Easy Learning Mandarin Chinese Characters: Trusted support for learning (Collins Easy Learning)
£8.20£10.40 (-21%)
The home of trusted Mandarin dictionaries for everyday language learning.
Learn how to write 250 of the commonest Chinese characters, with stroke by stroke guidance on every page.
With thousands of characters to learn, beginning to read and write Chinese is a daunting task. Aimed at learners, this book takes you through 250 of the commonest characters in a clear and accessible way.
The meaning of every character is explained along with information about its radical, the compound words it can form, its history, and more. There is a practice grid on every page, showing how the character is written, with space for you to practise writing the character for yourself.
It is generally agreed that learners of Chinese need a working knowledge of about 100 characters in order to make themselves at all understood and to travel in China, so Easy Learning Chinese Characters is a great place to start.
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Additional information
| Publisher | Collins, Second edition (6 April 2017) |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Paperback | 256 pages |
| ISBN-10 | 0008196044 |
| ISBN-13 | 978-0008196042 |
| Reading age | 11 years and up |
| Dimensions | 1.52 x 18.8 x 24.38 cm |
by J.E. Rowney
Really good book for practice writing mandarin characters. I picked up some new vocab too. I’m a beginner, two months into learning, and this was super for me.
by Filch
Brilliant for getting the basics of Chinese characters down. I’m studying it at university and I’ve found it really helpful as a starter book.
by Mr. C. L. Grindley
I like this book.
I like the fact that the characters are organised by themes and that for every character introduced, there are a few words given containing that character to show how, when combined, a new meaning is produced.
It also shows the traditional character (as opposed to the simplified one) in the corner of the page if it differs from the simplified one at all. It shows the pronunciation in pinyin and it explains the logic/origin of some of the characters.
If you are learning to write a language like Chinese which will take time unless you want to go grey (I know someone who went grey learning this language quickly) , you don’t want to have too many characters in one book or you will feel overwhelmed, so this book makes a great introduction to learning the first characters.
It’s an interesting language and should be learnt gradually and in a relaxed way.
I do however think that this book would look better if it had some nice coloured pages in it. Otherwise, I would recommend it for learning to write your first characters.
by George
All of the critical reviews seem to operate under the assumption that this would be the only tool people use to learn Chinese. And they are right that it is insufficient on its own for reasons including the lack of audio materials and the limited vocabulary. But if you are using it in addition to something else, whether it be a class or just an app on your phone, I think it is a fantastic supplement. It teaches you a lot more about the etymology of the characters so you can understand what you’re writing, not just memorizing the strokes, and gives you a few examples of how the characters are used in multiple contexts. I love it! I wish it was a series!
by Caroline pollard
Bought for my grandson who is learning this language in school. He found it a helpful addition for his studies.
by Philippe Magalon
I like the book . I have combined the book with audio tracks from an app and it works fine .
Good book .
by Zeyn S.
All around I feel this book is an adequate reference point for the 250 basic characters. I can easily turn to the index page, find a character, and learn about the characters composition and its stroke order. However, that is the only positive I can think of, and there are a number of drawbacks with this book.
Firstly, with regards to writing characters, a number of my chinese friends have pointed out that the way in which this book assists you in writing characters is counter-productive, as many of the characters written in this book look “mechanical”. They have recommended instead something called a 田字格本，which is essentially a chinese character copybook. Chinese nationals have told me that these copybooks enable you to more accurately write the characters. So, if you are serious about learning how to write chinese characters, as am I, I would definitely recommend buying a chinese character copybook.
Another point that id like to make is that many of the characters contained within this book do not really assist learning. To elaborate, I am taking the HSK qualification (an international qualification for non native chinese speakers), and as part of this qualification students are constantly learning characters combined together to form words, so for example 出租车 which means taxi. Now in this book, you are not really able to learn new words, because although you may learn the character 车 (car), you may not encounter the other characters in the word taxi, so really you are not able to see characters in use within other words.
Now for people who say “right this is a dictionary not a work book”, I completely understand that point of view. But if this publication was a good dictionary on chinese characters, it would have more than 250! At the very least for the price I would expect 1000 chinese characters. Please understand that basic proficiency in chinese = being able to understand 3000 characters (so this book is not a very good dictionary if it only contains 250). I would recommend that if you are wanting to buy a dictionary with chinese characters inside, there are a lot of publications out there better than this one.
These are just my honest views, and I hope they help a potential purchaser in understanding the pro’s and con’s of this book.