English-Mandarin Thematic Dictionary

The words you need, in the company they keep.

Most dictionaries are arranged by alphabet, which is useful for looking up one word and useless for learning. This one is arranged by topic. Turn to the situation you are in, the kitchen, the market, the railway station, the doctor's clinic, a banquet, a festival, and find the words that belong together, already grouped the way you will meet them in real life. Words learned in families like this are faster to find and far easier to remember.

Inside:

• 2,700+ words and phrases in 30 themes, each divided into smaller groups, from Greetings and Numbers through Family, the Body, Health, Food, Clothing, Weather, Nature, Animals, Travel, Shopping, Work, School, Technology, Festivals and Sport to Essential Verbs, Adjectives and the small grammar words that hold sentences together
• Every entry gives the Chinese word in simplified characters and its pronunciation in Hanyu Pinyin with tone marks on every syllable, so you can say the word correctly, not just recognise it
• Everyday phrases throughout: how to ask the way, order a meal, bargain politely, describe a pain, buy a train ticket, pay by phone, and say the right thing at Spring Festival
• A short, friendly introduction to the four tones, the sounds of Mandarin and how pinyin works, with tables of every initial and final, plus a plain explanation of how characters are built
• A Little Grammar: word order, the particles 了, 过 and 的, measure words, comparisons, questions, negatives and how to be polite, in a few readable pages
• A complete alphabetical English index to every entry (with page numbers in the paperback and live links in the Kindle edition)