Streetwise Mandarin Chinese

[wrbt]

Just picked this book up, pretty good stuff and I think a useful supplement.

It focuses on slang and colloquial speech that (usually) isn't covered in textbooks. probably more useful for those of us learning without the benefit of living in a Chinese speaking environment. Authors are three professors at the Defense Language Institute.

The format is 15 chapters that group by subject, with names like "Gossiping, disbelief, character" that each have two dialogs. Dialogs run 1-2 minutes each and are in both simplified and traditional, with English translation and vocabulary items in pinyin. Each slang term is discussed briefly with additional example, and each chapter has a summary article, explaining for example why Chinese ask personal questions etc.

There is an MP3 CD included with all the dialogs and the vocab, the audio quality is okay and the actors have Beijing accents, lots of er-hua where yesterday is "zuor" and busy man is "da mang rer" deng deng.

This isn't a beginner book, I'd say someone who has completed two years of college level Chinese study could use it.

An example of some of the terms they are throwing about, from the "grumbling and teasing" chapter include:

垫点儿

嘴刁

饥不择食

难伺候

If I get time I'll post a 20 second splice of the audio.

As an added bonus the cover has five very happy smiling young Chinese people. They are obviously giddy about their ability to express themselves in a non-textbook fashion.

[wushijiao]

I saw that in the bookstore when I was back in the US two months ago-- it does look pretty good.

On a side note, I picked up Steetwise Spanish, which is a good book for slang. The Spanish book also has the advantage that each series of dialogues is done by native speakers of a different country (ie. Mexican-American Spanish, Chilean, Nicaraguan...etc). That way, students consciously adapt to some of the slight changes in pronunciation. I wonder if the Streetwise Mandarin has this feature (I'd guess that it doesn't though).

[wrbt]

They might have speakers from different regions in this book too, I've only listened to the first two chapters.

[Shi Tong]

Looks very interesting.

"Where" does it cover? Is it mainly mainland slang or does it cover Taiwanese slang too?

[wrbt]

I've never been to Taiwan so not sure how universal the slang is, but can tell you that thru chapter three now and it's been all Beijing accents.

[Shi Tong]

Thanks wrbt.. I can probably find something like this in Taiwan, or go there for 6 months and pick up the slang myself:lol:

[stelingo]

The Streetwise series of books are very good, I have several of them. You can look at an excerpt on Amazon. The problem with the Chinese version is that there is no pinyin, except for the occasional word in the explanations. So the book is only accessible to the most advanced. A real shame, as students with a low intermediate level can make some use of the books in the other languages.

[wrbt]

Actually the vocabulary list at the end of each chapter has pinyin for every entry, and as you mentioned they do add pinyin for any of the slang term explanations that have more obscure characters.

I guess it's fair to say beginners couldn't use the book, but by no means is it "accessible to the most advanced" as you say. I bet you hand it to someone who has completed a couple years of college Chinese they have very few problems with lack of direct pinyin translations.