Synopses & Reviews
500 Common Chinese Idioms is the ideal tool for all intermediate to advanced learners of Chinese. Based on large corpora of authentic language data, it presents the 500 most commonly used Chinese idioms or chengyu, along with a variety of synonyms, antonyms and the most common structures, enabling the reader to make educated guesses about the meanings of hundreds of unfamiliar idioms.
Key features include:
- the idiom in both simplified and traditional characters
- a literal English translation and English equivalents
- two suitable example sentences, plus explanations and usage notes
- a Pinyin index and stroke order index.
This practical dictionary is suitable both for class use and independent study and will be of interest to students and teachers of Chinese alike.
Liwei Jiao is Lecturer in Chinese at the University of Pennsylvania. His publications include The Routledge Advanced Chinese Multimedia Course: Crossing Cultural Boundaries (co-authored with Kun-shan Carolyn Lee, Hsin-Hsin Liang and Julian Wheatley, Routledge 2009).
Cornelius C. Kubler is Stanfield Professor of Asian Studies at Williams College. He has authored or co-authored nine books and over 50 articles on Chinese language pedagogy and linguistics.
Weiguo Zhang is Emeritus Professor of Chinese Linguistics at Renmin University of China. He is currently Visiting Professor and Co-director of the Confucius Institute for Ireland at University College Dublin. He has published several books on computer language.
Synopsis
First published in 2010. 500 Common Chinese Idioms is a unique tool for learners. Presenting the 500 most commonly used Chinese idioms or 'chengyu', this dictionary presents:
- The idiom in both simplified and traditional characters
- The idiom in pinyin romanisation
- A literal English translation and English equivalents
- Two suitable example sentences, plus explanations and usage notes
The dictionary offers a step-by-step approach to gaining greater fluency through a grasp of the most common idioms in the language, making it the ideal resource for the intermediate learner of Chinese and for Chinese language teachers. The book is also accompanied by recordings of all 500 idioms, available free through the companion website.
Synopsis
500 Common Chinese Idioms is the ideal tool for all intermediate to advanced learners of Chinese. Based on large corpora of authentic language data, it presents the 500 most commonly used Chinese idioms or chengyu, along with a variety of synonyms, antonyms and the most common structures, enabling the reader to make educated guesses about the meanings of hundreds of unfamiliar idioms.
Key features include:
- the idiom in both simplified and traditional characters
- a literal English translation and English equivalents
- two suitable example sentences, plus explanations and usage notes
- a Pinyin index and stroke order index.
This practical dictionary is suitable both for class use and independent study and will be of interest to students and teachers of Chinese alike.
Synopsis
This book, available in both a simplified and a full-form character edition, is designed to help low-intermediate students of Mandarin improve their vocabulary and grammar competence, reading strategies, and translation skills. It uses Chinese idiomatic proverbs as the foundation of the instructional material, which allows the authors to present their lessons in a more dynamic fashion than the typical grammar-and-translation approach.
About the Author
Lin Chin-hui is a lecturer in Mandarin at the University of Gandouml;ttingen.Maghiel van Crevel is professor of Chinese language and literature at Leiden University.