Product Description

This revolutionary new dictionary is designed to give you a comprehensive introduction to Chinese in a completely new way. It covers all the vocabulary learners will need in their first years of study and gives unique guidance to the grammar and usage of the language.
Created specifically for beginners, this dictionary features color headwords and translations; no confusing abbreviations; and warning symbols show potential problem areas. It includes thousands of example phrases drawn from real-life situations and full romanization of the Chinese text with Chinese script following in simplified characters. It also offers a guide on how to write Chinese characters and provides full guidance on the pronunciation of Mandarin Chinese. Word patterns and constructions from language areas such as dates and telling time are grouped together to show similarities and differences.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #329636 in Books
• Published on: 2000-12-15
• Original language: German, Chinese
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 480 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780198602583
• Condition: USED - GOOD
• Notes:
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

Customer Reviews

Wish I Had It a Year Ago
I've just completed my first two semesters studying Mandarin and they would have been a lot easier if I had had this dictionary from the beginning. Everyone says how easy Mandarin grammar is and that may be true relative to other languages (and relative to learning Chinese characters!), but you still need to learn quite a bit of Mandarin grammar before you can start formulating sentences. I always felt very uncomfortable doing my homework (translation from English to Chinese) because I didn't know whether I was using the grammar properly or not and had no way of checking. I was worried about accidentally getting into bad grammatical habits without even knowing it, because my textbook (Integrated Chinese) has really very little usage information and neither did the dictionaries I had on hand.

Once I got "The Starter Oxford Dictionary," however, homework became so much easier and I no longer feel insecure about sentence formulation. The emphasis in this dictionary is on usage, so instead of having tons and tons of words (which you can get from a regular dictionary), it has a fewer number of words with their usages very clearly explained and illustrated. For example: the entry for the English word "can": "Oxford Starter" divides "can" into three subcategories: "to have the possibility" (translated as neng); "to know how to" (hui); "to be allowed to" (keyi). The "neng" entry then gives two illustrative sentences "Can he come?/Ta neng lia ma?" and "Where can I buy stamps?/Wo zai nar neng maidao youpiao?" The "hui" subcategory has three such illustrative sentences and the "keyi" has four. There are also two warnings on translating "can," one for "hui" and one for "keyi": "Note that when talking about the ability to speak a language, whether or not "can" is used in English, "hui" is required in Chinese" and "Note that to negate, you have to use "bu neng" rather than "bu keyi."

Odds are, if you're studying Chinese, you're a bibiophile, too, so probably you don't need a lot of convincing to buy yet another Chinese dictionary. But in praise of this work I have to say that, if I could have only one book to help me learn elementary Mandarin, this would be it.

(Note: "The Oxford Started Chinese" does use only simplified characters. However, I am learning with traditional and found it wasn't that difficult to figure out what the traditional equivalents were, especially since the entries are organized by pinyin. It would be nice to have a traditional edition but I still wholeheartedly recommend the simplified.)

Good Start Starter
This is a handy companion for the beginning of Chinese study. It includes common words, has large type (very important to me), and lots of cross references and "topical" digressions (languages, dates, special words, etc. referenced with citations). It also has a nice measure word section (some are included with nouns, but not always). It also contains both American and British options in word uses.

What I don't like. It ONLY has simplified characters (I would like the traditional ones included also with a primary citation). Harbaugh's book focuses on traditional ones but has both; the bigger Oxford (Manser, 2nd Ed.) has both. It does not have a pronunciation guide which, as a beginner, would be helpful to remind us (constrain us?). Some common words are not in there (who's judgement call?). And, some examples would be helpful where the primary citation includes precedent words. For example, look up "qi" and be able to find "tianqi".

On balance: good overwhelm the bad. After all, it's only about $12-15. As other reviewers have commented, "You need several dictionaries anyway." Do I use it all the time. Absolutely. It's also more fun than the bigger Oxford (Manser). But if Oxford could see clear to include "my" downsides, I'd be much happier.

Oxford finally gets it right!
This is the best Chinese/English dictionary I've found so far. It's a beginner's dictionary, but hopefully Oxford University Press will learn from this one and apply the same quality standards to their more extensive, but miserably formatted and somewhat inaccurate "Concise English-Chinese Chinese-English Dictionary". This dictionary is very easy to read. The lookup words are in large, blue print. Multiple definitions are bulleted and numerically categorized by noun, adverb, etc. Word definitions also contain the Chinese characters and examples of usage. There are radical and character indices, rules for writing characters, and a section on measure words. The English to Chinese section also contains the measure words in the definitions, as well as British and U.S. English spellings if there is a difference. There are also many language usage tips throughout the dictionary.