Chinese Medical Chinese: Grammar and Vocabulary

Rating:
Summary: Read this book
Review: Read this book and the others in this series if you wish to learn the language of Chinese medicine.

The book's presentation is at times dry. In particular, the discussion of the grammar of literary Chinese and Chinese-medical Chinese is more suitable for a linguist than it is for most of the target audience, but with some perseverance, the reader will find that his approach to the unique aspects of the grammar of Chinese-medical Chinese is practical and to the point.

As the title suggests, the book deals mainly in grammar and vocabulary. It builds on previous books in the serious, giving many compounds and phrases based on the simpler terms introduced in its predecessors. The vocabulary section is large and classified in seven major rubrics: theory, four examinations, diseases, pathomechanisms and disease patterns, treatment, chinese pharmaceutics, and acumoxatherapy, with smaller, more specific categories under each heading.

The book is conceived as a classroom textbook or self-study course and includes exercises at the end of each chapter, with answers to the exercises at the end of the book.

One of the best features of this book and of the Chinese Medical Chinese series generally is the extensive footnotes. Far from being dry or caught up in minutiae, the notes are very interesting and do much to convey the particular flavor and in-depth meaning of the vocabulary terms. The notes make this book much more than a dry grammar and list of terms to be learned. It would be a bargain at twice the price.