How do you look up kanji in the dictionary?

Question

I want to look up kanji in the dictionary but I don't know how to look for the one I want, there are so many of them. Any help guys?

Answer 1

There are a few different ways, but it depends on the dictionary.

With traditional dictionaries, you first need to know which element of the character is the main radical element under which it will be listed. Second, you need to know the number of (brush) strokes in the character.
For example, the character 侍 has two main parts: the main radical is 亻(which generally means "person"/"human") and the other is 寺. The radical element 亻is one of the most common. Now we know the radical we need to count the strokes There are two on the part on the left and six on the right. Most dictionaries list this character, which means samurai, under 亻plus six strokes.

It seems difficult to learn which element is the main radical, but you will find it gets easy very quickly. For example 体　働　住 all have 亻as the main radical. 湖　海　流 all have 氵, which means water. You can probably guess these ones easily from similarity:
婚　姫　嬢 (three strokes in the main radical)
林　棒　森 (four strokes ...)
針　銅　銀 (eight ...)
鳴　吼　吠 (three ... )
国　園 ... (three ...)

In Jack Halpern's dictionary however, there is another method, which is a lot easier for beginners to learn. He divides all kanji into four categories:
(1) those with a left-right division, eg 体　海　林　朋　時 etc
(2) those with a top-bottom division, eg 員　畠　某 etc
(3) those with an enclosure, eg 進　屋　国 etc
(4) other characters, eg: 人　出　乃 etc

Then all you have to do is count the strokes in each part. Let's look at 海. It's left-right, so section 1. The left side has three strokes (氵), the right side has 6 (毎, a little more difficult!) so it's 1-3-6. Characters are listed like this:
...
1-3-4
1-3-5
1-3-6
1-3-7
...
so it's easy to find this character. If you don't have your own dictionary, this is a great dictionary to buy. As one more example, you could try 買. It's top-bottom, so section 2, then 5 strokes on top, and 7 on the bottom, so it's 2-5-7. Try plugging these codes into this dictionary where it says "SKIP code":
http://www.solon.org/cgi-bin/j-e/jis/tty/nocolor/kanji?SASE=/cgi-bin/j-e/jis/tty/nocolor/dict
And you will be able to find them easily!

If you have an electronic dictionary (like those sold in Japan), it's even easier to find characters. There is a section that says 部分音訓 or something, and all you have to do is type in readings for different sections. eg 侍 consists of 亻("hito" or more technically "ninben") and 寺 ("tera"), so I could just type in "hito" and "tera" and this would come up.

To sum up, it's a good idea to start learning which element is likely to be the main radical element. And it is a good idea to learn to count strokes, then you will be able to look up kanji more easily.

PS: note on counting strokes:
口 has three strokes, not four. First the horizontal on the left, then the top and right horizontal together as the second, then the bottom. Having the top and right hand lines together as one stroke is very common. Have a look at the reference to see more.

Answer 2

It's rather complicated, based on the number of strokes required to create the kanji character. For example, all four-stroke characters are listed together, after the three-stroke and before the five-stroke characters.

If you have no experience with kanji, you need to learn what constitutes a "stroke" -- it's not always clear just by looking at the character (although it corresponds rather closely to a brush stroke).

Your kanji dictionary should provide you with the rules for looking something up.

Answer 3

Look it up on dictionary.com