PREFACE

This new edition of Reading and Writing Chinese uses the modern “simplified forms” which resulted from “script reform” after the Revolution of 1949. (The traditional forms, however, receive collateral presentation as variations of the modern simplified forms. The modern simplified forms are standard in the People’s Republic of China and in Singapore; the traditional forms are standard in Taiwan and Hong Kong.)

In the last 50 years, three developments in modern China have made it much easier for one to learn to read and write the Chinese language with a reasonable fluency:

This edition exploits all three of these developments, with the aim of enabling the foreign student of Chinese to acquire, quickly and painlessly (perhaps even pleasurably), a large vocabulary of Chinese written characters and of character combinations.

Using Reading and Writing Chinese with a good Chinese language teacher or in classes for spoken Chinese and written Chinese with a focus on Chinese culture or on other interests (business, politics, history, literature, etc.), it is now possible for the average student to achieve this large vocabulary in a period of time that would not have been possible before the Chinese government’s massive efforts at adult education and (more recently) at education of foreign students in Chinese. (Refer to pages ix–x for a discussion of Hanyu Shuiping Cihui Yu Hanzi Dengji Dagang [HSCHDD; Standard Vocabulary of the Chinese Language and Graded Outline of Chinese Characters].)

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In the preparation of this new edition of Reading and Writing Chinese, the same pedagogical method has been used to present the material as was used in earlier editions.

  1. The student studies the most useful characters (as determined, for this new edition, by Hanyu Shuiping Cihui Yu Hanzi Dengji Dagang [HSCHDD]).
  2. The characters are presented in the order in which they are likely to be most useful; the most frequently seen characters appear before the less frequently seen ones.
  3. In learning the characters, the student will also learn the elements of the writing system—the 226 radicals, and the “phonetics” (sound components) which he/she will find most useful in the study of the HSCHDD lists.
  4. Each entry for a character is given in units of information based on developments in “programmed instruction,” and these units have been arranged in order of growing difficulty.
  5. Help is given to students in mastering the problem of “look-alike” characters: through juxtaposition and cross-reference, the author has tried to clarify the main causes of the problem, look-alike radicals and look-alike characters.

The new edition’s content and organization are based on the analysis and vocabulary presented in HSCHDD (Beijing: Beijing Yuyanxue Chubanshe, 1995 [1992]). The earlier editions of Reading and Writing Chinese depended heavily on work done at Yale to prepare teaching materials and were based largely on George A. Kennedy, ed., Minimum Vocabularies of Written Chinese (New Haven: Far Eastern Publications, 1954), which, in turn, makes use of the 2,000-character list prepared in China in the early 1950s to facilitate adult education.

Hanyu Shuiping Cihui Yu Hanzi Dengji Dagang is tied to the Zhongguo Hanyu Shuiping Kaoshi, or Chinese Proficiency Test (HSK). HSK aims to measure the level of proficiency in Chinese attained by those, especially foreigners and overseas Chinese, who do not have a native speaker’s background and education. An HSK certificate can indicate the holder’s preparedness to study at a Chinese university or his/her level of Chinese proficiency to potential employers. It is, in other words, the contemporary Chinese equivalent of the TOEFL test in English. The graded organization in the printed HSCHDD copy, based on statistical studies and experts’ judgment about the most useful vocabulary items for non-native-speaker students to learn at each stage of their studies, is of great value and is of greater contemporary relevance than is Minimum Vocabularies of Written Chinese.

Hanyu Shuiping Cihui Yu Hanzi Dengji Dagang is focused more on “words” (ci 词) than on zi (字, single characters), although all of the characters (zi) needed to write the words of the basic vocabulary of words (ci) are included in graded lists (at the back of HSCHDD). The lists of “ci” include all of their component zi (single characters) which may, by themselves, stand for a word of the language. The ci are mostly two-character expressions, but there may be some items comprising three or even four characters (zi).

The study plan implied by HSCHDD is as follows:

In years one and two of study, it is contemplated that a vocabulary of 5, 253 words (ci), including the 2,205 zi needed to write those 5, 253 words, will be learned. This vocabulary is broken down into three lists:

Note that a large number of the 5, 253 vocabulary items (ci) are identical to items in the list of 2,205 zi. For example, the first list (of 1,033 ci) is comprised of 459 single-character items and of 574 items of two- or more characters—i.e., 44% zi and 56% ci.

