Product Description
Reading and Writing Chinese has been the standard text for foreign students and teachers of the Chinese Writing System since Tuttle first published it over 20 years ago. This new, completely revised edition offers students a more convenient, efficient, and up-to-date introduction to the writing system.
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Customer Reviews (47)

make your own flashcards
This has been a very handy book for me, I used it make my own character flash-cards, very affordable.

What I specifically like about this book is how all the characters are explained, so that you can see the logic in their structure and meaning, rather than just showing you what the sounds of the characters are.

I wouldn't call it a dictionary, but a tool for the learner to gradually learn and understand all the characters in the book.

A valuable reference dictionary
Tuttle continues to provide thorough and easy-to-use reference materials that are useful for beginning learners of written Chinese.While online and electronic resources may be easier to search and use, McNaughton's Reading and Writing Chinese remains the authoritative reference book for learners of Chinese characters.

Nathan Dummitt
author of Chinese Through Tone & Color

Errors everywhere
The majority of this book is a list of common characters and the elements that compose them. They may provide you with some compounds along with some characters, but there is no reading material.

Well, that's fine. One could use this book to learn characters. The reason for my 3 stars is that this book is filled with errors!

For example, they call this the Traditional Character Edition, but in at least one instance, , they give you the Simplified character and call it Traditional.

In at least one instance, it is incorrect etymologically. They call the top of"earth," but it really is "stop" (), a phonetic element, which has morphed into something that looks like "earth." Then they say "There is no satisfactory explanation" for this "earth."

Most of all, many of their stroke orders are wrong. Since this is the Traditional Character Edition, they should have followed the ROC's standards for stroke order (which happens to be the same as that of Imperial China). In many cases they merge the two sides of the grass () radical, resulting in a wrong stroke count (which will give you a hell of a time when you have to look something up in the dictionary). They fail to differentiate between the grass radical and the horns () radical. Also, the halberd () radical and everything that contains it follow the PRC standard, that is the upper right dot is written last to accommodate for horizontal writing. There are also many other errors.

In summary, it doesn't give you much help reading Chinese, it's unreliable in giving you the Traditional form of a character, it's unreliable in providing the correct etymology, and it's unreliable providing the right stroke order.

Excellent study tool
Favorite features:
- Shows "most likely" characters first so you learn what you need early on rather than esoteric ones you don't

- Shows simplified characters as well as traditional. It's not as hard or important to learn the radicals (and butchered etymology) for simplified characters as it is for traditional, so including smaller simplified characters where appropriate offers the best of both worlds. Better than buying the Simplified version w/tiny traditional characters & less explanation. If you know stroke order for traditional, you can figure out simplified - not as easy the other way around.

- Explains constituent parts/radicals just prior to more complex characters so you see how they're built.

- Includes most common definitions & multiple pronunciations, plus helpful examples that tie to previous entries for reinforced learning.

- It's $5-$10 cheaper here on Amazon than at local bookstores (if they even have it).

Problem areas:
- I have found some index errors & incorrect references between character entries, probably left over from the previous edition. They're minimal though.
********************

I've essentially been going through the book & copying down each entry for practice. I learned many of the characters through years of studying Japanese, but I've already learned more about the structure & logic behind the radicals, sound-loans, etc than I did w/Japanese.

This is a great companion study guide to actual "reading" material and spoken language practice that reinforce each other. No single book will teach you a language by itself. Combine w/ChinesePod (awesome!), PlecoDict software or formal classes.

Questionable value
I relied upon this book a great deal when I first started studying Chinese characters, but looking back a year or so later there are two things which I find limit it's value:

1) The book only occasionally warns you when the character you're learning is no longer in use. Many extremely common characters are composed of other characters which are rarely if ever seen independently; while it may be useful to know the component characters for memorization purposes, it's also a bit frustrating to find out that the character you saw labelled in this book as meaning, say, 'straightforward' fell out of use a few centuries back.

2) I encountered at least one situation in which the simplified character was put in this book rather than the traditional, with no acknowledgement of that fact. In other cases, the index was mislabelled. In other words, the book suffers a bit from sloppy editing.

Instead of this book, try Chinese Characters: A Genealogy and Dictionary, where out-of-date characters are clearly labelled as such. ... Read more

Product Description

Colloquial Chinese 2 is designed for people who already have some knowledge of the language but want to progress a stage further. It is the ideal way to refresh your knowledge and to extend your skills, either in preparation for a visit, or to brush up on the language for work.

Structured to give you the opportunity to listen to and read lots of modern, everyday Chinese, it has been developed to work systematically on reinforcing and extending your grasp of Chinese grammar and vocabulary. Key features include:

• revision material to help you consolidate and build up your basics
• Chinese texts presented in simplified characters and pinyin romanization throughout
• lessons based on practical everyday topics and supplemented by useful cultural notes
• lots of spoken and written exercises in each lesson for practice and consolidation
• a grammar summary, detailed answer key and Chinese-English glossary
• supplementary exercises and Chinese web-links at www.routledge.com/colloquials/chinese

 Accompanying audio material is available to purchase separately on CD/MP3 format, or comes included in the great value Colloquials Pack.

Product Description
Bring Chinese language learning alive with this 32-page brilliantly illustrated book with companion audio CD. Listen, learn and sing along with classic songs for children in this new dual language format. A perfect place to start exploring the Chinese language with children of all ages! ... Read more

Product Description
The Chinese Language is a brief introduction to the main characteristics of Chinese, written to be accessible to beginning students as well as anyone with a general interest in Chinese language and culture. Not a language-learning title as such, The Chinese Language provides a demystifying overview of Chinese from a linguistic, historical and social perspective. Providing basic information such as where Chinese is spoken, the history and earliest written records, regional variations, and a description of the writing system, The Chinese Language provides an excellent starting point for anyone intrigued by the history and basics of Chinese language.
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Customer Reviews (8)

Chinese 101
I have always been fascinated by Chinese characters.So when I discovered this book and read the reviews, I thought it would be interesting.It is a great intro to the Chinese language.The author shows how some of the characters were once pictorial but has evolved into characters with as many as 17 strokes.The flavor of the language associated with Chinese sayings/ Chinese proverbs is nicely covered.The author clearly communicates the complexities of the various dialects associated with the geography of China.In my opinion, if you are born in one part of China and move to another, you will have difficulties with that regional Chinese dialect.Chinese is by far a difficult language and could take a life time to master, especially if you were not raised/educated to speak and write Chinese from birth.I also think that unless you decide to live in China, it would be pointless to be proficient in the Chinese language.To become proficient, a person would need to interact with people who spoke Chinese.There are over 50,000 characters in the Chinese language.My only criticism of this book is that since Chinese characters are complex and at times very similar to one another, they are way too small to read in this book.They needed to be twice the size.If you truly want to study/read the characters in this book, I suggest using a magnifying glass.

