Analysis of Chinese Characters (Dover Language Guides)

This book is criticized by some high brow scholars because it has some etymological errors, however the information it provides for every character (some 1400 in this book) is very helpful for learning them, it also gives for most of them the old seal form that is highly informative. To learn above 4000+ is a interesting, fascinating but difficult task, and this book is a great help for building memory holds. It uses a old style romanization but is easy to get hold of it in some minutes, it has a very useful alphabetic index and a stroke index. I would recommend it as a extra help for those using the Heising method.

This short book will help you to understand that chinese writing is not as mysterious as it seems at first. Each complex character is built from simpler ideograms, and the arrangement tells the story. A nice touch is that all chinese characters, by a calligrapher, are printed in bright red (similar to the seal red) against the black text. The bichrome printing is refreshing. Of course, not enough to learn chinese, but enough to be tempted to.

I am just starting lo learn Chinese at home and would not have even attempted it without the support of several e-mail friends from China. After reading almost everyone's "listomania" and reviews of the many books on learning Chinese, I chose this to add to my library. (Thanks to all you Amazon reviewers!)I am familiar with Eastern thought and some of the history of China as a result of my 30+ years studying Taoism and, more recently, Buddhhism. The book brought facts together for me in the history of the language and why the characters changed form. I found this information fascinating. This resource answered many of the questions I had before tackling the language itself.So much help when explaining how to see the difference between the radical and phonetic! It also has a handy index in the back to find an alphabetical list in Western language converted to the Chinese character.. One of the unusual aspects of the book is the index of characters broken down in the number of strokes a character uses. However, there is no pronounciation guide. This is a major drawvback for the hands-on learner.I know I will be using this text as a staple of my lessons. However, I would not start with this text. As noted above, I recommend "Learn to Write Chinese Characters" by Johan Bjorksten as a "primer." (I am reminded of the tablet and pencil I used in first grade to practice my alphabet when attempting one character a day.)Some days I feel like I am Bart Simson writing on the blackboard after school, but I faithfully follow the instruction to learn each stroke and practice each character at least one hundred times before moving on.This language is an art, and I have yet to find the right pen and inks, as well as the "tablet" paper needed to "keep within the lines." Would someone please make this type of "tablet" available to the first year student? If you know a source, please e-mail me!I do recommend this as an excellent reference book and I will find it increasingly useful as mylearning continues. Great for the reference library!

It pains me to think that, two decades ago, people considered this a useful text. It's awful. The characters aren't printed clearly and the transliterations are non-standard. It's poorly organized and poorly explained.Don't waste your time with this one. Maybe it was okay in 1998, but it's unthinkably bad in 2024.

The book's only flaw is its use of a dated romanization, Wade-Giles, instead of pinyin. Otherwise it is a fascinating study of 1000 Chinese characters. The characters' parts are examined thoroughly and then we are shown how the joined pieces make up both the sound and meaning of the original character. I don't understand how such an interesting part of learning and understanding Chinese has been neglected. If you are learning Chinese, do not covet this book. Buy it! Now!

I had been looking for a text which would allow me to speed my process of learning Chinese. Because I am at an intermediate level, this text provided me with an historical and logical foundation for Chinese characters which I feel is a better method for learning than the raw memorization taught in most texts and courses.Although the Wade-Giles Romanization system has become a dead system (for good reason), conversion into the more familiar PinYin isn't too bad with a little practice. If you're going to learn Chinese, for example, a few hours learning the intricacies between Wade-Giles, PinYin and the Yale Romanization systems shouldn't be any deterrant.Zakarius

As a beginner, I could use cleaner characters. It's hard to determine the stroke count when there is too much ink. I have other Dover Publications and I always thought they were pretty cool, but not this one.I bought it on line so that's, what I get.

I'm actually an intermediate Japanese student but bought Dover's Chinese character analysis to help me memorize kanji. A story or a historical "hook" makes it easier to remember kanji rather than writing it dozens of times. So far this book's helped me make a few subtle connections between seemingly unrelated kanji. Since JP kanji has two readings (Sino "on" + native "kun") it helps to have the original Chinese readings. Most of book's too esoteric to have practical application though.