Understanding Chinese Characters by Their Ancestral Forms

Learning 5000 Chinese characters is a daunting task. It often is a question where and how to start. This book is quite novel in that it presents the most important characters by also showing the original ancient pictoral form. In that way it is easier to remember the modern character. And once one is getting used to the Chinese characters, it then is easier to remember more.

So many of the books out there are really not user-friendly. In fact, they tend to confuse more than help, but this book is very different. It truly makes understanding Chinese characters very easy and is helping my son to commit what he's learned to memory, the key he was seeking. He won't be taking Chinese officially until next year, but this book has given him a leg up & will definitely be attending college with him next year. We highly recommend "Understanding Chinese Characters by Their Ancestral Forms", by Ping-Gam Go!

Wow! I wish I had this book before I started studying the Chinese language. Knowing the symbology of the characters makes the language and culture so much more accessible. A "Walk Through Chinatown" will never be the same! I'm giving this book as a Christmas present this year.

I've been studying with this book and it's very helpful in my work toward learning more chinese characters. I love this book. It contains 288 characters.

The only aspect that I didn't like is the binding on the book which has now officially fallen apart because of so much use.

I have been studying Mandarin for several years, and this was one of the very first books I purchased.

It was difficult for me to begin study of a character-based language because, unlike Spanish or French, Chinese characters lack correlation to the Roman-based alphabet, phonetics, and word construction. This book was wonderful in helping me learn Chinese characters because it made them relevant and interesting. Once I formed a good base, I found it easier and easier to learn more characters.

I would definitely recommend this book to anyone starting out with Chinese.