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Modern Mandarin Chinese Grammar (Modern Grammars) | 
 enlarge | Author: Claudia Ross
Publisher: Routledge
Category: Book
List Price: $39.95
Buy New: $31.94
You Save: $8.01 (20%)
Rating:  10 reviews
Sales Rank: 39610
Media: Paperback
Edition: 1
Pages: 396
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.7
Dimensions (in): 9.5 x 6.5 x 1.3
ISBN: 0415700108
Dewey Decimal Number: 495.182421
EAN: 9780415700108
ASIN: 0415700108
Publication Date: August 1, 2006
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: Expedited shipping available
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: Brand new Book, ALL days Low Price !
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Product Description
A brand new title for the Modern Grammars series to add to the existing European Languages and to the forthcoming Japanese title. The grammar will present Chinese as spoken in the People's Republic of China (specifically, that spoken around Beijing) and give all examples in simplified characters, traditional characters, romanization (pinyin) and in translation. It will follow the series structure (two parts - one for grammar structures, one for functions), with an accompanying workbook. Linguistic jargon will be kept to a minimum throughout. We will also be creating an accompanying homepage for the workbook with additional exercises (and a reporting system enabling students to send their results to their tutors); this we hope will go further to enhance the performance of the workbook.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 5 more reviews...
 Very good book October 24, 2008
Bohumil Kopac
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
Book is well-arranged and very useful. Have only one mistake - from time to time describe facts which is used in Taiwan, but not used in mainland China without note. It can be source of problem.
Great overall coverage. October 23, 2008
Bruce (Sacramento, Ca.)
I've had one semester of 'conversational' Mandarin, and started in on some flashcards to learn some characters after the class was over. I was studying the Schaum's Outline of Chinese Grammar also by Claudia Ross, and I set it down somewhere and lost it. I found this book when I went to order another one.
It is much greater in depth and in scope than Schaum's, but very easy to understand and use. Occasionally vocabulary becomes a problem, but that's a normal part of learning any language. I'm glad I got the more complete book, as I intend to continue my study of Mandarin.
One thing missing that was nice in Schaum's is the plethora of tests, which make for easy self study. I haven't had a chance to get that far yet, but I like the way the book is divided into two major sections: the classic textbook section, and the situational section. The first is as expected going over verbs, adverbs, nouns, adjectives, prepositions, etc. The situational section describes language used for various purposes (greetings, talking about past, present, or future events, commanding or permitting, compliments, congratulations and so on). The second part makes it more useful to beginners than a plain textbook.
A very good book - highly recommended.
Excellent resource for both beignners and more advanced learners August 22, 2008
Nathan Dummitt (New York, NY)
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Claudia Ross improves and expands the work she did for Schaum's Outline of Chinese Grammar with a thorough and easy-to-use grammar guide for both beginning and intermediate learners. Chapter titles separate the language into clear and concise entires that are easy to navigate and provide hundreds of example sentences. "Modern Mandarin Chinese Grammar" is exhaustively cross-indexed by chapter number to help learners distinguish between multiple uses of the same word/character. Overall, an excellent resource for serious students of the language!
Nathan Dummitt
author of Chinese Through Tone & Color
Who says Chinese is difficult to learn? August 1, 2008
Bharat Shah (New York, NY, USA)
4 out of 5 found this review helpful
This is a simple, straight forward book to study the Mandarin Chinese language. It is actually a myths-buster. Having had a cursory glance at my copy borrowed from the library, I was convinced that Chinese is not particularly more difficult to learn than any other language. Although the authors do not claim this to be a book for the beginner, even a pre-beginner like myself found it to be easy to follow.
Writing the Chinese characters still remains elusive, and awe inspiring, but this work succeeds eminently in making sense of how those letters combine to form words. Imagine the delight one can get to find out that Chinese nouns, and pronouns do not undergo any changes with gender, tenses, cases, etc. in most instances.
This excellent work encourages the student by removing the fear generated by fear mongers and "linguo-phobes" by talking about 3-6000 characters, some with 40-50 pen strokes, several dialects, four tones of saying a sound, and so on, without ever explaining how such a language has survived for 30+ centuries.
The customary approach of learning the alphabet, before learning to use the language, would probably frighten away many new comers to Chinese. Grammar (first part of the book) generally is not the best way to begin learning a new language. However, quickly reading through the early pages of this work takes one a long way. It gives much needed confidence. There is no learning by rote, memorizing lists of words, or phrases without understanding them.
I have not yet reached the applied grammar (second part), but I am beginning to feel quite comfortable with the language. The book is very well organized, elegantly produced, and more than reasonably priced. One would be happy to pay that much for a lesson or two, and will get out only a fraction of what the book offers. I am ordering my own copy right now.
Very well done April 11, 2008
Robert Veale (Cleveland, Ohio)
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
If you are studying Chinese then you really need a grammar book as a companion to your other course materials. This will serve as a good reference which can be referred to when needed. The fact that the second half of the book focuses on functional (i.e. situational) grammar makes it easy to find the relevant grammar pattern. I won't go into too many details - you can read that in the review(s) below. I still have some grammar questions that the book doesn't answer but it is the best I have found so far. One area where the book is weak is on directional complements which can be unnatural for the western learner. Good luck on your learning!!
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