The Most Basic Chinese - All You Need to Know to Get By (Most Basic Languages)
***** UPDATE - This book has been Amazon's Number 1 Chinese E-book for 2012, 2013 and so far in 2014.
Most comments have been very positive but there were the odd negative ones - I did listen and have recently updated the book (May 2013) to answer the concerns expressed by some - these mostly centered around tones and organisation - Tones are now included, and Simplified Chinese characters are also available to be emailed for those who wish. I have also restructured the book to be better organised and easier to follow, so I hope you find the book even more useful. I have kept the same low price, and hope it continues to be of use to a lot of people. *****
‘The Most Basic Chinese’ teaches all the Mandarin you need to survive, enabling you to learn everything you need simply and effortlessly.
To begin, let’s get one thing straight – it is extremely easy to learn all the Basic Chinese you will need if you are travelling to or intending to live in China.
This booklet gives you all of that language and is presented in a simple way. It can be easily studied on the plane journey over or any other time, and is entirely sufficient to be able to get by in Mandarin on arrival. So don’t be fooled by the booklet length – once you have mastered this small amount of Basic Chinese, you will have reached the same level as thousands of people who have lived, worked and survived in China for years.
It begins with the very simple (10 most useful phrases for a newcomer), then builds on this in easy stages to demonstrate how easy it is to speak Basic Chinese as well as give you the language and knowledge to do so.
With this booklet, you will already have picked up a great deal of the language and grammar as well as a great sense of how easy it is to speak Basic Chinese.
As mentioned at the top, and due to requests from several readers, I have now updated the book to include the tones, and can also supply the simplified Chinese characters for those who would like them.
However, don't be scared off by the tonal system to get by in Basic Chinese - we are actually well understood without using it, so I consider it an added extra which you can choose whether to learn or not. My own direct experience of living in China was that I didn't actually need the tones to be understood, although learning them would have given me a better standard of Chinese.
In addition to the above, you will find ‘The Most Basic Chinese’ an invaluable tool to keep with you for its simple presentation of the language needed for various situations – e.g. in a taxi, restaurant, bar or shop.
Good luck and safe travels!
NB. This book is also available in German, named "Grundkenntnisse in Chinesisch".
Also note that I have updated the format of this book to remove the tables, since they were not always showing properly on Kindle Fire - the format should now be ok for this too.
