Chinese Slanguage: A Fun Visual Guide to Mandarin Terms and Phrases

by Mike Ellis

It's simple: follow the illustrated prompts and read the English words out loud, and soon you'll be speaking Chinese. This handy, easy-to-read language guide is easy to carry and gives the basic phrases you need while traveling, asking directions, or ordering food at a restaurant. It also includes phrases for medical or legal emergencies, as well as terminology for hotels, airports, and so on. But most of all, it's just plain fun!

112 pages, Paperback

First published March 1, 2010

Reviews

[Jon Nakapalau · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the biggest regrets of my life is that I never learned how to speak another language. It wasn't until I was stationed in Germany that I learned other countries do a much better job of introducing children to another language than we do here in the US. This book uses phonetics and 'signs' above the words to approximate the sound ('knee how' for (Nǐ hǎo) with the image of a knee above the pronunciation). Very unusual - but it works! And 500 years from now I will be fluent in Mandarin - bù kěnéng ('boo/kung/nung')!

[Erin · Rating 3 out of 5]

The purpose of this book is to help people learn Mandarin Chinese by using English words. For instance, you say hello in Chinese by saying 您好 or using the pinyin version "Ní hǎo." Romantic language users usually learn chinese by learning the pinyin version. Pinyin is chinese, but uses letters to explain the different characters. Pinyin makes learning the language a lot easier because pinyin includes the tones that are a needed part of the language.

Ellis attempts to make the language even easier, with using English words to describe things. Using the example above, instead of having people learn "Ní hǎo," he writes "Knee How." Some of his translations leave a lot to be desired. The phrase "It's hot" in chinese looks like this: 天齊很熱 pinyin: Tiān qí hěn rè and his form of language as: Tee Ann She Henry. The problem with this is that Henry doesn't sound like the Chinese word because the chine word is a sound that doesn't exist in the English language. If you read it like he suggests your read it, your Chinese audience is not going to have a clue what you are saying.

I am currently teaching a group of children Chinese, and found that many of his suggestions were helpful in helping them conceptualize what Chinese sounds like. However, this book is really only for people who want the very basics of the language. In order to speak Chinese properly, you need to know the tones.

Still, it was a fun book to read. And, it is better than nothing in first learning Chinese.

[Doc · Rating 3 out of 5]

What a goofy book. Split into categories ranging from Greetings/Response to Travel/Tourism this book gives you a basic idea of how words might sound like if you use its pronunciation guide near every word you are trying to translate. Sometimes we even get pictures to help memorize the words better I guess but I am curious if learning the words in this book could help you communicate with someone speaking Mandarin Chinese or just confuse them considering you are basically learning an americanized version of words and not actual sentence structure or anything like that. No You would be better off getting a more advanced learning course if you actually wanted to learn Chinese and just enjoy this book for its goofy methods of teaching. :)

[Thomas Clardy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think this is wonderful. Of course it does concentrate on the complex parts of Chinese like the various tones of vowels or writing, but it simplifies pronunciation which is one of the hardest thing in Chinese for me.

[Anne · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is actually a pretty hilarious book, helping a student learning Chinese the general pronunciation of common terms and words. Saying that, this is not a book to learn Chinese. The pronunciation is off, but it's still a fun book to read.

[Aroma with Love]

Very silly book, not worth your time if you are serious about learning the language you may find better books.

[Beverly Rowls · Rating 3 out of 5]

A fun book to make Mandarin easier to speak.

[Aaron Dietz · Rating 3 out of 5]

The concept is fun, though of course it is not precise. And it ends up pidgeon-holing us into unfortunate necessities, like including "prison" as one of the four places we must learn in Chinese, right up there with "restaurant" (which I DO agree should be there).

In other languages, this idea works much better, but I admire the attempt. Everything is pretty difficult with Chinese, and I found it fun to examine the words I already knew and see how close the author was able to get using English surrogate-sounds.

[Janice · Rating 2 out of 5]

It is an interesting concept and decently executed, but it wasn't ideal for my learning style or needs. It would work well for people who enjoy graphics and a simple presentation. I would have found a one page list of all these words more useful.

[Celia · Rating 1 out of 5]

A person could never learn to pronounce Chinese properly from this book unless he were already familiar with pinyin and Chinese sounds. Unfortunately, the "visuals" are more confusing than helpful.

[Marilyn · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book may perhaps be the first tiniest baby step in cracking the incredible code of Chinese for me. Elementary. From here to my Rosetta Stone is a quantum leap.