Customer Reviews

Mandarin: Lonely Planet Phrasebook

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(10)
1 star:		(14)

 

 

Over the years I've been a strong advocate of the Lonely Planet series of books - they've usually been pitched at just the sort of level of travel that suits my budget and interests. This was the first phrase book I bought by them and found it to be very, very disappointing. Not only is their pronounciation system a waste of time learning, many of the translations were found to be incorrect by my chinese friends in terms of sentence structure and word order. A number of key phrases weren't provided and the "strokes" dictionary in the back is also a waste. Also many words used in the phrases were not the same as the ones provided in the dictionary. Basically a lack of consistency throughout...a very, very poor effort and a very disappointed customer. LP should offer a refund.

Please note that the product sold on this page is the 6th edition September 2006. This edition marks REINTRODUCTION OF PINYIN.
Best phrasebook on the market though not perfect. Issues with format, not really with content.
Front grammar section is useful, but compartmentalized format in relatively newer editions makes it harder to follow. Questionable advice claims no tones are more understandable than bad tones.
Very thorough coverage of situations, including those never encountered (e.g. drugs, expressing interest in indigenous issues). As a 5 years student of Mandarin, I find the phrases accurate if sometimes stilted, but colloquial expressions given are still current.
I only wish the color coded category tabs were more effectively used. It is hard to find phrases quickly, as it is hard to find specific situations within the five categories of tools, practical, social, food, safe travel, and dictionary.
Anyhow, I will take this book along on upcoming trip to Beijing. (Have studied mostly modern literature and newspaper in Chinese, still don't know word for can opener!)

I want to add my voice to the chorus who have bemoaned the move away from Pinyin in this edition. This system is anything but better. Because it's so un-intuitive, I found myself constantly having to refer to the table of sounds and spellings at the beginning the book to decipher the correct pronunciation of a word or phrase.

In some cases, the transcriptions are inconsistent in that they don't follow the system described at the front of the book. For example, the spelling sequence 'ow' occurs several times throughout the book but is not in the reference table. Presumably, it represents the sound 'ao' as heard in the English word "couch", but that's only a guess. It could just as easily refer to the diphthong 'ou' as heard in the English word "dough".

That said, a book like this is a useful one to have along when traveling in China. It contains a 40-page grammar section with lots of information about how Chinese works. In typical phrasebook fashion, it also contains several sections organized by subject where one can quickly locate specific words or phrases. It also contains a two-way dictionary, the Chinese-English section being ordered by number of strokes in the character so as to allow Chinese speakers to find English translations.

But do get the previous edition if you can get your hands on it!

I own the 4th edition of Lonely Planet Mandarin Phrasebook and think it is kinda useful. (Despite a large amount of typoes). So I was quite happy when I saw the new edition on sale and assumed that it would be an improved and corrected version. However, when I opened the book I could not believe my eyes. Instead of Pinyin the author uses some weird romanization system that is often totally inaccurate.

My advice is to get a copy of the 4th or wait for the 6th edition (which hopefully uses Pinyin again)

If you have no experience with pinyin, then this may well be a fine phrasebook. But if you have studied pinyin (or are planning to) this book will be hopelessly confusing.

What were they thinking of?

My 2 cents: like it or not, pinyin is the standard for transliterated Chinese. I recommend spending a little time to understand pinyin pronounciation and get a pinyin phrasebook. You'll be happier in the long run

This is a terrible book. The author has come up with his own pronunciation system that is only somewhat different than pinyin. So instead of having to learn the Chinese script, pinyin, and pronunciation and tones, you also need to create a key to translate between the LP system and pinyin. This takes a difficult task and makes it even more time consuming.

If I could talk to the people at LP I would suggest giving anyone who bought this disaster a free pdf version of the 4th edition (a guy can dream can't he). Get the "Rough Guide to Mandarin Chinese" which is going to updated in April 2006.

I will continue to use the fourth edition of this book because the fifth edition is three steps backward. It includes all the drawbacks of phrasebooks while compounding the problem with a Lonely Planet pronunciation schema. A major difficulty is that most Chinese do not speak Mandarin but a local dialect. Even in the large cities there are many who do not speak Mandarin and although you may be able to make yourself understood, you will not understand them!

This edition compounds this problem by basing the pronunciation schema on the Beijing dialect. Although theoretically speaking Mandarin is based on Beijing pronunciation, in actual practice they sound quite different. Add to this the fact that Chinese people are not expecting you to be mispronouncing Chinese with a Beijing accent and you have a recipe for disaster. I saw this first hand on the train last week. Some poor Canadian was trying to make himself understood. He had copied out sentences from this phrasebook and was trying to use them. Not only could he not be understood orally but the Chinese speakers had no idea what he had written down because they couldn't read it either. (Educated Chinese can read pinyin but not the Lonely Planet system.)

