English Chinese Pinyin Dictionary

Rating:
Summary: magnificient
Review: Excellent dictionary.Many useful sentences and clear meanings. Explanations enlightening.Helpful for all levels of chinese learning.

Rating:
Summary: The Best English-Chinese Dictionary Available
Review: When I first told my classmates about this dictionary, they didn't believe me. What it is is an English Chinese dictionary, wherein you can look up an English word, and it will give you the Chinese in characters, and then in pinyin as well so you can pronounce the word you have just looked up.

This is so amazingly usefull. It is normaly a feature in pocket dictionaries and English-Chinese/Chinese-English dictionaries, but those are all more for travelers than students, and don't come close to providing a comprehensive resource. Most English-Chinese dictionaries continue to be compiled with Chinese learners of English in mind, not the other way around. Thus, since Chinese people largely already know how to pronounce their own characters, no pronunciation guide is given. Thus you encounter the odd problem of American students being able to write things in Chinese that they cannot say. It's the exact opposite of illitaracy!

This book also provides an extensive, fairly uncensored lexicon, and lots of examples in complete sentances. I even find English words in it that I didn't already know, and that's rare in a foreign language dictionary.

All in all, an indespensable language guide.