Great resource for linguists and serious students of the language
Daniel Kane's "The Chinese Language" is presented as a linguistic survey of Chinese, but also includes a wealth of commentary on teaching and learning Chinese as a second language.While Kane's linguistic analysis is thorough and interesting and his explication of the language and its dialects refreshingly up-to-date, I was disappointed to see a rather dated approach to methods of study for the CSL learner.This book was published in 2006.Are learning radicals by rote and using classic dictionaries from the 70s and 80s still the most effective means for studying Chinese?What about electronic dictionaries (with hand-writing recognition that makes searching for a character by radical almost obsolete) or online learning resources that include video and audio?Surely Kane is interested in using these more modern methods to teach Chinese as a second language.Aside from this minor flaw, this is a wonderfully readable and detailed introduction to the language for anyone considering studying, teaching or working with modern Chinese.


Nathan Dummitt
author of Chinese Through Tone & Color

of wide-ranging interest
I have studied Chinese for 17 years and have read many, many books on Chinese. This is not a classroom book for learning Chinese. But it is a wonderful adjunct. Beginners and advanced students alike would find it of interest, as would any linguistically oriented person wanting an introduction to this remarkable language.

Excellent intro to the Chinese language.
I have been studying the Chinese language for several months now, but was searching for more information about the langauge itself.This book has that information.It talks about the history of the langauge, the various dialects, grammar, and other topics.Also of interest were the Chinese expressions and proverbs that provided a much broader view of the Chinese language than you will find in other Chinese language resources.

Excellent book for intermediate students or language lovers!
This is a review of The Chinese Language:Its History and Current Usage, by Daniel Kane.

This is not a language textbook or phrasebook.It is also not a technical work on linguistics.This is a nontechnical survey of the language, covering topics such as "Chinese Characters," "History and Dialects," "Grammar" and contemporary slang.This is an excellent book to read for two audiences: (1) linguaphiles, who simply enjoy learning about foreign languages, and (2) students who have completed at least one year of modern Chinese and want to learn about some of the stuff you need to know but that the textbook never tells you.I speak and read Mandarin Chinese passably, and I wish I had a book like this when I started second- (or better yet third-) year Chinese.There are many tidbits in this book that I now know, but that it took me a long time to pick up bit by bit.For example, you will really impress native speakers if, when meeting someone for the first time, you say, "Jiu3 yang3, jiu3 yang3!"(Literally, "Long have I looked up to you!")I even learned a few new things, such as the fact that "tong2 zhi4," (comrade), previously a common form of address during the Cultural Revolution, has been adopted as a term by China's gay community.Finally, the "Suggestions for Further Reading" at the end of the book is VERY helpful.

Most of this book is extremely readable, with some pleasant doses of humor tossed in.There are a few parts that are obviously intended for reference purposes only, and the reader may skim or skip them.I'm not sure why Kane gives sample dialogues in the Cantonese, Hakka, Hokkien and Teochew dialects.This is the sort of thing that is really more appropriate for a linguistics textbook than a semi-popular book like this.But missteps like this are rare.

There are a few outright errors in the book.None of them are major, but they detract from its value slightly.I'll list the ones I caught, in case a reader wants to note them in her own copy.On p. 32, the explanation of phonetic loan characters ("group 6") is very unclear:I think you won't understand it unless you already know what a phonetic loan is. In the transcription that goes with Figure 17 on p. 82, the first occurrence of the character "wo" (I) should not be there.On p. 85, the quotation attributed to Confucius is actually from one of his disciples.It is inaccurate to state that there were no "classifiers" in Classical Chinese (p. 120). They were much rarer, but they did exist.The tone on the "hexagenary stem" "xin" is listed as third, but it should be a first (p. 126).

If you like this book, there are a couple of other books you might also enjoy.The Chinese Language:Fact and Fantasy by John Defrancis is a more detailed discussion by a famous Sinologist.Defrancis emphasizes the written language and is less up-to-date than Kane, though.Japanese in Action by Jack Seward does something similar for Japanese that Kane does for Chinese. Seward's book is out of print, but it is available used.Seward wrote this book from his perspective as an American bachelor living in Japan after WWII.(Imagine a young Dean Martin as a Japanologist.)But if that's okay with you, you'll find his book VERY entertaining and also informative.

Overall, this is an excellent book for intermediate to advanced students of Chinese or those who just love to learn about languages.
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Product Description
In Woman from Shanghai, Xianhui Yang, one of China’s most celebrated and controversial writers, gives us a work of fact-based fiction that reveals firsthand—and for the first time in English—what life was like in one of Mao’s most notorious labor camps.

Between 1957 and 1960, nearly three thousand Chinese citizens were labeled “Rightists” by the Communist Part and banished to Jianiangou in China’s northwestern desert region of Gansu to undergo “reeducation” through hard labor. These exiles men and women were subjected to horrific conditions, and by 1961 the camp was closed because of the stench of death: of the rougly three thousand inmates, only about five hundred survived.

In 1997, Xianhui Yang traveled to Gansu and spent the next five years interviewing more than one hundred survivors of the camp. In Woman from Shanghai he presents thirteen of their stories, which have been crafted into fiction in order to evade Chinese censorship but which lose none of their fierce power. These are tales of ordinary people facing extraordinary tribulations, time and again securing their humanity against those who were intent on taking it away.

Xianhui Yang gives us a remarkable synthesis of journalism and fiction—a timely, important and uncommonly moving book. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

the woman from shanghat
Fascinating storywonderful prose and a window into pre and post revolutionary Shanghai and the resulting emigration. Life inChinatown and the struggle to maintain their culture and traditions in Los Angeles. A great read.



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Customer Reviews (2)

A Chinese-Character Transliteration of "Beginning Chinese"
"Character Text for Beginning Chinese" is simply "Beginning Chinese" written all in "Han zi," or Chinese characters, rather than in pinyin.("Beginning Chinese" being all in pinyin.)

The above 2 books are the beginning (Mandarin) books in Yale's "DeFrancis Series," all written by John DeFrancis.But it's a bit more complicated than that, because in addition to the above 2 texts, there is a third beginning text, in 2 parts:"Beginning Chinese Reader, Part 1" and "Part 2."The "Reader"s aren't transliterations of the texts -- rather, they introduce Chinese characters in a different manner (easiest-to-write characters first, not most commonly spoken words first).

If you're thinking of starting to learn Chinese, or you're already learning Chinese and looking for another text because the one you're using doesn't have enough info and/or practice, I would definitely recommend all these books, if you can get ahold of them, as well as the audiotapes (EXTREMELY useful), which are available through Far East Publications, part of the Yale bookstores, I think.The DeFrancis Series comes as close to being a self-contained, self-explanatory method for learning Chinese as is possible.I am studying Chinese at home now and I find using these texts and tapes is much less frustrating than what I went through during community college Chinese 1 and 2, in which we used the "Integrated Chinese" texts and tapes (as well as live teachers, of course).(I got an "A" for those 2 semesters so I'm not saying this out of thirst for vengeance!)Please see my review of "Beginning Chinese" for more info on why the DeFrancis Series is, in my opinion, so good.

In regards to this particular book, you could just use the pinyin "Beginning Chinese" and then, after acquiring a basic knowledge of the spoken language, go directly to the Readers for a hopefully less frustrating introduction to Chinese characters, and skip buying this book altogether.But most people reading this review, I'll bet, have already studied some Chinese, both spoken/pinyin and written/character, and struggled through learning to write "wo," "nin," etc., cold.(I still flinch at these memories.)In that case, get this book, too, and follow along with it.No, don't consider just getting this book without the pinyin "Beginning Chinese," since one of the most valuable aspects to the DeFrancis series is the English translations of all the text, drills, etc. which are included in the pinyin text but not in the character text.(Otherwise, you won't know for sure if Lin Taitai is saying she lives on a big hill or she is a big hill.And don't tell me you never misread like that.)

