Read and Write Chinese: A Simplified Guide to the Chinese Characters

by Rita Mei-Wah Choy

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• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0941340090
• ISBN13: 9780941340090
• Release Date: March 1983
• Publisher: China West Books
• Length: 336 Pages
• Weight: 0.85 lbs.

Customer Reviews

One of the best books if you are studying asian calligraphy

This is great book if you are studying the art form of chinese characters. It is one of the only books available with an index of the characters in English which makes it invaluable. I highly recommend it.

Excellent book WITHOUT a flaw

This book is wonderful and I do not consider that having only unsimplified forms of the characters is a flaw. While simplifid characters are more useful in Mainland China, they are not used at all in Taiwan, Hong Kong or Singapore and are only used rarely in Chinese communities in the U.S. and Canada. This book is most useful when visiting one of these places or studying there, since it is well nigh impossible to find an unsimplified guide or dictionary in most book stores. Also, it provides pronunciation in "bopomofo" the phonetic system used in Taiwan by foreigners and natives alike, far superioir to Wades-Giles or Pinyin.

Very clear and well arranged Chinese Dictionary

I felt that the large font used for the Chinese characters helped in locating many characters in the dictionary. For anyone who has ever used a traditional Chinese dictionary, they usually have a tiny typeface capable of inducing severe headaches! Not so here! These Chinese characters are large and bold! Very nice feature, also including the cantonese pronuciation along with the mandarin. This feature alone makes the book worth twice what it is. The step by step drawings for each Chinese character are a great help. I highly recommend this book to any student of Chinese. It has helped me in my studies and I keep it with me everywhere. Also, each character is assigned a number which makes easy locating when I study. This is a great help. The multiple systems of looking up a word are also helpful. They include English, Mandarin PinYin, Cantonese, Stroke Number, and Frequency. Highly recommended. You won't be sorry.

Traditional vs. Simplified Characters?

This book is an excellent source of learning material, but to clarify the misunderstanding observed by the reader from Atlanta, perhaps a future edition should be retitled "Understanding Traditional Chinese".In any case, despite the fact that simplified characters are used throughout mainland China, they are useless in that they are not much faster to write (which was their original intended purpose) and make the language more difficult by forcing students to learn BOTH the traditional AND simplified characters. Furthermore, the many students I've met over the past few years from mainland China, who don't always know the traditional character equivalent of their simplified ones, are losing touch with their culture which has been embedded in the intricacies of how the traditional characters developed from pictographs.Zakarius

An indispensable bargain for anyone studying Chinese.

In the category of reference and learning tools for the study of Chinese, Rita Choy's book is the best one I have encountered. Among its unusual features, each of the 3,200 words include the Cantonese pronunciation as well as the Mandarin pronunciation. Furthermore, the publisher also sells audiotapes of a native speaker pronouncing each word in this book. At only $12, this useful book is a bargain for anyone studying Chinese. Traditional dictionaries, which costs many times more, are time consuming and difficult to use. Choy's book allows you to locate a word by number of strokes, English definition, Cantonese pronunciation and Mandarin pronunciation as well as the traditional radical approach. As such, the book is an easy low cost substitute for the beginning/intermediate student and a convenient supplement for the advanced student. In addition to its usefulness as a dictionary, Choy's book is also great for the student who want to focus on the more common words because a frequency indicator accompanies each word entry. Although I unequivocally recommend this book, there are flaws worth noting. While not excessive, this book does contain more errors than you would find in a traditional dictionary. It also does not consistently include all the alternate ways to pronounce and write each word.