"J Krugman" > wrote in message
...
>
>
> This is a question for readers with knowledge of Chinese. How do
> you say "water chestnuts" in Cantonese and in Mandarin?
>
> More generally, does anybody know of a webpage aimed English speakers
> listing the *Chinese characters* (or at least the phonetically
> transcribed words) for typical Chinese cooking ingredients such as
> fermented black beans and Szechuan peppercorns?
>
> Thanks in advance,
>
> Jill
>
> P.S. I know that there's a book out there on "demystifying the
> Asian grocery store", but I think that if I could just find the
> Chinese characters for the ingredients, I could get along fine.
>
Head on over to alt.food.asian and ping Peter Dy. He (amongst others, but
he posts the most regularly) would be able to help you.

Try http://www.asinah.net/chinese.html , a mirror site of
http://www.mandarintools.com/ (which has many useful tools, including a name
finder, but its Chinese-English dictionary is down for a while) for an
on-line dictionary. I think it gives only Mandarin pronunciations, though.

rona

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