5 comments about Far East Chinese-English Dictionary.

1. This may be of use to Chinese speakers from Taiwan who are translating into English. However, for native speakers of English who translate Chinese into English, or for students who need to look-up using pinyin, this dictionary will be of limited value. There is a pinyin index but it is not as convenient as a fully pinyin dictionary. Furthermore, although head character entries have pinyin readings, character compounds listed as sub-entries under each head character lack pinyin readings. It is more comprehensive than Oxford's Chinese-English English-Chinese (ISBN 0195911512) but I only use it rarely for characters I can't find in Oxford.



2. Fantastic! I was expecting a big and good dictionary. And had the surprise in receiveing a wonderful, very well printed, fine paper dictionary - not tzu tian ( words
   dictionary) but ci tian ( phrases dictionary )! Hardcover and with a nice box, besides, with a special plastic cover! And for each of its more than 7 thousands entries, more than 6 or 8 examples, with pronounciation, what makes more than 56 thousands expressions! Zhuyin Fuhao and Pyin Yin ! Fantastic is not enough for this treasure!



3. I have used this dictionary for nearly 10 years, and I believe that in that time, working regularly with classical documents, I have encountered no more than 5 characters not included in this dictionary. Certainly for students of modern Chinese, this is as complete a dictionary as you will likely ever need. Characters are listed by several different indexes in both the front and the back, including one index for characters with ambiguous radicals! My only objection is that alternative character forms are inconsistently listed in the indexes, meaning that characters that at first appear not to be included may be included under different forms. Others will not like the absence of the most contemporary usages and colloquialisms; in return, however, they will get a wide range of definitions used in both classical and modern Chinese, a remarkable number of phrases, both classical and modern, and a constantly useful range of biographical and historical names, which can otherwise be very difficult to locate. All in all, my dictionary of first choice on a shelf that includes at least 10 of them.



4. Above all, this is designed more for advanced learners, native speakers, and particularly users who are familiar with the Taiwanese Zhuyin symbols as all the entries are organized by Zhuyin instead of Pinyin. As Pinyin becomes a more commonly used romanization system for Mandarin, users who don't know Zhuyin or are more familiar with Pinyin may find it inconvenient to use. The main entry (the listed character) does provide the Pinyin of the character in addition to Zhuyin and Wade-Giles symbols, but the sub-entries (the compound nouns and phrases) are only listed with Zhuyin and with no Pinyin reference. I do like the fact that it offers traditional characters. (I believe that a simplified character version is also available out there.) Despite my personal preference on the romanization system, it is a relatively better Chinese-English dictionary compared with those in the market. It has a fairly comprehensive collection of sub-entries under each character with good definition and translation. Last but not the least, the reference pages at the beginning with the traditional radical system and at the end with all three romanization systems listed are pretty useful for learners who are really into learning traditional characters and/or need references on different phonetic romanization systems. So if you don't mind looking up words with Zhuyin symbols, it is a pretty good Chinese-English dictionary.



5. This is a very good hard-cover Chinese-English dictionary for those who are interested in a dictionary that features traditional characters and uses Zhuyin (bo po mo fo) for pronunciation, such as anyone interested in visiting Taiwan. The characters are organized by radical number and stroke count, and a Zhuyin phonetic index is in the back of the dictionary, as well as phonetic indices for two other phonetic systems (Gwoyeu Romatzyh and the U. N. Mandarin Phonetic Symbols). Since the dictionary is a Chinese-English dictionary, it is very useful for looking up Chinese characters you read and words you hear. For each character entry, there are often multiple (up to several dozen in some cases) common phrases of two or more characters in length all starting with that character. As I am a native English speaker, I have found that the dictionary is well complimented by an English-Chinese dictionary so that I can also look up words and phrases I know in English and would like to say or write in Chinese.
   
   I recommend this dictionary to native English speaking students of Mandarin Chinese with traditional characters.

5 comments about Basic Mandarin Chinese: Learn to Speak and Understand Mandarin with Pimsleur Language Programs (Simon & Schuster's Pimsleur).

1. Since I am planning a trip to Beiing, China for the summer Olympics in 2008, I was looking for a book that would simplify the emergency and polite words of the Chinese language. This book will allow me to honor the people of China by showing respect for their language and their culture.



