Conversational Chinese for Beginners

Dr. Morris Swadesh, widely known in the field of linguistics for his comparative studies of languages and language families, wrote this book in 1948. But the book is still a useful introduction to Chinese today. Like any teach-yourself style book, however, access to native Chinese speakers is indispensable. The book would be especially useful if one finds one's self in China for an extended period of time with little or no knowledge of the language. CCfB is built around 17 basic sentences which represent the most basic messages a traveler in a new environment will need to get across. Gradually, more sentences are added. At the back of the book is a small English-Chinese dictionary which can be used to look up new words to plug into the sentences you have learned in order to expand the number of things you can say gradually while ensuring, from the start, that what you learn is grammatically correct Chinese. In a way, it's unfortunate that the book contains no Chinese characters. On the other hand, an excellent introduction to Chinese characters can be found in a small volume entitled _I Can Read That_ by Julie Mazel Sussman. I recommend that learners begin their study of the characters using that book, which concentrates on simpler characters which are easy to recognize and even to write. Once those characters, which number fewer than 100, have been mastered, the learner will have a better background with which to understand the characters used to write the 17 sentences in Swadesh's book. Another weakness of Swadesh's book is that he uses his own phonetic system for writing Chinese in English. Though his system is undoubtedly better from a linguistic point of view, Pinyin is so widespread that it's crazy not to just bite the bullet and learn that system. I have assembled a short supplement to Swadesh's book on my website where the 17 basic sentences and other material from the book are displayed in Chinese characters and Pinyin phonetic transcriptions. The page is unfinished and will be added to over time. [...]