This dictionary is of extreme help for me in learning Chinese. I always loved the etimological approach in language-learning, and this is even more true for Chinese.When encountering an unknown character, if you recognize any of the components (not only the radical), the search in this dictionary based on these components is easy and fun. I looked up one character, and found myself flipping through several pages for others. Great for getting used to characters: meaning+meaning, meaning+phonetic.Problem is that if you only know the simplified form and no pinyin or meaning, you'll have difficulty with this dictionary. The simplified forms are given, but you first need to find the traditional one... Sometimes the 'etimological' explanation may not be 100%correct (as other reviewers said).Altogether, still my most used dictionary when learning!!