How to Look up 通[tōng] in a Dictionary?

Imagine a situation that we encounter a new word 通[tōng] and we certainly have no clue how to pronounce it, thus the voice-recognition app or the Pinyin input on a computer are out of the question, what could we do?

We look up the word in a dictionary.

How to look up 通[tōng] in a dictionary?

Go to Radical Index first.

All words in a Chinese dictionary are grouped by radicals. Words with the same radical are grouped together in ascending order of their stroke counts.

Radical Index lists starting pages of each radical group of words is located in fore-most section of dictionary. The list is also arranged in ascending order of stroke counts of radicals.

The indexed radical of 通[tōng] is a component of glyph composed of the last three strokes, from the 8^th to the 10^th. It resembles a kick skate board for kids.

However, you cannot find the 3-stroke radical 辶[chuò] in Radical Index.

This radical is a special radical which evolved from 辵[chuò], which means someone walks in a back-and-forth fashion, and all words of radical 辶[chuò] is listed under the 7-stroke radical 辵[chuò].

So, if we look up 通[tōng] in a dictionary by its radical, we should look up a 7-stroke radial 辵[chuò] in the index, instead of a 3-stroke radical 辶[chuò]. (See Table 1)

After we get to the starting page of radical group 辵[chuò], words there are arranged again in ascending strokes counts the radical 辶[chuò].

Excluding the radical, the remaining part of 通[tōng] is 甬[yǒng]. 甬[yǒng] has 7 strokes.

We shall find the word 通[tōng] within a subgroup of 7 strokes, after the 6-strokes, before the 8-strokes. (See Table 2)

👉 This short essay is supplementary to Lesson 8 of my Youtube videos.

Table 1

Table 2