The Rough Guide Mandarin Chinese Phrasebook

by Rough Guides and Xu Yinong

Book Overview

Make the most of your trip with the Rough Guide Mandarin Chinese Phrasebook.Find the perfect word or phrase for every situation Use extensive two-way dictionary packed with vocabulary Choose food and... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1843536358
• ISBN13: 9781843536352
• Release Date: May 2006
• Publisher: Rough Guides
• Length: 284 Pages
• Weight: 0.40 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 4.2" x 5.9"

Customer Reviews

Works for tours and visits

For travel to China this book is fine. I have used the Lonely Planet phrase books also and this differs in that Lonely Planet divides the phrase book into different situations. At the end there is a small dictionary. Rough Guide phrase books seem to have a short introduction to basic situations and then expanded dictionaries, that often have several dialogues included that would be useful when you look up the word. It also has the Mandarin characters next to the word or dialogue. We are spending two weeks in China and this seems fine. Trying to learn complete phrases hasn't worked too well for me. Mostly I need to look up words like beer, chicken, hot pot etc., try and pronounce them, and if they still can't understand, show the foreign words from the dictionary to the waiter...hotel people. As to whether the Rough Guide is better than Lonely Planet, I think if you are just on tour for a while either will help. As I said, I have used Lonely Planet in the past and thought I would try Rough Guide for Chinese Mandarin and also bought one for Japanese.

great organization

As the long 5 star review below tells you, this is an outstanding little book jam packed with info. The organization is superb, with almost nothing but useful phrases, each with characters and pinyin. EXCEPT the opening 28 pages, which SHOULD be some of the most useful! This opening section is organized by category (shopping, emergencies etc.) and, indeed, holds some of the key survival phrases you need (to be fair, most of the content can also be found in the alphabetical section). HOWEVER, inexplicably, this section has the pinyin in WHITE FONT on LIGHT BLUE BACKGROUND and LEAVES OUT the chinese characters!! Indeed, even under *perfect* light, I can hardly see the diacritical marks above the pinyin for certain words (they often look like a smudged dot). In other words, it's hard to read what the tone is of these sentences. Sure, if it's something simple like "jiu4ming4 -- 'help' " you'll likely be understood, but more complex sentences you just might find yourself very misunderstood. I cannot understand why these did this. In poor light you will find yourself straining just to read the pinyin, much less the tone marks. Now, the alphabetical section (the bulk of the book), has very crisp and clear font, black on white, and includes the characters. Why they didn't use this format for the opening section, I have no idea. That said, the book is fantastic. Buy it.

portable size, decent content

I chose the Rough Guide Chinese phrasebook because I prefer the Rough Guide country guides over others. The words and phrases organized by topics and situations are full of half-attempts at humor, but they aren't as useful as I'd hope for. Some important words - like dumplings/jiaozi - are missing from the dictionary section, but that's what you get with a pocket dictionary.

The best book if you want to be able to say more than hello during your trip.

Rough Guide Mandarin is structured completely different from most phrase books: The first 40+ pages gives you numbers, days of the week, time, etc., and a 20 minute course in grammar. Oh no, you might be saying, but it is presented very simply. For instance it presents a handful of common verbs and their conjugations. So on one page you can see how to say "I have," "he has, " etc. and "I like," "he/ she likes," etc. The rest of the book is split between an English-Mandarin dictionary (160 pages approx), a Mandarin-English dictionary (40 pages, approx.), and a 20 page menu reader. What makes the English-Mandarin dictionary pages unique, though, is that most every other page (at least) has dialogue boxes relating to the most useful word(s) on that particular page. For instance, when you thumb through the book for the word "live," you get the word itself, but also the phrases "I live in..." and "Where do you live?" It'll take you 10 minutes to find such a phrase in Berlitz or Lonely Planet in their "getting to know others' section. But because Rough Guide is structured as a dictionary, with hundreds of really useful phrases highlighted in boxes within, you can access something you want to say rather swiftly...and actually deliver it just a minute or so after looking for it. Add the grammar section, where you learn useful verbs and how to conjugate their past tenses, and the number section, and you can learn easily to chat with someone about where you are from, where you are going, where you have traveled thus far, what you like/liked, and so on. Likewise, knowing have to say "have" make sit easily to ask whether a hotel has rooms, whether the room has a shower (after thumbing through the book for the word for shower), etc. And when the answer comes back that the hotel doesn't have, or say "we have," you can actually catch what they are saying. If still not persuaded, next time you're in a bookstore compare a Berlitz, a Lonely Planet, and a Rough Guide language phrase book side by side. Lonely Planet Mandarin, for example, is basically several pages of basic grammar followed by many sections of phases you won't likely ever use. For instance, the guide provides several pages each of lists of occupations, nationalities, college majors, items of stationary, jewelery, colors, insects, flowers, aquatic sports(!), electrical appliances, camping terms,and so on. Also provided are pat phrases to employ at a hotel's front desk, at a doctor's, at the optometrist, and eating out, among other mini-sections. The book, in effect, is set up to be taken out to be used once a day, if that. It's an improvement on Berlitz phrase books, but not by much. (Berlitz simply divides their books into 10 or so color coded sections such as: "sightseeing," "relaxing," "shopping," traveling around," "money," "eating out," etc.) So, if you just want a book for emergencies (say, breaking a leg, etc.) then Berlitz and/or Lonely Planet phrase books will s

Great asset on my recent trip

Although the book favors the Beijing style pronunciation, the Chinese characters within are worth their weight in jade. I frequently pointed at more difficult characters. Coupled with a few phrases I'd picked up from the beginning of the book, I got around China really well. Missing was a section on how to properly tell off street peddlers and other nuisances. I would have loved a dialogue page with the following exchange: "Would you like a 'Rolex' watch?" "No. Go away and never pester me again you troglodyte!" Even with the above-mentioned shortcoming, I'd take this book back with me to China if I ever get the chance to return there. Take this with you and keep it very handy. I compared it to the newest Lonely Planet guide and this one is superior.