Here is a little fine free eBook (http://www.discoverchinese.cn/PDF-Gift-eBook-Version2.pdf) , which provides a unique and entertaining perspective of Chinese characters. You are free to send it to friends.
One of my books is available on Amazon.com Here is one of the preview pages for Chinese character " person.jpg ". www.discoverchinese.cn/person.jpg
Below is a book review by an
American:
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 'warm' 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.
Introduction of the book:
These books in series are written for any person, in the world, who can read simple English.
These books make Chinese characters very easy to understand and extremely easy to learn.
Any people who can read simple English will enjoy the interesting symbols and stories of each character in every page. Also, all world villagers will explore Chinese culture and characters through explaining pieces of each character and through both illustrations and the reasons behind them.
The most interesting of all is readers will be amazed to realize that they could read and understand a famous Aesop's fable, completely in Chinese, after reading the book for only about 60 minutes.
Details:
Many people would like to learn Chinese culture and characters. But... How to start?
Here is the book, Exploring Chinese Culture & Character with Aesop's Fables, which shows how logical the Chinese characters are. "The book is especially written for anyone who knows English, but know little about Chinese. After reading the book, learners would think Chinese characters are so logical, meaningful, so easy to remember, and even so easy to learn. Learners may immediately like the example of person very much. Readers will enjoy the interesting symbols and stories of each character in every page. Also, readers will explore Chinese culture and characters through explaining pieces of each character through both illustrations and the reasons behind them. The most interesting of all is readers will be amazed to know that they could read and understand a famous Aesop's fable, completely in Chinese, after reading the book for only about 60 minutes.
This book is absolutely the best book for learning Chinese characters. Please note you are free to send the preview page to friends.
"The book is especially written for anyone who knows English, but know little about Chinese. After reading the book, learners would think Chinese characters are so logical, meaningful, so easy to remember, and even so easy to learn. Learners may immediately like the example of person very much.
This book is absolutely the best book for learning Chinese characters. It is a "must have" for learners of Chinese everywhere!"
This book is not only about learning Chinese characters. It is also about culture appreciation! So, this book will be a great contribution to the world culture!
Every three months, I could produce a new book in the series. The new book's name could be "Exploring Chinese Culture & Characters with Aesop's Fables."
The book is available on Amazon.com with a different title. ISBN: 978-1- 4196-8611-5 Title: Learning Chinese The Easy Way Author: Sam Y. SONG
(The book also has a Pinyin-Mandarin Phonetic System cross reference that is handy for people who know Mandarin Phonetic System.)
The author web site is www.discoverchinese.cn which has another interesting preview page and sample preface.