Okay if it's what you want
This book is the Chinese Character text for DeFrancis' "Beginning Chinese."There are two theories regarding teaching written Chinese to foreigners.One is that you should treat it as a separate subject in the earlier stages of learning the language.For those who agree with this premise, there is DeFrancis' two volume "Beginning Chinese Reader."

The other school believes that students should learn how to write what they learn how to say.For educators who prefer this approach, DeFrancis prepared "Character Text."

If you're a teacher, you can come to your own conclusions without further input from me.If you're trying to teach yourself to read and write Chinese, I recommend that you use the readers rather than this book; learning to write Chinese is a task in itself that has little to do with linguistics.You can read my review of the Readers under their proper site, if you're interested in pursuing the matter. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (19)

Several definitions are not correct!
This book tries to teach 71 simple Chinese characters with the most common definitions.

I have noticed that several definitions are not really the most common ones. For example, the character "xue", on page 14, is wrongly defined as "school," while the most common meaning is surely "learn." (The word for "school" should be "xue xiao.")

The character "mu", on page 42, is wrongly defined as "tree," while the most common meaning should be "wood."

The character "lin", on page 42, is wrongly defined as "forest," while the correct meaning is "a clump of trees." (The word for "forest" should be "sen lin.")

The character "tian", on page 27, is defined as "heaven," while the most common meaning is the "sky." (The word for "heaven" should be "tian tang.")

Also, the front cover of the book is misleading because it gives readers an impression that readers are going to learn all the characters on the cover.
The truth is this book doesn't contain the following characters.
"hua"
"ji"
"hao"

I believe some experienced readers have also found there are other problems in the book.

Fun to read and useful
This book is fun to read and helps to learn some Chinese writing.
Not a textbook, of course, and it doesn't pretend to be. It serves its purpose
to teach some useful hieroglyphs while entertaining.

Cute poket book
This book is nice for travel and inquisitive minds who like to see how language works and where it comes from. The author did a brilliant job with this work and it's just right for what it is. I give it 4 stars because I couldn't give it 5.

helpful for travellers but not for students
When one travel to China for a meeting for exemple or make a visit as a tourist and has never studied Chinese before this book can be a good and useful help to reduce the fear of unknown characters. I mean this bookexplains them and helps to find and to recognise the characters in labels one can need to read during a visit like "exit" or "lady room" or reading city names at a station. So it can be very useful for someone who don't want to study Chinese, but who need to find his/her way in a Chinese city but I cannot recommend this book for students.

Awesome Book!
I highly recommend this book to anyone traveling to mainland China. It can be overwhelming to be surrounded by unfamiliar Chinese characters, but it really does help to be able to read and understand a few of them! This book is small, easy to read, and fun - perfect for bus or airplane rides. Even after 5 minutes of reading it, you will be able to recognize a few characters on signs, magazines, or the advertisement on the seat in front of you. I wish there were a sequel to teach common characters on menus. ... Read more

Product Description

Speak Chinese Mandarin Instantly!

The Pimsleur® Method provides the most effective language -- learning program ever developed. More than one million people every year use it to gain real conversational skills in new languages quickly and easily -- without books, written exercises, or drills.

Easy and Practical

This package contains sixteen lessons that will get you started speaking today! Simply listen, follow the instructions, and then respond out loud, just as you would in an actual conversation. Complete one lesson each day, in consecutive order. When you've finished this program, you'll be thrilled to realize you can hold a real conversation in Chinese Mandarin!

Product Description
Second volume (Lessons 31–72) of widely respected course in modern (Mandarin) Chinese. Basic sentence patterns, word order, complementary particles, etc. Pin Yin transcription. Includes review of basic grammar, complete glossary, other aids.
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Product Description
This is a revised third edition of Tuttle’s Reading & Writing Chinese.
This new edition focuses on the internationally recognized test of proficiency in Chinese, the Hanyu Shuiping Kaoshi (HSK). All 800 characters prescribed for Level A are covered here, and the 1400+ Levels B and C characters are covered concisely.
All of the prescribed vocabulary for Levels A-C of the Hanyu Shuiping Kaoshi is included among the example compounds. Knowledge of the 2,200+ characters and 5,253+ vocabulary items covered will equip students to take the test at either the Basic or the Elementary-Intermediate standard. Success in the top band of the Basic standard is sufficient to enter college in China. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (43)

Great book if you undestand its purpose
This is a good book on chinse symbols.However, it is NOT a tutorial.Saying this book is terrible is a bit like dismissing the OED as crap because it didn't tutor you in English.Do yourself a favor and couple this book with Tuttle Learning Chinese Characters: A Revolutionary New Way to Learn and Remember the 800 Most Basic Chinese Characters and you'll find this book considerably more valuable.

Great resource, lacking in a few ways.Suggesting alternatives.
This book is an excellent resource and a good selection of useful characters to study.

As others have pointed out, it's not a stand-alone resource, but that wasn't what I was looking for.It's not going to teach you to write Chinese, it will only provide you with a list of characters in order of usefulness, which you can study on your own.I saw this at a bookstore, and bought it for the great layout and way of presenting characters.

Unfortunately, there are quite a few mistakes.

I'll just give one example.Today on the train ride to work, reading through the characters, I arrived at character 885 on page 178:(xiang).It says "Distinguish from (some other character I can't type) (448, p. 90).I go to page 90 to find the pronunciation of the referenced character, and look at character 448, and it is not the one they're telling me to distinguish from.Not even remotely close (it's ).I'm not sure if they converted this book from the traditional version and mixed up the page references, but many of their page references are just plain incorrect.

Then I look at the example words containing this character.The first example is .The character "" is pronounced "xiang," similar in sound to the character being described here.... but it's a completely different character and is in no way an example of usage of the character I'm looking at.Was this a typo?Did they mean the character I'm studying, or did they mean ?I'll have to find another dictionary to be sure.

I've been coming across this kind of mistake pretty regularly as I read through the book.

And then there are also many places where the descriptions, definitions, and explanations leave something to be desired.For a more interesting explanation of the origins of Chinese characters, you could try "Chinese Characters: A Genealogy and Dictionary (English and Mandarin Chinese Edition)."It explains etymology using traditional characters, but also includes all of the simplified forms.I own both books.

A very similar book to the one I'm reviewing would be "Chinese-English Frequency Dictionary: A Study Guide to Mandarin Chinese's 500 Most Frequently Used Words," another book I own.The "Frequency Dictionary" only has 500 characters, with excellent half-page or so detailed explanations of usage of each character.For a beginner, I would consider that to be a better reference than the one I'm reviewing.At this point, I've outgrown the 500 character frequency dictionary.

Still, I give this product three stars.The genealogy dictionary I recommended has far more characters, and feels even more like a dictionary than anything one could attempt to study or read directly.I've grown beyond the 500 character frequency dictionary I recommend.I like the layout of the book being reviewed, it's more manageable to try to look at every one of the three thousand characters in this book than it would be to read the complete genealogy dictionary, and I don't regret my purchase.

