Nice Book: 'A Guide to Proper Usage of Spoken Chinese' by Tian shou-He

[柯賜海]

Living in Taiwan, I find that we are deprived of decent books for studying Manadrin. Every Mandarin Section in even the largest sof shops is very small. BUT, a few days ago I stumbled upon a gem of a book- 'A Guide to Proper Usage of Spoken Chinese (Second Edition)' by Tian shou-He.

I would say that it is aimed at the high level beginners to the intermediate levels and It's printed in Traditional characters.

Each and every page (sometimes 2 pages) is dedicated to a point of grammar. Examples include 吧ba vs 嗎ma (the first entry), 把ba3, 忙mang2 vs 幫忙bang1mang2, 碰peng4 碰到peng4dao4 碰見peng4jian4 and 碰上peng4shang, 派-送-寄 pai4 v song4 v ji4....and many others-over 200.

The book is not a systematic introduction to grammar. Thre author says that it is intended as a companion reference for beginners- but i think intermediates could use it too. Anyway, the author has selected the gramar an vocab which frequently presents difficulties. he uses a comparative approach to these points- comparing Chinese and English, 2 grammar points, and 2 vocabulary points. There are also some exersizes at the back.

It's starting to sound like I'm the guy's brother or something so i will just conclude. The thing that does it for me is that it is incredibly concise and clearly laid out- in the last few days I've found myself reading it on the toilet, digesting a page while I'm waiting for the kettle to boil..times like this.

Perhaps the mainland is riddled with quality material (actually this was written and published in HK) but Taiwan is sorely lacking, in any case if your're in Taiwan- get yourself down to Eslite bookstore( 誠品) and pick up a copy.

For others- the isbn is: 962-201-539-5

[wix]

Living in Taiwan, I find that we are deprived of decent books for studying Manadrin. Every Mandarin Section in even the largest sof shops is very small.

If you are in Taipei I suggest you visit Guoyu Ribao (Mandarin Daily News). They have a good bookshop there. I don't know the exact address, but it is in Roosevelt Road north of the Kuting MRT station. Just ask anybody in the street and they should be able to point out the way.

[yonglan]

In Taipei, you can go to either Lucky Bookstore (aka 師大書苑[or do they use 院?] or MTC/CCLC (aka 國語中心) but don't go to school at the latter!!!!!!!! Both of them are located a stone's throw away from each other on the campus of 國立台灣師範大學 and are the best sources of Chinese language learning books for foreign learners I know of in Taiwan. Go to the corner of 和平東路 and 師大路 and you're darn close. Lucky is on the ground floor immediately facing 和平東路. The other is on the 7th floor of 博愛大樓‧ You can just walk on campus. Caves doesn't have a bad selection either. But, yeah, the rest of them, including Eslite, have less than Borders in the US.

國語日報 has very little for foreigners, but if your Chinese is pretty good, they have piles of cool books for kids with 注音符號, as does Eslite (誠品書局). Also, for kids stuff with bo-po-mo, and adult stuff, you can go to 重慶路 (aka 書店街) near the train station and find billions of bookstores.

I'll stop there. Hope this is more help than confusion

Booklover

[jbradfor]

[WOAH. 6 year bump! Maybe I should have started a new thread? Anyway, could a moderator change the title to something more meaningful than "Nice Book!", such as '"A Guide to Proper Usage of Spoken Chinese" reviews'?]

I stumbled across this book on amazon.com, and based on the "Look Inside" feature, decided to purchase it. It's still in transit, will post more thoughts in a month or so.

Until then, anyone else use this? I'm a bit confused, as there seems to be three editions available on amazon.com.

1. Published by The Chinese University Press; 2 ed edition (March 29, 1996) amazon.com link
   
2. Published by The University of Michigan press; Bilingual edition (August 14, 2004) amazon.com link
   
3. Published by SMC Publishing Inc; 2nd Revised edition (January 1, 2010) amazon.com link
   

The first one says "second edition", the second one says "Simplified Chinese Edition", while the third says "second revised edition".

[There's also a "Latin edition"; huh?]

[jbradfor]

Just arrived today. Haven't had a chance to read it in detail, but thus far it seems a worthwhile purchase. The description of 能, 會 and 可以 alone is almost worth the price, in particular that the negative of 能 (when used for permission) is not 不能 but rather 不可以, and the negative of 可以 (when meaning possibility) is not 不可以, but 不能. [in some ways I knew that, but it's nice having it all described for me.]

FWIW, I got the 3rd version of the three I listed above. Based on the "look inside" feature for the 2nd version, the 2nd and 3rd version are identical, with the 2nd being in simplified and the 3rd being traditional.

[SiMaKe]

This book is a useful adjunct to other texts by providing additional discussion and several examples for important, and often problematic, words for learners. (I have the "first simplified Chinese edition 2005").

Another book in this "series" you might find useful is "A Student Handbook for Chinese Function Words" by Jiaying Howard. For a given function word (prepositions, auxiliaries, conjunctions, articles, adverbs, etc), it provides examples for each use of the word. Each entry includes both simplified and traditional hanzi, pinyin and English.

[jbradfor]

This is the same Jiaying Howard that co-authored Business Chinese I presume? She keeps busy!

But I don't quite follow your description of the book. How many different function words are there? I assume there can't be too many. And even for 2 pages of examples per function word, that seems like a small book?

[SiMaKe]

Since Business Chinese is in the same "series" (The Chinese University Press), it's probably safe to assume it's the same Jiaying Howard.

As for the book, according to the preface, it contains over 500 function words. Page numbers run to 305.

Entries are organized alphabetically by pinyin with an index at the end. Attached is a sample page - for part of the entry for 就 (there are 3 full pages to cover all the uses).

The information is not something you probably couldn't find somewhere else (e.g. nciku), but, unlike nciku, all the examples only use the 2905 most commonly used characters as determined by the (Hong Kong) State Office of TCFL. What it does lack is the ability look up a function word for which you know the English.

[tooironic]

Weird I was just reading this the other day and wrote a bit about it on my blog.

[jbradfor]

500 function words! No idea there were that many. Thanks for the recommendation, I'll have to take a look.