2. I wanted to start learning a new language to broaden my horizons, so I chose this program with high expectations, and it far overreached them! The program uses common dialogue that a traveler or foreigner could expect to see everyday. The only concern that I found with the program was that I found it a to be a bit repetitive in some ways but others may find it to be helpful to thier experience.
   
   All-in-all I highly suggest Pimsleur's programs to any who are interested in delving themselves into a new and different cultural experience!



3. Overall I really like this program, and it's helping me to learn some Chinese.
   Things I like best: 1) They use two speakers, a man and a woman. In my opinion the woman speaks more clearly and I find it easier to hear and repeat after her lines, however having two speakers really helps when you're having trouble hearing exactly how they are pronuncing something. 2) There is sufficient repetition to really learn the material well.
   Things I don't like about the program: 1) There is absolutely no written material for the course. I understand that the purpose of the program is to teach you how to speak (and not read or write), but how difficult would it have been to include a 1-2 page transcript of the words and phrases that are being taught? They can say all they want about how "that's not how you learn a language naturally...you do it by listening,"...fine, but I still want to know how the words look in writing. And why hinder the people who want to reinforce their learning through seeing it in print, when it would seem so easy to just throw in a cheap transcript and leave the options to the learner. 2) Although the amount of repetition is warranted, it gets a little frustrating when after an hour or so into the CDs you're still working on a few variations of a very few sentences. I don't really fault the program for this however, its just a difficult language to learn I think. I haven't tried others, so I can't make comparisons with other products, but overall I think it's a decent program at a pretty reasonable price.



4. WHAT A CD ,,IF YOU LISTEN WHILE ON LONG RIDE IN THE CAR IT IS AMAZING HOW GOOD THESE CD WORK,,,YOU REPEAT AND THEY REPEAT TWO TIMES ,,I CAN ACTUALLY SAY THAT IT HAS MADE ME UNDERSTAND THE CHINESE LANGUAGE,,,AND BE ABLE TO HEAR KEY WORDS,,,IT IS A GOOD LANGUAGE TOOL AND WELL WORTH THE INVESTMENT,,
   
   LIKE I SAY NEE HAU MA MAYBE NOT CORRECT SPELLING BUT CORRECT SOUND,



5. I used Pimsleur's Basic Mandarin Chinese (which is just the first 10 lessons of Pimsleur's Mandarin I series) prior to a 10 day visit to China in March 2008 (Beijing and Liaoning provinces). I was aiming to pick up some basic language to help navigate my way around and order in restaurants (I was off the tourist trail some of the time).
   
   Summary: Pimsleur is extremely good, but do NOT get the Basic Mandarin Chinese product. At the very least, get the Conversation Mandarin Chinese product (which is the first 16 lessons of Pimsleur's Mandarin I series). Here is my reasoning.
   
   I highly rate Pimsleur's approach to learning Mandarin Chinese. Pimsleur has you listening to native speakers and doing intensive repetition. As a result, you acquire a very good accent - the Chinese people I spoke to on my travels all understood me perfectly, and those who spoke English told me I had an excellent accent. However, the vocabulary in the first 10 lessons is limited, and much is not relevant to the casual traveller. Furthermore, you really need to learn Pinyin if you're travelling - so you can say place names, etc, correctly in your conversation. Pimsleur discourages this.
   
   Disadvantages:
   
   1. Limited vocabulary - in 5 hours of lessons, and with all the repetition Pimsleur does, you naturally learn a limited set of vocabulary. You don't even learn all the numbers from 1-10! On the plus side, what you do learn you will know very well and will be able to use in conversation. I've written out the complete list of the vocabulary and phrases you do learn below.
   
   2. Vocabulary and phrases not targeted to the causal traveller - the Basic series is just the first 10 lessons of the larger Pimsleur Mandarin I series, the latter of which is geared towards teaching you to speak conversational Mandarin. Many basic phrases useful to travellers are not covered, such as `How much is this?' - essential for bargaining in markets, or common phrases useful in restaurants, such as `please wait 5 minutes', `bill please', or directions such as `turn left/right'.
   
   3. You don't learn any Pinyin or Chinese characters. Pimsleur worries that if you read Pinyin, you'll acquire an American accent. I think this is a valid concern, however, to learn additional vocabulary, and read place names and the like, you need Pinyin at some point. My solution was to do the whole Pimsleur series first, and only then learn Pinyin (there are lots of online lessons to learn Pinyin).
   
