as "e" in "e人"). Instead, they can appear as unparsed elements of the pinyin. For example, "e-ren2" is preferred over "yi4ren2".
+which poses a different problem - we have two Hanzi sections but three pinyin sections due to the extra "shi2" that is not present in the hanzi. To solve these issues, we have decided to group the number in {}'s and write the number out in the pinyin field:
+<code>
+{21}三體綜合症 {21}三体综合症 [[{21} san1ti3 zong1he2zheng4]] /trisomy; Down's syndrome/
+</code>
+Note this is different from the 996 example above, which is treated as 3 digits "nine nine six" and parses without {}'s, not the number "nine hundred ninety six", which would need {}'s.
+To check whether an entry will be parsed correctly, you can use this tool:
+https://cc-cedict.org/editor/editor.php?handler=ParseEntry