5 BEST BOOKS TO FAST SELF-LEARN MANDARIN CHINESE

Updated August 4, 2020

Learning Mandarin Chinese is a very long and arduous journey. However, choosing the right books and study materials would certainly help you eliminate wastage of time. In this post, I’ll provide you a quick list of my favorite 5 best books to fast self-learn Mandarin Chinese (simplified characters). These are the books I personally referred to, and would recommend them to anyone willing to self-learn Mandarin Chinese. For your convenience, I’d link the books to Amazon. Feel free to check them out for further details!

5 Best Books to Fast Self-Learn Mandarin Chinese

#1 My Chinese Picture Dictionary (English Edition)

This is a wonderful picture dictionary book to learn Mandarin Chinese words fast. The book offers you very clear images of different aspects of life with corresponding words in English, pinyin and Chinese. Hence, both English and Chinese learners can use this dictionary. In fact, “My Chinese Picture Dictionary” is one of the finest English-Chinese dictionaries I have ever known about.

#2 The First 100 Chinese Characters: Simplified Character Edition: (HSK Level 1) The Quick and Easy Way to Learn the Basic Chinese Characters

This is a wonderful resource for self-learning Chinese character writing. Each and every character strokes are depicted very clearly. A great resource to understand the character radicals. This book would tremendously help you with Chinese writing. Learning first 100 basic Chinese characters will be useful to both kids and adults.

#3 Modern Mandarin Chinese Grammar: A Practical Guide (Modern Grammars)

Although Chinese grammar is often thought to be relatively simple, it’s recommended to understand numerous contextual nuances. As the book’s name suggests, “Modern Mandarin Chinese Grammar” is an amazing resource for learning Chinese grammar. The book offers you thousands of example sentences. Each sentence is provided in English, pinyin and Chinese (both simplified and traditional characters included). In my humble opinion, this book is necessary for the beginners, intermediate and advanced level learners.

Another related book, Modern Mandarin Chinese Grammar Workbook, is also very helpful to test your learning.

#4 The Lady in the Painting: A Basic Chinese Reader, Expanded Edition, Simplified Characters (Far Eastern Publications Series) (English and Simplified Chinese Edition)

This is essentially a Chinese reading practice book. The book provides a story of an ordinary guy, Zhang Da Ming (张大明). His wife is a fairy (女仙) and saves him from the fury of an angry and greedy king. A good number of caricatures are included throughout the text to explain you the story.

What’s more, the book doesn’t provide you pinyin Romanization. Basically, you have to read the Chinese characters/words and understand their meanings. Moreover, the word lists are included to make the reading process easier. Further, the book often repeats the same characters/words in different contexts, and hence, would help you unconsciously learn Chinese words/characters fast. As such, this should be the first and finest book to start your Mandarin Chinese reading practice.

I really admire Claudia Ross, who, as a nonnative author, wrote these beautiful books.

#5 Living Language Mandarin Chinese, Complete Edition: Beginner through advanced course, including 3 course books, 9 audio CDs, Chinese character guide, and free online learning

Another wonderful resource to self-learn Mandarin Chinese! There are a total 9 books in this set. Audio CD included. Check out more on amazon:

Actually, I live in China. When I started looking for this book, it turned out that the book wasn’t available on Chinese online shopping stores. Finally, I bought it on Amazon USA. It took more than a month before the book was finally delivered to me in China. Now I’m more than glad to have purchased this book set.

Overall, with such resources at hand, you will self-learn Chinese very fast.

What are your favorite 5 best books to fast self-learn Mandarin Chinese?