Cantonese: A Comprehensive Grammar is a complete reference guide to Cantonese as spoken by native speakers in Hong Kong. It presents a fresh and accessible description of the language, concentrating on the real patterns of use in current Cantonese. This makes it the ideal reference source for all learners and users of Cantonese, irrespective of level, in schools, colleges, universities and adult classes of all types. Moreover, it will provide a lasting and reliable resource for al...

Basic Cantonese introduces the essentials of Cantonese grammar in a straightforward and systematic way.Each of the 28 units deals with a grammatical topic and provides associated exercises, designed to put grammar into a communicative context. Special attention is paid to topics which differ from English and European language structures.This new edition features:• clear, accessible format• lively examples to illustrate each grammar point

Intermediate Cantonese is designed for learners who have achieved basic proficiency and wish to progress to more complex language.Each of the 25 units combines clear, concise grammar explanations with communicatively oriented exercises to help build confidence and fluency.Features include:Many authentic examples from contemporary media, including films, advertising, songs and soap operasClear differentiation between collo...

How does a child become bilingual? The answer to this intriguing question remains largely a mystery, not least because it has been far less extensively researched than the process of mastering a first language. Drawing on new studies of children exposed to two languages from birth (English and Cantonese), this book demonstrates how childhood bilingualism develops naturally in response to the two languages in the children's environment. While each bilingual child's profile is unique, the ch...

Learnmore than 3,000 English expressions and speak and understand the language easilyAs a new speaker of English, you may hear some expressions in your daily conversations that you do not understand--yet. McGraw-Hill's Conversational American English will help you learn these expressions, so not only do you know what a person is saying to you, but that you can use the expression yourself! More than 3,000 expressions are organized by theme, so you can find ...

2nd edition of our popular Manadarin course - improved! Remember trying to learn a language at school? Remember trying to get your head around conjugating verbs? Past tense, present tense, present participle, imperfect subjunctive? Yes, that's right, it was all mind numbing. Language is not about perfect grammar. Language is about communication. This edition includes a comprehensive phrasebook.This ebook edition teaches Pinyin Mandarin.Contents include..THE OLD WAY

Linguistics falls in the gap between arts and science, on the edges of which the most fascinating discoveries and the most important problems are found. Rather than following the conventional organization of many contemporary introductions to the subject, the author of this stimulating guide begins his discussion with the oldest, 'arts' end of the subject and moves chronologically through to the newest research - the 'science' aspects. A series of short thematic chapters look in turn at su...

'Language attrition' describes the loss of, or changes to, grammatical and other features of a language as a result of declining use by speakers who have changed their linguistic environment and language habits. In such a situation there may, for example, be simplification in the tense system or in certain properties of subordinate clauses; some vocabulary items might fall into disuse and phonetic features may be restructured. These changes can be affected by features of the speaker's envi...

By arranging frequently used characters under the phonetic element they have in common, rather than only under their radical, the Dictionary encourages the student to link characters according to their phonetic. The system of cross-referencing then allows the student to find easily all the characters in the dictionary which have the same phonetic element, thus helping to fix in the memory the link between a character and its sound and meaning.This innovative resource will ...

In "Basic Mandarin Chinese For Beginners! Book 1 & 2: Your First Mandarin Book & Your Second Mandarin Book", you'll be learning the absolute best way to begin mastering Mandarin Chinese. By combining all aspects of the language, you will quickly become a fluent speaker, an excellent listener, a strong reader and a beautiful writer of Mandarin Chinese.The most important thing about learning Mandarin Chinese is to be patient, diligent and above all, have fun.Trust in the learning pro...

This new title in the popular 'Flash' series gets straight to the key facts of linguistics. In just 96 pacy, jargon-free pages, you will:- look at language- understand sound- get to grips with semantics- consider language change- explore psycholinguisticsand much more besides!

A Frequency Dictionary of Mandarin Chinese is an invaluable tool for all learners of Mandarin Chinese, providing a list of the 5,000 words and the 2,000 Chinese characters (simplified) most commonly used in the language. Based on a fifty-million-word corpus composed of spoken, fiction, non-fiction and news texts in current use, the dictionary provides the user with a detailed frequency-based list, as well as alphabetical and part-of-speech indexes.All entries in the freque...