The Right Word in Cantonese

by Hanyu Zhinan, Choi Wah Kwan, Irene Saunders

Book Overview

Book by Kwan, Choi Wah This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 9620711068
• ISBN13: 9789620711060
• Release Date: January 1990
• Publisher: Cheng & Tsui
• Length: 244 Pages
• Weight: 0.45 lbs.

Customer Reviews

the little book that could

I never write reviews, but i feel like this little book needs a bit of a boost. I am living in Hong Kong for an extended period of time, and know absolutely no Chinese. I bought the collins phrasebook, but the word list in the back is nearly useless. There is also that other Cantonese Pinyin dictionary available... but that one doesn't have characters, just the pinyin, so that is useless as well. Other dictionaries only have characters, or only mandarin pinyin. So this little book is really all i've got. I'm most excited about the fairly thorough food section. And i love that it is geared towards people living in Hong Kong, with lots of local places translated. In my mind you have 2 choices, you pick this book up for 8 bucks, or you spend 100-300 on an electronic dictionary. obviously the electronic one will have more words... but i only had 8 bucks... so i'm pretty happy with this book. now if only i was better at the pronunciation, that is another story.

A very useful tool for pronunciation and use.

I have used this book on two visits to Hong Kong and Southern China. Chinese speakers have found it useful in communicating in English as well as English speakers in Chinese. Beyond a good vocabulary of useful words, there are specialized glossaries for forms of address, medical terms, foods and cooking/eating styles. Nicely laid out and easy to use.It does use the complex character set of Hong Kong so can create some difficulty for Chinese speakers in China, but I have not found this a significant problem.It is far more a lexicon than phrase book, but I have found it handier than some of the more popular phrase books I have tried. Some of that is because it is laid out well for Chinese speakers as well as English speakers.