Email the Author

About the Book

The Cangjie Code Dictionary provides a means of looking up characters and their cangjie codes easily.

Rather than organizing entries according to radical or pinyin spelling, the entries in this dictionary are sorted according to the first letter of their cangjie codes.

To make looking up a particular character easier, the characters are further sorted so that similiar characters are grouped together. 

Index

The lookup index for characters shows the Cangjie typing code in plain letters. If all you are looking for is the full typing code, then you only need to go as far as this index.

You do need to have a basic understanding of the Cangjie System to be able to use this dictionary effectively. However it is laid out in such a way that you may find it helps you to learn the cangjie typing system.

Main Entries

Main entries include both letter codes and cangjie symbols for each character. Also included is the radical, pinyin pronounciation of each character and for more common characters, the English translation.

To make looking up Cangjie codes easier, the intermediate index contains links to the main entries but also contains the cangjie letter code for that character. So if all you are looking for is the Canjie code you only have to go as far as the intermediate index.

If you'd also like to know it's pronounciation or radical, then click to go to the character entry.

Why Touch Type Chinese?

I've been using the Cangjie system for about 7 years now. I use it to type out chinese phrases or passages from chinese books so that I can look up the meaning of the character or enter it into my own database.

Because I often don't know the sound of the character, being able to type it using its Cangjie typing code makes my life easier.

While not a perfect touch typing system, it can be a fairly quick method of learning to type chinese, once learned.

There are some codes that point to more than one character, but those are relatively few, and with practice you get to know which characters those are so that you can fairly quickly choose the desired character from the pull down list.

The other reason that I like the Cangjie method is that it helps me to remember the characters. It's a little like actually writing the characters since each Cangjie element represents an element of the character. And since I practice painting Chinese characters also, this is a useful way to help me keep my Character knowledge fresh.

Note that even though I've been using the Cangjie typing method for a while, I still sometimes forget characters. I designed this dictonary to be easy to use so that I could use it quickly and efficiently. I hope it helps you also.

Part 1 of the dictionary covers characters with codes beginning from A to L.

Part 2 covers Chinese Characters wth codes beginning from M to Y.

About the Author

Neil Keleher

@kneelkeleher

Although also a yoga teacher, one of the main reasons Neil Keleher moved to Taiwan was to study Chinese, in particular reading and writing.

He once had the thought "how crazy would he be trying to learn to read and write Chinese". So crazy he is. 

He first started trying to use a calligraphy brush after graduating from university in 1997. He found books on Japanese calligraphy and tried teaching himself. Later he visited a Calligraphy teacher in San Francisco for a few lessons and then continued to self learn.

After moving to Taiwan he began to learn Cursive style calligraphy (Cao Shu) and has also been learning the old Seal Script.

He spends time trying to read novels in Chinese (Currently he's reading the Chinese translation of Game of Thrones) and that's where knowing Cangjie comes in handy.

He types characters he doesn't know in Google Translate, and then later adds them to his Excel Chinese Database which is the source for this Cangjie Dictonary.