Intermediate Spoken Chinese: A Practical Approach to Fluency in Spoken Mandarin

730 Pages·2013·14.09 MB·English

by  Cornelius C. Kubler

CORNELIUS C. KUBLER
TUTTLE Publishing
Tokyo | Rutland, Vermont | Singapore
The Tuttle Story: “Books to Span the East and
West”
Many people are surprised to learn that the world’s largest
publisher of books on Asia had its beginnings in the tiny
American state of Vermont. The company’s founder, Charles E.
Tuttle, belonged to a New England family steeped in publishing.
And his first love was naturally books—especially old and rare
editions.
Immediately after WW II, serving in Tokyo under General
Douglas MacArthur, Tuttle was tasked with reviving the
Japanese publishing industry, and founded the Charles E. Tuttle
Publishing Company, which thrives today as one of the world’s
leading independent publishers.
Though a westerner, Charles was hugely instrumental in
bringing knowledge of Japan and Asia to a world hungry for
information about the East. By the time of his death in 1993,
Tuttle had published over 6,000 books on Asian culture, history
and art—a legacy honored by the Japanese emperor with the
“Order of the Sacred Treasure,” the highest tribute Japan can
bestow upon a non-Japanese.
With a backlist of 1,500 titles, Tuttle Publishing is more
active today than at any time in its past—inspired by Charles
Tuttle’s core mission to publish fine books to span the East and
West and provide a greater understanding of each.
Published by Tuttle Publishing, an imprint of Periplus Editions (HK)
Ltd.
www.tuttlepublishing.com
Copyright © 2013 Cornelius C. Kubler
All photos © Cornelius C. Kubler except for:
Front cover/title page, top righthand image: © iStockphoto.com/Peng
Wu. Page 359: © Roza; Unit 24 Part 1, © 1000 words; Unit 24 Part 2,
© Sam D\’ouz; Unit 24 Part 3, Mohamad Ridzuan Abdul Rashid
(George Town), © Rindradjaja (food stall); Unit 24 Part 4, © Rafal
Cichawa, all Dreamstime.com.
ISBN 978-0-8048-4018-7; ISBN 978-1-4629-1549-1 (ebook)
Interior design: Anne Bell Carter
Assistance received from the following in the videotaping of the basic
conversations for this course is gratefully acknowledged: Unit 11, Part
2: 7-Eleven Corporation of Taiwan; Part 4: China Petroleum station,
corner of Xinyi Road and Tonghua Street, Taipei; Unit 12, Part 2:
Suzhou Jie Department Store, Beijing; Unit 13, Part 2: Heping
Supermarket, Taipei; Part 3: Fengcai Shoe and Handbag Store,
Taipei; Part 4: Tiantian Children’s Fashions, Taipei; Unit 14, Parts 1
and 2: Dong Ji Restaurant, Beijing; Parts 3 and 4: Jufulou
Manchurian Restaurant, Beijing; Unit 15, Parts 1, 2, and 3: Quanjude
Roast Duck Restaurant, Beijing; Unit 16, Part 1: Xiangyang lou
Restaurant, Taipei; Unit 20, Parts 1 and 2: Chinese Classic Art
Development Center, New York City; Unit 22, Part 2: Foreign Affairs
Police, Taipei; Part 3: National Taiwan Normal University, Taipei;
Unit 23, Part 3: Yale-China Chinese Language Centre, Chinese
University of Hong Kong; Unit 24, Part 3: Penang Chinese Girls’
Private High School; Part 4: SBS House of Notebooks, Gurney Plaza,
Penang.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or
utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical,
including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and
retrieval system, without prior written permission from the publisher.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data for this title is on
record.
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First edition
15 14 13 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 1306EP
Printed in Hong Kong
®
TUTTLE PUBLISHING is a registered trademark of Tuttle
Publishing, a division of Periplus Editions (HK) Ltd.
A Note to the Learner
Welcome to the second volume of an
unusual, and highly effective, two-volume course in spoken Chinese.
As a native English speaker, your working hard to learn Chinese
isn’t enough; you have to work smart in order to learn this very
different language efficiently. No matter why you’ve chosen to learn
Chinese—for business, travel, cultural studies, or another goal—the
Basic Chinese approach of two separate but integrated tracks will
help you learn it most efficiently and successfully.
There are no Chinese characters to be found here because you
don’t need characters to learn to speak Chinese. In fact, learning the
characters for everything you learn to say is an inefficient way to
learn Chinese, one that significantly slows down your progress.
To help you learn to speak and understand Chinese as efficiently
as possible, Intermediate Spoken Chinese gives you the Chinese
language portions of this course not via characters, but instead
through video and audio featuring native speakers (on the
accompanying discs). And in the pages of this book, the Chinese is
represented in Hanyu Pinyin, the official Chinese romanization
system.
• Intermediate Spoken Chinese should be used in conjunction with
the accompanying Intermediate Spoken Chinese Practice
Essentials.
• If you wish to learn Chinese reading and writing, which is
certainly to be recommended for most learners, you should—
together with or after the spoken course—use the companion
course Intermediate Written Chinese. It corresponds with
Intermediate Spoken Chinese and systematically introduces the
highest-frequency characters (simplified and traditional) and
words in context in sentences and reading passages as well as in
realia such as street signs, menus, and advertisements.
• For instructors and those learners with prior knowledge of Chinese
characters, an Intermediate Spoken Chinese Character
Transcription is also available. It contains transcriptions into
simplified and traditional characters of Intermediate Spoken
Chinese and can be downloaded free from the Intermediate Spoken
Chinese page at www.tuttlepublishing.com. Please note that the
character transcription isn’t intended, and shouldn’t be used, as
the primary vehicle for beginning Chinese language students to
learn reading and writing.
• The Basic Chinese Instructor’s Guide, also available free from the
publisher, contains detailed suggestions for using these materials
as well as a large number of communicative exercises for use by
instructors in class or by tutors during practice sessions.