I Can Read That: A Traveler's Introduction to Chinese Characters

Rating:
Summary: Can be really helpful for travellers to China
Review: This book is intended for people traveling to China who want to master some basic characters so that they can find it easier to find their way around.
The book is very enjoyable to read and the characters presented are rather easy to learn. Beside each character and character combinations, the author has provided mnemonic devices to make it easier to remember the character.

At the end of the book the author has also provided a brief section with guidelines for writing Chinese characters.

Some of what you'd be able to read by the time you're done with this little book are numbers, dates, currencies, public utilities, directions, names of public places, signs, tickets, and few other words.

On a side note, if you want to get deeper into learning how to write Chinese characters easily, you may also want to check out Easy Chinese Tutor.



Rating:
Summary: Delightful book
Review: This book is intended for people traveling to China who want to master some basic characters so that they can find it easier to find their way around.

The book is very enjoyable to read and the characters presented are rather easy to learn. Beside each character and character combinations, the author has provided mnemonic devices to make it easier to remember the character.

At the end of the book the author has also provided a brief section with guidelines for writing Chinese characters.

Some of what you'd be able to read by the time you're done with this little book are numbers, dates, currencies, public utilities, directions, names of public places, signs, tickets, and few other words.

On a side note, if you want to get deeper into learning how to write Chinese characters easily, you may also want to check out Easy Chinese Tutor.

Rating:
Summary: Delightful book
Review: This book is intended for people traveling to China who want to master some basic characters so that they can find it easier to find their way around.

The book is very enjoyable to read and the characters presented are rather easy to learn. Beside each character and character combinations, the author has provided mnemonic devices to make it easier to remember the character.

At the end of the book the author has also provided a brief section with guidelines for writing Chinese characters.

Some of what you'd be able to read by the time you're done with this little book are numbers, dates, currencies, public utilities, directions, names of public places, signs, tickets, and few other words.

On a side note, if you want to get deeper into learning how to write Chinese characters easily, you may also want to check out Easy Chinese Tutor.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent introduction to characters
Review: This easy book does exactly what it claims to be able to: teaches you a small vocabulary of chinese characters. You won't be able to read much with it, but you will be able to pick out enough characters to get the jist of what some things are getting at.

Well written. Very accessible. Excellent compliment to chinese language tapes for anybody trying to learn basic language skills before a trip.

Rating:
Summary: super
Review: This is a must for Asian coin collectors, as shangxi & jing are often mint marks, not to mention numbers, currency denominations and empires. It is also a jumpstart to the characters. I've had the "100 most used", etc.. They don't give nearly the insight that this does. Also, the notes clear up things you don't see until very deep into a program... which often rises as an early question (like plurals & tenses). The book is written in a very interesting and candid style. I wish I had bought this book for my first Chinese instruction. However, even at my current beginning/intermediate level, it is still a great book. Hats off to Julie (and I am normally at odds with feminine instructional logic). The only thing I would change, is adding the Pinyin transliterations to the "Quick Reference"

Rating:
Summary: An incredibly good book for a traveller
Review: This is a remarkably good book for a non-Chinese speaking tourist to have. The reviews which say that this book is not for the student of Chinese are correct. It's not a very "deep" book, and it doesn't teach you very many characters. But that's not who the book is meant for.

I travelled to China last year, not knowing a word of Chinese and certainly not having any ability to make out the characters. Prior to that trip, I might occasionally read an article or website which would show me the characters for, say, "China", but they'd so to speak go in one eyeball and out the other -- I simply couldn't retain or learn or even really *see* the characters.

A travel article recommended _I Can Read That_ so I bought it, and it was a miracle. Literally on the first page, in the first few minutes of reading it, I at last started to realize "oh, there's a system behind all these characters". I could now look at Chinese characters, and though I couldn't truly read them (since I don't even know Chinese), I could start to truly see them, recognize them, and learn them.

After 5 minutes of reading, I'd learned 5 characters. After another 5 minutes, 5 more. After that, well there's a limit to how much information my brain can take in at once, but I kept reading the book and learning characters.

It was as exciting an experience as learning to read must have been (I actually don't remember).

And, to return to the first theme, this could all be done without "studying" per se, or taking a class. It can be done on the run, while travelling in China (or on the plane to China).

So, the book is no substitute for actually taking a Chinese class or learning from an in-depth book. But for the traveller who doesn't have time to actually take a Chinese class, but who is willing to spend a few hours poring over a small but useful book, this book is ideal.

I never would have believed that I could start reading Chinese in 3 minutes, but this book makes it possible. And the characters presented in the book are the ones that are especially useful for tourists (characters which are common in place names, such as "jing" for "capital", directions such as "bei" for "north" -- and if you put those together and say "Aha! Beijing!", you can now see how this book makes the Chinese language suddenly start to come together for the tourist).

So this book gave me a gift of (partial) literacy that no phrase book or guidebook did. I only learned a few dozen characters and I still do not know Chinese. But I could use that literacy skill to read some signs, to pick out bus stops (assuming that I knew the characters for the destination), etc.

A marvelous, marvelous book.

