Re: Bopomofo and pinyin

Boudewijn Rempt <bsarempt@...> wrote:

> > I found a book
> > of Chinese lessons in English. Mainly drills and patterns,
> > but interesting nevertheless.
> >
>
> Care to describe it a little closer? Is the binding red?
I'm sure it's not a famous book -- now B., if you actually
have a copy, I'm going to start believing all those rumours
about your giant library. ;)

The book has a soft cover, light-blue, with a shallow canvas-like
texture. In the front it reads 'Speak Chinese'; that is preceded
by four hanzi (one of them is the one for 'gwo', but that's all
I can identify); then there is a 'yi' hanzi in parentheses (the
number 1, isn't it?). In the lower part of the cover there are
also two rows of hanzi.

In the first page it has the same, plus it also says

               Revised and Adapted
                      by the
             MANDARIN TRAINING CENTER
        NATIONAL TAIWAN NORMAL UNIVERSITY

The printing itself is quite bad; the hanzi and bopomofo characters
are well done, but the Roman transliterations are apparently type-
written (with a typewriter, I mean) and I suspect the tones are
marked by hand.

There is no date of publication. Despite its quality, the book is
quite well-bound. It totals 576 pages, most of which are exercises
and drills in hanzi, no transliteration; the transliterated pieces
and grammatical notes are just *notes*, it seems, though there are
examples and you usually get what they mean.


--Pablo Flores
  http://www.geocities.com/pablo-david/index.html
  http://www.geocities.com/pablo-david/draseleq.html