Customer Reviews

Basic Chinese Vocabulary

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I thought this book was okay at first, but then I started to really use it and realized that it's insufficient for learning Chinese vocabulary. It's pretty much just a categorized list of words in Mandarin Chinese with English translations. This was the kind of book I was looking for, but unfortunately it failed to meet my expectations for the following reasons:

1.) NO CHINESE CHARACTERS ARE INCLUDED IN THE MAIN BODY OF THIS BOOK

The claim on the back cover is deceptive. Characters only appear in the English-Chinese section of the glossary. This means that when you see a word in this book, you need to flip to the glossary in the back to see the characters. Even worse, you need to look up the word by it's English translation. This is very awkward.

2.) OUT-OF-DATE VOCABULARY

The vocabulary list was compiled before the advent of the compact disc, and well before computers and the internet were in common use.

3.) NO EXAMPLES

Each Chinese word is translated into English. The translation is usually a single word; there is no explanation of usage or sample sentences. Many of the translations are ambiguous, especially since the English used is British English, not American English. In many cases, I would have assumed a different meaning if I hadn't already known the Chinese word.

4.) POOR CHOICE OF WORDS

For some reason, the compilers decided to include several items of specialized vocabulary that you'll never use. These words are included at the expense of several basic words, which were left out. They should have included only the most frequently occurring words. You could learn all 3000 or so words in this book and you'd still find really basic structural words that you haven't learned yet.

5.) BETTER CHOICES EXIST

There are two excellent resources that I'd highly recommend for vocabulary. The first, Chinese Vocabulary Cards (ISBN: 1556370873) by Vis-Ed, is a set of 1000 flashcards containing the most basic 2500 words. The words in this deck are very well selected, and examples are provided for each entry. It's suitable for anyone at the beginner or intermediate level. The second resource that I'd recommend is Schaum's Outline of Chinese Vocabulary (ISBN: 0071378359). This book assumes a knowledge of 500 - 1000 words, which it uses to teach new words in context. It's suitable for an intermediate or advanced student. These two resources, when combined, will give you everything you need to develop an effective vocabulary.