Product Description

Now readers can by-pass the complex Pinyin system in favor of user-friendly words and sentences provided in straightforward phonetic English. Packed with humorous slang and favorite Chinese idioms, only SPEAK E-Z CHINESE provides the means to communicate in fresh, contemporary Mandarin at only a glance. Free audio companion offered online at www.CathayCafe.com.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #61484 in Books
• Published on: 2006-07-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 304 pages

Review
Authors Timothy Green and Zhao Fang worked for two years to create a language book that made learning Mandarin easy and fun. It also had to contain words and phrases that travellers would use. The pair have a sense of humor as the book contains off-colour or potentially offensive phrases that, let's be honest, you might have to use in China. The book is timely. -- Calgary Herald

Concerned about language barriers? Worry no more! SPEAK E-Z CHINESE In Phonetic English (cathaycafe.com) by Zhao Fang and Tim Green is sure to turn a potentially frustrating experience into an enjoyable journey. -- DreamScapes Travel & Lifestyle Magazine

If you have never been to Mainland China, please remember this is not Hong Kong SAR, while 80% of Hong Kong speaks English; crossing the border results in only 20% of the population speaking it. Please bring a Mandarin Phrase Book with you. If you want the best one we have come across, then we recommend Speak E-Z Chinese. -- New Step International

The revolutionary book, Speak E-Z Chinese, definitely does its job of teaching a tough language in a fun and realistic manner. Within about 30 minutes of reading you can learn all the basics to hit the ground running in China. If your goal is to get up to speed on basic Chinese as fast as possible, Speak E-Z Chinese is perfect. -- Tango Diva Reviews

This amazing and delightful book serves up a generous amount of helpful travel information, as well as a revolutionary technique for learning the Chinese language easily in phonetic English. -- Travelvideo.TV

From the Publisher
Speak E-Z Chinese In Phonetic English offers a revolutionary new approach to learning the Chinese language. You will be speaking Mandarin in only minutes when you by-pass the complex Chinese Pinyin system with user-friendly words, phrases, and sentences provided in straightforward English phonics. This quick and easy pocket guide is an effective, fun, and essential resource for all travelers to China.In addition, you'll find helpful travel and culture information, as well as many quick tips on learning Mandarin.

Customer Reviews

Fantastic super-handy reference
I have bought a few books and an audio course in order to learn some Chinese for fun and also because I wanted to communicate better while visiting China. If I had my pick of just one resource, this awesome, efficient little reference would be it. The best part about it is the pronunciation key for us Westerners to pronounce pinyin, it helps enormously. The book starts with the pronunciation guide and the four tones, then moves on to the essential phrases in every contexts, such as transportation, currency, time and calendar, and restaurants. It teaches both words and short phrases and sentences that introduce you to sentence construction. At the end there's a 130-page dictionary that is surprisingly complete, and includes a pronunciation key for every word. Most of the times I want to know how to say something out of the blue, it's there.

As an added bonus, there's a *lot* of interesting things here that you are unlikely to learn from any other source. I am not sure why they are there but there they are, some are pretty funny. If you want to tell someone she's cute or sexy or that you love her, if you want to curse, call somebody an idiot or crazy or odd, how to call BS, how to say Chicago or California or Spain, how to say general or female/male body parts, how to say football or basketball, how to say honey (both as the sweet liquid and as a term of endearment), how to say "I'm stuffed", how to say so-so, and a bunch of other things, look no further: it's all here.

You can also download an audio version of the book for free from their website, I have not tried it yet but I definitely will. I took this book everywhere I went to in China. Highly recommended.

This is the very best Chinese phrasebook!
I've found this book to be extremely helpful in being able to grab a word or phrase at a glance and then pronounce it accurately. Designed for the beginner, SPEAK E-Z lives up to its word on making the learning process enjoyable and easy. I have three other Mandarin language books and they remain on the shelf. Thanks to its simplicity in usage and its fun bits of humor, SPEAK E-Z CHINESE is the only phrasebook the traveler in China needs.

You can't learn speaking without learning how to make sounds!
This is horrendous! The circumvention of learning the proper pronounciation of Chinese phonemes and tones is doing the reader no good at all. Imagine a language which consists of only tongue-clicking sounds, grunts and hand claps (if such a language existed.) Now imagine that you speak only this language, and someone told you: "I can teach you English using your own phonetic system." This would certainly result in communicational disaster, were you to find yourself in an English speaking area.

Chinese phonetics is difficult for most non-natives. There's no escaping it. If you interchange you pinyin-letters x and sh, your "I love Shanghai" (w ài shànghi) might be interpreted as "I love looking like the sea" (w ài xiàng hi). If you don't learn the tones correctly, there is no difference between the words "to buy" (mi) and "to sell" (mài). There certainly are important semantic differences conveyed by the small nuances in sounds and tones. If you really want to learn to make yourself understood in China, and not learn how to sound like a garbled radio, buy a book that starts out with lots of pinyin and sound/tone practice.