Teach Yourself Beginner's Chinese Script

It is one thing to learn Chinese in a classroom because you have to, it is another thing to learn Chinese because you want to learn it. Learning by route memorization is no match for learning by "going out" memorization. If you want to spend years learning enough Chinese to read a Chinese book, but in the meantime, if what you really want to do is go out into a Chinese community and find your way around, there is no other better way to do it then by reading this book. I use it when I'm in China where I am all alone with no guide, and it is tremendously helpful. I can't read a newspaper yet, but a newspaper isn't for communicating to other people with or getting around town by yourself. Besides, in China, people are more interested in your social skills then your know-it-all skills.

This book is basically to introduce the concepts of Chinese script. If you are new to Chinese, just starting out, I would recommend this book. Because Chinese script does not have a direct correlation to speaking as western languages do. Chinese dialects are more different than French and Spanish are different in terms of speaking. But, interestingly, they use the same characters in all the dialects for script. Thus they are called dialects instead of languages. (Although the Chinese dialects are spoken differently like different languages, they use the same written symbols.) Because of this nature, some people prefer to learn Chinese script writing and reading seperately from speaking. For example one may choose to learn speaking by using the Pimsleaur excellant audio course and afterwards learn Chinese script. Or one could learn speech by using Pinyin, using a western alphabit. Or it may be that you just want to learn to read and write Chinese. This book is an inexpensive easy place to start to get a feel for Chinese script. By its self this book will not make you literate in Chinese. It is just a starting place to understand the concepts of Chinese language script. The authors' methodology is to ask questions that you probably won't be able to answer, to get you to think about the concepts and then goes on to expalin the reasoning. If you are curious about Chinese script, just want to get a feel for how it works, and don't want to spend a lot of money; then I would recommend this book for you. The one problem I had with this book is that sometimes the characters are printed too small to see all the strokes. The strokes sort of blend in togeather. To be literate in Chinese script, you will need to purchase more advanced books.

This book is the first I have come across that teaches Chinese characters by helping the reader to understand how they are formed. Other books plunge right into the presentation of characters that must be memorized, quickly overwhelming the reader.In this book you will understand the logic behind the evolution of the characters, the use of radicals in compound characters, the composition of multiple character words, interpretation of characters in context, and how to correctly write these characters yourself. Elizabeth Scurfield explains the rules behind stroke order and gives many examples as the characters progress from simple to more complex. Each unit builds logically on the preceding unit, so learning is gradual and easy.If you are just beginning to learn Chinese writing, I couldn't recommend this book more highly. You will need to look elsewhere to learn the spoken language, not much help here (although Elizabeth Scurfield does have another very good book that teaches both reading and speaking Mandarin). Once you have mastered the material in this book, you will need to find a more advanced book if you wish to become proficient. This truly is just a beginning - but a very good one.

This book is really fantastic. It shows you the basics for the chinese script origin and gives you a basic understanding of the written language by associating it with everyday situations. Through the numerous examples from real chinese setrtings it teaches you how to guess a possible meaning for a character by noticing its background (e.g. if it is on a restaurant menu, airport lounge information etc.) and compounds. This is particularily important for the everyday traveller to China who doesn't have the time to learn a lot of characters but has the basic intelligence to associate a character with its possible meaning. It also has a very practical pronounciation guide and a guide to chinese computer input methods at the end of the book but unfortunately doesn't give the pinyin for all the characters that are presented in the book.

I am a beginner to learning Chinese and I find this book an excellent guide to understanding chinese characters, its components and why. I recommend this book to anyone who wish to be able to recognize and read chinese characters. The author has provided an excellent description regarding the radicals and phonetic components of chinese characters.