Chinese speech, described in musical terms, is staccato rather than legato (which could be used to describe English).
1.5 Pinyin: the romanization scheme to show pronunciation
As Chinese writing normally does not indicate pronunciation, a romanization scheme, known as pinyin, is used to represent the sounds and tones of Chinese, as in this dictionary. Pinyin is useful for learning the phonetics of Mandarin.
2 WRITING CHINESE: 汉字 Hànzi
Chinese is not phonetic like most European languages (in varying degrees). Chinese is written in logograms, known as 汉字 (Hànzi) and generally referred to as “Chinese characters”, or “Sinograms.”
2.1 Chinese characters as syllables
Each Chinese character is pronounced as a syllable. It is of course important to be able to read a character with the correct pronunciation.
2.2 The composition of Chinese characters: Meaningful components
Chinese characters can be analyzed into components. It is acknowledged that there are three kinds of components. Of the three, the most interesting to learners of Chinese is a group of components that convey certain meanings. The presence of such a component in a character gives you some clue to its meaning of the character. Hence, learning the meaning of these component parts will deepen your understanding of characters you know, and help you guess the meaning of unfamiliar characters. See List 1 on page xv.
2.3 The writing of Chinese characters
STROKES
Each Chinese character is composed of strokes. The table below shows the basic strokes. Recognizing the strokes in a character is helpful for finding a character or radical in the Stroke Index, List of Radicals and Radical Index. Each of the strokes shown in the table is counted as one stroke.
STROKE ORDER
For the character to look correct, its strokes should be written in the correct order. Knowing the order will also help you remember characters. The general rules of stroke order are as shown below.
SIMPLIFIED AND TRADITIONAL CHARACTERS
The Chinese government simplified hundreds of Chinese characters in mid-1950 by reducing the numbers of their strokes. Such simplified characters are called 简体字 jiǎntǐzì. This dictionary uses jiantizi. Traditional versions (also known as complicated characters) are still used in Taiwan and Hong Kong, and they are shown after “Trad” where applicable, e.g.:
学 xué Trad 學
3 VOCABULARY: Word-formation
Chinese words are either of one syllable or more than one syllable (mostly two syllables). When they are made up of two or more syllables, their meanings are usually transparent; that is, the way a word is formed tells you a lot about its meaning. Therefore it is very helpful to know the meanings of the components in a word and the way the word is formed, and it also makes understanding the word easier and more interesting.
There are six basic word-formation methods:
• Compounding: the components of a word are complementary to each other in meaning and are of the same status. For example:
重 once again + 复 repeat → 重复 repeat
• Modification: one component modifies the other. For example:
外 outside + 国 country → 外国 foreign country
• Verb+object: the word has a verb-and-object relationship. For example:
发 develop + 烧 burning, fever → 发烧 to run a fever
• Verb+complementation: the word has a verb-and-complement relationship, that is, the first component is a verb or an adjective and the second one modifies it. For example:
提 raise + 高 high → 提高 raise
• Suffixation: the word contains a suffix. For example:
本 a book + 子 nominal suffix → 本子 notebook
• Idioms: the word is an idiomatic expression. For example:
马上 → at once, immediately
4 GRAMMAR
4.1 Main features of Chinese grammar
TOPIC+COMMENT STRUCTURE
The basic principle in making Chinese sentences is to follow the “topic+comment” structure. “Topic” means the subject matter you want to talk about, and “comment” is the information you give about the subject matter. To make a Chinese sentence, you simply first mention the subject matter you want to talk about, and then say what you have to say about it. For example, you can say 那本书 nà běn shū (that book) first as the “topic” and then add “comment”:
那本书 Nà běn shū (that book) + 很有意思 hěn yǒu yìsi (very interesting) → That book is very interesting.
那本书 Nà běn shū (that book) + 卖完了 mài wán le (sold out)→That book has been sold.
那本书 Nà běn shū (that book) + 你有吗 nǐ yǒu ma (do you have) → Do you have that book?
那本书 Nà běn shū (that book) + 语言很优美 yǔyán hěn yōuměi (language is beautiful) → The language of that book is beautiful.
ELLIPSIS OF SENTENCE ELEMENTS
Chinese speakers may leave out words that are supposed to be understood, and therefore need not be spoken. Subjects and conjunctions are often omitted. For example, you may translate the English sentence If you like it, you may buy it, but if you don’t like it, you don’t have to, into the Chinese sentence 喜欢就买, 不喜欢就别买。 Xǐhuan jiùmǎi, bù xǐhuan jiù bié mǎi. Literally, it means “Like it, and buy, don’t like then don’t buy.” Compare the two sentences, and you will find that some English words, such as if, you, it, and but are not translated.
WORD CLASSES: FLEXIBILITY, NO INFLECTION
Chinese words do not have inflections, i.e. they do not change to indicate grammatical categories. For example, the verb 去 qù (to go) is invariably 去 qù; there is no past form or any other inflected form of this verb. Neither do Chinese words normally have formal markers of word class. Consequently it is rather easy for a word to be used in more than one word class. This relative flexibility in word classes, however, does not mean that Chinese does not have word classes (see Section 4.2).
MEASURE WORDS AND PARTICLES
Measure words (量词 liàngcí) and particles (助词 zhùcí) are two word classes found in Chinese but not in English and most other languages.
Measure