   Advantages:
   
   1. Great accent.
   
   2. Everything Pimsleur teaches you, you learn, and learn really well. It becomes intuitive. You can and do use it in conversation with native Chinese. Although not everything was relevant to my needs, I was able to order drinks in restaurants and have some basic conversations with taxi drivers.
   
   Recommendation:
   
   If you are going to learn Mandarin Chinese, I highly rate doing one of the Pimsleur series. Chinese is not a language you can learn from a book. But if I were to do it again, I would do the Conversational Mandarin Chinese - the first 16 lessons. The first 10 lessons are insufficient. I suggest you start by doing a Pimsleur series, then once you're speaking confidently and your accent is pretty good, use online lessons to learn Pinyin/Characters and to extend your vocabulary as needed.
   
   Vocabulary and Phrases taught:
   
   1. Vocabulary: Excuse me, please let me ask, English, Mandarin language, American person, I, you, can (not) speak, to be (am), (yes/no question particle), a little
   I can(not) speak English. I am (not) American.
   2. Vocabulary: Chinese person, hello, how are you?, (very/not) well, thank you, goodbye
   I don't speak well.
   3. Vocabulary: how about (you), but
   4. Vocabulary: to understand (the situation), what, road, street, where, located, here, over there
   I don't understand what you're saying.
   You speak Mandarin very well.
   Where is Long Piece Street?
   College Road is over there.
   5. Vocabulary: to eat, to drink, would (not) like, something, to know
   I would like to eat something.
   Do you know?
   6. Vocabulary: my place, your place, when, now, later, to go
   Where do you want to go to drink/eat?
   7. Vocabulary: tea, beer, (not) OK
   8. Vocabulary: restaurant, hotel, lunch, or (for questions), to do, to buy, to want(order), two (glasses), with, whom
   I would like to order two beers.
   I would like to eat lunch with you.
   9. Vocabulary: o'clock, what time, one, nine, eight, or (for statements), impossible
   What don't I understand?
   10. Vocabulary: anything, five, three, four, am going to (want to), as for me,
   What time is it?
   Is it four o'clock?

4 comments about The Rough Guide to Mandarin Chinese Dictionary Phrasebook 3 (Rough Guide Phrasebooks).

1. Although the book favors the Beijing style pronunciation, the Chinese characters within are worth their weight in jade. I frequently pointed at more difficult characters. Coupled with a few phrases I'd picked up from the beginning of the book, I got around China really well.
   
   Missing was a section on how to properly tell off street peddlers and other nuisances. I would have loved a dialogue page with the following exchange:
   
   "Would you like a 'Rolex' watch?"
   "No. Go away and never pester me again you troglodyte!"
   
   Even with the above-mentioned shortcoming, I'd take this book back with me to China if I ever get the chance to return there. Take this with you and keep it very handy. I compared it to the newest Lonely Planet guide and this one is superior.



2. This book is fun to read and easy to find a phrase that your looking for.
   Good phrases for shopping and getting directions.



3. Rough Guide Mandarin is structured completely different from most phrase books: The first 40+ pages gives you numbers, days of the week, time, etc., and a 20 minute course in grammar. Oh no, you might be saying, but it is presented very simply. For instance it presents a handful of common verbs and their conjugations. So on one page you can see how to say "I have," "he has, " etc. and "I like," "he/ she likes," etc.
   
   The rest of the book is split between an English-Mandarin dictionary (160 pages approx), a Mandarin-English dictionary (40 pages, approx.), and a 20 page menu reader. What makes the English-Mandarin dictionary pages unique, though, is that most every other page (at least) has dialogue boxes relating to the most useful word(s) on that particular page. For instance, when you thumb through the book for the word "live," you get the word itself, but also the phrases "I live in..." and "Where do you live?" It'll take you 10 minutes to find such a phrase in Berlitz or Lonely Planet in their "getting to know others' section. But because Rough Guide is structured as a dictionary, with hundreds of really useful phrases highlighted in boxes within, you can access something you want to say rather swiftly...and actually deliver it just a minute or so after looking for it. Add the grammar section, where you learn useful verbs and how to conjugate their past tenses, and the number section, and you can learn easily to chat with someone about where you are from, where you are going, where you have traveled thus far, what you like/liked, and so on. Likewise, knowing have to say "have" make sit easily to ask whether a hotel has rooms, whether the room has a shower (after thumbing through the book for the word for shower), etc. And when the answer comes back that the hotel doesn't have, or say "we have," you can actually catch what they are saying.
   
