Understanding Chinese Characters by Their Ancestral Forms [Paperback]

Gam Go (Author), Ping-Gam Go (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 1995

The reader will discover that it takes little effort and imagination to understand the most common and widely used characters. Ping-gam Go provides a full-color photo survey of San Francisco s Chinatown and a dictionary of 288 Chinese characters, each entry contains the Mandarin and Cantonese pronunciations, ancestral pictograph, traditional Chinese character and English definition. Dozens of practice exercises and flashcards are provided to assist in memorization of the meanings of the signs in Chinatown.

--This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Now in its fourth edition, Understanding Chinese Characters By Their Ancestral Forms by Ping-gam Go reveals the meaning of Chinese writing by providing and describing the historical pictograph for each Chinese character, thereby materially aiding the reader to identify, learn and memorize the most widely used Chinese characters with a minimum of effort. Enhanced with a full-color photo survey of business establishment signage in San Francisco's Chinatown, and a dictionary of 288 Chinese characters containing both Mandarin and Cantonese pronunciation), students and tourists are offered dozens of practice exercises to memorize the meanings of those Chinatown signs. There are even flashcards for 41 of the most prevalent characters found on a Chinese restaurant menu!. Compact and portably, with alphabetical and subject indexes to dictionary entries, Understanding Chinese Characters By Their Ancestral Forms is a welcome and "user friendly" resource for learning to decipher Chinese writing whether for simply fun or serious business. Also very highly recommended from Simplex Publications are two other Chinese language instructionals by Ping-gam Go: Read Chinese Today: A Walk Thro-ugh San Francisco's Chinatown, Understanding Chinese Characters By Their Ancestral Forms With Photographs And Map (0962311332, $6.95); What Character Is That?: An Easy-Access Dictionary Of 5,000 Chinese Characters, 2nd Edition (0962311359, $19.95). --Midwest Book Review

Chinese reading/writing can be an intimidating subject for new students, but what better way to start than understanding what all those signs in Chinatown mean? The author Ping-gam Go did a wonderful job with this book. He included color photographs of signs from Chinatown in San Francisco. This book teaches the reader to understand how to read traditional Chinese characters. Each word is described in context of its historical pictograph background, going back thousands of years in Chinese history. Many of the Chinese characters actually look like the thing they describe. With this knowledge, memorization of the characters was much easier for me. I found myself recognizing many words in Chinatown thereafter. This book is very thin (less than 100 pages) but it packs a wollop with the knowledge it conveys. There are several hundred characters defined/described in it, and if you can remember half of them, you're on your way to learning Chinese. It doesn't teach writing at all, but if you understand basic Chinese caligraphy, you can figure it out yourself. By itself, this book is insufficient to learn to read/write Chinese. It is a great companion book to a more in depth text on the subject. However, Ping-gam Go is quite successful with his goal. Even after reading a few pages, I was able to walk through Chinatown recognizing characters I've never known before, and it was like a whole new world opening up. Highly recommended! --J. Wong, Jackson Heights, NY, amazon.com

Ping-Gam creates a vivid survey of current Chinese writing visible in San Francisco's Chinatown, revealing the hidden art, myth, and culture within the characters of the written language through ancestral forms. [e-mail], Berkeley, CA, amazon.com --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

About the Author

Ping-gam Go, who descended from the Fukien province in China, was born in Java, Indonesia. He traveled abroad for his education, earning degrees in physics and mathematics from the University of Amsterdam and post-graduate degrees in geology from Imperial College of Science & Technology in London and Leyden University in Holland. Ping-gam Go worked for Elsevier Publishing Company in Amsterdam as a science editor on the English translations of all Nobel Prize lectures. The Nobel Foundation in Sweden recognized him for his work as editor and for his contributions to these translations. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Paperback
• Publisher: Simplex Pubn; 3rd Revised edition (November 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0962311340
• ISBN-13: 978-0962311345
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.3 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,982,344 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A fun way to learn characters, July 6, 2006

By 

A. S. Yamaki (Brooklyn, NY) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Understanding Chinese Characters by Their Ancestral Forms (Paperback)

I have been studying Mandarin for several years, and this was one of the very first books I purchased.

It was difficult for me to begin study of a character-based language because, unlike Spanish or French, Chinese characters lack correlation to the Roman-based alphabet, phonetics, and word construction. This book was wonderful in helping me learn Chinese characters because it made them relevant and interesting. Once I formed a good base, I found it easier and easier to learn more characters.

I would definitely recommend this book to anyone starting out with Chinese.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A welcome and "user friendly" resource for learning to decipher Chinese writing, July 3, 2005

By 

Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Understanding Chinese Characters by Their Ancestral Forms (Chinese and English Edition) (Paperback)

Now in its fourth edition, Understanding Chinese Characters By Their Ancestral Forms by Ping-gam Go reveals the meaning of Chinese writing by providing and describing the historical pictograph for each Chinese character, thereby materially aiding the reader to identify, learn and memorize the most widely used Chinese characters with a minimum of effort. Enhanced with a full-color photo survey of business establishment signage in San Francisco's Chinatown, and a dictionary of 288 Chinese characters containing both Mandarin and Cantonese pronunciation), students and tourists are offered dozens of practice exercises to memorize the meanings of those Chinatown signs. There are even flashcards for 41 of the most prevalent characters found on a Chinese restaurant menu!. Compact and portably, with alphabetical and subject indexes to dictionary entries, Understanding Chinese Characters By Their Ancestral Forms is a welcome and "user friendly" resource for learning to decipher Chinese writing whether for simply fun or serious business. Also very highly recommended from Simplex Publications are two other Chinese language instructionals by Ping-gam Go: Read Chinese Today: A Walk Thro-ugh San Francisco's Chinatown, Understanding Chinese Characters By Their Ancestral Forms With Photographs And Map (0962311332, $6.95); What Character Is That?: An Easy-Access Dictionary Of 5,000 Chinese Characters, 2nd Edition (0962311359, $19.95).

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Pretty Good, but could use some improvements, March 11, 2010

By 

Charlemange (USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Understanding Chinese Characters by Their Ancestral Forms (Chinese and English Edition) (Paperback)

This was a pretty fun book to read and learn Chinese hanzi. The book uses traditional characters only. It it helpful to learn common characters that you might see on buildings in Chinese American cities. The book could be improved by including the pinyin system and also providing the simplified versions of the characters. The end of the book has some pronunciations, but most of them are inaccurate.