Easy Learning Mandarin Chinese Dictionary: Trusted support for learning (Collins Easy Learning)

In general, I like the Collins Easy Learning series of dictionaries. I found its Spanish and German dictionaries extremely useful when studying these languages, with their very helpful example sentences illustrating how words are used.I'm now studying Mandarin Chinese, and I'm finding this dictionary useful too, but not quite so useful, for two reasons. First (as another reviewer has pointed out) the characters are written in a "mechanical" style dominated by right angles, rather than the more normal 'rounded' style. (See the images for a comparison of the two ways of writing shì, to be.) This is not very helpful for people learning to write the characters for themselves.Secondly, the print is very small, which makes the more complicated characters difficult to read without a magnifying glass.I do use the dictionary and I don't regret buying it, but it could easily have been a lot better.

It is well laid out, but sadly lacking on the Chinese to English as there are very few words and I think is not really suitable for a beginner. It's strength is in the English to Chinese. Berlitz Compact is better.I would not recommend this as it is far inferior to the Kindle versions of this dictionary. You have to buy both separately because of the software, but they are far superior and cheaper to this so better value for money.If you like this kind of layout in a paper dictionary I would recommend Concise English-Chinese Chinese-English dictionary by Commercial Press.

Bought for teaching purposes.