Reading and Writing Chinese: A Guide to the Chinese Writing System

Rating:
Summary: Great
Review: This book is perfect for those of you who are interested in learning Chinese characters and how to write them. This book has all of the most important characters in the Chinese language, including the list of the 1020 characters students should know and the offical 2000 characters published by the People's Republic of China with over 2500 combinations. This book also includes the all-important pinyin romanization to help you with pronunciation. Definitions, explanations, memorization tips and stroke order is also given for every character. Overall, I think that this is one of, if not the best book out there for learning the written Chinese language.

Rating:
Summary: Highly recommended as a reference source
Review: This book systematically introduces the 2000 Chinese characters that McNaughton feels are the core of the language. Though it can be used this way, the book makes an even better reference source as a basic character dictionary. Its most helpful features are the dual-indexes of Romanized and original characters. Approximately half of the characters in the book (about 1000) have explanatory diagrams showing how to properly write them in the correct stroke-order. These are accompanied by etymologies explaining the origins of the character, the character's radical, and the simplified forms. A chart of all 214 radicals is also provided. The only drawback is that the romainization is Yale, not Pinyin, but a helpful conversion chart is provided.

Rating:
Summary: A good supplement
Review: This is NOT a dictionary. The book is really a collection of some 2000 characters with their English equivalents or close English equivalents. Each characters has some example character combinations (i.e., words) and the stroke order. Thus, the book is really geared towards the student who wants to learn all the essential 2000 and some odd characters (i.e., learn how to write them and their BASIC meaning; I say 'basic' because the meaning of each character is explained using English equivalents, as opposed to truly explaining what a particular character means). The book emphasizes traditional characters, but simplified forms are provided. So if you want a good supplement for learning Chinese character, buy this book. If you are looking for a Chinese/English dictionary this is NOT it (instead, try the Concise English-Chinese Chinese-English Dictionary (ISBN 0195911512) and Xinhua Zidian (ISBN 7801031989).