Chinese For Dummies (2 page)

Introduction

G
lobalization has made familiarity with other people, cultures, and languages not only preferable but also essential in the 21st century. With the help of the Internet, reaching out and touching someone on the other side of the earth has become as easy as clicking a mouse or using a smartphone. And yet nothing quite beats the excitement of a face-to-face encounter with someone who hails from the other side of the globe in his or her own language. Communication in cyberspace doesn't even come close.

Whether you're an inveterate traveler, going overseas for business, about to study overseas, interested in frequenting Chinatown, befriending a Chinese-speaking classmate or coworker, or just plain curious about China,
Chinese For Dummies,
2nd Edition, can help you get acquainted with enough Chinese to carry on a decent conversation on any number of topics. You won't become fluent instantly, of course, but this book helps you greet a stranger, buy a plane ticket, and order some food. It also gives you some invaluable cultural tips so that you can not only rattle off those newly acquired words and phrases but also back them up with the right behavior at the right time.

I designed this book to help guide you toward the successful use of one of the most difficult languages on earth. Chinese should also just be plain fun to learn.

About This Book

The good news is that you can use
Chinese For Dummies,
2nd Edition, anytime, anywhere. No mandatory class sessions, no exams, and no homework assignments to dread. Need to get to a new city for a business meeting? Just turn to the chapter on travel to find out how to buy a plane ticket, get through customs, and get to the airport on time. Have to make a sudden trip to the doctor? Turn to the chapter on your health and figure out in advance how to tell your caregivers exactly what ails you.

The beauty of this book is that it can be all things to all people. You don't have to memorize
Chapter 5
before moving on to
Chapter 6
if what
Chapter 6
deals with is what you really need. Each chapter provides you with different bits of information about the Chinese language and highlights different parts of Chinese grammar. Read as much or as little as you want, as quickly or as slowly as you like. Whatever interests you is what you should focus on. And remember: You're discovering a language that simultaneously represents one of the world's oldest civilizations and one of its fastest growing economies in the 21st century.

Conventions Used in This Book

Pay attention to a few conventions that can help you navigate this book's contents:

Chinese terms are set in
boldface
to make them stand out.

Pronunciations and meanings appear in parentheses immediately after the Chinese terms. The English translations are in
italics.

This book uses the
pīnyīn
拼音
(pin-yin) (Literally:
spelling the way it sounds
) Romanization system of Chinese words. What does that mean? Well, if you go to China, you see signs in Chinese characters all around, but if you look for something in English, you may be hard pressed to find it. Whatever signs you see in Roman letters will be of
pīnyīn,
the Romanization system developed by the Communists in the 1950s, so seeing
pīnyīn
in this book is good practice for you.

In this edition of
Chinese For Dummies,
Chinese characters have been added in many places and appear after the initial transliteration from the
pīnyīn.
Chinese characters are fun to try to decipher. The Chinese have been working at precisely that for thousands of years, especially for the more complicated characters that took as many as 20 separate strokes of the traditional Chinese writing brush to create.

Lucky for you, many of the more complicated Chinese characters were simplified in the early 20th century to make them easier to read and write, and these are used in mainland China today. (You can read more about Chinese characters in
Chapter 2
.) The original (or
traditional
) characters are still used in Taiwan. In this book, simplified characters appear first, followed in parentheses by the traditional characters. Characters that were never simplified don't have any separate notation in parentheses.

Another thing you should keep in mind as you begin to understand Chinese is that many of the English translations you see in this book aren't exactly literal. Knowing the gist of what you hear or see is more important than knowing what individual words in any given phrase mean. For example, the Chinese phrase meaning
so-so
literally translates as
horse horse tiger tiger
even though you're not actually talking about animals. Whenever I give a literal translation, I preface it with “Literally.”

The following elements in this book help reinforce the new terms and phrases you're studying:

Talkin' the Talk dialogues:
Nothing beats seeing and hearing an actual conversation to learn Chinese, so I intersperse dialogues throughout the book under the heading “Talkin' the Talk.” They show you the Chinese words, the pronunciations, and the English translations, and I often put cultural do's and don'ts into context, which should come in handy. Many of these dialogues appear in the accompanying audio tracks so you can practice the sentences after you hear how they should sound. With the tonal nature of the Chinese language, this feature is indispensable as you learn Chinese.

Words to Know blackboards:
These boxes come after the Talkin' the Talk dialogues and highlight important words from each dialogue.

Fun & Games activities:
Working through word games can be a fun way to review the words and phrases you encounter in each chapter. This element is a great way to gauge your progress and tease your brain at the same time. Look for these activities at the end of each chapter.

Foolish Assumptions

Some of the foolish assumptions I made about you while writing
Chinese For Dummies,
2nd Edition, are that

You don't know any Chinese, except for maybe a couple of words you picked up from a good kung-fu movie or the word
tofu,
which you picked up while grocery shopping.