A Study On Characters Of Medhurst's Dictionary Of The Hok-k?èn Dialect Of The Chinese Language

British missionary Walter Henry Medhurst published the Dictionary of the Hok-k?èn Dialect of the Chinese Language in 1837,it's the first dictionary of the Hokkien dialect compiled by protestant missionary.This dictionary records the dialect of Fujian Zhangpu,more truly reflects the characteristics of pronunciation,vocabulary and dialect characters of Hokkien dialect in early 19 th century,and provides precious documentation for us to study the situation of Chinese characters usage of Hokkien district in the late Qing Dynasty.The achievements of studying Hokkien dialect mostly focus on the domestic research materials.There were a few study focusing on the dictionary of the Hokkien dialect compiled by missionary,and there are few people concerned on characters study of the Hokkien dialect dictionaries compiled by overseas missionaries.There is no doubt that the research of this article will create a certain significance and value to the Chinese characters study,dialectology,folk characters study,sinology and so on.The main contents are as followed:Chapter One: Preface.Firstly,make a brief introduction about Medhurst and the Hok-k?èn Dialect of the Chinese Language.Then,introduce the current research status of this dictionary,the research contents,methods,significance and the innovation points of this article.At last,do a quantitative analysis of the characters in the Hok-k?èn Dialect of the Chinese Language,and make a chart.Chapter Two: The study of common folk characters based on the Dictionary of the Hok-k?èn Dialect of the Chinese Language.Make a classification of the common folk characters in this dictionary and give some representative examples to analyze the characteristics of the folk characters.Chapter Three: The study of dialect characters based on the Dictionary of the Hok-k?èn Dialect of the Chinese Language.Make a classification of the dialect characters in this dictionary and give some representative examples to analyze the characteristics of the dialect characters.Chapter Four: The characters' features of the Dictionary of the Hok-k?èn Dialect of the Chinese Language.Make a summary and induction to the characteristics of the folk characters and the dialect characters.Chapter Five: Conclusion.Firstly,put forward the research values of this dictionary to study the Hokkien dialect.Secondly,clarify the shortcomings of this article and put forward the expectation to future study.