Chinese is a fascinating language that seems impossibly difficult to many people, but is actually very learnable. This user-friendly approach to the basics helps you learn Chinese quickly and easily by drawing parallels with something you already know: English. This book will work for anyone who wants to speak and understand Chinese for business, for pleasure, or for travel—and who wants to enjoy the process of learning a new language while they're at it! Chinese for Beginners abounds with extra hints and tips drawn from the authors' many years of experience teaching the language in adult evening classes. Answer Keys help you keep track of your learning process; an "Extend Your Vocabulary" feature in each chapter helps you to remember and understand more words that you'd think possible; and photos and insider tips about China's culture, special places, and everyday life add to the adventure. Chinese for Beginners focuses on realistic situations you'll encounter when you meet people in China. New words are explained in terms of how you'll actually use them to communicate with new friends. The disc lets you listen and repeat and remember the sentences with ease, and will help you soon declare with pride, "I can say that in Chinese!" - * A lighthearted guide brings Chinese to life in a down-to-earth fashion - * Real-life dialogues and situations help you converse with confidence - * Native-speaker audio recordings teach you to pronounce Chinese accurately - * Interesting notes, idioms, sayings, and poems introduce you to Chinese culture

The fun way to learn to speak Chinese With more than 1.2 billion speakers across the globe — and with nearly 3 million in the U.S. alone — Mandarin Chinese claims the top spot as the world’s most common language. If you want to learn this language to get ahead at school or work, or to make your travel to China easier, this is the handy reference you’ll want by your side. Chinese For Dummies teaches basic grammar, as well as the necessary vocabulary to make introductions and greetings, use proper etiquette, make small talk, make transportation arrangements, order food and beverages, ask directions, deal with money, shop, access recreation, and handle an emergency. - Concentrates on Mandarin Chinese and features new and revised content - Includes major updates to all the necessary foundational information needed to speak Chinese - Covers grammar, verb conjugations, and pronunciations - Offers a refreshed mini-dictionary complete with even more vocabulary - Find free conversational audio tracks online As the Chinese economy continues to grow, the importance of Chinese as a trade language will also increase. If you’re a student or business professional who has a basic understanding of the language, you’ll be poised to surpass your peers when it comes to dealing with international markets. So get started today!

Designing machines that can read handwriting like human beings has been an ambitious goal for more than half a century, driving talented researchers to explore diverse approaches. Obstacles have often been encountered that at first appeared insurmountable but were indeed overcome before long. Yet some open issues remain to be solved. As an indispensable branch, Chinese handwriting recognition has been termed as one of the most difficult Pattern Recognition tasks. Chinese handwriting recognition poses its own unique challenges, such as huge variations in strokes, diversity of writing styles, and a large set of confusable categories. With ever-increasing training data, researchers have pursued elaborate algorithms to discern characters from different categories and compensate for the sample variations within the same category. As a result, Chinese handwriting recognition has evolved substantially and amazing achievements can be seen. This book introduces integral algorithms used in Chinese handwriting recognition and the applications of Chinese handwriting recogniers. The first part of the book covers both widespread canonical algorithms to a reliable recognizer and newly developed scalable methods in Chinese handwriting recognition. The recognition of Chinese handwritten text is presented systematically, including instructive guidelines for collecting samples, novel recognition paradigms, distributed discriminative learning of appearance models and distributed estimation of contextual models for large categories, in addition to celebrated methods, e.g. Gradient features, MQDF and HMMs. In the second part of this book, endeavors are made to create a friendlier human-machine interface through application of Chinese handwriting recognition. Four scenarios are exemplified: grid-assisted input, shortest moving input, handwritten micro-blog, and instant handwriting messenger. All the while, the book moves from basic to more complex approaches, also providing a list for further reading with literature comments.