Book binding lasted six weeks - book fell apart.
I was quite happy with this book for about six weeks, until it split wide open. Had it split apart four days earlier I would be able to return it to Amazon for a refund. I treated the book with care and did not use it heavily. I am really, really disappointed.

Handy tool for your first 1000 characters !!!
This book is a learning tool and not a reference book. It is very easy to use with clear layout and presentation of the characters. This book is just very handy to have with you, especially when you are in the memorization phase of your first 1000 Mandarin Chinese characters.

Roughly the given characters follows a bit the learning order for beginners of Mandarin Chinese and it builds up to more complicated (and lesser used) characters.

The book gives 1067 characters (with about an additional 2000 characters but those are smaller listed).
Each page gives 5 characters.

For each character the following is given:
1. The character itself
2. Character serial number
3. Stroke count
4. Stroke-order diagram
5. Pinyin: pronunciation and tone
6. Character definition
7. Radical information
8. Radical number
9. Hanyu Shuiping Cihui..list
10. Character explanation
11. Other words with the character combinations (with pinyin-pronunciation, meaning and HSC list)
12. Traditional character

Personally I liked using this book to master the first 1000 characters (and beyond). Very handy as memorization tool! I would suggest though using this book as additional secondary tool to learn Mandarin Chinese.

An excellent reference for Chinese characters
This work, along with "Learning Chinese Characters" (LCC - Tuttle Learning Chinese Characters Volume 1: A Revolutionary New Way to Learn and Remember the 800 Most Basic Chinese Characters (Chinese Edition)), is a must-have manual when learning Mandarin.While LCC teaches the basics through interesting stories and relationships, this book is the next step in character acquisition.Similar characters are arranged in groups, with the stroke clearly shown for each character.Although I am still working on the basics with LCC, I fully expect Reading and Writing Chinese: Simplified Character Edition to seamlessly build my character inventory. ... Read more

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Customer Reviews (3)

Pinyin does not include tones
Nice illustrations, but pronunciation does not include diacritical marks or any indication of tone, making it useless as a learning tool.

adorable
This book is adorable. I took this book to my son's school for a presentation to show some of the pages and to explain the idea about how chinese characters were formed.
The art work is beautiful and content is very interesting, but not too familiar by non-chinese speaking people.

A perfect book for the curious
This little square book is perfect for the little hands with big curiosity. Pages are printed on heavy-stock paper for durability. On each spread, the Chinese character is juxtaposed with its former pictographic form on the left-side page with nicely illustrated wood block art on the right-side page. One almost doesn't need to look at the translated English word to know what each character's meaning is. There's also pinyin to help one to figure out the pronunciation. It kept my 5-year-old buried in the pages for three days! ... Read more

Product Description
This general introduction to the study of Chinese traces the language's history from its beginnings in the second millennium B.C. to the present, and provides a clear picture of the contemporary language and its sociolinguistic status. Chinese, in its numerous dialects, has more speakers than any other language in the modern world, and this vast extension in time and space brings to its study an exceptional complexity.Nevertheless, Norman's crisp organization and lucid elegance make this extraordinary range of material easily accessible even to those with an elementary understanding of linguistics. Chinese includes information on the genetic and typological connections of the language, the writing system, the classical and early vernacular tongues, the modern language and non-standard dialects, and the history of linguistic reform in China. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

GGGGreat Serviec!Book is in good condition!
The whole package was delievered to me within a week, which is awesome!
Besides, I was spurprised by the way it was wrapped. I really thought the plastic wrape outside was a good iead to prevent the item got damged by water.good job!

Fascinating, but be forewarned
The other reviewers have fairly summarized this book. One must have some background in linguistics (or at least a good linguistics text or reference handy) since Norman uses standard linguistics terminology without any explanation; one should also speak at least basic modern Chinese to appreciate many of the examples. My only real complaint is that the book does not use Chinese characters, rather pinyin (with tone marks), throughout the explanations. The problem here is that one pinyin syllable can have many meanings, since Chinese is so homophonic, thus printing the character would have been more revealing for anyone who reads Chinese or can use a good Chinese dictionary. I suspect the problem was with typsetting in 1988 when the book was published. Indeed Norman wonders how the Chinese characters will survive the computer age!! With 20-20 hindsight we can see that in fact the computer age has revitalized not only Chinese but many non-Latin scripts (thank you Unicode!).It would be nice if the book were re-done with characters and some updating based on more recent scholarship. Still, I learned a tremendous amount here, it is a fascinating journey and it's hard to see how it could be much better done in the limited space of one volume.

Hard to cover a topic so massive in one volume, but it's a good overview
Jerry Norman's overview of Chinese, part of the Cambridge Language Surveys series, is an admirably diachronic treatment. Not content to simply speak of features of the major modern dialects, Mandarin and Cantonese, Norman places very early an exploration of the historical phonology of Chinese (back to Old Chinese) and of the development of the script. His explanation of tonal development in Chinese, in which he uses the "s-hypothesis", is especially enlightening.

After this very necessary basis of historical linguistics, Norman devotes a chapter each to the literary language and written vernacular, two chapters to the modern standard language (i.e. Putonghua). He examines the dialects of North and Central China in one late chapter, and the dialects of the Southeast (including the difficulty of their classification) in another. The final chapter, "Language and society", discusses how the various languages coexist in daily life and what the future may hold.

As with all Cambridge Language Surveys volumes, readers must have some prior training in linguistics. Some knowledge of Mandarin at the very least will let the reader make good use of the information Norman provides. If you are looking for a general overview of Chinese and its dialects, this is a helpful resource.

A Survey of Chinese with a Historical Perspective
There is a surprising lack of general books on the Chinese languages aimed at students and amateur linguists, and Norman's book fills this lacuna admirably. Although coverage is uneven in parts, this book presents asurvey of the language that is a tribute to the author's scholarship. Moreimportantly, lucid language maintains the reader's interest and the book isa joy to read.

Many areas, including general typology, historicalphonology, the writing system, the classical language, the modern languageand dialectal variation, is covered to a greater or lesser extent, as arecertain sociolinguistic issues relevant to the language. In particular, thehistorical linguistics and dialectology aspects of the language are wellexplained, the section on Modern Chinese being somewhat weaker.

The book,however, is not aimed at complete neophytes. A certain familiarity, albeitslight, with the Chinese language and history is presupposed, and thereader needs to be aware of, if not acquainted with, the basics ofhistorical and comparative linguistics. Nonetheless, it is far from beingan abstruse work understandable only by specialists in the field.

