Basic Patterns of Chinese Grammar: A Student's Guide to Correct Structures and Common Errors

by Qin Xue Herzberg, Larry Herzberg

Here is a concise guide to supplement any course of study and help with homework, travel, and test preparation. Topics include word order, time, nouns, verbs, adjectives, word choices with verbs and adverbs, and letter writing. The simple format has one quick mastery and growing confidence. Qin Xue Herzberg , a graduate of Beijing Normal University, has taught Chinese for decades and has been an upper-level Chinese professor at Calvin College for ten years. Larry Herzberg did his PhD work in Chinese and founded the Chinese language programs at Albion College and Calvin College.
Qin and Larry live in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and are co-authors of the popular China Survival Guide as well as the recently released Chinese Proverbs and Popular Sayings.

Genres: China, Language, Reference, Nonfiction, Linguistics

128 pages, Paperback

First published December 21, 2010

Reviews

[Karen Chung · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is fun and useful for comparing equivalent basic constructions in English and Chinese. It's a quick read if you already know Chinese.

It seems that simple, frequently-used sentences have been chosen to make the book as accessible to beginners as possible. Still, it might have been fun to use actual sentences from a corpus rather than invented classroom sentences.

There are some areas where I disagree with the analysis. 了 le marks the perfect aspect rather than the "past tense" in English (p. 65ff). If English-speaking students don't know the difference between "past tense" and "perfect aspect", this should be explained in class, otherwise they will constantly misuse le due to a misunderstanding of what it actually marks.

Some sentences seem to be simply incorrect, e.g. 明天晚上我會在中餐館見面我的朋友。(p. 110) This should be: 明天晚上我會在中餐館跟我的朋友見面。(See http://www.pcerc.org/HJZHY/HJ704/HJ70... for explanation). And page 72 says that 地 is used "between an adjective and a verb" – it should be "between an adverb and a verb. Also, the tone marking for 雖 is incorrect (p. 115): it should be first tone suī rather than second tone suí.

Another point is not a flaw, but simply an inconvenience for Taiwan users, i.e. that the sentences are all PRC-based Mandarin. Many are not widely used or sound unnatural in Taiwan, for example 聞不見 'can't smell' is not widely used in Taiwan, but rather 聞不到 (which is in fact also listed in the book). So I was left longing for a Taiwan version of the book, and with a slight urge to write one myself! Such an edition could be very useful to Taiwanese learners of English in a language exchange situation.

I teach English in Taiwan, so this book should be helpful in further sorting out Chinese-English differences to alert my students to, and for them to alert their language exchange partners to. The book's usefulness could however be enhanced by a careful re-editing by a native speaker of Mandarin with a solid knowledge of English and English grammar.

[Miglė · Rating 4 out of 5]

• If you're learning Mandarin or if you've learned some Mandarin and want to revise / have useful rules in one place, THIS IS THE BOOK FOR THAT!

• If you HAVEN'T learned any Mandarin and want to get acquainted with the deep internal structure of the language via its grammar, this is NOT the book for that.
It doesn't go very deep, but simply lists the rules, for example, which word for "can" to use if you want to say "know how to", as opposed to "be physically able to", "be permitted to" or "maybe want to".

• If you want to start learning Mandarin, I wouldn't recommend starting from this book either, but it would serve as a useful supplement to a textbook.
+it's small and easily fits in most bags I can think of.

[Ocean G · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is excellent for someone who has already studied some Chinese, but likes having the main grammar rules clearly spelled out as a reference, which, incidentally, was exactly what I needed.

I was afraid I wouldn't be able to follow the simplified characters, since they usually confuse me, but the sentences were simple enough. I was also afraid that the "Bad Chinese" examples might stick with me more than the proper examples, but for the most part everything was very clear.

[Guilherme Miotto · Rating 5 out of 5]

Short and useful.

[Hayley · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found this book really useful in ways that a traditional "Learn Chinese" book isn't. If you need to look up a specific way to say something, though this book might not have the exact answer, it will at least point you in the right direction without making you sift through chapters of insipid dialogues about the weather and what time it is. I do have to say that it was so much at once that I likely didn't absorb everything, but at least if I need to go back and look something up, it's well organized.

[Evan · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is an excellent supplement but shouldn't be used as the end-all, be-all book to learn Mandarin. I'm on my 4th year of Chinese study, and I thumbed through this book to review some of the earlier grammar rules I'd forgotten. It was short and to the point, which was nice, but it assumes a basic level of understanding. I'm also not a fan of the pinyin first format. I prefer to have the characters above the pinyin so my eye will be drawn to them. I found myself just reading the pinyin in the book, though all of the characters are very basic.

[Keith · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wouldn't rely exclusively on this to learn Chinese grammar, but as a supplement to class or a refresher course, this book functions well. It's nice to have Chinese grammar explained by a native English speaker.

I thought the book could have used a bit more explanation or a few more examples for each, but as a basic guide, it served its purpose.

[KimberlyAsal · Rating 3 out of 5]

I use this as a supplement to the courses I'm taking and materials which I'm using to learn from at home. It's not a book that can be used on its own, as it isn't comprehensive enough to be of benefit. As a short reference guide for common errors for new Mandarin speakers it's alright.

[b · Rating 4 out of 5]

This isn’t really a grammar guide, but it is well worth reading as revision for a lot of A1 grammar points as you approach upper beginner. The sections near the end of the book on differentiating many words that are the same in English (like 走/离开/留) are really useful. There’s some random references to grammar points not included in the book that would probably leave you scratching your head if you didn’t already know them, but if you have covered the points in this book, you probably already understand them.

[Julia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Short and sweet. Very useful and gets straight to the point. Answered almost all my questions about Chinese grammar

[Nancy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very helpful book for intermediate-level Chinese learners.

[Hibido · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is such a babe.