   If still not persuaded, next time you're in a bookstore compare a Berlitz, a Lonely Planet, and a Rough Guide language phrase book side by side. Lonely Planet Mandarin, for example, is basically several pages of basic grammar followed by many sections of phases you won't likely ever use. For instance, the guide provides several pages each of lists of occupations, nationalities, college majors, items of stationary, jewelery, colors, insects, flowers, aquatic sports(!), electrical appliances, camping terms,and so on. Also provided are pat phrases to employ at a hotel's front desk, at a doctor's, at the optometrist, and eating out, among other mini-sections. The book, in effect, is set up to be taken out to be used once a day, if that. It's an improvement on Berlitz phrase books, but not by much. (Berlitz simply divides their books into 10 or so color coded sections such as: "sightseeing," "relaxing," "shopping," traveling around," "money," "eating out," etc.)
   
   So, if you just want a book for emergencies (say, breaking a leg, etc.) then Berlitz and/or Lonely Planet phrase books will serve you well...in your pocket until you are faced with such a situation, since they do have many more specific terms (like 50 different parts of the the body), but if you really want to be able to say some things in Chinese on a daily basis during your trip you'll be much better served by Rough Guide Mandarin. Cheers



4. As with most of these books the print is small. There needs to be more English to PinYin translation of both words and phrases.

5 comments about Schaum's Outline of Chinese Vocabulary.

1. I've studied Mandarin (off and on... too much off) for about twelve years. I have many books that teach me obscure Chinese history or the names of Chinese minority groups' clothing and holidays. But I have sketchy knowledge of many fundamental words, like "water faucet." This book systematically plows through commonly used vocabulary. It tells you, for example, how to say "web browser" and "mouse" in Chinese (which I find essential for showing my in-laws how to use a computer). And, unlike a Mandarin pictorial dictionary I have that displays only Chinese characters, this book also has pinyin and uses the words in sentences.
   
   I highly recommend this book to anyone who can pronunce pinyin and wants to build up a practical vocabulary.



2. I purchased this book several months ago, to complement my chinese classes, it helped me to learn much more new words related to some commom everyday conversation topics. Although I wish the chinese character printed were a little bigger for easier reading, other than that It has been a worthy buy.



3. This book presents lots of useful vocabulary, often with a helpful sketch. For example the At the Hotel chapter shows a picture of the room and bathroom, with callouts for the Chinese words for the bed, sink, shower, etc. in characters and pinyin.
   
   Sample dialogs are presented to demonstrate the use of the vocabulary. However, the presentation could be improved simply by using the form in the Schaum's Chinese Grammar book, where every sentence if provided in traditional and simplified characters, pinyin, and English. Instead, the Vocabulary book usually gives the English for only one word in the sentence. That's fine if you already have a working knowledge of Chinese, but for beginner's it would be nicer to have a translation of the whole sentence.



4. Schaum's Outline of Chinese Grammar chose to include both the traditional form and the simplified form in the book. I really think that's a very smart and considerate decision. For people who want to learn the Chinese characters, you need to get familiar with both forms. If you're taught only in simplified form, you're missing a lot -- especially the beauty of the Chinese characters. I strongly recommend that Schaum list both forms like you did with the grammar book. Besides, I guarantee that if you make this small change, the book will sell better. Otherwise, I won't buy it.



5. This vocabulary book is the greatest idea in the world! I used Pimsleur (Mandarin I, II & III) along with the Oxford Starter Chinese Dictionary as my collective foundation for learning the Chinese language (Mandarin). Both of these tools were GREAT but now that I'm trying to have actual conversations with Chinese people (using VoIP - voice communication over the internet) I've discovered that my vocabulary is a little (a lot?) weak. (I know I'm stating the obvious here, but when it comes to having REAL conversations in ANY language, a well developed and modern vocabulary is a MUST.) I think the major strengths of Schaum's Outlines Chinese Vocabulary can be reduced to just one word: practicality. In this respect, I think it is far superior to just a standard dictionary. Don't get me wrong, its not a replacement for traditional and complete English-Chinese and Chinese(pinyin)-English dictionaries, but the filtering, organization and presentation of its content are PERFECT for rehearsing and quickly developing a large, PRACTICAL and MODERN vocabulary. Great stuff. I also found Schaum's Chinese Grammar to be a useful book as well.

