Author Description

If it is a real headache for you to grasp thousands of Chinese words, you will find this book to be a magic antidote. In an intuitive and fun way, this book reveals the unique method of how this ancient language built up its vocabulary palace, and what's more important, it helps you to understand the ways of thinking and reasons for creating such a vast language. Finally you will find that Chinese is not a difficult language, it is just different.Also, in order to make this book more helpful for solving some "realistic" language problems, such as, to help you to pass tests such as the HSK, BCT or final exam in your class, most of the example words in this book are selected from those words required by these various tests, or those most frequently used in everyday language. Contents and Briefings001 INVISIBLE TIES: ABOUT MANDARIN CHINESE...... To put it simply, Mandarin Chinese is a man-made language. It is based on the dialects near Beijing, and was then modified to be the standard official language. If you happen to visit the Jin Shan Ling Great Wall, you will find that the village beside it is proclaimed as the Origin of Mandarin Chinese......002 IMMORTAL BRICKS: CHINESE CHARACTERS......One amazing fact is that many characters that were created thousands years ago are still in use even though they have changed a lot in their appearance. People can find a distinct route of their evolution. The chart below shows the typical changes of the appearances during the past thousands of years........003 ORIGIN OF THE LEGEND: CHARACTERS AND WORDS...... For most of the languages, the "words" are the most basic elements that are used to construct whole language systems, and the words "mirror" all of the objects or concepts in our lives......004 INFINITE POSSIBILITIES: FEATURES OF VOCABULARY SYSTEM......If you happen to have both an English dictionary and a Chinese dictionary, compare them and you will find some interesting differences in them.......005 BEHIND THE CURTAIN: MECH