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Reading and Writing Chinese: Third Edition: Third Edition
This is a complete and easy-to-use guide for reading and writing Chinese characters.
Learning written Chinese is an essential part of mastering the Chinese language. Used as a standard by students and teachers learning to read Chinese and write Chinese for more than three decades, the bestselling Reading & Writing Chinese has been completely revised and updated. Reading & Writing Chinese places at your fingertips the essential 1,725 Chinese characters' up-to-date definitions, derivations, pronunciations, and examples of correct usage by means of cleverly condensed grids. This guide also focuses on Pinyin, which is the official system to transcribe Hanzi, Chinese characters, into Latin script, now universally used in mainland China and Singapore. Traditional characters (still used in Taiwan and Hong Kong) are also included, making this a complete reference.
Newly updated and revised, these characters are the ones officially prescribed by the Chinese government for the internationally recognized test of proficiency in Chinese, the Hanyu Shuiping Kaoshi (HSK). The student's ability to read Chinese and write Chinese is reinforced throughout.
Key features of this newly-expanded edition
The 1,725 most frequently used characters in both Simplified and Traditional forms.
All 2,633 characters and 5,000+ compounds required for the HSK Exam.
Standard Hanyu Pinyin romanizations.
More mnemonic phrases and etymologies to help you remember the characters.
An extensive introduction, alphabetical index, and index according to stroke count and stroke order.
Completely updated/expanded English definitions.
Convenient quick-reference tables of radicals.
Updated and revised compounds, plus 25% more vocabulary now offered.
Codes to assist those who are preparing for the AP exam or the HSK exam.
Learning written Chinese is an essential part of mastering the Chinese language. Used as a standard by students and teachers learning to read Chinese and write Chinese for more than three decades, the bestselling Reading & Writing Chinese has been completely revised and updated. Reading & Writing Chinese places at your fingertips the essential 1,725 Chinese characters' up-to-date definitions, derivations, pronunciations, and examples of correct usage by means of cleverly condensed grids. This guide also focuses on Pinyin, which is the official system to transcribe Hanzi, Chinese characters, into Latin script, now universally used in mainland China and Singapore. Traditional characters (still used in Taiwan and Hong Kong) are also included, making this a complete reference.
Newly updated and revised, these characters are the ones officially prescribed by the Chinese government for the internationally recognized test of proficiency in Chinese, the Hanyu Shuiping Kaoshi (HSK). The student's ability to read Chinese and write Chinese is reinforced throughout.
Key features of this newly-expanded edition
The 1,725 most frequently used characters in both Simplified and Traditional forms.
All 2,633 characters and 5,000+ compounds required for the HSK Exam.
Standard Hanyu Pinyin romanizations.
More mnemonic phrases and etymologies to help you remember the characters.
An extensive introduction, alphabetical index, and index according to stroke count and stroke order.
Completely updated/expanded English definitions.
Convenient quick-reference tables of radicals.
Updated and revised compounds, plus 25% more vocabulary now offered.
Codes to assist those who are preparing for the AP exam or the HSK exam.
- GenresNonfictionLanguage
336 pages, Paperback
Published July 23, 2013
4 people are currently reading
15 people want to read
About the author
William McNaughton
23 books2 followersWilliam McNaughton was the founding teacher of Chinese at Oberlin College. From 1986 he taught at Hong Kong’s City University, where he was the founding program leader of the BA (Honors) program in Translation and Interpretation.
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
October 21, 2023
This is a great reference book to own on learning the Chinese language system of characters. It was written as a guide to help study for the national exam on writing.
What I would say is great about this book is all the information it gives, a little back story on the writing system vs spoken Chinese. The order of radicals, which you literally just need to memorize. It teaches you the order and direction of strokes on writing the characters.
This book is a massive collection of characters to teach you vocabulary. With each character, you are also provided with pronunciation written using pinyin to help with phonetics, strokes broken down to give you order, and other detailed references.
What I would say is great about this book is all the information it gives, a little back story on the writing system vs spoken Chinese. The order of radicals, which you literally just need to memorize. It teaches you the order and direction of strokes on writing the characters.
This book is a massive collection of characters to teach you vocabulary. With each character, you are also provided with pronunciation written using pinyin to help with phonetics, strokes broken down to give you order, and other detailed references.
Displaying 1 of 1 review