1 comments about Modern Mandarin Chinese Grammar Workbook (Modern Grammars).

1. Very simply a great buy and a must for anyone that has the grammar book already.The book is presented very well and linked to each chapter of the grammar book.

No comments about New Practical Chinese Reader Workbook, Vol. 1.

5 comments about Chinese For Dummies (For Dummies (Language & Literature)).

1. Chinese for Dummies is, in no way, a book for beginners. It's a book for people who have studied Mandarin for 20 years and just haven't gotten it yet. It's for people who really just don't get it... but even those people probably won't be aided by this book.
   
   What I know for sure is that beginners will be lost. This is not a teaching tool, it is a reinforcement tool, best used to supplant prior exposure to Mandarin Chinese.
   
   Don't buy this book expecting to LEARN chinese. For that, go with Rosetta Stone or Pimsleaur. But if you are looking to brush up on your Mandarin in a quick and (somewhat) easy way, this book might be for you.



2. The title of the book is misleading, it expects you to have some basic knowledge of the language. If you don't know anything about Chinese when you start reading it, you will be completely lost. If you do know the basics of the language, this book will teach you very little vocabulary and grammar (in my case it didn't teach me anything I didn't learned from Pimsleur). The teaching method used by this book is really inefficient.
   
   The audio is terribly slow, I don't have any other Chinese course that have such a slow audio speed; it is nowhere near real conversational speed and it takes forever to listen to a whole lesson.
   
   There are plenty of products out there that are better than this one, don't waste your money on this book. Pimsleur/Assimil are way better. The New Practical Chinese Reader costs about the same price and will teach you way more than this book does.



3. This is a very good reference book for learning spoken Mandarin. As stated in the Introduction, this is not a book intended to be read from cover to cover. Instead, it's written for browsing. I agree with some other reviewers that this book isn't exactly a basic Dummies book. Some previous Chinese language experience before reading this book makes more sense. The information in this book is still very useful though. One problem I have with this book is that the type is small. Sometimes it's hard to see the tone marks without wearing reading glasses. A larger font would make the transliterated text easier to read. Also, this book does not have any information about reading Chinese characters. I think this book is worth the low price as a reference book, but you'll still need other references.



4. I cannot recommend this book to anybody who does not already have a basic knowledge of Chinese. If you intend to learn some Chinese as a beginner, please avoid this [...] and seek different literary introductions.
   All this book does, is teaching you sentences and phrases and what they mean.
   
   It would tell you, how to tell a person, that you are not Chinese:
   
   Wô bú shì zhöng guó rén. (I can't do all phonetics correctly)
   I am not Chinese.
   
   That's all it does. It would have been so easy, to make this a helpful exercise by pointing out what you were literally saying, namely:
   
   I not be middle-land-man.
   
   Concealing this fact, this book almost deliberately disables you from putting sentences together yourself because it won't tell you how to!
   
   Again: It is consisting only of sentences and phrases that one must learn by heart. Maybe that's the Dummie's way, but - unless you are a chimp - I don't think anybody would be dull enough to learn an entire language this way.
   
   DO NOT BUY if you are really interested in learning Chinese as a beginner.



5. Mandarin Chinese is a tonal language. This means that the meaning of a word is determined not only by the vowels and consonants that compose its sound, but also by the change in pitch in the speaker's voice. While "Chinese for Dummies" claims to help beginning learners navigate this difficult sound system with its chatty and casual writing style, it instead encourages replacement of the Pinyin pronunciation system that 1.4 billion Chinese speakers world-wide have used for decades with a new English-based approximation that brashly ignores tone completely. Speaking Chinese without proper tone is akin to speaking English using only one vowel. "Chinese for Dummies" seems to repeatedly ignore this point (mentioning that readers will "eventually" get to tones) and I fear that this neglect, at best, confuses and frustrates casual learners, and at worst, distracts and hinders serious students of Mandarin Chinese. I can't comment on the book's effect on learners who are also dummies.
   
   Nathan Dummitt
   author of Chinese Through Tone & Color

5 comments about Concise English-Chinese / Chinese-English Dictiona (Third Edition).

