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Title: Langenscheidt's Pocket Dictionary Chinese/English English/Chinese by Langenscheidt Staff, Langenscheidt Publishers, Langenscheidt Editorial ISBN: 1-58573-057-2 Publisher: Langenscheidt Publishing Group Pub. Date: 15 February, 2001 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.5 (6 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: The Perfect Dictionary For China
Comment: I took a quick course in conversational Chinese. Being a bad student, all I really learned was basic phrases and how to read pinyin. Suddenly I was offered a chance to go to Shanghai for two months to stay with a friend of my Chinese teacher. His friend ran a middle school and wanted an American to talk with the students. I agreed, but between the time I agreed and when I arrived in Shanghai, the agreement changed from talking with the students to teaching four hours of classes a day! Having very bad Chinese skills (almost none), this was a little daunting. I somehow managed to get through teaching 13 year-old Chinese students with only a few years of English training, even while I knew almost no Chinese. There is one main reason I was able to do this: Langenscheidt's Pocket Chinese Dictionary. This book saved me every day, and that is no exaggeration.
The book gives single words, but it also gives common phrases in which that word is used. The radical index is pretty good, though like others have said, it leaves some characters out. Most of the ones I couldn't find were (I discovered) local characters used mostly in the Shanghai area. When I was standing around trying to read signs, I often would consult this book. Since I had a conversation class, I didn't know how to read anything when I arrived. Once I was able to learn how to pick out a radical, though, I was usually able to find out what the word was just by using this dictionary. During class, when I had written an English word on the board and wanted to write the Chinese word, all I had to do was look up the English word in here. You not only will find the Chinese pinyin next to it, but also the character(s) for writing it. When I wanted to find something, I could do the same thing. Even if I didn't say the pinyin right, I could point to the characters in the book, and almost always people would immediately know what it was and would help me get it.
Like others have said, the cover is rubbery, and stands up well to wear and tear. As I accidentally found out, this also means you can cover it with marker writings, or spill coffee and tea on the cover, yet it will wipe away clean. In the back of the book is a quick number section for dealing with all numbers, big and small. It also shows you the characters for writing numbers on checks, which are different than the characters for the regular use of numbers. The book also has the Chinese way of saying a lot of useful in-country phrases, like Communist Party, CCTV, People's Republic of China, and other things like that. It has slang and formal words in it, and covers thousands of words. I cannot believe how many things the dictionary has. I was teaching 13 year-olds, and like most kids that age, they wanted to know how to say some rather weird phrases in English. When they would write the Chinese, I could use the radical chart and look it up. Or, if they spoke it, I could find the pinyin using the Chinese side of the dictionary. I still cannot believe how many seemingly random words were in there. I'd say I could find any word (and I mean ANY word) about 95% of the time (one notable lack I found one day: "caravan" - can't have them all I guess). It is amazing.
I have put this book to the test. The sides of the pages are covered in dirt. The blue L on the front is slowly starting to wear off (not surprising after all I put it through). Physically, as well as language-wise, this book is great. I used it every day, flipping through and referencing it nearly non-stop. It has pulled me through every time. I've never really used another dictionary much, but I've never really had to. This one is great. If you are going to China and need a quick, handy, durable, and travel-friendly dictionary, this is what you want. Believe me, after two intense months of being one of the few English-speakers in a suburb of Shanghai, I know for a fact, this dictionary is good. Get it. You won't be disappointed.
Rating: 5
Summary: OUTRAGEOUSLY GOOD
Comment: I found this dictionary very help for beginning Mandarin. I thought I once bought a better dictionary but they are almost exactly the same. I reccomend this dictionary to anyone.
Rating: 4
Summary: Probably The Best, Still Not Ideal.
Comment: I've been studying Chinese in Suzhou (Jiangsu State) for about 4 months now, and of all the dictionaries I've bought this one has the most China-street-grime on it's pages. It is my everyday dictionary, I use it all the time. It's layout is nice and clean, no eye straining here, the character lookup uses a nice big font. I LOVE the tough rubber cover, it's nice and rugged.
Wishlist:
1: A Traditional character lookup.
2: A Stroke order index for characters with obscure radicals (the ABC Dictionary has this). Many of the very most common characters have very weird radicals.
3: Markings for the different types of Chinese parts of speech, as a previous reviewer also noted, the parts of speech in Chinese are a little different. For example: "tiaowu" means "to dance", but is it's "le" form "tiaowule" or "tiaolewu"? Help us out here folks, just mark it as a splittable verb.
4: Update the vocab. When you wanna say "cell phone" you say "shouji", but that's not the word they give, and in fact if you go to lookup "shouji" it's not there. All in all though this book has the most up to date lexicon of any of the dictionaries that I've seen. And like a previous reviewer said, it has all the words that other prudist editors leave out.
5: More usage notes on the grammer type words, less on the nouns, I don't need usage notes for "banana" or whatever, but i would really like it if they told me how to use "chule" (kinda like "unless" but not exactly)
6:Mark which single character entires can be used alone and which must be used in combo with other characters. But for Pete's sake DON'T get rid of the single character entries, they are invaluble for learning Chinese, even if you can't use them on their own. More single character entries would be better.
6:Do a little more research on the frequency of words, I always end up sounding [bad] cause I use some stodgy word, while the dictionary doesn't even HAVE the common way to say it.
7:Mark written-vs-spoken words. Chinese has a big split in the written and spoken languages.
Hmm, everyday I think of other ways to improve this dictionary, but the fact that I use it everyday tells you something, the other dictionaries sit at home on my shelf.
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Title: Concise English-Chinese Chinese-English Dictionary by Martin H. Manser, Oxford ISBN: 0195911512 Publisher: Oxford Press Pub. Date: July, 1999 List Price(USD): $15.95 |
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Title: Reading and Writing Chinese: A Guide to the Chinese Writing System by William McNaughton, Li Ying ISBN: 0804832064 Publisher: Charles E Tuttle Co Pub. Date: September, 1999 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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Title: The Starter Oxford Chinese Dictionary by Boping Yuan, Sally Church ISBN: 0198602588 Publisher: Oxford Press Pub. Date: 15 December, 2000 List Price(USD): $15.95 |
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Title: Chinese in 10 Minutes a Day by Kristine K. Kershul ISBN: 0944502105 Publisher: Bilingual Books Pub. Date: January, 2002 List Price(USD): $17.95 |
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Title: Chinese Characters: A Genealogy and Dictionary by Rick Harbaugh ISBN: 0966075005 Publisher: Zhongwen.com Pub. Date: 01 August, 1998 List Price(USD): $18.95 |
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