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    Second 100 Chinese Characters: Traditional Character Edition: The Quick and Easy Method to Learn the Second 100 Basic Chinese Characters
    Second 100 Chinese Characters: Traditional Character Edition: The Quick and Easy Method to Learn the Second 100 Basic Chinese Characters
    Second 100 Chinese Characters: Traditional Character Edition: The Quick and Easy Method to Learn the Second 100 Basic Chinese Characters
    Ebook246 pages2 hours

    Second 100 Chinese Characters: Traditional Character Edition: The Quick and Easy Method to Learn the Second 100 Basic Chinese Characters

    By Laurence Matthews and Alison Matthews

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    About this ebook

    This book is a quick and easy way to learn the second 100 basic Chinese traditional characters.

    The major struggle facing all beginning Chinese language students is to learn to recognize, read and write hundreds of Chinese characters. A working knowledge of characters is essential for any student wishing to learn Chinese. The Second 100 Chinese Characters adopts a structural approach that helps students to overcome this initial difficulty and quickly master the basic Chinese characters that are fundamental to this language. This book contains characters that have been carefully selected and sequenced for rapid and effective learning.

    For effective learning, memorization and practice, each Chinese character is shown separately on a single page, together with its English definitions, hanyu pinyin romanization, alternate form (if any), a stroke order guide and ample space for writing practice. The stroke order guides introduce the student to the standard stroke sequence used in writing the characters, by tracing over them. After learning the correct stroke order, the student can then practice writing the character on their own, thus reinforcing recognition and memorization. Large boxes with grid lines for correct proportions are provided. Related compounds and phrases containing each character are also included to assist in vocabulary building. Three indexes (alphabetically by the English meanings and the pinyin romanization, and by radicals) are provided at the back of the book for quick and easy reference, along with extra sheets of blank boxes for writing practice. This book features
    • The second 100 most frequently-used Chinese characters.
    • Foundation characters for the HSK A level language proficiency test.
    • Standard hanyu pinyin romanizations.
    • Step-by-step stroke order guides and ample space for writing practice.
    • Over 500 words and phrases containing the basic characters.
    • Concise English definitions.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTuttle Publishing
    Release dateFeb 26, 2013
    ISBN9781462911967
    Second 100 Chinese Characters: Traditional Character Edition: The Quick and Easy Method to Learn the Second 100 Basic Chinese Characters

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      Book preview

      Second 100 Chinese Characters - Laurence Matthews

      Dear Reader: In order to view all colored text and non-English text accurately, please ensure that the PUBLISHER DEFAULTS SETTING on your reading device is switched to ON. This will allow you to view all non-English characters and colored text in this book. —Tuttle Publishing

      Published by Tuttle Publishing, an imprint of Periplus Editions (HK) Ltd, with editorial offices at 364 Innovation Drive, North Clarendon, Vermont 05759 and 61 Tai Seng Avenue #02-12 ,Singapore 534167.

      Copyright © 2007 by Periplus Editions (HK) Ltd.

      All rights reserved.

      ISBN: 978-1-4629-1196-7 (ebook)

      Distributed by:

      Japan

      Tuttle Publishing

      Yaekari Building 3F

      5-4-12 Osaki, Shinagawa-ku

      Tokyo 141-0032, Japan

      Tel: (03) 5437 0171

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      Email: tuttle-sales@gol.com

      North America, Latin America & Europe

      Tuttle Publishing

      364 Innovation Drive

      North Clarendon, VT 05759-9436

      Tel: (802) 773 8930

      Fax: (802) 773 6993

      Email: info@tuttlepublishing.com

      www.tuttlepublishing.com

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      Berkeley Books Pte Ltd

      61 Tai Seng Avenue, #02-12

      Singapore 534167

      Tel: (65) 6280 1330

      Fax: (65) 6280 6290

      Email: inquiries@periplus.com.sg

      www.periplus.com

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      PT Java Books Indonesia

      Kawasan Industri Pulogadung

      Jl. Rawa Gelam IV No. 9

      Jakarta 13930, Indonesia

      Telp. (021) 4682 1088

      Fax. (021) 461 0207

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      09 08 07 06

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      Printed in Singapore

      TUTTLE PUBLISHING® is a registered trademark of Tuttle Publishing, a division of Periplus Editions (HK) Ltd.