All inall, Norman has done a marvellous job in condensing the vast field ofChinese languages into a book of reasonable dimensions which is relativelyerror free. It will no doubt become a valuable general reference on theChinese language. ... Read more

Product Description
This text is part of a series which aims to advance insight into the multifaceted character of written language, with special emphasis on its uses in different social and cultural settings. This edition focuses particularly on writing in Chinese, Korean and Japanese. ... Read more

Product Description

Product Description
Our best-selling audio language-learning program provides comprehensive grammar and vocabulary to beginners and advanced students, offering guidance in pronunciation in addition to language fundamentals. Updated for the 21st century and re-recorded with fresh voiceovers, Learn In Your Car includes terminology for cell phones, computers and the Internet, as well as contemporary currencies and usages. Listeners learn pronunciation, vocabulary, and grammar of a new language without the need of a textbook: Level 1: Key words and phrases, basic grammar skills, emphasizes travel needs; Level 2: Expands vocabulary, new grammar concepts, more day-to-day activities; Level 3: Broadens vocabulary base, more advanced grammar skills, enriches conversational ability. 9 hours of audio on 9 compact discs, 3 booklets with recorded text for reference & grammar notes, Zippered CD Wallet, Travelogue DVD. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

Rosetta, are you better?
I bought Learn In Your Car Mandarin partly on the basis of good reviews here, but also because I had used the Spanish version of the program to learn that language a few years ago and am now fairly fluent.

As is well known, Learn In Your Car consists of CDs and booklets. The format is very simple. An expression is stated in English, then there is a space for you to say the Chinese, then the expression is repeated in Chinese, another space for you, the same expression in Chinese a second time, then another space. That is basically it. There are 9 CDs and about 10 lessons or groups of phrases on a CD. The booklets provide a hard copy of the text in both languages.

Right now I have been working with CD1 for about 6 weeks and have mastered most of it. I probably need about one more week before I move on to CD 2, though I have listened to CD2 a bit when I was getting bored with CD1. Now if you need someone to ask a Mandarin speaking hotel receptionist for a room without a bathroom, I am your man. And I can count from 1 to 100. And I can tell a taxi driver to take me to the airport or train station. So that is a start.

Beginning in Chinese is incredibly different, because even the Latin alphabet version of Chinese called Pinyin is incredibly difficult and the letters often bear no resemblance to the sounds represented in European languages. I had such a hard time getting started that I did try some other programs which I am continuing to use for a bit of variety.

Pimsleur has a reasonably priced introductory set and is quite good for learning basic conversation. I had previously used the Haitian Creole set and enjoyed that. The problems with Pimsleur are 1) there is no written text, which is a huge problem with Chinese, not so much with Haitian, and 2) it is very slow going, 3) it costs an arm and a leg.

Instant Immersion Mandarin by Topix is a budget priced set of discs that has speech recognition, but I haven't found it very useful. There is no book. The publicity material for the course claims it is similar to Rosetta Stone, but much cheaper. However I have not used Rosetta Stone, so I don't know. Rosetta Stone is outside my budget.

Rocket Languages Mandarin is an online course that is rather more expensive. I bought it for almost a hundred dollars because I felt I needed some instruction and explanations beyond what Learn In Your Car offers. There are audio lessons you can download to an mp3 player or computer, games for your computer, exercises, lessons on Chinese culture and manners, grammar, and overall it is pretty useful. The English male presenter, Dave Lewis, is a little overenthusiastic for my taste, but overall the course is pretty good and would be an excellent resource to use in a classroom or group learning situation.

Downside is that there is no book and if you want a set of CDs, they are very expensive, more than double the online course.

A very nice course I got free from my online library, but you can also download it for a few dollars is the Collins Easy Language Learning Mandarin Chinese course, which I would also recommend as good value. I don't have the book, but apparently there is one available. The lessons have explanations in English, plus exercises that invite you to repeat phrases. Each brief chapter focuses on one key phrase and other associated words.

I would mention that another useful resource is the Google translator program, available free online, which translates from English into Mandarin, and gives you a playable audio version, Chinese characters either simplified or traditional, and Pinyin. You could also use this Web siteto construct your own flash cards, laminated cheat sheets, or whatever you need.

I like to use all of these courses for a bit of variety and entertainment, and to hear some English or American voices talking about learning Chinese, but I also find that for the real work of learning Chinese, I keep coming back to Learn In Your Car, because I can drive for hours repeating phrases over and over and over again until they are burned into my head, and then when I stop I can still hear those phrases in my head, and I start building variations on them to ask for different things. In this situation one thing I like about the program is that it is ALL practice. There is no listening to chatter and explanations in English. Rocket Languages has a bit too much padding and classroom chitchat, but Learn In Your Car is all business.

That is the real key to an effective language learning course. You have to find something that you can spend many hours working with, because without the input of time and repetition, you won' t really get there. This course seems to be working for me, but whether you will like it depends on you. All I can say is that it is extremely difficult to get started in Chinese, because it is so different from any European language. The Pimsleur is helpful to get some momentum, but I find Learn In Your Car is the most effective course overall for learning the language. (But then, I am in the car a lot, where there are no distractions.)

Incidentally the woman Mandarin speaker on the Learn In Your Car Mandarin is the clearest and easiest to mimic of all the courses I have mentioned, and the recording quality is crystal clear.

One possible criticism of Learn In Your Car Mandarin is that the early discs are rather tourist oriented and don't teach you how to seduce Chinese maidens by asking them for a meal at your place--as per Pimsleur--or discuss politics. I don't find this too much of a problem, because it seems to me that when I eventually arrive in China, whether for vacation or work, I would most likely initially be dealing with airports, trains, changing money, hotel rooms, getting something to eat or drink, greeting people etc. and that these basics would be useful. I would also want to know the word for toilet and recognize the Chinese signs for Ladies and Gents so as to avoid any possible faux pas. No good arriving at a hotel and being able to discuss the weather with the receptionist, but not able to request a room without a bathroom (or with a bathroom).

I do not have any kind of commercial connection with the manufacturers of this course. I shalltry to update this review in a few months to say what progress, if any, I am making, because, although one may comment in all kinds of ways about the structure of the program, the only metric of any value is whether you succeed in learning to speak, understand, read, and write the language in question.

Qing ba zhe shencha hao chengi. Wan shang hao!

Pro: Clear Pronunciation, Gradual Increase in Complexity; Con: SImple Grammar
My background: I had taken a year of Chinese some years ago. I already knew the dreaded "four tones" of Mandarin, and I was already familiar with the pinyin spelling system. If you don't know what those are, you'll have great difficulty learning Chinese on audio only-- you'll have to start out reading the accompanying booklets for the important background.Because I already knew the basics, I listened to this course on audio only, twice, and rarely looked into the booklets; and found that satisfactory.

But if you need to get the basic background from the accompanying booklets, they should do the job. They provide all vocabulary written in pinyin, with new words in red when they're introduced. Handy. After the first few lessons you may not need the books as much.

As for the audio, it gets good marks for convenience. All 9 CD's come in a handy CD carrying case-- you can pull the case out of the box and immediately take it to the car, start listening right away. As a terrific bonus, there's an extra CD with all audio in MP3 format, so I could throw all the audio onto my MP3 player immediately, instead of having to do a time-consuming CD rip.

Most Mandarin audio courses start out with pronouncing component sounds and the four tones of Mandarin. This does not. Again, if you don't know what the four tones are, you'll be lost at sea; start with the book. Luckily, the Chinese speakers on this course pronounce their tones VERY CLEARLY-- especially the female speaker on the first 3 CD's, who has the easiest-to-interpret tones I've ever heard. After the first 3 CD's, other speakers have less clear tones, but still OK.

The course starts right away with words, then simple phrases, and gradually builds up more complex sentences.The course is very well-structured in that it generally teaches you a new word by itself before putting it in a sentence. In a few cases they don't define the word separately first, but it's almost always clear from the context. Not all language courses stick to this rule, but this one does almost always, so they get points for structure.

