Reading & Writing Chinese Simplified Character Edition [Paperback]

I started learning to write Chinese by working my way through this book, memorizing the characters, pronunciation, and definitions. Now I sort of regret it. The list of characters is reasonable enough. If your goal is to memorize a bunch of characters, these are good ones to concentrate on, and they're generally presented in a reasonable order. The stroke order diagrams are helpful when you're first starting out, and it isn't a problem that they're only present for the first half of the list of characters; by the time you finish the part of the book with the diagrams, you will have long since developed a good intuitive sense of the stroke order rules.

Unfortunately, beyond the selection of characters and the diagrams, it kind of falls short.

My biggest complaint is that the definitions are often not good. When a character has multiple meanings (as most of them do) you can't count on the most common meaning being first in the list, and in some cases common meanings aren't listed at all. If you're using the definitions to make flashcards, you'll be frustrated by the number of times two characters are given exactly the same English definition, even though in reality they differ in connotation or in usage.

There is never any distinction made between characters that stand as words on their own and characters that only ever appear as parts of compound words, which will definitely trip you up a lot if you're using this as a source of vocabulary. And the compound words are sometimes obscure or very old-fashioned terms that, if you say them to a Chinese speaker, will cause them to give you a puzzled look and ask where the heck you learned THAT old word.

The font used for the characters is a typewritten one. If you learn to write the characters as printed in this book, you will end up writing in a very precise but somewhat mechanical-looking style rather than a more artistic handwritten style. Whether that's a plus or a minus is up to your sense of aesthetics. The traditional character edition of this book uses a handwritten font; even though I'm primarily learning simplified characters, if I had it to do over again I'd have picked up that edition instead. (Both editions actually contain both character forms; the difference is mostly the font and the order of the entries.)

If you get this book, use it as a list of characters to learn and a large collection of stroke order diagrams. Keep a real dictionary handy and it'll be a worthwhile learning resource.

This book has been the single most important resource in developing my budding ability to read and write Chinese. The concept of introducing the most fundamental radicals before even the very common characters that employ them is wonderful...I took a year of Chinese in college and struggled to learn the characters with almost nothing to grasp on to, struggling to memorize what seemed like totally arbitrary pictures.

This book first introduces the building blocks of each character -- the radicals -- and then explains to you how their sounds and meanings combine to form new, complex characters. Now every time I come upon a new character in a textbook I am learning from, I look it up in this book to see if there is a clever mnemonic or phonetic element that will help me remember it more easily. A great help.

Forget the other character books ! This is the one that

will get you over this hurdle ! Clear and sharp pictures of

every character, together with stroke order, pronunciation and

relation to other characters. Go after the big first thousand,

and then you will be ready to tackle the following 2000. This

book points out all the dangers and traps you'll run into in

your quest for mastery. You'll love it and keep it under your

pillow ! Bill K.