YES stroke alphabetical order

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Handbook of the YES Stroke-Order Sorting for Chinese Characters
Handbook of the YES Stroke-Order Sorting for Chinese Characters

The YES stroke alphabetical order, also called YES stroke-order sorting, briefly YES order or YES sorting, is a Chinese character sorting method based on a stroke alphabet and stroke orders.[1][a] It is a simplified stroke-based sorting method free of stroke counting and grouping.[2]

YES order has been successfully applied to the indexing of all the characters in Xinhua Character Dictionary and Xiandai Hanyu Word Dictionary. In this joint index the user can look up a Chinese character alphabetically to find its pinyin and Unicode, in addition to the page numbers in the two popular dictionaries.[3]

At the end of the article, there is an appendix with a list of all the 20,902 CJK Unified Ideographs (Unicode block) sorted in YES order.[4]

Stroke alphabet[edit]

In the Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary, the word alphabet is defined as "a set of letters or symbols in a fixed order used for writing a language".[5] The YES "alphabet" is a list of Chinese character strokes in the order of 

"㇐ ㇕ ㇅ ㇎ ㇡ ㇋ ㇊ ㇍ ㇈ 乙 ㇆ ㇇ ㇌  ㇀ ㇑ ㇗ ㇞ ㇉ ㄣ ㇙ ㇄ ㇟ ㇚ ㇓ ㇜ ㇛ ㇢ ㇔ ㇏ ㇂".[6]

for writing and sorting Chinese. This stroke alphabet is built on the basis of Unicode CJK Strokes[7] and the Standard of Chinese Character Bending Strokes of the GB13000.1 Character Set.[8] There are totally 30 strokes, sorted by the standard basic strokes order of “heng (橫, 横, 一), ti (提, ㇀), shu (豎, 竖, 丨), pie (撇, 丿), dian (點, 点, 丶), na (捺, ㇏)” and the bending points order of “zhe (折), wan (彎, 弯) and gou (鉤, 钩)”.[9]

Stroke order[edit]

Chinese characters are written stroke by stroke in a certain order. The standard stroke orders of Taiwan and the China mainland are quite similar.[10][11][12]

For example, the stroke orders of the different characters in "一二三笔顺排检法 一二三筆順排檢法" (the YES Stroke-order sorting) are: 

一(一)
二(一 一)
三(一 一 一)
笔(㇓㇐㇔㇓㇐㇔㇓㇐㇐㇟)
顺(㇓㇑㇑㇐㇓㇑㇕㇓㇔)
排(㇐㇚㇀㇑㇐㇐㇐㇑㇐㇐㇐)
检(㇐㇑㇓㇔㇓㇏㇐㇔㇔㇓㇐)
法(㇔㇔㇀㇐㇑㇐㇜㇔)
筆(㇓㇐㇔㇓㇐㇔㇕㇐㇐㇐㇐㇑)
順(㇓㇑㇑㇐㇓㇑㇕㇐㇐㇐㇓㇔)
檢(㇐㇑㇓㇔㇓㇏㇐㇑㇕㇐㇑㇕㇐㇓㇔㇓㇔),

where the stroke order of each character is a string of strokes put in brackets. In the rare cases where more than one glyph or stroke order exist for a Chinese character, YES follows the fonts and stroke order in the Standard of GB13000.1 Character Set Chinese Character Order (Stroke-Based Order)[13] in its current implementations, because this standard covers all the 20,902 Unicode CJK characters and has a larger user population. Theoretically, any standard of stroke order can be used in YES.[1]

YES sorting[edit]

With the knowledge of stroke alphabet and stroke order, the user is now ready to sort (or lookup) Chinese characters and words alphabetically.

