Newcomer
UID: 749
Credits: 3461
Posts: 135
Registered: 2012/5/30
|
Best Reference Book for Learning Chinese
Last week the eleventh edition of the mammoth Xinhua Dictionary, China's official compendium of the Mandarin language was released. As Chinese learner’s indispensable reference book, the 711-page tome is the world's best-selling dictionary, with over 400 million copies printed since it launched in 1953.
Your Chinese teachers must have recommended it to you. When previewing a new Chinese lesson, you will find things get easier with the help of a Xinhua Dictionary. In the early days, it was like the Encyclopedia Britannica and the Oxford English Dictionary rolled into one, teaching a mostly illiterate country about everything from umbrellas to fertilizer to how to write the word "pigeon." A 1971 edition, published at the height of the Cultural Revolution, contained 46 of Mao's proclamations, which many readers already knew by heart. Today, competing publishers release numerous alternative dictionaries, but the Xinhua edition remains a staple of most schools.
In many languages, there are disagreements about whether dictionaries should standardize how language should be used, or reflect how language is used. The Xinhua Dictionary contains far more words that actually reflect how language is used than in previous editions, yet it still omits sensitive entries. There is unsurprisingly no entry for the Tiananmen Massacre , but it also leaves out shengnv("Leftover Ladies" a common term which refers to ageing, unmarried women) and the reappropriation of the word "comrade" to mean gay. "We abandoned these words because it's kind of rude to label this group," Jiang Lansheng, a linguistics expert from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences who was responsible for the revisions, told Chinese Central Television. As a result, it will be a satisfying tool for your Chinese learning.
So what does the new edition, compiled over seven years and featuring more than 3, 000 new words and expressions, include? Many of the new entries are deeply vernacular, originating from Internet memes, tabloid scandals, and other informal sources. Some, like boke (blog), and tuangou (onlinegroup shopping, along the lines of Groupon) reflect today's new, digital world. Others, like fenqing(nationalists, literally "angry youth") and xiangjiao ren (banana person, which usually refers to Chinese-Americans -- yellow on the outside, white on the inside -- though unlike in the United States this is not pejorative), are names for new social categories and subcultures that have emerged.
Are you interested in Chinese learning? Do you want to take a Chinese lesson? And do you need some help from professional Chinese teachers? Come and join us. Welcome to visit http://www.echineselearning.com/
|