Wednesday, July 09, 2003

Language Tool

Chinese Starter DictionaryAs a "beginning" student of Chinese for a few years now, I have gone through a large number of Chinese language resources. This is one that I would unhesitatingly recommend to anyone.

The dictionary is at the right level for beginning students. The entries are limited to the most commonly used words. This is a major advantage for those who like to learn vocabulary by browsing a dictionary -- you are sure to be learning useful words (as opposed to specialty or infrequently used words). There have been only a few times where I have look for a word that wasn't included in this dictionary. I expect that the casual learner of Chinese will not outgrow this dictionary for at least a year or two.

I found the format of the dictionary uncluttered and very user friendly. In addition to the standard word and definition, entries also include very useful notes of clarification. For example, after the character for hui4 ("to be able to") there a note explaining that this character can also be pronounced as kuai4 with a different meaning.

(Order from Amazon.com.)

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