Written Chinese

I was browsing in a book store today, and I found this book 汉语书面用语初编: Expressions of Written Chinese (which is mentioned in this thread: http://www.chinese-forums.com/index.php?/topic/11393-%e6%b1%89%e8%af%ad%e4%b9%a6%e9%9d%a2%e7%94%a8%e8%af%ad%e5%88%9d%e7%bc%96-expressions-of-written-chinese)

I flicked through it, and it looked really good, though a bit high for my level. But it was the long, 30 page introduction that caught my eye. I couldn't understand all of it, but from what I could understand, it was about the nature of written/formal Chinese. I've been looking for something like this for a long time now. But as my Chinese is lacking, I can't understand it all. Does anyone know of something similar to this in English?

it's not entirely the same thing, but you could try an introduction to Classical Chinese, as many expressions in written Chinese are derived from Classical. Have a look at Fuller: http://www.chinese-forums.com/index.php?/topic/21037-an-introduction-to-literary-chinese-michael-a-fuller

For something similar written in English, I would recommend Yu Feng's book. He's a lecturer in the Harvard Chinese program, I believe. It's an excellent book.

http://www.chinese-forums.com/index.php?/topic/9379-book-on-formal-chinese-writing&highlight=book

A Learners' Handbook of Modern Chinese Written Expressions (Paperback)

by Yu Feng

that's an English translation of the same book, right? I hadn't realised that there was an English version, if that's the case, of course this is the way to go.

EDIT: or rather, these seem to be two different books, both written by Chinese lecturers/professors from Harvard? It's a bit confusing I'll get one of them soon in my mail, looking forward to it

They are not the same. They are by different authors.

汉语书面用语初编 is only available in Chinese and focuses more on the derivation of modern Chinese (baihua) from classical Chinese. It's more academic in my opinion.

"A Learners' Handbook of Modern Chinese Written Expressions" is only available in English. It's designed to teach students to read more formal written Chinese such as that used in more formal news and academic articles. I think it originated in the Harvard program.

wushijiao likes them both.

http://www.chinese-forums.com/showthread.php?p=196949#post196949

Re: 汉语书面用语初编: Expressions of Written Chinese

gotcha. Well, I'll get the Chinese-only one then I'll see how I like it...

Actually, the postman brought me the book today (dank je wel, Daan!)

Sooo, I can tell the OP, you needn't worry about the book all being in Chinese. This holds true only for the first 21 pages of explanation or so (I think they should have spent more space on explaining things, oh well)

The bulk of the book is in a dictionary format, and basically has three alphabetically ordered parts:

- 250 monosyllabics used in disyllabic patterns. Here, each word also has an English translation, but not the example sentences.

- a list of 400 disyllabic words used in "disyllabic couplets" (i.e. combined with other disyllabics). Here, only the first disyllabics has English translations, but not the combinations

- 300 classical grammatical patterns used in Modern Mandarin: Here, each pattern has an English translation, and the first example sentence.

So you could still give it a try..

Me personally, I don't like grammatical dictionaries too much, I like it more in the traditional grammar format, but sometimes this kind of thing can come in handy as a reference..