Chinese At a Glance

Rating:
Summary: Great pocket sized travel dictionary.
Review: I would not suggest this book as a means of learning Chinese. Nor is this a book you would want to use for the translation of Chinese documents into English. The reasons being that only a few hundred words are in the dictionary and the book does not concentrate on grammar. Rather, the intention of this book is to be a handy travel dictionary and in this function, the book works very well.

I carried this book with me everywhere during my year of travel in China. The first edition of the book was written during the time when foreigners could only shop in the Friendship Stores and so some of the shopping and restaurants phrases were a bit out of date. However, the book presents a translation of words and phrases, separated by topics such as "at the restaurant" or "at the hotel".

There are words and phrases for use at the hotel such as "I would like to pay my bill", or "There is a problem with my room." You will find the words for dozens of foods which are arranged for example in groups of meat, vegetables or dessert which is very convenient when you go to a restaurant. Best of all, the book not only shows the pinyon, but also the characters. So, even if you can not pronounce the word correctly, you have the characters to show the waitress what you want to order. Very handy!

Rating:
Summary: Just a phrasebook -- won't teach the language
Review: This consists of two phrasebooks: "Chinese at a Glance" (Seligan, Chen) and a very similar credit-card sized version. The tape does nothing but read from the smaller phrasebook. The larger book makes a small attempt to explain pronunciation. But neither makes any attempt to explain the grammar or anything about the language except by giving whole-sentence examples. The larger book has a small C-E E-C dictionary in the back.

The two phrasebooks cover the same material, but with the phrases in a different order, making it impossible to follow the tape in the larger book. The type in the smaller book is very small, making the intonation marks almost illegible sometimes.

Either book is very portable on a trip. The smaller one is really tiny, so if you're looking for a highly portable phrasebook, this isn't a bad choice. But this is a poor choice for learning the language.