Yufa! A Practical Guide to Mandarin Chinese Grammar (Arnold Concise Grammars) (Chinese Edition)
YUFA! A PRACTICAL GUIDE TO MANDARIN CHINESE GRAMMAR takes a unique approach to explaining the major topics of Mandarin Chinese grammar. By providing examples that are rooted in realistic situations, the author shows you how grammar is used in everyday life. The book features:
The book is presented in two sections: the core structures of Chinese grammar, and the practical use of the Chinese language.
The combination of these straightforward descriptions and numerous exercises throughout the book makes this one of the clearest and most comprehensive pedagogical grammars available.
List Price: $ 34.95
Price: $ 22.38
Easily the best Mandarin Chinese grammar text available,
I am an intermediate level Chinese student, and I have invested in a number of Chinese grammar books. While I would certainly recommend Claudia Ross’ two books, I have to say that I’ve found Yufa! to be a far more thorough, well-designed text. Chapter divisions are well thought out and clear, and the subject matter is categorized according to three levels (beginner, intermediate, and advanced) so that students know what to focus on depending on their own personal level of Chinese knowledge.
I feel that this book has really helped me to unlock some confusing points of the Chinese language that had not been clearly explained to me by my previous teachers or other grammar books (e.g. the distinction between determinate, indeterminate, and general nouns, and the rules of grammar concerning all three in shi, zai, and you sentences, and the different types of de complements and sentence structures for each). Every time I pick up this book, I walk away a better student than beforehand.
My only complaint is that the book is only in simplified characters and pinyin, so those of us focusing on traditional characters are left to try to decipher simplified text or forced to resort to reading pinyin. Otherwise, this book is the shining star of my collection of Chinese textbooks.
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|Best There Is,
I have acquired a number of Chinese grammars and I agree with the other commenters, this is the best there is. The explanations may be a bit short, but they are thorough, and the questions at the end are actually challenging without being too much so. I especially appreciate the differing levels. If I have any complaint, it’s that the only hanzi used are simplified characters. I am hoping the author creates more!
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|Clear format, useful exercises.,
Prior to buying Yǔfǎ! (语法!), I had been using Mandarin Chinese: A Functional Reference Grammar. Yǔfǎ! has these advantages: use of Chinese characters 汉字, exercises to test and train the student, and clear formatting. The formatting includes several fonts, indenting, and tables; all of these make it easier to locate information and assimilate it. I have not yet accessed the Website, but anticipate that the additional exercises and audio of the correct answers there will be additional advantages.
However, Mandarin Chinese: A Functional Reference Grammar has two features that Yǔfǎ! would do well to add to future editions: interlinear glosses and more comprehensive examples. For the non-linguists reading this review, an interlinear gloss is a word-by-word literal translation of a sentence, with tags added to show syntactic functions, such as RVC for Resultative Verb Compound. Interlinear glosses allow the student to see a sort of “Chinglish”, that is, the English words with the Mandarin Chinese syntax.
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