Chinese Character Components, Radicals and Phonetics A dissertation submitted to The University of Manchester for the degree of Master in the Faculty of Engineering and Physical Science -2014- Mingshu Zhao School of Computer Science The University of Manchester Table of Contents Abstract ......................................................................................................................... 7 Declaration .................................................................................................................... 8 Intellectual property statement ...................................................................................... 9 Acknowledgements ...................................................................................................... 10 1 Introduction ......................................................................................................... 11 1.1 Motivation ............................................................................................................ 11 1.2 Aims ..................................................................................................................... 12 1.3 Objectives ........................................................................................................... 13 1.4 Structure of dissertation .................................................................................... 14 1.5 Summary ............................................................................................................. 15 2 Background .......................................................................................................... 16 2.1 History of Chinese character ............................................................................ 17 2.2 Chinese character structures ........................................................................... 20 2.3 Chinese character components ....................................................................... 23 2.3.1 Strokes ............................................................................................................ 23 2.3.2 Radicals .......................................................................................................... 24 2.3.3 Phonetic component ..................................................................................... 25 2.4 Pinyin system ..................................................................................................... 26 2.5 Barriers of westerners learning Chinese ........................................................ 27 2.6 Effective way of learning Chinese ................................................................... 28 2.7 Summary ............................................................................................................. 30 3 Methodology ....................................................................................................... 31 3.1 Database technology ......................................................................................... 31 3.1.1 Relational database ...................................................................................... 31 3.1.2 Entity-relationship model .............................................................................. 32 3.1.3 Relational database management system ................................................ 34 3.2 Programming languages ................................................................................... 34 3.2.1 Structured query language ........................................................................... 35 3.2.2 Java ................................................................................................................. 36 3.3 Tools and methods ............................................................................................. 37 3.3.1 Database management software ................................................................ 37 3.3.2 Visual database design tool ......................................................................... 38 3.3.3 Development environment ........................................................................... 39 2 3.3.4 Selection of encoding system ...................................................................... 39 3.4 Summary ............................................................................................................. 40 4 Design and implementation .................................................................................. 42 4.1 Design .................................................................................................................. 42 4.1.1 Requirements analysis ................................................................................. 44 4.1.2 Conceptual structure design ........................................................................ 45 4.1.3 Logical structure design ................................................................................ 47 4.2 Implementation ................................................................................................... 55 4.2.1 Collection of radicals ..................................................................................... 55 4.2.2 Collection of phonetic components ............................................................. 56 4.2.3 Collection of Pinyin ........................................................................................ 56 4.2.4 Collection of elements .................................................................................. 56 4.2.5 Collection of structures ................................................................................. 57 4.3 Summary ............................................................................................................. 61 5 Application development ..................................................................................... 63 5.1 Investigation of existed Chinese learning software ...................................... 63 5.1.1 Hanzi Master .................................................................................................. 63 5.1.2 Chinese Master .............................................................................................. 64 5.2 Conceptual design of the application structure ............................................. 65 5.3 Implementation ................................................................................................... 67 5.4 Summary ............................................................................................................. 70 6 Evaluation ............................................................................................................ 71 6.1 A review of current Chinese database ............................................................ 71 6.2 Contribution ......................................................................................................... 72 6.2.1 Contribution to Chinese teaching ................................................................ 72 6.2.2 Contribution to the platforms for Chinese enquiries ................................. 73 6.2.3 Contribution to Chinese research ............................................................... 73 6.3 Performance evaluation .................................................................................... 74 6.3.1 Single table test ............................................................................................. 74 6.3.2 Two-tables joint test ...................................................................................... 76 6.3.3 Three-tables joint test ................................................................................... 77 6.3.4 Application test ............................................................................................... 77 6.4 Summary ............................................................................................................. 78 7 Conclusion ........................................................................................................... 79 7.1 Deliverables ........................................................................................................ 79 7.2 Project limitation ................................................................................................. 80 3 7.3 Future work ......................................................................................................... 80 7.3.1 Suggestion of database optimization ......................................................... 80 7.3.2 Suggestion of learning system development ............................................ 82 Bibliography ................................................................................................................. 83 Word Count: 16203 4 List of Figures 2.1 Evolution of character ............................................................................ 18 2.2: Simplification process of character ....................................................... 19 2.3: Chinese character decomposing ........................................................... 22 2.4: Eight basic strokes ................................................................................ 24 2.5: Process of Chinese curriculums ............................................................ 29 4.1: Database design process...................................................................... 42 4.2: ER model .............................................................................................. 46 4.3: One-level