Practice Pinyin pronunciation and tone of any Mandarin syllable. Over 2000 practice examples in addition to historical tone development. Introduction to Pinyin Consonants and Vowels with IPA transcriptions • 35 Lessons practicing 385 syllables in each of 5 tones: pinyin with IPA transcriptions • 16 Lessons practicing 1082 words with 2-syllable tone combinations • 64 Lessons practicing 2048 words with 3-syllable tone combinations What's Inside • Traditional and Simplified side by side • Pinyin spelling of each entry • Middle Chinese tone class to help you transfer to Cantonese, et al • Characters in 入 tone category have -p, -t, -k, -c superscript to assist transfer to Cantonese, et al Sign up and start a 7-day free trial: ✓ iOS App: https://apps.apple.com/app/glossika-language-learning/id1597902556 ✓ Android App: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.glossika.ai (* You can also download this ebook for free here: https://ai.glossika.com/free-download)

At long last the approach that has helped thousands of learners memorize Japanese kanji has been adapted to help students with Chinese characters. Book 1 of Remembering Simplified Hanzi covers the writing and meaning of the 1,000 most commonly used characters in the simplified Chinese writing system, plus another 500 that are best learned at an early stage. (Book 2 adds another 1,500 characters for a total of 3,000.) Of critical importance to the approach found in these pages is the systematic arranging of characters in an order best suited to memorization. In the Chinese writing system, strokes and simple components are nested within relatively simple characters, which can, in turn, serve as parts of more complicated characters and so on. Taking advantage of this allows a logical ordering, making it possible for students to approach most new characters with prior knowledge that can greatly facilitate the learning process. Guidance and detailed instructions are provided along the way. Students are taught to employ "imaginative memory" to associate each character’s component parts, or "primitive elements," with one another and with a key word that has been carefully selected to represent an important meaning of the character. This is accomplished through the creation of a "story" that engagingly ties the primitive elements and key word together. In this way, the collections of dots, strokes, and components that make up the characters are associated in memorable fashion, dramatically shortening the time required for learning and helping to prevent characters from slipping out of memory.

Get the pronunciation of any Chinese character in any East Asian language with an introduction covering tones and historical sound changes. Classical Middle Chinese and Modern Mandarin | Cantonese | Taiwanese | Hakka | Shanghainese | Wenzhounese | Fuzhounese | Japanese | Korean | Vietnamese What's Inside 1. Over 5000 Characters 2. Radical and Stroke Lookup 3. Middle Chinese readings with Rime and Grade Index 4. Readings in IPA, Universal Pinyin, and native scripts 5. Both literary and colloquial readings included 6. Cross-reference tables of tones & consonant endings in each language 7. Separate index available for each language 8. Both Japanese Onyomi and Kunyomi readings with an index for both 9. Explanation of Middle Chinese evolution to the modern languages 10. Fast lookup: click on any character >> Sign up (https://bit.ly/2Qu21nK) now and start 7-day free trial! >> Learn Chinese (Beijing) with Glossika: https://bit.ly/2zNCvn9 >> Learn Chinese (Taiwan) with Glossika: https://bit.ly/2P6KRv2 >> Download all Glossika guides here: https://ai.glossika.com/free-download

"DeFrancis's book is first rate. It entertains. It teaches. It demystifies. It counteracts popular ignorance as well as sophisticated (cocktail party) ignorance. Who could ask for anything more? There is no other book like it. ... It is one of a kind, a first, and I would not only buy it but I would recommend it to friends and colleagues, many of whom are visiting China now and are adding 'two-week-expert' ignorance to the two kinds that existed before. This is a book for everyone." --Joshua A. Fishman, research professor of social sciences, Yeshiva University, New York "Professor De Francis has produced a work of great effectiveness that should appeal to a wide-ranging audience. It is at once instructive and entertaining. While being delighted by the flair of his novel approach, the reader will also be led to ponder on some of the most fundamental problems concerning the relations between written languages and spoken languages. Specifically, he will be served a variety of information on the languages of East Asia, not as dry pedantic facts, but as appealing tidbits that whet the intellectual appetite. The expert will find much to reflect on in this book, for Professor DeFrancis takes nothing for granted." --William S.Y. Wang, professor of linguistics, University of California at Berkeley

