Product Description

A convenient reference for writers, students, and businesspeople;anyone who needs the right word at the right time. Poetry, prose, and a nine-letter pizza toping . . . When you're looking for a word, pull it out of one of our Pockets.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #158572 in Books
• Published on: 2001-02-15
• Original language: English, Chinese
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Turtleback
• 504 pages

About the Author
Since 2000. Hammond, American Map, Langenscheidt Dictionaries, Insight Travel Guides, Delorme – the famous names in the Langenscheidt family. These represent the most authoritative, up-to-date, and extensive travel and reference products available. In January 2003, the renowned Berlitz Publishing became part of the Langenscheidt Group. The Langenscheidt Publishing Group, the premier group of map and travel companies, offers over 4,000 North American and international street maps, road maps, atlases, language-learning, bilingual dictionaries, and travel-related products covering countries, cities, and languages in every continent.

Customer Reviews

Langenscheidt's Pocket Dictionary Chinese/English English/Chinese
Excellent book for those who know very little Chinese. I use it daily for reference. I highly recommend this book for those who travel too China or know someone Chinese and just need to communicate with them.

Warning! Non-standard headword order
The format, cover, pages, durability and typography are of excellent Langescheidt standards. BUT... be aware that, unlike almost every other Chinese-English pinyin dictionary, the entries are listed in strict alphabetic pinyin order, NOT by pinyin components or radicals. Thus related words are widely-spread. For example, with mai3 "buy" and mai4 "sell", these are listed first in order, but then we get mai1bo2 "pulse", mai4bu4 "stride" etc. until we find mai3dan1 "pay the bill". In other dictionaries, we first identify the first pinyin character, say mai3 "buy", and then all its compounds are listed. The slight disadvantage of that system is that one might have to look under a few head characters, but the great advantage is in understanding related words.

Even worse is that ma3 "horse" comes before the various mai's, but ma3jiu4 "stable" (with first character "horse") comes *after* all of the words beginning with the various mai's. So ma3 + a...h is *before* mai but ma3 + j ... z is *after*! This is contrary to the universal practice of other dictionaries, and violates the principles of pinyin (it is romanization, not spelling as such).

It's too bad I can't find any other dictionary of this size and durability with correct word ordering.

Excellent beginners pocket dictionary
This is a superb, durable, and comprehensive pocket dictionary that is a great tool for beginners. I use it mostly for its English-Chinese translation which is how most newbies will be using it. Many options are given with each word so you can select the correct context. The great part is several common phrases that use the word you are referencing are also listed. 40,000 entires is plenty enough for me and I haven't gone looking for a word that I wasn't able to find yet. Did someone mention this book is durable? I have really given mine a beating and it is still in perfect condition.