OK

I used this book and its follow-up book, Volume 2, along with tapes several decades ago. Nicholas Cleaveland Bodman also wrote Spoken Hakka as well using the same format. These books were quite helpful to me when I has regular discourse with Chinese in these dialects. Bodman's books do acknowledge a Malaysian influence but the material is still very useful in China. Speakers using this dialect in Taiwan will also find it useful but the Taiwanese versions of this dialect will contain some vocabulary not found in the Bodman book.

The tapes were of very satisfactory quality.

Users of this book should realize that these books were prepared in the 1950's and that there was some need to reflect the fact that World War II and the insurrection going on at that time did affect the content of the book.

In any case I hope that CD's will come out and replace the tapes.