A helpful start!
|
I carry this phrasebook with me everywhere in China and find it extremely useful. I would agree with my fellow reviewer on the fact that Chinese Characters in all sections of the book would be useful.
Thanks to this book I was able to make a confident start to communicating in Chinese. I found the pronounciation guide on pages 250/251 excellent. From my experience I would say it is well worth spending time studying these two pages to learn the proper pinyin pronounciation rather than relying on their suggestions in brackets after each word/phrase. Personally the suggestions in brackets I have found to be unreliable at times.
This book rescued me from the frustration of not being able to communicate.
|
|
|
Many Pros and only a few Cons
|
This is a brilliant book in some ways and a disappointing book in others.
The way it is much better than its competitor 'The Lonely Plant Phrasebook to Mandarin Chinese' is that it includes, in brackets, the pronounciation guide = Extremely helpful for me - I was saying things like 'I would like a late please' instead of 'I would like a fork please'
But the way that the 'Rough Guide to MC' is not as good as the lonely planet one is under its useful phrases section it isn't written out in chinese. Really unfortunate if your talking isn't that good.
Whereas if you show a chinese person the Chinese Script and radicals and they'll instantly understand you regardles of whether you are in a mainly Cantonese or a mainly Mandarin part of China.
Apart from not writing out the phrases underneath in chinese, the only other cons would just be picking really - e.g. the emergencies section wasn't as good as the Lonely Planet Phrasebook section.
My advice would be to buy both the Lonely Planet and the Rough Guide Phrasebooks, I have, as they both have their uses.
|
|
|
United States | 
United Kingdom | 
Canada