Stuart Jay Raj has developed a suite of hand and body signs, glyphs, colourful stories and exercises that will help learners of Thai lay down a new linguistic and cultural operating system for their mind and body. Rather than awkwardly superimpose a new language over the top of the pre-existing non-Thai sound and meaning system of your mother tongue, Cracking Thai Fundamentals will teach you to think about language, culture and meanings, produce meanings, speak, read and react in Thai in a way that much more resembles the way Thais think about and produce their language themselves.

A “fascinating” (The Economist) dive into the world of linguistics that is “part travelogue, part science lesson, part intellectual investigation…an entertaining, informative survey of some of the most fascinating polyglots of our time” (The New York Times Book Review). In Babel No More, Michael Erard, “a monolingual with benefits,” sets out on a quest to meet language superlearners and make sense of their mental powers. On the way he uncovers the secrets of historical figures like the nineteenth-century Italian cardinal Joseph Mezzofanti, who was said to speak seventy-two languages, as well as those of living language-superlearners such as Alexander Arguelles, a modern-day polyglot who knows dozens of languages and shows Erard the tricks of the trade to give him a dark glimpse into the life of obsessive language acquisition. With his ambitious examination of what language is, where it lives in the brain, and the cultural implications of polyglots’ pursuits, Erard explores the upper limits of our ability to learn and use languages and illuminates the intellectual potential in everyone. How do some people escape the curse of Babel—and what might the gods have demanded of them in return?

Learning Chinese can be frustrating and difficult, partly because it's very different from European languages. Following a teacher, textbook or language course is not enough. They show you the characters, words and grammar you need to become proficient in Chinese, but they don't teach you how to learn them! Regardless of what program you're in (if any), you need to take responsibility for your own learning. If you don't, you will miss many important things that aren't included in the course you're taking. If you study on your own, you need to be even more aware of what you need to do, what you're doing at the moment and the difference between them. Here are some of the questions I have asked and have since been asked many times by students: How do I learn characters efficiently? How do I get the most out of my course or teacher? Which are the best learning tools and resources? How can I become fluent in Mandarin? How can I improve my pronunciation? How do I learn successfully on my own? How can I motivate myself to study more? How can I fit learning Chinese into a busy schedule? The answers I've found to these questions and many others form the core of this book. It took eight years of learning, researching, teaching and writing to figure these things out. Not everybody has the time to do that! I can't go back in time and help myself learn in a better way, but I can help you! This book is meant for normal students and independent language learners alike. While it covers all major areas of learning, you won't learn Chinese just by reading this book. It's like when someone on TV teaches you how to cook: you won't get to eat the delicious dish just by watching the program; you have to do the cooking yourself. That's true for this book as well. When you apply what you learn, it will boost your learning, making every hour you spend count for more, but you still have to do the learning yourself. This is what a few readers have said about the book: "The book had me nodding at a heap of things I'd learnt the hard way, wishing I knew them when I started, as well as highlighting areas that I'm currently missing in my study." - Geoff van der Meer, VP engineering "This publication is like a bible for anyone serious about Chinese proficiency. It's easy for anyone to read and written with scientific precision." - Zachary Danz, foreign teacher, children's theatre artist About me I started learning Chinese when I was 23 (that's more than eight years ago now) and have since studied in many different situations, including serious immersion programs abroad, high-intensity programs in Sweden, online courses, as well as on the side while working or studying other things. I have also successfully used my Chinese in a graduate program for teaching Chinese as a second language, taught entirely in Chinese mostly for native speakers (the Graduate Institute for Teaching Chinese as a Second Language at National Taiwan Normal University). All these parts have contributed to my website, Hacking Chinese, where I write regularly about how to learn Mandarin.