The only advance made is that you can look up characters by stroke count. However, this is a negligible benefit as tourists have no chance of figuring out stroke counts and stroke order.

Don't waste your money on this book; it will only make your journey to China more frustrating.

This review applies to the Lonely Planet Mandarin Phrasebook, 5th edition, by Garnaut (2004).

I am a beginning level Mandarin speaker who has just spent a month traveling in China, where I used this phrasebook.

As other reviewers have commented, the 5th edition abandoned pinyin for Garnaut's homegrown romanization. This is perhaps excusable and even helpful for some sounds, such as replacing "x" by "sh," "c" by "ts," and "q" by "ch." However, Garnault goes much further. He often replaces "a" by "u" (e.g., Shanghai becomes Shunghai) and he adds "r" in innumerable places. Thus "toilet," which is "ce suo" in pinyin, becomes "tser swor" in Garnaut's book. Garnault comments that these extra r's are common in the Beijing dialect, but I listened in on 100's of conversations in Beijing and I never heard them. In any case, they are confusing. Asking where the "tsir swore" is (or however a novice might pronounce "tser swor") won't get you to the bathroom, but "tsuh swo" (an approximation of "ce suo") works fine. I know from experience that saying Garnaut's "wor syen kun-kun" (page 79) in a shop will get only a blank look; what you want is "wo xiang kan-kan," which sounds *much* different. Most people would pronounce "wor" similarly to "wore," rather than "whoa," which is much closer, and so on.

After a few days of failures with Garnaut's pronunciations, I began asking Chinese friends and English speaking tour guides if certain phrases in Garnaut's book were correct. I often got answers like, "That would be confusing, say it this way" or "Maybe they say it that way in Guangdong, but that isn't Mandarin." I lost all faith in Garnaut's book within a week and began compiling my own notebook of needed phrases with the help of friends and tour guides.

In addition to the misleading pronunciations, the book is filled with errors, omissions, and useless phrases. Thus both "buy" (mai in pinyin, 3rd tone) and "sell" (mai, 4th tone), are given with the 4th tone in the book; that's one case where you had better get the tone right. Many tourists will want to buy jade, but the word for jade is not to be found in the book. "If you come to Scotland you can stay with me"(page 116) is probably the most useless phrase I've ever seen in a phrasebook, and "How can we support Falun Gong" (page 124) will probably get you a tour of the nearest Peoples' Security Bureau office and a quick deportation. What you really need is "GO AWAY!!" for use on the aggressive street vendors and beggars (try "zau kai" or the stronger "qu ni de", which you won't find in this book).

The one good thing about this book is the Mandarin-English dictionary, where you can look up a character by its stroke count. Unfortunately, the printing is so small that I have to carry a magnifiing glass to see the characters.

The best I can do is give this book one star of five, because it is better than nothing at all.

Is there anything better? Yes: the Lonely Planet 4th edition by Rudelson and Qin (2000). It uses pinyin, it's organized differently, it includes the phrases you actually need (even including a page of profanities), and the characters are big enough to see. I consider myself lucky to have found a copy in a hotel bookstore, but unfortunately on my last day in China. I give it four stars rather than five only because it lacks a character dictionary. I also recommend The Rough Guide Mandarin Chinese Dictionary Phrasebook (1997). This book gives you a quick look up of almost any word or phrase you need, with characters, pinin, and pronunciation help. The Rough Guide and the Lonely Planet 4th edition are exactly what most travelers will need.

If the editors at Lonely Planet have any sense at all, they will take the character dictionary from edition 5, add it to edition 4, and reissue the improved edition 4 as a new edition 6 ASAP.

Lonely Planet books usually deserve rave reviews. Their Mandarin Phrasebook, however, uses a system of pronunciation that is much more confusing than helpful. The tragedy is that Mandarin already has a very workable western-script pronunciation system called "pinyin." Pinyin doesn't take long to learn and is very standard in Mandarin Chinese dictionaries and textbooks. A traveler looking to buy a useful phrasebook will be much happier with a standard pinyin phrasebook. .

WARNING!!! DO NOT BUY THIS BOOK!!! I have been a long time user of the previous version of the Lonely Planet phrasebook. It helped me tremendously as I was learning Chinese and living in there at the same time. I was very excited to hear that there was a new version coming out, but then to my disbelief, Lonely Planet decided to invent their own phonetic spelling of chinese words. They are obviously disconnected from their customers. Until they realize that their most dedicated customers are those that are learning Chinese, and that Pinyin is the standard phonetic system for learning Chinese, they should discontinue publishing anything for the China region.