Appendix A: Notes on the choice of Chinese characters included in the Dictionary

As mentioned in the Introduction, the characters presented as the 943 key characters in the Dictionary have been chosen on the basis of usefulness, defined as frequency of use. As a beginner learning to read the Chinese characters I started to notice and make my own list of the frequently repeated elements in a number of compound characters. These elements were clearly of a phonetic nature, since the pronunciation of the many compounds was often (although not always) identical or similar. My provisional list of key phonetic elements consisted of approximately 900 items.