Help me!

忠Jaron
 December 04, 2010, 03:35 AM posted in General Discussion

when looking for good books to learn beginner chinese characters it has been similiar to mining gold for me. You try to find the good stuff but get baffled at the end.

Whenever i look at a good review and i think it may be the book for me then i see some crappy reviews afterwards and try to be reserved and not by the book.

i have wasted money on books before trying to learn cantonese and mandarin and i am desperate for any good suggestions on beginner books for learning chinese characters!!

Can anyone help me?

I don't want to resort back to John Francis Beginning Chinese Reader published in the 70's.

thanks for any help!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

shiny days ahead.

忠忠

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light487
 December 04, 2010, 04:09 AM

Yer.. hrmm.. I have the "Tuttles" one.. but I find that is more of a reference than anything helpful in learning the characters... I mean.. it's just a book with all the characters in it, which radicals it uses and so on. It's a good reference text.. but it doesn't really transcend that.

This one below is something I have been meaning to get for a long time.. It is a Chinese Hanzi version of a book John Pasden recommended a long time ago for Japanese Kanji learning. I'm not sure if the Chinese version holds true to that recommendation or not but it's by the same people etc

http://www.amazon.com/Remembering-Simplified-Hanzi-Meaning-Characters/dp/0824833236

Read the reviews and decide for yourself.

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pretzellogic
 December 04, 2010, 03:50 PM

Jaron, I bought the book with the link below, and thought it was really good approach. My main concern with that book is that you still need practice with writing words and sentences, not just the individual characters, and this book doesn't give you sentences to additionally anchor your intuition around the characters you learn.  But that's a weakness around almost all character books i've read, except for TLIs character book. TLI doesn't make their hanzi book available on Amazon, but I think their book is the greatest thing since sliced bread.

http://www.amazon.com/Tuttle-Learning-Chinese-Characters-Revolutionary/dp/080483816X/ref=pd_sim_b_2

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忠Jaron
 December 05, 2010, 03:45 AM

謝謝大家!