 | Summaries and Customer Reviews are supplied by Amazon.com | Modern Mandarin Chinese Grammar is an innovative reference guide to Mandarin Chinese, combining traditional and function-based grammar in a single volume.
Divided into two sections closely linked by extensive cross-references, it covers:
- traditional grammatical categories such as phrase order, nouns, verbs and specifiers
- language functions and notions such as communication strategies, giving and seeking information, expressing apologies, regrets and sympathies.
With all grammar points and functions richly illustrated with examples, and a strong emphasis on contemporary usage, the main features of this Grammar include examples in simplified characters, traditional characters, and romanization (Pinyin) as well as an emphasis on areas of particular difficulty for learners of Mandarin Chinese.
This is the ideal reference grammar for learners of Mandarin Chinese at all levels, from elementary to advanced. No prior knowledge of grammatical terminology is assumed and a glossary of grammatical terms is provided. Featuring related exercises and activities, this Grammar is accompanied by the Modern Mandarin Chinese Grammar Workbook. |
Average Customer Rating:   Good layout, but not enough review or examples. Like a previous reviewer, I had had the Schaums book earlier and left it in another state, so picked this up to replace it based on the positive reviews, along with the workbook. All in all, I'd have to say I liked the Schaums better because the chapters built on each other and the examples and questions were substantially more intense. This book takes the path of explaining each topic independently. However there's very little in terms of building up to something greater. You see something once, you see one or two example sentences, you do a couple trivial questions in the workbook, and then you never see it again. I found it hard to really remember much (and in general with foreign languages, find it hard to remember much) if there's not constant building, repetition, and review. Some people might like this format, but it wasn't to my liking.
Personally I'd say the New Practical Chinese Reader series is the best, as it has grammar, vocab, and interesting dialogs to help you understand intuitively how the language is really used. Almost Perfect
I fully endorse what others have said about this book. It is the best grammar book available. It would benefit from larger fonts of the characters. I have "perfect" 20/20 vision but I must wear 1.25 magnifier glasses to read the book at the usual arms length. i think if you can't read the Chinese characters that this is a significant flaw.
The book also is a little cluttered. Having both traditonal and simpliied characters makes the pages a little too busy to quickly pull out what you need. Also, I think that if the examples were done in tables so that you could clearly see which Pinyin is associated with which character, learnng would be faster.
There are many characters and Pinyin that are not indexed in the back of the book. This leaves the reader in a difficult position as he/she has no idea as to the meaning of an individual novel character.
Topic headings in the same size of font as the text also makes it difficult to quickly scan an area for information.
The spacing between the Hanzi and the Pinyin, well there is none.This again contributes to the cluttered look and makes it difficult to pull out information and to figure out which character associates with which Pinyin/English.
The book is an odd size. There is enough information to make this a reference book, so why squeeze it into a 7 by 9 1/2 inch book? Why not put it into an 8 1/4 by 11, make use of bigger fonts for headings, overall increase the Chinese chara cter fonts, and make a separate Simplified and Traditional edition??? No one is going to try and make this a pocket book.
There are a surprising number of errors with Pinyin tone markers.
However, irrespective of my feedback, this is a comprehensive book and if you master it, you will be functionally literate.
Content wise, this is the new Li or Chao, the new standard in the 21st century.
I Wuv It. To Death. This book is awesome. Purely awesome. It's easy to use. It's index is lush. Everything's well-organized. It's explanations are clear, concise, and thorough.
It uses Simple AND Traditional Characters, along with Pinyin and English Translations
I will warn you: You probably want a year of Chinese under your belt, maybe a little more! This is a reference book at heart, and it functions best if you've been exposed to Chinese in other formats first. This book is for the people who are learning Chinese by some other means, and need a better Grammar tool.
If you have a question about Chinese Grammar- if you're struggling, knowing that you know all the correct words, and yet baffled as how to put them in the correct order- this book is for you.
I've also used the workbook, and I will highly recommend that as well. You never really know grammar until you use it- and, well... there's your chance to use it!
If you're hesitant about buying it, go find a nearby library that has it. Pour through its glorious pages. Know that you too can understand chinese grammar. And then buy it because the library wont let you check it out for long enough.
/Every/ time I have a question about Chinese grammar, this book has been able to help me. And Chinese is so under-studied in the united states that really you can't find any of this information online- at least not like this. If you buy this book, you will not have wasted your money.
For your info: I'm using this book alongside the New Practical Chinese Readers books. New Practical Chinese Readers are really good about vocab, native language, idiomatic expressions, etc, but the grammar they teach is very scattered and haphazard. You could never possibly locate a grammar rule in that book. This book fills that niche /perfectly/.
A good grammar book First and foremost this is my very first review, I will try to review the books I buy more often.
This book is of course as you can tell from all the reviews a good book on Chinese grammar. I really like how its composed and I think its a high quality book that most people will be happy with.
p.s. I've been studying Mandarin for awhile. Exactly what it should be. The book is exactly what one should expect -- a reference on Chinese grammar. It is concise, yet thorough and easy to understand. It is very well organized, too. |  |
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