Beginning Chinese

by John DeFrancis, Yung Teng Chia-yee

A complete revision of the first volume in the Yale Linguistic Series, this new version, in pinyin romanization, and aimed at secondary school and college levels, is an introduction to spoken Chinese. It includes dialogues, pronunciation drills, sentence-building exercises, examples of characters, substitution drills, and miscellaneous exercises in the form of games like crossword puzzles. There is a combined glossary-index, supplementary vocabulary for each lesson, notes, and a detailed suggested study guide. John De Francis is research professor of Chinese at Seton Hall University. Yale Linguistics Series, 1.

 

The features of this introductory text for learning the Chinese language include:

-Pinyin romanization

-Vocabulary of 600 items

-Pronunciation drills, dialogues, sentence-building exercises, pattern drills, substitution tables, games and other learning aids, memorization exercises, and a combined glossary-index

-No characters are used

 

Genres: Nonfiction, Language, China

601 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1963

Reviews

[Josine van Heek · Rating 4 out of 5]

We used this book during our beginner courses Chinese at Volksuniversiteit Eindhoven. Bit old fashioned but very thorough and detailed. When we moved to China teachers were impressed that we started learning Chinese by using this classic.