Customer Reviews

Chinese: An Essential Grammar (Essential Grammars)

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I've bought a number of books to try to learn Chinese on my own (well... with some help from friends, too). This is the first one I've made it all the way through. I plan to read it a couple more times so that I can try to learn everything in it. Part of what I like is that it is written clearly but concisely. The book has just about the right number of examples per point - not so many that you get bored, not so few that you are left confused (except for a very small number of places where I would have liked an additional example to clarify some particular detail.) The book is well organized. It flowed smoothly so that I did not often feel the need to jump around between sections. Finally, although the vocabulary list at the end of the book is reasonably lengthy, it never seemed like the vocabulary was introduced at such a rate as to bog down the learning of grammar. I'm not sure if a revised edition has come out since the edition I have was published, but my copy has a few typos and incorrect tone markings which can occasionally provide a moment of puzzlement. However, I did not find these to be a significant problem.

So far this is the only decent Mandarin grammar book I have encountered. To add to the above review, this book also has the advantage of having both word-for-word-literal and natural translations, so that you can see the exact structure of the sentence, as well as the more natural meaning. The small "dictionary" at the end of the book is not really intended as a dictionary, but rather as a helpful list of all the words used in the examples, along with their corresponding characters. One of the drawbacks of this book is that there are no chinese characters except in the reference at the end. Maybe in a future addition they could add characters? The main difference between this book and the authors other two books (Basic Chinese and Intermediate Chinese) is that the other two are meant more as workbooks, with grammar lessons followed by exercises. Also, the other two books use chinese characters throughout with parallel pinyin. This book would make a good companion to the other two.. they're all somewhat expensive though! But there are really no other options for easy to understand, though thourough, grammars.

I strongly recommend this book as a main grammar book in the learning of Chinese. This is a watered-down beginner-lower intermediate version of the superlative "Chinese: A Comprehensive Grammar" and covers the basics. It's just a pity that it is rather an expensive purchase.

The authors were lecturers at the University of Leeds in the UK but have since retired.

The type of person who is reading this is typically a novice student of Chinese, and therefore probably needs to know the tones and pronunciation of words. This is the problem: roughly half of all the pinyin in the entire book is either without a tone marker, or, more dangerously, with incorrect tone markers. Considering how important tones are to Chinese, this is baffling oversight.

I had read this grammar a few years ago and loved it, no problems. But when I got it for my kindle as a reference here in China, it seemed edited by monkeys. So perhaps if you're looking to buy this, don't, unless your chinese is already excellent and you don't need the pinyin. Wait until someone realizes how glaringly incorrect the pinyin is and edits it. Also the characters are quite fuzzy and unfocused. I don't know how one makes a kindle book, but I imagine it's scanned in, which would account for these errors.

And perhaps Rimmington should say "prepositions," which is what he means, rather than invent the word "coverb." It needlessly confuses, e.g. replacing the "verbs" with "actionwords." But I suppose that's more an issue with "A Comprehensive Grammar," which unfortunately doesn't exist for Kindle.

But other than those easily correctable issues, its an excellent book for what it is.

This book is good, BUT having recently purchased it from Amazon for my impending Chinese studies, I was really annoyed to see that a better grammar book by the same author and publisher - A COMPREHENSIVE Grammar is already available. Note the date of my review here and especially the year. As of this time, Amazon states that the Comprehensive Grammar is "Not yet released". If it is not yet released, then how could I have browed through a copy at a book store in Japan only last Saturday? It is also available through Amazon UK with a long wait. Admittedly, I checked the date of publishing in the Comprehensive Grammar and it said "First Published 2004"! I am in a time-warp or something? What is Routledge playing at? The Comrehensive Grammar is considerably more substantial than this work so I recommend that you resist the temptation to buy and put the money towards the Chinese: A Comprehensive Grammar - the book that is "not yet published", requires a 4 to 6 week wait if you order through AmazonUK, but is already sitting on a bookshelf in Maruzen in Nagoya just waiting to be snapped up!

This book seems to be targeted between the basic and intermediate grammars and the comprehensive grammar.

I really wouldn't recommend it on the basis of the lack of characters. Nor would I recommend studying spoken Chinese without simultaneously studying the characters. As students of Chinese we should be aiming to be able to function *without* the pinyin.

That's not to say that the comprehensive grammar is perfect - I've got a short errata in the reviews of that book. But it really has all the information you need. The benefit of the basic and intermediate grammars is that they have exercises (complete with answer keys), whereas the comprehensive grammar does not.
UPDATE: A new edition actually includes the characters. Updates like this can be annoying for those who buy just before the new one comes out. I got in a bit too early with my Fast Finder from Tuttle Publishers. A terrible mistake on the thumbnail index was fixed (which caused me to cut off one of the tabs) and an index was added at the back of the book. NOT an encouragement to go to Tuttle for language learning material. Routledge, on the other hand, does publish books with some mistakes (see my review of Chinese: A Comprehensive Grammar) but not as bad as that mentioned.

I ordered the 2nd edition which has characters. After receiving it the cover says 2nd edition and says revised to include characters, but the contents are the first edition. Obviously I will return it.

I have the Kindle version of the 2nd edition but the characters are so blurred they forced me to by the book.