Teach Yourself Chinese

Fülszöveg

THE PLAN AND SCOPE OF THIS BOOK
SOUND TABLES AND SPELLING CHART From these it will be seen that there are 409 different sounds in the language, and that these are built up from sixty-two basic syllables, either independently or in combination. No system of Romanisation has yet been devised which reproduces the sounds of the Chinese language with perfect accuracy. But the divergences between the sounds as actually spoken, and as reproduced by the system of Romanisation adopted in this book, are so slight that no discouragement need be felt on that account.
THE DIALOGUES There are forty dialogues on various topics designed to make the student familiar with the terminology of everyday affairs, domestic, social, travel, personal, political and the like. The selection of the themes of these dialogues has been guided by a desire to meet the need of a student making his first contacts with the Chinese people. With expert Chinese assistance, phrases and sentences have -been selected... Tovább

Fülszöveg

THE PLAN AND SCOPE OF THIS BOOK
SOUND TABLES AND SPELLING CHART From these it will be seen that there are 409 different sounds in the language, and that these are built up from sixty-two basic syllables, either independently or in combination. No system of Romanisation has yet been devised which reproduces the sounds of the Chinese language with perfect accuracy. But the divergences between the sounds as actually spoken, and as reproduced by the system of Romanisation adopted in this book, are so slight that no discouragement need be felt on that account.
THE DIALOGUES There are forty dialogues on various topics designed to make the student familiar with the terminology of everyday affairs, domestic, social, travel, personal, political and the like. The selection of the themes of these dialogues has been guided by a desire to meet the need of a student making his first contacts with the Chinese people. With expert Chinese assistance, phrases and sentences have -been selected as they are spoken by Chinese of average intelligence to-day. A few phrases of modern newspaper Chinese are introduced here and there. The aim of the writer is to make the student feel at home with the ordinary folk in China to-day.
THE VOCABULARIES Each dialogue is accompanied by a vocabulary, which includes the new characters as they appear in Romanised and Chinese form, with their meaning and intonation.
THE NOTES
Each dialogue is followed by a few short notes consisting chiefly of idiomatical and grammatical comments, designed to introduce the student gradually to the chief idioms and rules.
THE CHINESE TEXT OF THE DIALOGUES This section follows the dialogues in the Romanised form. '] Some students will perhaps choose to confine themselves
' , to the Romanised section, and the writer knows many
' good speakers of Chinese who scarcely recognise a single
Chinese character. But it is hoped that the student will
Contipued on back flap
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