Modern Chinese: A Basic Course

This overall course in modern Chinese was designed by the Faculty of Peking University and has been used successfully for the past decade in teaching English-speaking and other foreign students basic Mandarin Chinese. Assuming no previous training in Chinese, this course is excellent for self-study, with full explanations and ample pronunciation and grammar drills throughout.The 30 lessons of the Peking University course are a self-contained grammar, beginning with the most basic characteristic of the language. The diligent student, who carefully follows the lessons to the end, will learn an extensive vocabulary (including characters) and will be conversant in the simple Chinese of daily life … progressing to such complex constructions as "On Saturday I borrowed a translated novel from a friend, and on Sunday (in one day) I read the whole novel" — which he will be able to say and to read.The first four lessons, summarized in table form in the fifth, introduce the vowels, consonants, compound vowels, and vowels plus nasal consonants and their phonetics — all the speech sounds of the Peking dialect — and gradually build up to the tonality and simple sentences of modern Chinese. Grammatical instruction progresses from elementary principles like the negative and interrogative to more advanced concepts like the perfective aspect. To enlarge vocabulary, lists of new words introduce each lesson, and to ensure written proficiency, instruction in writing characters is given at each lesson end.Adapted from the Introduction and first thirty lessons of the Modern Chinese Reader (Peking, 1963), the present course includes translations of the grammar example sentences and exercise sentences (none existed in the original). The official transcription of Mainland China is used, and a conversion table to the Yale and Wade systems is provided.