P.S. The book is most useful for mainland China, because it teaches the "simplified" characters, not the "traditional" characters, which are used most other places in the world.

Rating:
Summary: An incredibly good book for a traveller
Review: This is a remarkably good book for a non-Chinese speaking tourist to have. The reviews which say that this book is not for the student of Chinese are correct. It's not a very "deep" book, and it doesn't teach you very many characters. But that's not who the book is meant for.

I travelled to China last year, not knowing a word of Chinese and certainly not having any ability to make out the characters. Prior to that trip, I might occasionally read an article or website which would show me the characters for, say, "China", but they'd so to speak go in one eyeball and out the other -- I simply couldn't retain or learn or even really *see* the characters.

A travel article recommended _I Can Read That_ so I bought it, and it was a miracle. Literally on the first page, in the first few minutes of reading it, I at last started to realize "oh, there's a system behind all these characters". I could now look at Chinese characters, and though I couldn't truly read them (since I don't even know Chinese), I could start to truly see them, recognize them, and learn them.

After 5 minutes of reading, I'd learned 5 characters. After another 5 minutes, 5 more. After that, well there's a limit to how much information my brain can take in at once, but I kept reading the book and learning characters.

It was as exciting an experience as learning to read must have been (I actually don't remember).

And, to return to the first theme, this could all be done without "studying" per se, or taking a class. It can be done on the run, while travelling in China (or on the plane to China).

So, the book is no substitute for actually taking a Chinese class or learning from an in-depth book. But for the traveller who doesn't have time to actually take a Chinese class, but who is willing to spend a few hours poring over a small but useful book, this book is ideal.

I never would have believed that I could start reading Chinese in 3 minutes, but this book makes it possible. And the characters presented in the book are the ones that are especially useful for tourists (characters which are common in place names, such as "jing" for "capital", directions such as "bei" for "north" -- and if you put those together and say "Aha! Beijing!", you can now see how this book makes the Chinese language suddenly start to come together for the tourist).

So this book gave me a gift of (partial) literacy that no phrase book or guidebook did. I only learned a few dozen characters and I still do not know Chinese. But I could use that literacy skill to read some signs, to pick out bus stops (assuming that I knew the characters for the destination), etc.

A marvelous, marvelous book.

P.S. The book is most useful for mainland China, because it teaches the "simplified" characters, not the "traditional" characters, which are used most other places in the world.

Rating:
Summary: An incredibly good book for a traveller
Review: This is a remarkably good book for a non-Chinese speaking tourist to have. The reviews which say that this book is not for the student of Chinese are correct. It's not a very "deep" book, and it doesn't teach you very many characters. But that's not who the book is meant for.

I travelled to China last year, not knowing a word of Chinese and certainly not having any ability to make out the characters. Prior to that trip, I might occasionally read an article or website which would show me the characters for, say, "China", but they'd so to speak go in one eyeball and out the other -- I simply couldn't retain or learn or even really *see* the characters.

A travel article recommended _I Can Read That_ so I bought it, and it was a miracle. Literally on the first page, in the first few minutes of reading it, I at last started to realize "oh, there's a system behind all these characters". I could now look at Chinese characters, and though I couldn't truly read them (since I don't even know Chinese), I could start to truly see them, recognize them, and learn them.

After 5 minutes of reading, I'd learned 5 characters. After another 5 minutes, 5 more. After that, well there's a limit to how much information my brain can take in at once, but I kept reading the book and learning characters.

It was as exciting an experience as learning to read must have been (I actually don't remember).

And, to return to the first theme, this could all be done without "studying" per se, or taking a class. It can be done on the run, while travelling in China (or on the plane to China).

So, the book is no substitute for actually taking a Chinese class or learning from an in-depth book. But for the traveller who doesn't have time to actually take a Chinese class, but who is willing to spend a few hours poring over a small but useful book, this book is ideal.

I never would have believed that I could start reading Chinese in 3 minutes, but this book makes it possible. And the characters presented in the book are the ones that are especially useful for tourists (characters which are common in place names, such as "jing" for "capital", directions such as "bei" for "north" -- and if you put those together and say "Aha! Beijing!", you can now see how this book makes the Chinese language suddenly start to come together for the tourist).

So this book gave me a gift of (partial) literacy that no phrase book or guidebook did. I only learned a few dozen characters and I still do not know Chinese. But I could use that literacy skill to read some signs, to pick out bus stops (assuming that I knew the characters for the destination), etc.

A marvelous, marvelous book.

P.S. The book is most useful for mainland China, because it teaches the "simplified" characters, not the "traditional" characters, which are used most other places in the world.

Rating:
Summary: Book Description:
Review: Were you ever a tourist in China, or in Chinatown for that matter, and wondered what all those Chinese characters meant? Maybe you recognized one or two of the Chinese characters, but had no idea what they designated. Well, now you have an opportunity to learn many of those commonly used words and phrases. In this unique approach to learning characters, Ms. Sussman takes you through numbers, names, common words, money, directions, place names, and more. Written in a simple style for non-specialists, <I>I Can Read That!</I> provides an easy introduction to Chinese for even the most linguistically impaired.