Product Description

Learn the 101 critical words and phrases in Mandarin Chinese to travel safely and have fun abroad. Whether doing business in Beijing or walking the Great Wall, Mandarin Chinese 101 will teach you words and phrases for Greetings, Dining, Travel, and Emergency.

We use only native Chinese speakers so your pronunciation will be clear and accurate. There are 3 different levels so you can start with the easiest and slowest way. As you learn more and more, you can advance levels and learn more. The Travel Linguist series is a great way to start learning Mandarin Chinese today.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #37302 in DVD
• Released on: 2005-08-01
• Formats: Color, NTSC
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 80 minutes

Lonely Planet (Thorn Tree Forum) 2005
"I found the Travel Linguist DVDs a new and simple way to learn basic words in a foreign language."

From the Actor
I love to travel and I love to learn new languages. I developed The Travel Linguist series to make it easy for you to get started using your new language right away. There are no boring rules on grammar. You won't learn words or phrases that you'll never use. From the minute you step off the plane, boat, or bus, you'll start using your new language right away.

About the Actor
Joe Mefford is The Travel Linguist. Joe has lived, worked, and traveled in over 50 countries over the past 20 years. He always learns 101 words or so to travel comfortably whether on the Champs Elysees or in the forests of the Philippines.

Customer Reviews

Excellent course supplement or travel prep aid
I'm taking a beginning conversational Chinese class at a community college. This DVD covers much of the same material, and is an excellent supplement to the course. While studying during the week between classes, it's easy to forget the precise pronumciation of new words -- you can end up practicing the wrong pronunciation all week!

As with any foreign language, it would be quite challenging to start out learning it by yourself, using a DVD like this without taking a class or having a tutor or mentor of some kind. But as a supplement to a formal course, this DVD is invaluable.

Of course, if you're going to China and don't have a semester to study the language, you'll be a lot better off having studied from this DVD.

What I particularly like about this DVD is that it has video. You can see the speakers' faces quite cleearly. And there's more than one speaker repeating the same word, so you can really get it. This is so much more helpful than just an audio version.

In my opinion, this is a quality product, and a bargain to boot.

Mandarin Chinese 101
This dvd is great! Not only do the two instructors speak the words/sentences both slowly then normally, but the anglicized words are shown on the screen. The sentences are very basic and should be helpful for a first-time visit to the People's Republic of China. Seeing and hearing a dvd is much, much better than just listening to a cd while reading a book.

good practice for some essential words & phrases
This DVD would be better if it included a brief discussion of the four tones of Mandarin Chinese. At the very least, the pinyin spellings ought to be marked to indicate which tone is used. Even the phrase list included with the DVD lacks the tone symbols. Considering their importance, it would have required minimal extra effort to include them.

In any case, each phrase in English has two Chinese translations: one in characters and the other in pinyin (without tones). This is a good product for learning some basic words & phrases in a short amount of time.