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Pop Chinese: A Cheng & Tsui Handbook Of Contemporary Colloquial Expressions (Cheng & Tsui Asian Dictionary Series)
Pop Chinese A Cheng Tsui Handbook Of Contemporary Colloquial Expressions - Cheng & Tsui Asian Dictionary Series Ideal for: Students of Chinese at the intermediate level and above Native English speakers living in China As a companion teaching tool to intermediate- and advanced- level Chinese classes in contemporary film, literature, and language Overseas Chinese who want to watch new Chinese movies and TV series but are not familiar with the new expressio... more »ns As an essential reference on spoken Chinese for translators, researchers of Chinese language and linguistics, and professors of modern Chinese literature in the West The informal colloquial speech style that dominates everyday conversation in China has its own words, idiomatic phrases, and sentence patterns that are rich in humor and cultural nuance. Because the colloquial style differs from the speech styles taught in Chinese courses, even advanced students of Chinese often have difficulty understanding conversations between native speakers, or dialogues in films, TV shows, and contemporary literature. This comprehensive handbook is specially designed to bridge that gap, with important features to help them understand and use the more than 1,200 colloquial expressions in their own speech. Features: English definitions include both idiomatic and literal meanings. Notes identify special characteristics, such as phrases that come from non-Beijing dialects or expressions that are considered abusive or rude. Each entry includes examples that illustrate its usage; many from over 500 popular contemporary films, novels, short stories, and TV series. Each example is translated into colloquial English. Background notes in English explain the context in which the example phrase is used. This handbook contains a wide variety of spoken expressions, including words used only in colloquial speech or in ways that differ from their standard definitions; idiomatic phrases; special spoken-language compounds, colloquial proverbs and short sentences; and sentence patterns used only in colloquial speech.« less