Most Helpful Customer Reviews
|
|
28 of 30 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Very un-intuitive phonetic system used in this book, March 19, 2005
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!
|
|
|
19 of 20 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Surprisingly poor, March 6, 2006
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.
|
|
|
21 of 23 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
A step backwards from the previous edition, April 4, 2005
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.
|
|
|
Most Recent Customer Reviews
|
by Damian Harper
by Chiu-yee Cheung
by Damian Harper
by Yoshi Abe
by Damien Harper
See all Editorial Reviews
