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Books published by Dover tend to have certain similarities: they tend to be books that were considered primary reference sources in their (usually eccentric) field at one time, but are now outdated and while their contents are frequently interesting, possibly useful and occasionally enlightening, they should not be considered authoritative except in the sense that they reflect scholarly opinion of several generations past.

Fr. Wieger's book should be treated in this manner. We have a great deal more resources regarding the evolution of the Chinese writing system at our disposal now than when he wrote a hundred years ago. The book is interesting in that it reflects the accepted wisdom of Chinese scholars of the nineteenth century on the subject, and in this sense it resembles James Legge's translations of the Chinese classics - they're considered almost unreadable nowadays (as is Wieger) but Legge had the benefit of real mandarins of the old regime to consult with. Fr. Wieger's book is a reflection of the sholarship that put together the Kang Xi dictionary, which despite its drawbacks in retrospect was a monumental work in its time.

If you're looking for a dictionary don't waste your time with Wieger - in this respect he was inaccurate even when he was new, and it's doubtful that preparing a dictionary was his major concern anyway. If you're looking for a history of Chinese writing, you should look elsewhere for accuracy, but Wieger's comments are worth a read as well, for no other reason than that he goes into so much detail over every character, and provides us with the received wisdom on the derivation of so many of them.

credit for this book goes to: trung1906

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