Customer Reviews

The Basic English-Chinese/Chinese-English Dictionary (Signet)

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This book is very helpful for beginners to get started on useful vocabulary and by filling in needed words for today's word usage from other sources. Some words may be outdated for todays usage, but will be understood by "patient" native speakers. Column format especially helpful for self-study on Eng-Chin, Chin-Eng (in Pinyin) and reading Chinese characters (caution: simplified characters used). Caution on some mispels and column misprints, very few though. Zai Jian.

I have used the 1980 edition of this book. The main thing I liked about it is that it provided both the Pinyin and the romanized transliteration, which I assume is Wade-Giles. Each English word also includes the simplified Chinese character to help when trying to communicate with Chinese friends.

What I didn't like about it is that it is very basic and I would often find myself going to a more complete dictionary to find many words, but hence they would only give the Pinyin. Having both transliteration methods in this book made it much easier for me to get close to the correct pronounciation.

My Chinese friends found the list of words in the simplified Chinese characters by stroke count too limiting. They would often prefer to use a more complete dictionary...or their handheld translation computers.