      Contents

      Introduction

      歲 suì

      怎 zěn

      樣 yàng

      認 rèn

      識 shí

      現 xiàn

      可 kě

      點 diǎn

      半 bàn

      分 fēn/fèn

      鐘 zhōng

      因 yin

      為 wèi/wéi

      很 hēn

      忙 máng

      還 hái/huán

      吾 xǐ

      歡 huǎn

      等 deng

      太 tài

      久 jiǔ

      週 zhou

      末 mo

      打 dá/dá

      球 qiú

      看 kàn/kan

      書 shū

      常 cháng

      寫 xie

      電 diàn

      視 shǐ

      唱 chàng

      歌 ge

      吧 ba/bǎ

      聽 tīng

      音 yīn

      樂 yuè/lè

      會 huì

      跳 tiào

      舞 wú

      對 duì

      錯 cuò

      才 cái

      回 huí

      去 qù

      所 suǒ

      以 yi

      裡 li

      外 wài

      抵 zhi

      想 xiáng

      玩 wán

      愛 ài

      睡 shuǐ

      覺 jiào/jué

      找 zháo

      到 dào

      工 gong

      作 zuo/zuo

      後 hòu

      快 kuài

      放 fàng

      開 kāi

      意 yì

      思 sī

      説 shuō

      空 kòng/kōng

      話 huà

      要 yào/yāo

      知 zhī

      道 dào

      別 bié/biè

      客 kè

      氣 qì

      進 jìn

      來 lái

      坐 zuò

      呀 yā

      介 jiè

      紹 shào

      高 gāo

      興 xǐng/xīng

      漂 piǎo/piǎo/piào

      亮 liàng

      口 kǒu

      渴 kē

      喝 hē/hè

      茶 chá

      外 gēi

      杯 bēi

      水 shuī

      就 jiù

      起 qī

      淋 chuáng

      考 káo

      試 shǐ

      方 fāng

      便 bián/pián

      幫 bāng

      助 zhù

      Hanyu Pinyin Index

      Radical Index

      English-Chinese Index

      List of Radicals

      Introduction

      Learning the characters is one of the most fascinating and fun parts of learning Chinese, and people are often surprised by how much they enjoy being able to recognize them and to write them. Added to that, writing the characters is also the best way of learning them. This book shows you how to write the second 100 most common characters and gives you plenty of space to practice writing them. When you do this, you’ll be learning a writing system which is one of the oldest in the world and is now used by more than a billion people around the globe every day.

      In this introduction we’ll talk about:

      • how the characters developed;

      • the difference between traditional and simplified forms of the characters;

      • what the radicals are and why they’re useful;

      • how to count the writing strokes used to form each character;

      • how to look up the characters in a dictionary;

      • how words are created by joining two characters together; and, most importantly;

      • how to write the characters!

      Also, in case you’re using this book on your own without a teacher, we’ll tell you how to get the most out of using it.

      Chinese characters are not nearly as strange and complicated as people seem to think. They’re actually no more mysterious than musical notation, which most people can master in only a few months. So there’s really nothing to be scared of or worried about: everyone can learn them—it just requires a bit of patience and perseverance. There are also some things which you may have heard about writing Chinese characters that aren’t true. In particular, you don’t need to use a special brush to write them (a ball-point pen is fine), and you don’t need to be good at drawing (in fact you don’t even need to have neat handwriting, although it helps!).

      How many characters are there?

      Thousands! You would probably need to know something like two thousand to be able to read Chinese newspapers and books, but you don’t need anything like that number to read a menu, go shopping or read simple street signs and instructions. Just as you can get by in most countries knowing about a hundred words of the local language, so too you can get by in China quite well knowing a hundred common Chinese characters. And this would also be an excellent basis for learning to read and write Chinese.

      How did the characters originally develop?

      Chinese characters started out as pictures representing simple objects, and the first characters originally resembled the things they represented. For example:

      Some other simple characters were pictures of ideas:

      一 one           二 two            三 three

      Some of these characters kept this pictographic or ideographic quality about them, but others were gradually modified or abbreviated untilmany of them now look nothing like the original objects or ideas.

      Then, as words were needed for things which weren’t easy to draw, existing characters were combined to create new characters. Fore xample, 女 (meaning woman) combined with 子 (meaning child) gives a new character 好 (which means good or to be fond of ).

      Notice that when two characters are joined together like this to form a new character, they get squashed together and deformed slightly. This is so that the new, combined character

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