There are NO DIALOGUES. This means the course won't build up your listening comprehension as much as a course with dialogues where people talk at their normal (that is, fast) speed. But anyway, this course is called "Learn in Your Car", and in my experience, I can't drive at the same time while trying to parse a fast dialogue in a foreign language. I think that's dangerous. When you're driving, I think you should stick to parsing one slow sentence at a time, and leave the dialogues at home.

The phrases and sentences gradually get more complex, but never that complex. They give you quite extensive vocabulary in words that travelers need: dealing with hotel rooms, banks, buying a train ticket, getting directions, etc. Unlike most out-of-date courses, this one gives you vocabulary for computers and the internet, so you can ask, "Where's the nearest internet cafe?" and "How do I print this?" Bonus points for that.

My main complaint is that they keep the grammar pretty simple. I learned almost no new grammar (with one exception, see below).In particular, they don't teach:
A. Complicated questions. They breeze through the basic question words (corresponding to "who", "why" etc.) too quickly. I doubt most listeners will be able to ask "who? why?" questions after listening to this course once. They do cover "where" pretty well and "when" once or twice.
B. For yes-or-no questions, they almost always use the question form with "ma" at the end. Very rarely do they use the common verb-"bu"-verb construction, and on the rare occasions they do, it's only the simplest form; e.g. there are no questions of the form "Ni shi-bu-shi-huan ka fei?"
C. No clauses corresponding to "if", "then", "because", "therefore". Forget about expressing complex philosophical ideas.
D. Conjunctions. There are two Chinese words for "or", an "or" for questions and an "or" for statements. I believe I heard these words ONCE in the whole course, and the important grammatical distinction was not explained. Likewise "and" goes by very fast.

On the plus side, Level 3 (CD's 7 and up) starts out with many different grammatical forms for expressing the past tense.

PROS:
Convenient, love the disk of MP3's;
You can (mostly) listen to it audio only, rarely looking into the books;
Speakers pronounce clearly;
Well-structured, with a gradual increase in vocabulary and complexity;
Vocabulary is truly useful for travelers, with lots of hotel, bank, and transportation terms, plus handy computer and internet vocabulary.

CONS:
No audio-only introduction on the four tones of Mandarin;
Simple grammar (see above);
Simple questions only;
They teach you how to order in a restaurant, but don't teach you words for most foods (no "chicken", "egg", "beef", etc.);
No dialogues (this may be a positive, if you want to drive safely while listening).

I am giving this course four stars because the pros outweigh the cons. Plus... other Mandarin courses I've heard have worse defects than this, and it's all relative.

To sum up: this is a good course if you're traveling to China and just want to rent a hotel room, change money, cash a check, buy a train ticket, direct a taxi driver, etc. Forget about expressing personal feelings or complex ideas or concepts.

review of multiple products
After owning these items for a few months, here is my brief review of each one for comparative purposes for those who are considering learning the language but are contemplating on which course to purchase.It should be noted that there is no one perfect method.Each has its own advantages and disadvantages, hence no five-star ratings from me.I also recommend using a dictionary as a supplement.

PIMSLEUR MANDARIN.This course is completely audio.Each CD contains two half-hour units, no individual tracks on each lesson.I consider this method to be the easiest way for a beginner to start speaking.It is very non-intimidating, introduces the vocabulary slowly and gives an explanation of the words used in the dialogues.However, there is no written transcript so one is unable to verify the pronunciation visually although the speakers' voices are quite clear.Also, if the listener wants to review a certain section, he/she would have to remember which lesson it was played on.The overall vocabulary is limited but this method relies a lot on memory retention.Pimsleur is pricey and may not be the best value for the money when you consider the drawbacks.If this is a concern, then perhaps Conversational Mandarin at a much lower cost along with another course(s) reviewed below may better fit the bill for broadening the horizon.Still, the lessons are pleasant and less monotonous than other audio methods.Good for those who wish to spend the drives in the automobile more productively.

SPEAK IN A WEEK.This course contains four spiral-bound books with a CD to accompany each one.The books are visually appealing, brightly colored and the fonts used are very clear.The eight lessons in each book are spoken in complete sentences with an extensive vocabulary at the end of the book.The first eight tracks of the accompanying CD's cover each lesson, with the second half of the CD using some of the vocabulary at the end of the book to expand on the words learned in the lessons.Unfortunately, I have also discovered a few minor printing/recording errors on the books and CD's.Although the sounds of Pinyin are covered in writing, there is no audio to verify the pronunciation.The knowledge of Pinyin is a necessity and this may be a drawback for some users because there is no audio pronunciation for the majority of the vocabulary words.Since this is an audio/visual set, I consider it an overall good value at a modest price.

LEARN IN YOUR CAR.This course is made by Penton Overseas, the same makers of Speak in a Week.Like Speak in a Week, this is also an audio/visual course containing CD's and written transcripts, although the booklets in Learn in Your Car are not as visually appealing.This set focuses more on traveling rather than general conversation, sometimes using individual words/phrases instead of complete sentences to communicate.The audio is monotonous compared to Pimsleur and may be better used along with the booklets at home rather than in a car, but the advantage is the words on the CD's are color coded and covered in the written transcripts.This makes it an ideal supplement to Speak in a Week since you can also hear the pronunciation of simple words such as the numbers used in counting.The combination of the two Penton Overseas courses along with a dictionary can provide a solid foundation of the language at a total cost less than Pimsleur alone.

BEHIND THE WHEEL.This is my least favorite of all the methods.As others have stated, this is definitely not recommended for beginners.Like Pimsleur, this course is completely audio with no written transcripts but has the advantage of individual tracks, making it easier for short reviews.In my opinion, the presentation is not as pleasant to listen to as Pimsleur and although the vocabulary is more extensive,there are no individual word explanations which can be very confusing for beginners.There are also no explanation of formal vs. casual forms of introduction or when different words that have the same meaning are used for certain circumstances.This course may be a handy supplement for a lower intermediate user who has a basic understanding of the grammar and is better able to distinguish the individual words.

Mandarin for everyone
A great set of learning discs for Chinese.This is the language of the future.Everyone concerned about the world of economics should learn Mandarin. ... Read more

Product Description

Customer Reviews (10)

Let's set the record straight
As Mr. Strong has already noted in greater detail, many of the reviews claiming that the etymology here is outdated are missing the point.Since Wieger wrote this book, archeology has revealed a tremendous amount about the origins of Chinese characters in remote antiquity, and to this degree the ideas presented in this book, which are based upon a consensus reached in the second century A.D., are "inaccurate".But the "personality" of each word in a language is built up over time by all the users of the word, and the ideas they had about the word's origin and nature are, to that degree, of more importance than whatever might have been in the mind of the scribe who first coined it.Here is a comparison.Suppose archeology discovered very ancient texts of Gensis, say, which differ in important respects from the canonical version.The new discoveries would, indeed, be very much worth our attention, but would the canonical Genesis suddenly become "outdated"?It is still the latter, what has been known as Genesis for three thousand or more years, that has helped shape our civilization.In fact, the traditional etymologies are even more worth knowing about even than this comparison suggests.If an authentic older text of Genesis were really discovered, this would gradually change the way we thought about the Old Testament.By contrast, the fundamental nature, idea, "character" of the Chinese characters has been pretty firmly shaped by the ideas about them, settled in the 2nd century A.D., which this book very competently presents.No discoveries about what the graphs originally meant in the Shang is likely to change that.