Sorting of characters[edit]

To arrange two Chinese characters into YES order, the user follows the same rules of Latin alphabetical order.[1] First compare the first strokes of the stroke orders of the two characters. If they are different, arrange the characters according to the strokes' order in the alphabet, for example, "土(㇐㇑㇐)" comes before "日(㇑㇕㇐㇐)", because the initial stroke "㇐" is before initial stroke "㇑" in the alphabet. If the first strokes are the same, compare the second strokes of both sides, and so on, until a pair of strokes that are not the same is found and the Chinese characters are ordered accordingly, for example, "土(㇐㇑㇐)" comes before "木(㇐㇑㇓㇏)" because the third stroke "㇐" precedes "㇓". If the last stroke of one of the characters is compared and the strokes on both sides are again the same, then the shorter stroke order string comes first, for example, "二 (一 一)" comes before "三 (一 一 一)".

The YES order of the different characters in "一二三笔顺排检法 一二三筆順排檢法" is: 

一(一)
二(一 一)
三(一 一 一)
檢(㇐㇑㇓㇔㇓㇏㇐㇑㇕㇐㇑㇕㇐㇓㇔㇓㇔)
检(㇐㇑㇓㇔㇓㇏㇐㇔㇔㇓㇐)
排(㇐㇚㇀㇑㇐㇐㇐㇑㇐㇐㇐)
筆(㇓㇐㇔㇓㇐㇔㇕㇐㇐㇐㇐㇑)
笔(㇓㇐㇔㇓㇐㇔㇓㇐㇐㇟)
順(㇓㇑㇑㇐㇓㇑㇕㇐㇐㇐㇓㇔)
顺(㇓㇑㇑㇐㇓㇑㇕㇓㇔)
法(㇔㇔㇀㇐㇑㇐㇜㇔).

Sorting of words[edit]

Words of multiple characters are sorted by their first characters in YES order. If the first characters are the same, then check the second characters, and so on. Non-Chinese characters appear after Chinese characters in alphabetical/Unicode order.[14] For example, 

覺
覺醒
觉
觉醒
觉悟
B超
T恤.

Applications[edit]

YES order has been applied to the compilation of several books, including:

  • 一二三笔顺检字手册 (Handbook of the YES Stroke-Order Sorting for Chinese Characters) (in Chinese, a pocket book of 276 pages with a joint index for all the 13,000 plus different characters in Xinhua Dictionary and Xiandai Hanyu Cidian)[3]
  • The YES-CEDICT Chinese Dictionary (一二三漢英大詞典, Trial Edition, Sorted by Traditional Chinese, a Chinese–English dictionary of over 110,000 word entries).[15]
  • The YES-CEDICT Chinese Dictionary (一二三汉英大词典, Trial Edition, Sorted by Simplified Chinese, a Chinese–English dictionary of over 110,000 word entries).[16][b]

In addition, all the 20,902 Unicode CJK Unified Ideographs have also been sorted in YES order (please see Appendix).[17]

A few more words[edit]

Comparing with traditional stroke-based sorting, the most important advantages of YES are: (a) No stroke counting and grouping (such as, into the heng-shu-pie-dian-zhe 5 groups) is needed. (b) The employment of stroke alphabetical order.[18]

According to experimental results, YES's one-tiered stroke-order sorting is more accurate than the traditional two-tiered stroke-count-stroke-order sorting. For example, in the traditional method, the 9 characters of "夕夊夂久么勺凡丸及" are not sortable, because they are all of 3 strokes and share the same stroke order code of 354 (pie-zhe-dian, 撇-折-点, ㇐㇕㇔). The YES method can sort them into 6 groups "及/凡丸/勺/夕/夊夂久/么". The code duplicating rate (重码率) of the traditional method on the 20,902 CJK characters set is 10.31%. And in YES order, it is reduced to 2.75%. The maximal number of characters sharing a code is reduced to 4, such as 甲 曱 叶 申. (Duplicating code characters, i.e., characters sharing a stroke order code, are sorted by the positions of the starting and ending points of corresponding strokes in the order of higher before lower and left before right.)[2]

According to references,[19] the Chinese name of the YES sorting method, i.e. "一二三" (1, 2, 3), is formed by the first three of all the Chinese characters in YES order (because stroke "一" lies at the top of the alphabet). And the English name "YES" is the acronym of "Yi Er San", which is the Pinyin expression of the Chinese name.

