much needed dictionary, July 15, 2002
　

This is a much needed dictionary for people wanting to learn Cantonese. It is very useful, well printed, and nicely done. However I have 2 minor issues: (1) it lacks a Mandarin index so if I know how the character sounds in Mandarin, I have to resort to tedious radical and/or stroke lookup to find the Cantonese pronounciation; and (2) the Cantonese romanization used doesn't explicitly distinguish between a short 'i' and a long 'i'.
　

I found a couple of errors in a couple of the definitions and pronounciations in this dictionary.

Excellent character dictionary, March 31, 2003
　

This dictionary is excellent for finding individual characters and their meanings. However, it is not a ready source for finding whole words (most chinese words consist of 2 or more characters). In other words, a person could find the characters ¤õ and ¨® and they're respective meanings, fire and car, quite easily, but ¤õ¨® (train)- is not listed.

The dictionary's strong points are that it uses Yale romanization for Cantonese and standard pinyin for Mandarin; that characters can be looked up in three ways: radical, number of strokes, and Cantonese romanization; and the detail of its listings.

If it had a Mandarin pinyin index and simplified characther look up as well it would be a much more useful tool. As it is, it is indespesible for a Cantonese speaker learning Mandarin and one of the easiest dictionaries to use to look up a character. I recommend it highly for intermediate to advanced Cantonese speakers, and I would even suggest it to students of Mandarin (although not as strongly).

Correction to 1/12/01 review, January 22, 2001
Reviewer: A reader
Oops, to correct a mistake in my previous 1/12/01 review, I meant to say that the indices only lists traditional characters and traditional radicals, so you can only look up traditional characters. So if you want to look up a simplified character, you need to know its traditional form first. The simplified form, as well as the common traditional variant(s), is listed in parenthesis after you've found the traditional one.

Great pocket sized E-C dictionary w/ Cantonese pronunciation, January 12, 2001
Reviewer: A reader
The only other English-Chinese dictionaries w/ Cantonese pronuncation I can find are: One from Rita Choy, which is just a 3200 character list without compounds, another one from Rita Choy which is a beginner's guide that includes (among other references) compounds for 801 characters, and one from Roy T. Cowles, first written in 1914, which contains ~5300 characters including a lot of "Cantonese" characters (ones not found in regular Chinese publications), but requires you to flip to other page(s) to look up compounds, and I sometimes can't find modern newspaper characters in it. Please let me know if you know of other C-E dictionaries w/ Cantonese romanizaton.

This one is more complete, ~6000 char's, and so far, I haven't found a newspaper/magazine character I wanted to look up that's not in it. It lists the compounds (usually 2 per char) along with their Yale Cantonese pronouncation underneath the main char. The pinyin Mandarin pronounciation is also given for the main char. Char's can be searched by radical, stroke count, and Cantonese pronouncation. It even has a plastic coated cover to protect it from wear!

Its main drawback is that it only lists traditional char's, without the simplified ones used in mainland China. Also, because of the limited number of compounds, it is best used along side a more comprehensive C-E dictionary.