1. I saw comments that the print in the third edition was too small, but I bought it anyway. Big mistake. The print is so small that the dictionary is virtually useless. It's about 5-6 point type. I need a magnifying glass to read it, and complex Chinese characters come out as little more than a black blob, even with a magnifying glass, because the characters can't be printed that small. Don't buy this dictionary!!!!
   
   The only reason I gave it a "2" rather than a "1" is that the content seems okay (as much as I can see of it, anyway).



2. A somewhat useful book. However: print is far too small, pages are impossibly thin, it is impossible to intuit strokes because you can barely SEE the character. Sometimes, the traditional character is omitted completely. It is not easily navigable and seems to be based in British English. Seems to be designed for a Chinese-speaking audience, not the other way around. Not very useful for a beginner. Try: Far East New Practical Chinese/English Dictionary edited by Liang Shih-chiu.



3. A high-quality book.
   Just be sure to have your reading glasses or magnifying glass available!



4. A very comprehensive dictionary, but you must have the patience to go over the many itterations in the hope of finding the English corollary. There is no English to Chinese and no special sections like "marrying/measuring" words. but the more I use it the more I realize that this is the most definitive Chinese dictionary for English speaking persons. I would prefer a little larger print, but it is bigger than some other dictionaries.



5. I found this book so useful I bought three, just to have spares. I didn't pay Amazon's price though; the same book is under $6 in China.
   
   Regarding some of the other reviewers' complaint's:
   
   Yes the print is tiny, and well-nigh illegible for the more complex characters, and the pages are very thin. That is the inevitable result of cramming large amounts of information into a small space. I do have to say, though, that it wasn't necessary to have printed the diacritics so small. The printing is crisp, however, under magnification and I recommend keeping a 1/2" fold-up magnifying glass in your pocket. Even at that, the thing is barely pocket size; I would have preferred a smaller number of broader pages so it were not so thick.
   
   The definitions are not as authoritative as the best desktop dictionaries, but it is better than any other pocket or PDA-based dictionary I have found. For important situations, check your word with a reverse-lookup. That's life folks.
   
   Chinese usage hints are in hanzi with no pinyin. I understand the need to conserve space, but if you have to choose one or the other, I think pinyin would have been better. Those experienced in Chinese can figure out which sense is being referred to, while those inexperienced in Chinese will need the pinyin to look up the words.
   
   The radical index is immensely useful to look up characters by shape only, but a 4-corner index would be much more accessible to Chinese beginners. Including both might add 20 pages of heft, but would be worth it in my view.
   
   Those last two issues (usage hints lack pinyin and no 4-corner index) make me say that this dictionary is not suitable for beginners. You have to have a few weeks of study and mastery of some basics in order to use it.
   
   Having said that, I can offer no higher endorsement than to say that this dictionary is my linguistic side-arm whenever I go pounding the pavement in China. Not as good as the best dictionaries for European languages, but the best Chinese I have found, and my key to successful communication.
   
   Beginners should start with an introductory phrase book and audio course, though. PDA owners, whose goals are less ambitious and who want to save space, might consider the MSDict PDA software, which appears to be built on the Pocket Oxford's lexicon. A better PDA dictionary, but not as good as this printed one, and less suited than MSDict for beginners, is Clavis Sinica.
   
   Serious students will need a "real" desktop dictionary with more space to expound on usage and more terms of art.[...]

5 comments about Mandarin Chinese-English Bilingual Visual Dictionary (BILINGUAL VISUAL DICTIONARY).

1. This is a nice little tome for browsing and referencing, though is not a replacement for a standard dictionary. I would agree with the others about the strong Western bias -- most people studying Chinese are interested in some aspects of culture as well, and thus would be interested in relevant words. However, for learners of Chinese language living outside of China, it's quite useful. It takes a while to figure out where some words are categorised, though there is an index in back. It also does not show traditional characters, or alternative pronounciations or uses of words as may occur in Hong Kong or Taiwan, and again a good standard Chinese-English dictionary would be a better option since most will show you the variants. Some uses and prounciations in this text are simply wrong to native Mandarin speakers from HK or Taiwan.
   EDIT -- having had this book a while now, it's still a fun reference though one thing to note is that it is HEAVY. Nice quality paper stock makes for a compact book that feels like a brick.



