About Chinese

by Richard Newnham, Tan Lin-Tung

Product details 192 pages Penguin Books Ltd; First Edition edition (27 May 1971) Language English 0140211314 978-0140211313 Product 17.8 x 10.9 x 1.3 cm

Genres: Language

192 pages, Paperback

First published July 30, 1971

Reviews

[Blaine Snow · Rating 5 out of 5]

This little volume is an outstanding introduction to the Chinese language. A bit dated as it was written-published in the 1970s but so be it - the essentials of Chinese haven't changed since then. What I remember from reading this book in the early 1980s was how unique and sophisticated Chinese is compared to other world languages - it's pictographic writing and its great importance to Chinese culture; it's mono-syllabic phonetics which limit the sounds of Chinese; it's non-inflected structure which means words never change form unlike Western languages which constantly change form (e.g., conjugation) to reflect grammatical structure; and many other things that stuck with me for decades after. I learned about the various transliteration systems, the old Wade-Giles system (Peking, Taoism) -v the Pinyin system (Beijing, Daoism), how the writing system works, how characters are constructed, their history and tons of fascinating information. Learning Chinese is a journey unto itself. Highly recommended.

[Julian · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this book 35 years ago and I don't really know much about Chinese but as far as I can tell this is the best book there is for explaining the complexities of the language and its writing system.

[Lysergius · Rating 3 out of 5]

An excellent overview of a very complicated subject.