Reading & Writing Chinese Traditional Character Edition

List Price: $24.95 Discount Price: $12.39

Customer Reviews:

A comprehensive and detailed introduction to Chinese [Posted on 2008-03-09]
A comprehensive and detailed introduction to the tecniques of writing and readinig chinese. Cards are quite complete and easy-to-read.Radicals are listed both as traditional and modern, but the authors lack of being clear in distinguishing how to use the two.A possible improvement could be to propone the "remaining Characters" (1020-2000) as well as the basic ones.

Questionable value [Posted on 2008-04-11]
I relied upon this book a great deal when I first started studying Chinese characters, but looking back a year or so later there are two things which I find limit it's value:

1) The book only occasionally warns you when the character you're learning is no longer in use. Many extremely common characters are composed of other characters which are rarely if ever seen independently; while it may be useful to know the component characters for memorization purposes, it's also a bit frustrating to find out that the character you saw labelled in this book as meaning, say, 'straightforward' fell out of use a few centuries back.

2) I encountered at least one situation in which the simplified character was put in this book rather than the traditional, with no acknowledgement of that fact. In other cases, the index was mislabelled. In other words, the book suffers a bit from sloppy editing.

Instead of this book, try Chinese Characters: A Genealogy and Dictionary, where out-of-date characters are clearly labelled as such.

Excellent study tool [Posted on 2008-06-10]
Favorite features:
- Shows "most likely" characters first so you learn what you need early on rather than esoteric ones you don't

- Shows simplified characters as well as traditional. It's not as hard or important to learn the radicals (and butchered etymology) for simplified characters as it is for traditional, so including smaller simplified characters where appropriate offers the best of both worlds. Better than buying the Simplified version w/tiny traditional characters & less explanation. If you know stroke order for traditional, you can figure out simplified - not as easy the other way around.

- Explains constituent parts/radicals just prior to more complex characters so you see how they're built.

- Includes most common definitions & multiple pronunciations, plus helpful examples that tie to previous entries for reinforced learning.

- It's $5-$10 cheaper here on Amazon than at local bookstores (if they even have it).

Problem areas:
- I have found some index errors & incorrect references between character entries, probably left over from the previous edition. They're minimal though.
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I've essentially been going through the book & copying down each entry for practice. I learned many of the characters through years of studying Japanese, but I've already learned more about the structure & logic behind the radicals, sound-loans, etc than I did w/Japanese.

This is a great companion study guide to actual "reading" material and spoken language practice that reinforce each other. No single book will teach you a language by itself. Combine w/ChinesePod (awesome!), PlecoDict software or formal classes.

Errors everywhere [Posted on 2008-06-25]
The majority of this book is a list of common characters and the elements that compose them. They may provide you with some compounds along with some characters, but there is no reading material.

Well, that's fine. One could use this book to learn characters. The reason for my 3 stars is that this book is filled with errors!

For example, they call this the Traditional Character Edition, but in at least one instance, , they give you the Simplified character and call it Traditional.

In at least one instance, it is incorrect etymologically. They call the top of "earth," but it really is "stop" (), a phonetic element, which has morphed into something that looks like "earth." Then they say "There is no satisfactory explanation" for this "earth."

Most of all, many of their stroke orders are wrong. Since this is the Traditional Character Edition, they should have followed the ROC's standards for stroke order (which happens to be the same as that of Imperial China). In many cases they merge the two sides of the grass () radical, resulting in a wrong stroke count (which will give you a hell of a time when you have to look something up in the dictionary). They fail to differentiate between the grass radical and the horns () radical. Also, the halberd () radical and everything that contains it follow the PRC standard, that is the upper right dot is written last to accommodate for horizontal writing. There are also many other errors.

In summary, it doesn't give you much help reading Chinese, it's unreliable in giving you the Traditional form of a character, it's unreliable in providing the correct etymology, and it's unreliable providing the right stroke order.

A valuable reference dictionary [Posted on 2008-07-18]
Tuttle continues to provide thorough and easy-to-use reference materials that are useful for beginning learners of written Chinese. While online and electronic resources may be easier to search and use, McNaughton's Reading and Writing Chinese remains the authoritative reference book for learners of Chinese characters.

Nathan Dummitt
author of Chinese Through Tone & Color

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