Urban Chinese is broken down into five sections. The first section, Pinyin and Tones, provides the reader training wheels for learning Chinese. Based upon standard American English, the pinyin component will present similarities to which speakers of English can relate. The tones section will outline and explain the tones of Chinese, providing tips and practice exercises.
Section Two, Radicals, reveals the logic and meanings of the most commonly used radicals, the components that are mixed and m

书摘

Regardless of how you break it down, studying Chinese is an overly daunting task. When people invest their time to study, they want to know that the material that they are struggling to learn is used in public discourse. Over the past two and a half years, I have had access to a cross section of Chinese life. I have lived with two young Chinese professionals; had Chinese classmates, tutors and friends with whom I spent time on both formal and informal occasions; worked in an all-Chinese professional services firm; taught English to students aged 6-50; and conversed with my older generation neighbors on a regular basis. Due to this complete immersion, I have been able to capture the contemporary nuances of urban Chinese. Urban Chinese: Mandarin in 21st century China is a compilation of my notes which will give the reader the vocabulary, and more saliently the usage necessary to effectively operate in 21st Century China.
I started studying Chinese in the fall of 1998. At that time, like most foreigners, the characters, tones, pronunciation, etc. overwhelmed me. What I did to overcome these obstacles was subconsciously develop word association techniques that facilitated my learning process, utilizing Chinese strong logic, based on my native language English, After all, when studying a foreign language, one cannot help but use their mother tongue as a base, at least in the beginning stage, By breaking down the meaning of each individual character, words became easier to learn, as I was not memorizing a word, but an idea. These mnemonics also proved helpful when learning grammar.
Throughout the course of my studies, I have been a very diligent note taker. If I heard a new word, I would write it down and the next time I met with my tutor, we would go over how I could apply it into my everyday vocabulary. Indeed, these techniques have made it possible for me to attain a high level of proficiency; something that I thought would never happe
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I Pinyn(拼音)
II Radicals(部首)
III Measure Words(量词)
IV “Chinglish” Key
V Category Dictionary(分类词典)
Hobbies(爱好)
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Urbom Chimese is brolxen down into five sections. The first sectlon, Pimyim omd Tomes provldes the reader training wheels for learning Chinese. Based upon stan-dard American English, the pimyim component will present similarities to which spealxers of English can relate, The tones section will outline and explain the tones of Chinese, providing tips and practice exercises.
Section Two, Rodicols , reveals the logic and meanings of the most commonly used radicals, the components that are mixed and matched like puzzle pieces to form Chi-nese characters.
The third sectlon, Cotegory Usoge Dictiomory, provides the most frequently used words on topics such as the body, business, cabs and directions, colors, countries and country leaders, education, electronics, emotions and feelings, foods and restaurants, hobbies, holidays, language study, telling time, vehicles, weather and Chinese zodiac signs.
Learning the stories behind Chinese idioms is a great way of deepening your under-standing of the Chinese culture while also expanding your vocabulary ' In Section Four, Idioms, the background stories of 25 idioms are told along with an example sentence that will enable the student to use the idiom in public discourse.
Section Five, Slcmg, wlH provide the student with the.'real,, language that is not printed in textbooks, but is said as much as, if not more than, the material that is ' Fach entry has undergone a usage test, Only if a majority of the people questioned use the word, was it selected, Examples with the“Chinglish”formula are used to guarantee the student complete understanding and usage.
Lastly, throughout the book, there are baclxgrounds and words of some of China,s most commonly referenced perSOnages including Lei Feng, Da Shan, Norman Bethune, etc, , which will give the redder a basic understanding of why these per-sons are brought up today.