45 of 47 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Art of Chinese Calligraphy: Learning Language with the Eyes, July 8, 2008
This review is from: Learning Chinese The Easy Way: Read & Understand The Symbols of Chinese Culture (English and Mandarin Chinese Edition) (Paperback)
For most Westerners the mystery of the Orient has always been cloaked in the seemingly impenetrable complexity of languages based on characters. The frustration of wanting to learn one of the Eastern languages is usually heightened by the fact that a 'character' can mean a word or a concept and for the Western mind to step away from the building of words from a set of 26 alphabet letters requires releasing the security so ingrained in our 'inside the box, phonetic approach' to learning language.
Sam Y. Song's fine book LEARNING CHINESE THE EASY WAY changes this perception. Instead of devoting the mind to memorizing countless words, arranging them into nouns, verbs, adjectives, etc., Song shows us how the Chinese language is essentially a visual experience - a fascinating exploration of simplifying line drawings of visual things (man, water, eyes, and so forth) and thereby creating visual representations of words created from these reduced lines. Even in explaining the process, Song makes so accessible one of the major differences between, say, Chinese and English, is that need to scientifically dissect symbols relegated to vocabulary instead of merely using the eyes to visualize the objects around us to transmit visuals to the written word.
Case in point: 'look at; see; watch' is a character that is composed of a reduction of a sketch for an eye and a hand that when combined result in a symbol of 'a person watching something with his hand above his eye' or 'to look at, see, or watch. ' Sound simple? With Song's gift for line reduction moving into calligraphy it IS simple, and with the added 'word' for each symbol along side the completed visual, very soon sentences can be constructed or thoughts can be expressed.
From Song's user friendly teaching lessons comes this example of how he accomplishes his Mission: 'How to find a character to express "water" in Chinese?' (he then draws wavy lines, progresses them to the simplest form, compresses them logically) and Presto! we "reach the character \shui\ which means 'water' in Chinese'. Eastern wisdom seduces Western thought into understanding a new form of language. And with Sam Y. Song's technique, it seems that each of us can enter a mysterious world of Chinese symbols comfortably. This is a fine book that entertains as it teaches. Highly recommended. Grady Harp
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25 of 27 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Makes sense of incomprehensible characters!, August 5, 2008
This review is from: Learning Chinese The Easy Way: Read & Understand The Symbols of Chinese Culture (English and Mandarin Chinese Edition) (Paperback)
I travel frequently to China, and have often asked Chinese colleagues how on earth the characters that we see today have developed over time. Looking at it from a Chinese perspective, I don't imagine that our Arabic lettering makes any sense either, but Mr Song's clever little book has given me an interesting insight into the development of the written language China has used for centuries.
For those who are considering learning the language but are put off by the written aspects, this is indeed a valuable tool, and far less onerous than the more daunting texts that are out there today. Many people are keen to learn Chinese as this wonderful country continues with its global rise, and this is a wonderful gift for anyone who travels to, or is interested in China and its culture.
It is a little gem!
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21 of 23 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Beware - this is the same as "Adventures in Chinese" volumes 2 and 3, March 31, 2011
This review is from: Learning Chinese The Easy Way: Read & Understand The Symbols of Chinese Culture (English and Mandarin Chinese Edition) (Paperback)
I purchased vol. 1 and 2 of Adventures in Mandarin Chinese along with this book, thinking they were follow-on volumes of this book: "the first book of Chinese characters" - only to find that vol. 2 is exactly the same text of the story Two Men and The Bear. And when I checked the contents of vol. 3, I found that it's also the same story as in this book: The Wind and The Sun. So if you're going to buy this book then DON'T also buy vols. 2 and 3.
That out of the way, here is my initial review of the content itself:
Firstly, I was a little disappointed: based on all the five-star reviews, I was expecting something special. Interestingly, if you look at Erika's 100's of reviews, they're nearly all five stars also. So she's most likely a professional reviewer commissioned by the various publishers to improve the ratings of their books. As are probably the other reviewers here.
The print quality is actually quite cheap: rough and slightly yellowed paper, badly laid out with over-large text to pad out the book, yet very little white space to rest the eyes, and with underlying and grayed out boxes in an amateurish design. At first I thought it might have been a reprint of a book published in the 60's, but - no - it was published and printed in 2008.
So what about the content itself? Does it help to learn Chinese in a fun and effective way? Regardless of my disappointing first impression and the dubious marketing of this book, this is what ultimately matters!
Well, I'm not sure yet. I have to work through the book first and will update my review once I've done that.
But I'm not impressed. For the following reasons:
1. The advice on how to memorize the Chinese characters is simply "write each new character at least three times". There's nothing innovative about that.
2. The book covers both traditional AND simplified Chinese characters. Why? What's the point of learning both styles of characters as a total beginner? Choose one or the other, but not both. It's an unnecessary burden - and I'm sure even the Chinese don't learn both the traditional and simplified versions of each character.
3. The stories are actually quite boring and pointless: "Two people saw a bear. One person climbed into a tree immediately. The other person immediately and purposely fell over down upon the ground to play dead. The bear put its nose to his face and sniffed briefly. Then the bear went away. Coming down from the tree, the person asked What did the bear say to you? Said the other: The selfish person fled away fast. He is not a good friend."
What's useful about this story?
Well... the numbers "1" and "2" (which are obvious). And the words "saw", "person", "tree", "immediately", "other", "down on the ground", "dead", "nose", "face", "briefly", "then", "went away", "what did ... say to you", "fast", "not", "good friend".
So 20-odd words that are vaguely useful as a beginner.
Each character is introduced in the order as it appears in the story, which is helpful. And each character is described from an etymological point of view, showing how the original image become the stylized character it is today (both in traditional and simplified form)...
So far so good.
But, frankly, nothing much different from most other ordinary introductions to Chinese. And equally long-winded!
A much better buy is
Tuttle Learning Chinese Characters, Vol. 1: A Revolutionary New Way to Learn and Remember the 800 Most Basic Chinese Characters by Matthews & Matthews for under $20. Why spend roughly the same to learn only 40 (useful) words? Granted, it's fun to be able to read and understand a story. But then why not make it a story that's a bit more relevant. Something like:
"Two people, a man and a woman, met in a pub. The man ordered a beer. The woman ordered a glass of white wine. The man asked: What did you do today? The woman replied: I've been working since early this morning. I didn't sleep well last night. I am very tired. What about you? The man said: I'm going to work tonight. I've been sleeping all day. I have an idea. Let's share a room together, it's cheaper. We can share the same bed. You can sleep while I'm working, and then, when you go to work, I can sleep!" (c) 2011, G. Orman
I'd pay $10 to be able to read and understand a story like this, because it's much more relevant: many of the elements can also be used in an everday conversation. Wouldn't it be great to have more stories like this, building up a conversational vocabulary base in an entertaining way?
I originally gave this this book (and the others in the series) two stars because they are still kind of fun to work through and moderately useful. The extra (half) star is because of the audio downloads from discoverchinese.cn, a slow and a fast version of each story, and the Chinese text that can be clicked on for individual words and phrases. Nevertheless, this is also badly designed. In firefox, every time you click on a link, it opens another tab with an audio control bar, which you then have to click on again to play (so you can't also be reading while listening unless you flip back very quickly). In IE, media player loads up after about 2-3 seconds, so at least you have time to go back to the page and follow the text while listening. But you have to flip back to media player to repeat.
Overall, these books are quite slapdash... probably a quick `n dirty adaptation from a series of government-produced primary school readers for Chinese children.
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