Customer Reviews

Speak Mandarin: A Beginning Text in Spoken Chinese (Yale Language Series)

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is the book I used when I first learned Chinese. It is a rather boring book to look at, but it is so straightforward that, with tapes or a native speaker to help you, you can make real progress rather quickly. The Yale romanization poses no problem as it is close enough to pinyin to make later adjustments quite easy. In my mind it's the best there is - and I've tried them all just about.

This is a good grammar text book for spoken Mandarin Chinese. It gives lots of examples, drills and grammar explanations in its twenty lessons. It uses an outmoded phonetic spelling system developed during WWII by Yale University which is similar to the the widespread Pin Yin phonetic spelling. This Yale romanization is actually designed for the English tongue, so it seems more natural to pronounce than Pin Yin, but since not many places teach it, it's of limited use.

As the other reviewers have mentioned, this is an old book using an outdated system for learning Chinese. At the same time, it is by far the EASIEST way to learn spoken Chinese. I have my students review this book with me chapter by chapter and I can see HUGE progress every single week. I did enroll at a local university here in Chengdu and I found that the class was overwhelming for me. I tried a professional tutor as well and I realized that I was learning much more from this book than I was from her. I would recommend reading the scripts with a partner at the beginning of the chapter and then reviewing the vocabulary. You can practice at home once you learn how the tones go for each word. Good luck!