2. This compact, square-shaped visual dictionary is the best of its kind as far as I've seen. Being a visual dictionary, the majority of the words are nouns, but under many categories there are additional related adjectives and verbs, along with fixed phrases. Including nearly 6,000 nouns, the book covers the majority of objects that students would seek to know, while at the same time it doesn't overdo it with superfluous, obscure vocabulary. Ideal for English-speaking students of Mandarin or Chinese-speaking students of English as a reference.



3. While this dictionary includes attractive images that encourage browsing, the characters are somewhat small and the organization of the book by theme (rather than in alphabetical or Pinyin order) makes quick look-up difficult. Also, I have a hard time believing that simply listing all the body parts (for example) is an effective way to learn the Chinese words. Discussion of characters/etymology and Chinese-specific culture is limited, but this might be a fun book to look at with a non-English-speaking Chinese friend in order to facilitate communication.
   
   
   Nathan Dummitt
   author of Chinese Through Tone & Color



4. I was disappointed with this visual dictionary. I suppose I should have paid closer attention to the other reviews before making the purchase. My biggest complaint is that the font of the Chinese characters is much too small. Any character that is more than a few strokes is virtually impossible to distinguish. You would need a magnifying glass to be able to read the characters. I know why the book has this problem. All of the visual dictioanries are essentially the same -- they simply change the text for each language. Since the Chinese version requires both Pinyin and the Chinese characters, there isn't enough space to use a larger font. The cookie-cutter approach also means that the book is not culturally "in tune" with many items that you would find in China. Finally, since the dictionary is all nouns, I think it should include the corresponding measure words/classifiers for the nouns. This is a huge oversight, making the dictionary less valuable. I need to use another reference book to find out the corresponding measure words. The pictures in the dictionary are nice, but that doesn't overcome the flaws I have mentioned. While the cost of the book was relatively low, I still don't think it was worth purchasing. Oh well.



5. The book does not have a 'Western bias' as some reviewers argued. It IS a Western visual dictionary, with many nice pictures, if that's what you buy it for. If you buy it with the intention of learning something about China, and not just Chinese words for universal-cum-Western concepts, beware: It has NOTHING specific to do with China or Chinese culture. These aspects are not neglected -- to repeat my point -- they simply do not exist. The worst thing is that the publishers PRETEND that the book teaches you about China, and MARKET their product as such. Thus, the front and back covers are the ONLY places were you'll find Chinese specific pictures/words.
   I can't see how this is anything but plain cheating. The price is reasonable, so that is not the problem, but rather the feeling of being lied to.
   I would have given this book a zero marking, if that was an option.

5 comments about Tuttle Learner's Chinese English Dictionary.

1. The book is well organized and easy to find information. I'm not too familiar with PinYin so I can't account for its accuracy. On the whole, book arrived within time period.



2. 
   Like most things in life this dictionary has some good points and some poor ones. Yes I agree with most folks that the word usage in sentences is handy and functional, I like that. But little else is truly useful here in china. The pages are definitely cluttered with blue print on white background, black on white, varying types and scripts and boxes, traditional and simple characters, script sizes large to tiny (bring your 10X eyepiece) etc. But the biggest drawback is the limitation of words; it's just too much like the car that starts only 30% of the time-it is just not dependable enough for daily use. Maybe in usa where one is learning from a text and the words are few, then this dictionary may be OK. If in china then it just is not worth the money to buy or effort to carry and use because failure to find the word is just much too frequent and really, how many dictionaries do you want? Although Langenscheidt's Pocket D. too has drawbacks, it is much more useful here.



3. This is such a good book! The example sentences and the cultural notes are great. And the appendices contain some very helpful information! Ever wanted to know what your name would be in Chinese?



4. Use the Tuttle Learner's Chinese-English Dictionary along with the Oxford Beginner's Chinese Dictionary. The Tuttle is better for Chinese-English in that it contains more entries and examples. The Oxford is better for English-Chinese. One very nice feature is that the measure words are included with the nouns. Use both dictionaries together for the most helpful learning experience, but keep in mind the dictionaries are geared towards students and will not be overly comprehensive.



5. It's a very good dictionary to find Chinese words, the method to find Chinese characters is easy too. The index of English words is not bad but it would be more helpful to have the equivalent of the Chinese-English as English-Chinese too. Most authors forget that foreigners need words to speak, not just to read.