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148 of 162 found the following review helpful:
The Art of Chinese Calligraphy: Learning Language with the Eyes Jul 08, 2008
For most Westerners the mystery of the Orient has always been cloaked in the seemingly impenetrable complexity of languages based on characters. The frustration of wanting to learn one of the Eastern languages is usually heightened by the fact that a 'character' can mean a word or a concept and for the Western mind to step away from the building of words from a set of 26 alphabet letters requires releasing the security so ingrained in our 'inside the box, phonetic approach' to learning language.
Sam Y. Song's fine book LEARNING CHINESE THE EASY WAY changes this perception. Instead of devoting the mind to memorizing countless words, arranging them into nouns, verbs, adjectives, etc., Song shows us how the Chinese language is essentially a visual experience - a fascinating exploration of simplifying line drawings of visual things (man, water, eyes, and so forth) and thereby creating visual representations of words created from these reduced lines. Even in explaining the process, Song makes so accessible one of the major differences between, say, Chinese and English, is that need to scientifically dissect symbols relegated to vocabulary instead of merely using the eyes to visualize the objects around us to transmit visuals to the written word.
Case in point: 'look at; see; watch' is a character that is composed of a reduction of a sketch for an eye and a hand that when combined result in a symbol of 'a person watching something with his hand above his eye' or 'to look at, see, or watch. ' Sound simple? With Song's gift for line reduction moving into calligraphy it IS simple, and with the added 'word' for each symbol along side the completed visual, very soon sentences can be constructed or thoughts can be expressed.
From Song's user friendly teaching lessons comes this example of how he accomplishes his Mission: 'How to find a character to express "water" in Chinese?' (he then draws wavy lines, progresses them to the simplest form, compresses them logically) and Presto! we "reach the character \shui\ which means 'water' in Chinese'. Eastern wisdom seduces Western thought into understanding a new form of language. And with Sam Y. Song's technique, it seems that each of us can enter a mysterious world of Chinese symbols comfortably. This is a fine book that entertains as it teaches. Highly recommended. Grady Harp, July 08
2 of 2 found the following review helpful:
Highly Effective Learning Tool Jun 23, 2008
Learning Chinese The Easy Way is a well written text that makes learning Chinese, a typically difficult language to acquire for westerners, an enjoyable process. By putting the language acquisition process into story form and by showing evolution of each chinese character, the author helps to anchor the information with a strong mental image of what the character represents. Shunning the high pressure, information density of most textbooks, this well written book is an essential part of any Chinese language student's curriculum.
2 of 2 found the following review helpful:
WOW! I am learning Chinese and it is EASY! May 18, 2008
I am not very far along in the book, yet I must pause and write a review to tell others what a great book this is!! I am so impressed by the illustrations and the step by step explanation that simplifies each character and phrase. Frequently, Mr. Song encourages the reader by reviewing the Chinese characters that are learned by writing the accumulated characters at the bottom of the page under the title (YOU HAVE LEARNED SIMPLIFIED CHINESE) and then shows the reader the rapidly increasing accululation of characters as the book progresses. Mr. Song is obviously a great treacher because he breaks Chinese characters down into logical, SIMPLE, progressive units to lead to the ultimate end of reading a story in Chinese. I am only to the point of reviewing and reading sentences at the bottom of the page in what I have learned, but I never ever thought I could learn a foreign language...ANY language other than English, much less Chinese, and here I am learning it!! (And in a few hours time!!) WOW...what a great learning tool!!!
A "must have" for learners of Chinese! May 11, 2008
This is an amazing book! It is worthy of 5 stars.
The book is written for anyone who knows English.
As soon as I started reading this book, I couldn't put it down. Before I read the book I knew very little about Chinese. I just figured Chinese was very difficult according to my impression. After reading this book , I have since learned that Chinese characters are so logical and meaningful. I would like to say "Ths book is very interesting and seems like Chinese characters were made very easy to understand, logical and practical, so they are very easy to learn. I especially like the example of person."
This book is absolutely the best book for learning Chinese characters. It is very helpful because it contains both the simplified and traditional characters. It is a "must have" for learners of Chinese everywhere!
The book also has a Pinyin-Mandarin Phonetic System cross reference that is handy for people who know Mandarin Phonetic System.
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