A trip to China is magical, especially when you can speak the language. So before you visit the Great Wall, take the first step here. This book with itsnew digital download is a complete and fun, hands-on language learning experience. Useful study tools, fun interactive computer games and easy-to-use English phonetics make learning Chinese effortless and enjoyable. And with a focus on practical words and phrases, you’ll be able to order a meal, shop for those incredible bargains and find your way around town, with absolute ease. Spend just10 minutes a day

CHINESE in 10 minutes a day® Book 132-page illustrated workbook Full color throughout Organized in 25 easy steps, by essential categories 150 Sticky Labels for home and office Ready-made Flash Cards Cut-out Menu Guide Pronunciation Guide Over 300 Free Words Glossary of over 2,000 new words, definitions and pronunciation CHINESE in 10 minutes a day® CD-ROM Included with the 10 minutes a day® Book Special language learning software features interactive Sticky Labels, Flash Cards, Colors and Numbers See and hear the words as you play with them on your computer screen PC and Mac friendly A trip to China is magical, especially when you can speak the language. Before you visit the Great Wall, take the first step here. This book and interactive CD-ROM combo is a complete, and fun, hands-on language learning experience. Useful study tools, fun interactive games and easy-to-use English phonetics make learning Chinese effortless and enjoyable. And with a focus on practical words and phrases, you ll be able to order a meal, shop for those incredible bargains and find your way around town, with absolute ease! Spend just 10 minutes a day® with this program and you ll be speaking Chinese in no time!

Chinese in a Flash Volume 4 continues to provide more resources for Chinese language students wishing to learn Chinese quickly and easily. This unique set of Chinese flash cards enables learners to acquire more Chinese words and their derivatives in an easy-to-use manner, at a pace to be set by the learners themselves. Common idiomatic expressions are widely distributed among the cards; learners who master these will come to appreciate the beauty of the Chinese language by using a few words to say a thousand different things.

This treasury of Chinese wisdom presents some six hundred proverbs while offering keys to culture and language. Here are both the familiar, earnest sayings of Confucius and Lao Zi ("The longest journey begins with a single step") and the homespun truths of every day ("Teachers open the door; you enter by yourself"). Designed both for inspirational browsing and for students of language and culture, the text is organized by subject (Learning, Patience, Money, Family, Food, etc.) and provides commentary plus Chinese characters and pinyin romanization for each entry. Includes an index. Qin Xue Herzberg and Larry Herzberg teach Chinese at Calvin College. They live in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

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Why Chinese with Mike? Chinese with Mike is 100% new and breaks with traditional Chinese curricula. Mike's humour, mixed with his logical, step-by-step approach shields learners from the unnecessary complexities of Mandarin Chinese. In this complete learning package you'll get 60 short, highly addictive video lessons on DVD, a Coursebook, an Activity Book and audio. You'll acquire essential Chinese with confidence. More importantly, you get a little one-on-one time with Mike, as he makes learning Chinese ridiculously easy-and fun! What will I learn? Thisis a solid foundation course that teaches you how to speak Chinese and also understand how the language fits together. Season 1 Thiscovers pinyin, the four tones and writing system using Simplified Chinese characters, common words, phrases and typical conversations. In no time you'll be able to talk about yourself, your family, your friends, your job, your home, your dogs and cats. Season 2 If Season 2 wasn't included in the book, you wouldn't be able to tell people you can speak Chinese, you like to play basketball, or you want to eat beef fried rice. More importantly, you wouldn't even know how to ask permission to use the bathroom! Without Season 2 you wouldn't get very far in life. Why will learning Chinese be a breeze? · Mike builds confidence through his logical step-by-step design of the course · Mike explains pronunciation with clear, familiar examples · Mike adds interesting facts about the intricacies of language · Mike includes lots of cultural tidbits · Mike recognizes and explains thoroughly troublesome areas · Mike uses native speakers to help you with listening and speaking What do I get when I learn Chinese with Mike? Coursebook: -256 pages of addictive learning material -60 videos on DVD -Audio on MP3 CD-ROM Activity Book: -144-pages of addictive practice material -Audio on MP3 CD-ROM Addictive learningMike Laoshi (Teacher Mike) will astound you with his unparalleled ability to make learning Mandarin Chinese fun and easy. Be warned, his teaching style is highly addictive, so if you have a family, career or social life, you may want to put those on hold for a little while. "It is definitely new, and it definitely works." -Dr. Licheng Gu, Program Director, African & Asian Languages, Northwestern University Chinese with Mike is suitable for classroom, self-study or home schooling.