Ideally the indexes below, and the entries they connect to help make Traditional Chinese characters easier to find and easier to learn.
In the init Shapes index, characters are sorted and grouped by their top-most, left-most or outer most element. These elements are sorted into 12 main shape groups and from there subsorted to make lookup as easy as possible.
In the final Shapes index, characters are sorted and grouped by their bottom-most, or right most element. In some cases, this index can make it easier to find a particular character. As with the init Shapes index, final elements are divided into groups and from there subsorted. Note that for this index there are 15 main shape groups.
The phone shapes index groups characters according to shared phonetic elements. These elements are sorted using the same indexing method as as the initial shapes index. This index does not include all characters because some characters do not have a shared or common phonetic element. However, it can be useful for seeing characters grouped both by phonetic element and shape.
The phone beginnings is in some ways like a typical phonetic index, listing characters by their pronounciation. However, where characters in the same phonetic group share a shape element, those are grouped together. Note that this index lists c, ch, s, sh, z and zh separately.
The phone endings is a rhyming index. Phonetics are grouped by their rhymes. It can be difficult to use. However, a workaround is to lookup a pronounciation via the initial phones index and then switch to the finals index. The idea of this index is to make it easier to navigate between sets of characters that rhyme.
The English index lists characters based on their English translation. Characters, words and phrases are indexed here based on either the first word or first two or first three words in their definition.
the Cats index includes a variety of words based on categories. This is a work in progress.
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