This book, then, pretty accurately gives the student the ideas of the characters which have shaped Chinese usage throughout history.Secondly, it is a magnificent introduction to ancient forms which, for understanding what lies behind Chinese words, are as useful as a knowledge of Greek and Latin together is for a deeper understanding of the modern European languages.I do not know of any other book, useful for a beginning student of the language, which shows so many of the old forms.Finally, while it is certainly not adequate as a stand-alone dictionary, it has been for me a very useful supplement to the other dictionaries I own.In fact, more than once a rare character which did not appear in any other dictionary turned up here.

The introduction to this book, though brief, is the most thorough, in-depth, and readable account of the nature of Chinese characters that I personally have seen in a book for the common reader.Everyone who studies Chinese should read i--not at the very outset but after a few months, when he will know what Wieger is talking about.The ten pages of that introduction contains more insight and information than DeFrancis' whole book, and far more agreeably presented.

Finally, I would like to say a word about the comment about Wade-Giles.Until pretty much the day before yesterday everyone writing about China used it; unless you want to avoid everything that was written before 1990 or so (including, to name a few examples, Barbara Tuchman's book on China in WWII, Lau's translations of the Chinese classics, or Benjamin Schwartz's World of Thought in Ancient China) and unless you are willing to be in permanent uncertainty as to the pronunciation of many personal and place names in Taiwan, learning Wade Giles, along with learning Pinyin, is something everyone with serious interest in China simply does.It takes about ten minutes.Surely by the time someone is as deeply involved in the study of Chinese characters as to be reviewing a book about their etymology, it is a little silly to object to devoting ten minutes to learning another Romanization system.

Dated but Valuable
Some of the reviews of Wieger's book are unfair.Of course it is out of date:the second edition was published in 1927, the same year that the Academia Sinica began to protect the Shang sites at Anyang!Serious study of oracle bones had barely begun, and no-one can reasonably deride Wieger's failure to mention it as "ignorance."

About the year 200 CE, the Shuo-Wen was published, the great dictionary that dominated Chinese etymological thinking until the early 20th century.This was a remarkable intellectual achievement.Chalmers' 1881 book, "The Structure of Chinese Characters," introduces this Chinese etymology to English speakers, but it is extremely concise.Wieger is much more detailed, and in 1923 no less a person than Bernhard Karlgren said, "his work is up to now the best European work on the subject."A popular extension of Wieger's work "Analysis of Chinese Characters" by Wilder and Ingram was published in 1922.The authors make an illuminating remark, "[these etymologies] are the products of Chinese fancy and imagination and to some extent show the workings of the Chinese mind.Therefore they interest us who are students of Chinese thought."

As Karlgren notes, "the small seal of Li Si is in many cases an entirely new script."My point is simple:the etymologies derived from shells and bones are frequently irrelevant to the modern characters. The Shuo Wen's may often be erroneous guesses, but they were a part of the Chinese appreciation of their script for more than 1700 years, witness F.C. Hsu's "Chinese Words," published in 1976 and based primarily on the Shuo-Wen.So, buy Wieger and enjoy it.The mnemonic help it gives you in remembering the characters is deeply Chinese, and far more relevant than anything you can contrive for yourself.

I agree with the remarks Kent Suarez makes in his review and would also recommend Wang Hongyuan's book, though I, too, have reservations.

Not for beginners
I'm not an etymologist by any means, but have an interest in understanding the poetry of the pictographs. There is a lot here to digest, and it would help if there were no doubts about its accuracy. How else would a beginner learn the correct things? The publisher has a responsibility to get a new revision.

In additon, there should be an update to hanyu pinyin, which is the official mainland China romanizaton. Wade-Giles is really out of date (I was brought up on this) and not helpful when trying to make sense of the new literature in China which may use HanyuPinyin together with the new attenuated pictographs.

Grossly outdated
The understanding of the origins of Chinese characters has made huge leaps and bounds since the Anyang archaeological digs of oracle bones right around the time this book was published. As a result, Wieger's quaint, admittedly enjoyable work is terribly out of date and inaccurate, as anyone who has studied the works of Guo Moruo (Kuo Mojo), Li Xiaoding (Li Hsiaoting), Luo Zhenyu (Luo Chen-yu), Sun Haibo (Sun Hai-po), Takashima, Keightley, Tang Lan, Wang Guowei, (Wang Kuo-wei), etc. can tell you. Wieger's work is also badly indexed, and uses obsolete Wade-Giles romanization. It also fails to include many common characters.

Unfortunately, there is currently no updated version using this kind of lesson-by-lesson layout, which is probably why Wieger is still in print. However, I'd instead recommend that you learn about the REAL origins of characters, starting with the following items:

1. Sources of Shang History: The Oracle Bone Inscriptions of Bronze Age China (Campus, No 335) by David N. KeightleyISBN 0-486-21321-8. THE must-read introduction to oracle bones, the earliest significant corpus of Chinese writing. A very interesting work by a leading, highly esteemed scholar. Highly recommended.

2. The Ancestral Landscape: Time, Space, and Community in Late Shang China, Ca. 1200-1045 B.C (China Research Monographs,No 53) by David N. Keightley. An exploration of what the oracle bone divinations tell us about the environment, weather, geography, politics, foreign relations, religion and lives of the Shang.
Highly recommended.

For character by character etymology, these two are ok although still flawed:

Xie Guanghui's Composition of Common Chinese Characters: An Illustrated Account (Peking (sic) University Press; ISBN 7-301-03329-x; 1997) -- more accurate in content than most others, but often presents one theory as if it were the only one, which does readers a disservice. Still, probably the best on the market at the moment.

Wang Hongyuan,(1993). The Origins of Chinese Characters, Sinolingua, Beijing, ISBN 7-80052-243-1 (explanations are unsatisfactory but the broad range of historical forms given for each graph is unparalleled in mass-market books, making it worth the price)

For Reference & Pleasure
If you've heard of the excellent Zhongwen.com website, note that you can look up a word there and often find the corresponding Wieger lesson number in THIS book. Very helpful.
-------------------------
I bought this book in '96 and am still enjoying it. While I agree with many other reviewers who say this book is not for beginners, I was shocked to see reviews posted here that call it grossly out of date, or even useless.

If you have some experience with Chinese characters and would like to delve into their origins, Wieger's book provides hundreds of brief etymologies. Are they correct and accurate? Ahem, no comment. I'm not a linguist. But they have definitely helped me to remember characters' meanings when I see them later in a newspaper or a letter.