In years 3 and 4 of study of HSCHDD, it is contemplated that a vocabulary of 3,569 words, including the 700 additional zi needed to write those words, will be learned—“1,500 vocabulary items in each of the last two years of study,” according to the “prefatory article” (daixu). The words in this list D are characterized as “other words in common use.”

This new Tuttle guide to the Chinese writing system presents all of the characters (zi) in the A, B, and C lists, introducing students to the 2,205 single characters (zi) needed to write the 5, 253 (ci) words. In addition, as many of the words (ci) as is possible are introduced as sub-items within the frames of each character (zi), modified by the principle of not introducing a character in a sub-item until it has been introduced as a main item. The new edition also—which HSCHDD does not—introduces students to “elements of the writing system” (e.g., “radicals” (bùshǒu) and productive phonetics). This will make it easier for foreign students to use Reading and Writing Chinese, in their progress toward acquiring a large enough vocabulary to be competent in the Chinese written language.

Also, grouping characters into “phonetic series” (i.e., several characters having the same phonetic element) gives the following benefits:

The organization of characters into phonetic series is one of the features of earlier editions which has been strengthened in the new version.

For the three HSCHDD lists used to prepare the new Reading and Writing Chinese (RWC), the relation to earlier editions of Reading and Writing Chinese is as follows:

—List “A,” 800 characters (zi), of which 25 are not in earlier editions of RWC;

—List “B,” 804 characters, of which 144 are not in earlier editions of RWC; and

—List “C” (including the 11-character supplement), 601 characters, of which 290 are not in earlier editions of RWC.

This means that 459 new characters have been added to this new edition. From the characters included in earlier editions of Reading and Writing Chinese, a few dozen, maybe, have been deleted as being irrelevant to mastery of the HSCHDD lists. One of the features of this and previous editions of Reading and Writing Chinese is that ci are regularly introduced throughout the book—and, in fact, about 25% more ci than zi are introduced (2,500 ci as against 2,000 zi). This means that it has been fairly easy to adapt the format and method of Reading and Writing Chinese to present the lists in HSCHDD, including ci.

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This new edition preserves, as far as possible, a successful and popular feature of earlier editions—introducing first the characters which the student would meet early in his/her studies of other kinds of textbooks in Chinese—readers, conversation books, etc.

Firstly, the editor has used his judgment about the characters foreign students in the 21st century are most likely to meet early in their studies (the list of such characters is not that much different from what it was at the time earlier editions were prepared). Secondly, every character (zi) and every word (ci) have been marked as “A” or “B” or “C” on their first appearance in the new edition of Reading and Writing Chinese, following the “A” list, the “B” list, or the “C” list of first-year and second-year study materials in the HSCHDD. That way, the student can follow his/her preference, using the arrangement of characters into phonetic series to pick up a larger number of characters fast; or (alternatively) learning at first only the “A” character with its radicals and phonetic (if any), taking note of related characters, and moving on, to return later and learn the “B” character(s) in the phonetic series, and finally coming back later still, to learn the “C” character or characters.

While the editor certainly does not want to discourage ambitious students who would follow the first method of study, he recommends the alternative method, as follows:

Using this method, students should learn all of the radicals as they are introduced. The editor recommends this method because of the pace of learning inherent in it. In a Western university curriculum, where the student studies several subjects at the same time in a 16-week semester, the student can learn seven new characters (zi) a night (35 new characters a week). By the end of the first year of study, he/she should know all of the “A” characters (up through the tenth character in column “a” of Part II, p. 227) as well as their radicals and phonetics; and he/she should also know 270 characters of the “B” list and their radicals and phonetics. By the end of his/her third semester of study, the student should have learned all of the “A” and “B” characters and their radicals and phonetics.

By the end of his/her second year of study, the student should have learned all of the characters of the “A,” “B,” and “C” lists—and will have kept pace, as far as the learning of characters (zi) is concerned, with the study plan implied by HSCHDD.

The study plan implied by HSCHDD, however—at least with reference to the rate at which the student is expected to learn ci —seems to assume that the student will be studying Chinese in an intensive course—in Beijing, perhaps; as sole, or almost sole, subject of study; and for more than the 28 to 32 weeks of the usual Western university academic year. All this means, in the long run, is that the student studying in a Western university may want to spread out over eight semesters (rather than four) the time and cerebral energy devoted to the study of Reading and Writing Chinese and use the “space” so created in his study week to learn all of the ci on the various HSCHDD lists (as well, of course, as the 700 new zi on List “D” and its supplement).

William McNaughton