Customer Reviews

The Oxford Chinese Minidictionary

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I purchased this dictionary prior to a two-week stay in Taiwan. I used it 10 to 30 times a day in a wide variety of situations - mostly to look up vocabulary words in the English-Chinese section, but also on several occasions to decipher what people were saying to me in the Chinese-English section. The pinyin is clear and the examples were great.

As one of the reviewers above noted, some of the words I looked up were absent, but this only happened a few times and in most cases I was able to find a suitable synonym. I spent over an hour comparing dictionaries in the bookstore, and found this to be true of ALL of the pocket dictionaries I looked at.

On several occastions people I was speaking with were so impressed with my ability to 'unstick' conversations (and look up words alphabetically by pinyin) with this dictionarry that they would invariably ask to take a look at it and spend some time browsing and discussing it themselves.

It is also the only one of the pocket dictionaries which I was able to actually get into my pocket, or hold unobtrusively in one hand while I walked around the city.

The dictionary also includes a simple character/radical lookup chart, which I was actually able to use to look up some written characters I encountered (though this can take several minutes per character).

The dictionary is intentionally non-symmetrical; the Chinese-English side contains words and concepts you are likely to encounter, and the English-Chinese side contains words and concepts you are likely to want to express. For example, whereas the Chinese side has more words to express things like politeness and family relationships, the English side has more words for more Western things like skydiving and mowing the lawn.

This might not be the right dictionary for someone translating a Chinese newspaper, but for a 1st-year Mandarin student trying to survive in Taiwan this dictionary was invaluable.

This dictionary has its niche ... and it fits me perfectly. I've worked in China for the past two and a half years and this dictionary has been my constant companion. I use it for daily activities (store, post office, bike repair) and it has never let me down. It is also far more compact than any of the other dictionaries belonging to my friends.

The reason I gave this dictionary 5 stars is because it possesses something which no other dictionary has (even others in the Oxford series) : whole phrases that are written in english, pinyin, and characters. When you look up an English word in most other pocket dictionaries they may provide you with a one word chinese equivalent in characters and pinyin. Some of the better ones will even give you an example phrases which shows how the word is used correctly. But here's the problem ... that example phrase is almost always given in Chinese characters. This dictionary gives you an example phrase in pinyin and characters!

Of course this is not the dictionary for you if you want to translate an official paper or engage in advanced chinese studies, but if you are going to live in-country and begin picking up the language on your own then this dictionary is an invaluable resource because it provides you with beautiful examples of word-usage without requiring you to read 100's of characters. It's like a mini-textbook. Nothing else touches it.

As a testament to how helpful this mini-dictionary really is: after seeing how amazing my dictionary was, three separate co-workers of mine gave up using their previous dictionaries and ordered their own copies of the Oxford Chinese mini-dictionary.

This little dictionary has many everyday words in it. I have a problem finding words in the Chinese-English section, because the words are listed in some strange manner that relates to the Chinese characters. These are incomprehensible to a beginner and the same pinyin word with the same tones sometimes appears in more than one place. I have also given up trying to find a word on more than one occasion, only to find it later. I think this is a serious shortcoming. The beginner, like me, who really needs this dictionary will usually be stuck on pinyin and it's usefulness is compromised by this technicality.

I'm specifically describing this older edition, which I found at a clearance sale -- I don't know if the newer edition retains the best features of this little dictionary.

I bought this after becoming unhappy with my Oxford "Pocket" Chinese-English dictionary. This mini dictionary is, I think, a better choice for beginners. It focuses on basic vocabulary, and provide realistically common sample sentences in pinyin. "Measure" words are given for all nouns, so you can be sure of using them correctly. The book truly fits in a pocket, so it's easy to carry around.

This dictionary is clearly aimed at English speakers, as opposed to being aimed at speakers of both languages.

My only complaint is that the Chinese characters are printed in fairly small type, and in a rather plain typeface, making it harder (for me at least) to recognize/memorize them.

BEWARE! This dictionary looks good. It is compact and neatly presented. The English-Chinese section includes some essentials not always found in other dictionaries: (1) it gives Chinese words in Chinese characters and in Pinyin complete with tones; and (2) it distinguishes, in English, between different senses of English words.

But the dictionary is a disgrace, totally unprofessional and nearly useless.

I took a leading article in the Melbourne Age newspaper - the kind of article in straightforward English, without fancy words, that I would give to a mid-level student of English. Its short first paragraph contained the following words, not one of which is in the English-Chinese section of the dictionary: security, endure, terrorism, establish, prompt, territory, constant, covert, action, suggest, seizure, cargo, weapon, numerous, revive, struggle, invasion, negotiate, settlement, image, cling, and detriment. In the same paragraph, common usages not in the dictionary included bound for, and along with. The dictionary does not contain grain, radical, philosophy, biography, motive, lung, darling or despair.

Words that DO appear include: decaffeinated, evacuate, slot machine, beet root, hockey, showjumping, kangaroo, eggcup, hostage, hoover, and coconut.

If looking for words reminds you of children looking for "naughty" words in a dictionary at school, there is no need to bother; this book will not help you to talk about penises, vaginas, urine, nipples or puberty, let alone anything more adventurous.

Many words specifically important in China are missing, at least from the English-Chinese section, including: dynasty, pagoda, province, prefecture, county - even (unbelievably) communist and Marxist.

Even some words in the Chinese-English section fail to appear in the English-Chinese section, including: dynasty, province, county and pagoda.

In these days when computers are obtainable in Djibouti, let alone Great Clarendon Street Oxford, it is difficult to understand how a dictionary could get words out of alphabetical order; but obtain comes before observe.

I liked this "big-little" dictionary well enough to want a bigger version of it and tried to find it at Amazon.com. I may not have used the correct search technique, because its bigger brother book did not seem to be there for me to buy. The review by Jeffrey Chapman expressed my own feelings and frustations very well. This is a very good dictionary for serious beginners like me that appreciate the integrated blend of Pinyin romanization for the sounds of Mandarin with the real Chinese characters there to be seen and with English words and helpful examples of expressions and sentences.
A "Big-little" book is a special kind of book I remember as a child. And this memory hints at my age. A "big-little" book was made for kids and had print size consistent with book size (and shape); but the "Oxford Chinese Minidictionary" tried to put adult-size content into child-sized volume!