Nitty gritty:
+ You can find ancient forms next to the modern (merely 2000 years old?) forms here. Very interesting, and I have yet to find these forms on the Internet.Also, you may see more than one variation of a character.
+ The etymologies: Translated from French, which was translated from - i think - German, they have an archaic flavor. You might like that, and you might hate it.Still, the etyms are what this book is all about.
Printing: bad, but the paper hasn't yellowed, even in my humid climate.
Indexes --How do you FIND these tasty etymologies?:
- Radicals
- Phonetics (alphabetized) - the old k'ai, hsien & chou, not kai, xian and zhou.
- the 224 'Primitives'

Series: Aside from the indexes (indices) mentioned above, there are also "phonetic series", lists of words that have not the radical in common but instead...that other part.The phonetic clue. Not all the words in each series sound exactly alike. For example, you'll find ch'ing4, sheng1 and hsin1 together in one group. But, they all share the same phonetic clue, and are thus placed in the same lesson as well.Bottom line - if you fail to find a word, but then turn to a word that merely _reminds_ you of the former, and there's a good chance of finding the word you're actually looking for.

Final word on the etymologies:If you're a linguist, there must be better sources out there (and you probably have them). The angry reviewer from Wulai wants to see this book out of print, but until she posts the title of an alternative source, these snippets are USEFUL, at least in helping one memorize characters. They make this book one of my favorite sources of pleasure reading.How many language books can _You_ still call pleasure reading after 5 years? ... Read more

Product Description
Each fairy tale starts in English, then slowly MORPHS INTO MANDARIN CHINESE

Begin with LEVEL 1! This book will teach your child 20+ new Mandarin Chinese words in a fun, fast, and truly easy way! Here s how it works...

* An English word in the fairy tale is circled with its Mandarin Chinese translation in the column.

* From that moment forward, the Chinese word (written in red) will be used throughout the rest of the story... and it will be used again and again in context!

* As the fairy tale progresses, more and more Chinese words are added like a big language train gathering words along the way.

* The new words are repeated throughout the story helping to reinforce understanding.

* By the end of the book, the child has easily learned 20+ new Chinese words in context!

It's easy! And remember... each level uses words taught from previous levels...so you ll want to continue with the next levels. By the end of the last level, the fairy tale will be written almost entirely in Chinese - and it will be easy to understand EVERYTHING!

****************************************** Included: Audio CD with narration, sound effects, & fully orchestrated original music
**Composed, arranged, and performed**
by Slangman David Burke! ... Read more

Product Description
This book introduces Chinese language-processing issues and techniques to readers who already have a basic background in natural language processing (NLP). Since the major difference between Chinese and Western languages is at the word level, the book primarily focuses on Chinese morphological analysis and introduces the concept, structure, and interword semantics of Chinese words.The following topics are covered: a general introduction to Chinese NLP; Chinese characters, morphemes, and words and the characteristics of Chinese words that have to be considered in NLP applications; Chinese word segmentation; unknown word detection; word meaning and Chinese linguistic resources; interword semantics based on word collocation and NLP techniques for collocation extraction.Table of Contents: Introduction / Words in Chinese / Challenges in Chinese Morphological Processing / Chinese Word Segmentation / Unknown Word Identification / Word Meaning / Chinese Collocations / Automatic Chinese Collocation Extraction / Appendix / References / Author Biographies ... Read more

Product Description
An essential reference both for English-speakers learning Chinese and Chinese-speakers learning English, this brand new Oxford Chinese Dictionary offers authoritative, up-to-the-minute coverage, with over 88,000 words and phrases, and 130,000 translations in a practical format.
The Dictionary's clear layout makes it accessible and straightforward to use, and a detailed index system of radicals helps you find the entry you need quickly and easily. Chinese simplified characters, orthodox characters, and pinyin forms are given for each. Putonghua tones are included. The Dictionary has also been updated to include the very latest vocabulary, including bioterrorism, e-shopping, WAP phone, domain name, and SARS.
The CD-ROM offers an essential and quick reference tool, eliminating the multi-stage look-up process in the print dictionary. The CD contains character recognition and audio pronunciations for 22,000 single-characters. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (20)

Okay Chinese Dictionary
The Oxford Chinese Dictionary is an okay chinese dictionary when it come to looking up simple characters and expressions, which I find it good.But when it come to finding complex expressions it doesn't do so good with it.I don't like it complicate lookup for chinese characters which are totally different from other chinese dictionary.It took me some time to get familiar with this dictionary look up and learn how to search for character from the chinese perspective not the english perspective.Beside that it's a great chinese dictionary to purchase.My reason for 4 stars is because of the different character look up method.

CD-ROM does NOT install on Vista and does not work
CD-ROM does NOT install on Vista

I have lived in China for a few years so I wanted to increase my Mandarin skills. Therefore, I checked this book out at my library before buying it and am I glad I did. I definitely would not buy this dictionary.

With this book you get a dictionary, CD-ROM and phrase book.

First, as another reviewer mentioned, the CD-ROM does NOT install on Vista. When I installed it on another PC using XP professional, the CD did not work correctly. The CD-ROM was useless and there are better ones online for free that work correctly. From the fonts used for this CD-ROM, I could tell it was designed and written by a Chinese software company. Like so many other products coming out of China, it is substandard.

The phrase book is not on the CD so you have no idea how to pronounce the mandarin phrases contained in the phrase book. It would have been nice to make the CD work with the phrase book so you could learn how to pronounce the pinyin phrases.

Finally the dictionary is fine going from English to Mandarin. But going from Mandarin to English it is very difficult, for an native English speaking person to use. The pinyin words are not in exact alphabetical order so you have to search for the pinyin Mandarin word you are looking for over several pages.

Excellent Chinese Dictionary Package
.
I've had the Oxford Chinese dictionary since the first week of February, 2005. Thus, this review is long overdue.

I started as an enthusiastic and somewhat clueless neophyte student of (with no formal training on) the Chinese language. So the dictionary was a tough nut to crack, at first. With use, this dictionary grew on me.

I particularly find the "Talking Dictionary" extremely useful. The software installed successfully the first time around.

The talking dictionary is excellent for its purpose as a quick-search tool for Chinese "word(s)" that contain the desired English words in its meaning. For more details on the displayed Chinese "word(s)", the user may then proceed to the printed Oxford dictionary.

Searching for a Chinese "word" is trickier (of course) because one needs to indicate the numerical value (1, 2, 3, 4, or 5) of the "word's" tone at the end of the pinyin spelling. However, if one is in a real hurry, then suffixing the pinyin spelling with "*" (according to the software's help documentation) will display all the "homonyms".

Of course, the "talking" feature of the software is where it's greatest usefulness lies. After having all the "homonyms" displayed, one can then train one's hearing acuity to the different tonal pronunciations of the same pinyin spelling.

Learning the Traditional Characters was (and still is) a priority for me. Otherwise, learning the Simplified Characters is like learning another written language altogether. I would have ended up with having no appreciation at all as to the rhyme and reason for the supposed simplified character. This dictionary package has both the traditional and simplified characters; it helped me appreciate the usefulness (or not) of the simplified script.

I highly recommend this "Printed + Talking Dictionaries" from Oxford. Of course, like any dictionary, this product will not help one speak in grammatically correct Chinese. It is very helpful only in learning the meaning of Chinese "words". One needs an entirely different training and/or tool for learning conversational Chinese.

CD-ROM does NOT install on Vista
I've tried several times in many different ways (including Win XP compatibility mode) and it just won't install on Vista. What a shame, little disappointed...
The dictionary itself is good though.

Excellent Dictionary
I am learning disabled and this dictionary has not seen a lot of use as yet.It is the dictionary my language teacher suggests. ... Read more