See also[edit]

Notes[edit]

  1. ^ This article is an expansion of a section in article Stroke-based sorting, which is of class B.
  2. ^ This is the Simplified Chinese version of the dictionary, not a duplication of the previous reference.

References[edit]

  1. ^ a b c Zhang 2013a, p. 5.
  2. ^ a b Zhang 2013a, p. 274.
  3. ^ a b Zhang, Xiaoheng et. al (张小衡, 李笑通) (2013a). 一二三笔顺检字手册 (Handbook of the YES Stroke-Order Sorting for Chinese Characters) (in Chinese). Beijing: the Language Press (语文出版社) of the National Language Commission of China. ISBN 978-7-80241-670-3.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  4. ^ Zhang, X. (2020). "Chinese Characters Sorting and Retrieving Free of Labels (漢字的"無標記排檢")". The Journal of Modernization of Chinese Language Education (中文教学现代化学报). 9 (2020) (general 18): 42–59.
  5. ^ Hornby, A S (2015). Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary (9th ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-479879-2.
  6. ^ Zhang 2013a, p. front cover inner side.
  7. ^ "Unicode CJK Strokes" (PDF). The Unicode Standard. Retrieved 2023-06-21.
  8. ^ PRC, National Language Commission (2002). GB13000.1字符集汉字折笔规范 (Standard of Chinese character bending strokes of the GB13000.1 character set). Beijing: 语文出版社 (the Language Press). ISBN 978-7-80-126882-2.
  9. ^ Zhang 2013a, pp. 5–6.
  10. ^ Zhang, X. (and Cheung W. K) (2013b). "A Mainland-Taiwan Comparative Study on Standard Stroke Orders of Chinese Characters (兩岸漢字規範筆順比較)" (PDF). Newsletter of Chinese Language (中國語文通訊). 92 (2013) (1): 17–26.
  11. ^ Taiwan, 國語推行委員會 (National Language Promotion Committee) (1996). 常用國字標準字體筆順手册 (Handbook of the Stroke Orders of the Commonly-Used National Chinese Characters) (in Chinese). Taipei: Ministry of Education. ISBN 978-9-57-090664-6.
  12. ^ PRC, National Language Commission (2021). 通用规范汉字笔顺规范 (Stroke Orders of the Commonly-used Standard Chinese Characters) (in Chinese). Beijing: the Commercial Press. ISBN 978-7-100-19347-4.
  13. ^ National Language Commission of China (October 1, 1999). "GB13000.1字符集汉字字序(笔画序)规范 (Standard of GB13000.1 Character Set Chinese Character Order (Stroke-Based Order))" (PDF) (in Chinese). Shanghai Education Press. ISBN 7-5320-6674-6.
  14. ^ Zhang, X. (Li, X. and Lin, S.) (2015b). "A Brief Introduction to the YES-CEDICT Chinese Dictionary (《一二三汉英大词典》简介)". The Journal of Modernization of Chinese Language Education (中文教学现代化学报). 4 (2015) (1): 27–31.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  15. ^ Zhang, X; Li, X; Lun, C. (2015a). "The YES-CEDICT Chinese Dictionary (一二三漢英大詞典, Trial Edition, Sorted by Traditional Chinese)". The Journal of Modernization of Chinese Language Education (中文教学现代化学报). 4 (1): link to the book – via link to the book.
  16. ^ Zhang, X; Li, X; Lun, C. (2015c). "The YES-CEDICT Chinese Dictionary (一二三汉英大词典, Trial Edition, Sorted by Simplified Chinese)". The Journal of Modernization of Chinese Language Education (中文教学现代化学报). 4 (1): link to the book – via link to the book.
  17. ^ Zhang, Xiaoheng (2015). "Building a collation element table for a large Chinese character set in YES". Chinese Computational Linguistics and Natural Language Processing Based on Naturally Annotated Big Data - Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Switzerland: Springer Verlag. pp. 3–14. ISBN 9783319258157.
  18. ^ Zhang 2013a, pp. 274–275.
  19. ^ Zhang 2015, p. 7.
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