Cher Alex:


Sorry to be late in answering your useful message. How could we improve without critics! Thanks for your critics. We want more critics: shoot!




1) Your point 1: I have tried very hard, especially in Chapter one and two, but also in chap 3 and 4, to choose characters which codes were completely deductible from the few rules presented earlier.




So, if you found some that don¡¦t meet this criteria, please uncover them: let us all know. The main point of Chap 1 is to train on the Main-Signs. All characters presented are made up of Main-Signs shapes, even those who are made of two or three units. The most trouble some is¥» DM (ben3, the origin, a volume) which is an exception explained only page 104, footnote 28. Also ¿ù CTA (cuo4, mistake) because the sign T is (T1) ¡K a secondary sign presented later page 78. I will take these characters out from the next edition.


In Chap 2, the purpose of the exercise presenting the secondary signs is mainly to show these signs inside a character, and help spot their shapes. the simplest shaped characters (with a meaning as common as possible). You will note that very few contain shapes to be skipped. The delineation of some signs might indeed depend on rules explained in section 3 about the delimitation of signs but this is compensated by the display on the right last column of the chosen signs. Only in a few cases, did I omit forget do mention that the code is explained fully by Chap 3 rules on sign skipping: ex: page 79 ANVIT ; page 82 KHVVV and LIVVV. Did you see any other one?


In the big exercise pages 106 to 112 in secondary signs, I see: MCW page 106 (which is more completely explained page 252; IJE (qiu2, to rescue) because the position of sign I is more explained page 128. ( I will place it earlier next time). ¡@


What did I miss? For chap 3 and 4, I let you tell us the ¡§displaced¡¨ characters, okay? It will be useful.




2) Your point 2: color: Yes, full color would have been nice. But ¡K there is something called printing costs, much higher if you have a four color print. Besides, I feel that two colors, shades of gray and coreless characters shapes are enough to properly illustrate most situations. By the way, up to recently, most of the Chinese books on CangJie were black and white. But recently, I noticed an abundance of colors, very lively, some times useful, some times only for decoration without pedagogical value.




3) Your point 3: regarding the absence of pinyin on Appendix III which gives the CJ code for the most used traditional characters. Reason is simple: space! Phonetics will add to many more pages to an already heavy book. I would have rather listed 7000 more less common characters. I consider important to place phonetics next to any character used in the book in order to help learners of Chinese. I saw other books displaying zhuyin phonetic in Taiwan. However, the main purpose is to teach Cangjie input, not Chinese. The book you mentioned can indeed be useful to some users. I will include it a Cangjie bibliography for those who want to consult Chinese books on Cangjie. Could you provide the full coordinates of the book?


Thanks for all,


Eddy

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Replying to:

Bonjour Eddy,




Your books is great!


Just found three points to be criticised (Sorry ) :




1. Going through the CJ-Method book, I found out that sometimes in the early exercices, characters where introduced, which couldn't be inputted without the knowledge of the rules, which where introduced later in the book.




2. Why isn't the book published in full colour to keep the learner's attention on a high level?




3. In the Apendix III, I miss a table of characters by Pinyin (or even Gwoyeu Romatzyh)- order.




This would be useful, because I think that both CJ and GR are the best systems for learning Mandarin. (CJ for character retention and GR for tone retention).




I found such a list in a book called "AN ILLUSTRATED DICTIONARY FOR CHANGJIE CODE", published in 1998. It's a Chinese book, but nethertheless it can be very helpful for looking up some characters, once one have mastered the basics of CJ.




Another plus is its table for HK vernacular characters and another one by HK pronunciation method (although it's not the Yale System).




Hope, this info can be helpful!




Adieu,


Alex