This book has its unique value as the pioneer study on the regional variants of Mandarin by experimental phonetics methods, sociophonetic methods, and AI assisted big data methods. Dialectal Mandarins are commonly well-recognized variations for standards Mandarin that have regional characteristics. This book is divided into four parts. The first part introduces Chinese, Chinese dialects, and Mandarin tones. In part two, the book makes a comprehensive and systematic comparison among Beijing Mandarin, Shanghai Mandarin, and Guangzhou Mandarin as the three major Mandarin variants by both the experimental phonetic methods and by using deep learning method. In the deep learning chapter, this book explores whether deep learning can recognize regional dialects patterns from the large amounts of data, and whether it can successfully identify the tonal system of each region’s dialects. The experimental results show that deep learning performs perfectly well in regional dialect recognition and tonal system learning. Liu Yuxuan, a student from USST, provided important technical support for the deep learning experiment. The third part further deepens the research perspective, and studies the geographically close subregional Mandarin. This part involves both acoustic research and perceptual research on three geographically close subregional dialects of Mandarin. The last part is a report on two experiments investigating dialectal experience’s role in predicting listeners’ subjective depiction on both non-categorical and categorical tonal variants of the official language, Putonghua. The dialectal resources recorded in this book are also valuable. The book is supposed to contribute to new progress in academic study on language variation, language evolution, experimental phonetics methods, as well as AI programming.

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.

Essential Mandarin Chinese Grammar is a systematic overview of Mandarin grammar, oriented toward self-study, English-speaking students. Through explanations of common mistakes learners make, useful example sentences and exercises with an answer key, this book provides a detailed introduction to the unique grammar structures of the Mandarin language. Ideal for any student who is interested in taking their skills to the next level, this book makes the difficult task of perfecting grammar efficient, interesting and rewarding. Essential Mandarin Chinese Grammar is a perfect tool to help you form correct and natural-sounding sentences, and determine how to best use the grammar you need for reading or writing Mandarin. Each example and exercise is written in both pinyin and Simplified Chinese Characters to accommodate learners with varying levels of character literacy, including those who have learned only to speak but not read.

Make the most of your trip with the Rough Guide Mandarin Chinese Phrasebook. Find the perfect word or phrase for every situation Use extensive two-way dictionary packed with vocabulary Choose food and drink from any menu Check out travel tips and a regional pronunciation guide Listen to correct pronunciation of essential dialogues DOWNLOAD EASY AUDIOFILES OF CONVERSATIONS FROM www.roughguides.com

The studies of the Japanese language and psycholinguistics have advanced quite significantly in the last half century thanks to the progress in the study of cognition and brain mechanisms associated with language acquisition, use, and disorders, and in particular, because of technological developments in experimental techniques employed in psycholinguistic studies. This volume contains 18 chapters that discuss our brain functions, specifically, the process of Japanese language acquisition - how we acquire/learn the Japanese language as a first/second language - and the mechanism of Japanese language perception and production - how we comprehend/produce the Japanese language. In turn we address the limitations of our current understanding of the language acquisition process and perception/production mechanism. Issues for future research on language acquisition and processing by users of the Japanese language are also presented. Chapter titles 1. Learning to become a native listener of Japanese (Reiko Mazuka) 2. The nature of the count/mass distinction in Japanese (Mutsumi Imai & Junko Kanero) 3. Grammatical deficits in Japanese children with Specific Language Impairment (Shinji Fukuda, Suzy E. Fukuda, & Tomohiko Ito) 4. Root infinitive analogues in Child Japanese (Keiko Murasugi) 5. Acquisition of scope (Takuya Goro) 6. Narrative development in L1 Japanese (Masahiko Minami) 7. L2 acquisition of Japanese (Yasuhiro Shirai) 8. The modularity of grammar in L2 acquisition (Mineharu Nakayama & Noriko Yoshimura) 9. Tense and aspect in Japanese as a second language (Alison Gabriele & Mamori Sugita Hughes) 10. Language acquisition and brain development: Cortical processing of a foreign language (Hiroko Hagiwara) 11. Resolution of branching ambiguity in speech (Yuki Hirose) 12. The role of learning in theories of English and Japanese sentence processing (Franklin Chang) 13. Experimental syntax: word order in sentence processing (Masatoshi Koizumi) 14. Relative clause processing in Japanese: psycholinguistic investigation into typological differences (Baris Kahraman & Hiromu Sakai) 15. Processing of syntactic and semantic information in the human brain: evidence from ERP studies in Japanese. (Tsutomu Sakamoto) 16. Issues in L2 Japanese sentence processing: similarities/differences with L1 and individual differences in working memory (Koichi Sawasaki & Akiko Kashiwagi-Wood) 17. Sentence production models to consider for L2 Japanese sentence production research (Noriko Iwasaki) 18. Processing of the Japanese language by native Chinese speakers (Katsuo Tamaoka)

A masterpiece of linguistics scholarship, at once erudite and entertaining, confronts the thorny question of how—and whether—culture shapes language and language, culture Linguistics has long shied away from claiming any link between a language and the culture of its speakers: too much simplistic (even bigoted) chatter about the romance of Italian and the goose-stepping orderliness of German has made serious thinkers wary of the entire subject. But now, acclaimed linguist Guy Deutscher has dared to reopen the issue. Can culture influence language—and vice versa? Can different languages lead their speakers to different thoughts? Could our experience of the world depend on whether our language has a word for "blue"? Challenging the consensus that the fundaments of language are hard-wired in our genes and thus universal, Deutscher argues that the answer to all these questions is—yes. In thrilling fashion, he takes us from Homer to Darwin, from Yale to the Amazon, from how to name the rainbow to why Russian water—a "she"—becomes a "he" once you dip a tea bag into her, demonstrating that language does in fact reflect culture in ways that are anything but trivial. Audacious, delightful, and field-changing, Through the Language Glass is a classic of intellectual discovery.