The major struggle facing all beginning Chinese language students is to learn to recognize, read and write hundreds of Chinese characters. This book adopt a structural approach that helps students overcome this initial difficulty and quickly master the basic Chinese characters fundamental to this language. Intended for beginning students, The First 100 Chinese Characters: Simplified Character Edition contains carefully selected and sequenced characters for rapid and effective learning. Each Chinese character is shown separately on a single page, along with its English definitions, hanyu pinyin romanization, alternate form, a stroke-order guide and ample writing space.Two indexes—alphabetical by the English meanings and by pin [Read More...]
Buy The First 100 Chinese Characters: Simplified Character Edition: The Quick and Easy Method to Learn the 100 Most Basic Chinese Characters at Amazon
Internet Item of the Day: Women’s fragrances make for great gifts all the time!
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
I am learning to speak Mandarin but felt I needed more knowledge of the written language to get a more comprehensive feel for the language. I looked around and settled on this one and it was a good choice. It has just enough information for me to learn the character and its meaning as well as some commonly used phrases in which each character appears. It gives ample space to practice the strokes of the character. The characters are also in a type size that makes it easier to read than some other books I’ve looked at.
This book really does have the characters you need to know for a basic understanding of Mandarin. I like the fact that it supplies a proper grid, gives you both stroke order and direction, and shows the radical for each character. If you’re new to learning Chinese, I’d also recommend flashcards (or make your own based on this book) because constant repetition is the key here.
This book is most useful for students with no exposure to the Chinese writing system. After a clear and thorough introduction to the history and development of Chinese characters, students are introduced to 100 basic characters - a nice attainable number for the first year of high school instruction or the first semester at the university level. Each entry includes several example compounds (very important for Chinese, in which disparate characters can be combined discretely to form unexpected words) as well as nice, large boxes for practicing. While the Matthews have made a nice introduction to Chinese characters, more serious students of the language will outgrow it quite quickly. Their newer book Tuttle Learning Chinese Characters Volume 1: A Revolutionary New Way to Learn and Remember the 800 Most Basic Chinese Characters provides several hundred more characters (without the practice space) for the more ambitious.
Nathan Dummitt
author of Chinese Through Tone & Color