Chinese 24/7

The late astronomer Carl Sagan was famous for talking about “billions and billions” of stars as he contemplated the mysteries of the universe. Lately, I’ve spent hundreds and hundreds of dollars on books in order to confront the mysteries of the Chinese language. Sagan’s job was easier: Calculating the orbit of Alpha Centauri is nothing compared to finding the right bus in Shenzhen.

So I’ve been lost in space, drifting through a swirling galaxy of grammar books, phrase books, character (writing) books, dictionaries, and texts. What I lacked was an orbital center to things, something to pull it all into practical, usable order. Fortunately, I just found such a book: It’s called Chinese 24/7, written by Albert Wolfe (Stone Bridge Press, 355 pages, $24.95), and it hit the market a matter of weeks ago.

This is a uniquely useful guide to speaking Mandarin Chinese, rooted in an abundance of linguistic street smarts. Wolfe isn’t a hectoring grammar freak or a pompous know-it-all; he’s more like a friendly guide at your side, helping you survive the real-life situations you’ll encounter in China.

Wolfe, who taught himself Chinese after he moved there to teach college-level English, still remembers what it’s like to learn Chinese. He’s still got the dirt on his language boots, so to speak, and he has painstakingly prioritized information so that our newbie brains can travel light, learning what we need, and not learning what we don’t need.

As for written Chinese (Hanzi), Wolfe thinks it’s a distraction to the beginner. “Ditch Hanzi,” he advises. That surely raises some eyebrows, but Chinese 24/7 does incorporate the Hanzi characters in its text, so all the bases are safely covered.

Fully 27 pages of Chinese 24/7 are devoted to the tones in Mandarin (there are four, by the way, plus a “neutral” tone). If that sounds like overkill, well, it’s not; the seeming simplicity of tones at first glance is deceptive. So the book provides examples of how these things all come out in the wash when you’re really stringing words together.

Likewise, other elements of pronunciation receive their due attention. The pronunciation tips cover things that many other books simply ignore or gloss over. Wolfe does not shy away from this, and he solved many nagging pronunciation riddles that were tormenting me.

Here’s an example of Wolfe’s practical approach to things, in which he addresses the weirdness of the Mandarin “r” sound in one case: “You can say ‘shi’ just like the English word ‘sure’…it won’t be 100 percent like the Chinese people are saying it (it’s about 80 percent), but I’ve tried it and they can understand you.”

The parenthetical comment is Wolfe’s, not mine. Anyway, that’s the kind of practical, hands-on advice I can use. I want to know what’s good enough, and what isn’t good enough, and these distinctions are constantly noted.

Likewise, here are some totally random tips just so you can get more of the book’s flavor: “When in doubt, speak fast” (p. 96). And if you have to say a phrase that’s a consecutive bunch of fourth (falling) tones, Wolfe advises, “You just kind of belt them all out like you’re having a tantrum.” (p. 87).

Although Wolfe’s approach is friendly and plainspoken, beneath the friendliness is a very serious work. Past and future verb tenses are covered, at least to some extent, a fact I note because some beginning college texts don’t even touch this stuff. The organization of topics is excellent. The detailed index spans seven pages.

Wolfe also incorporates learning strategies and conversational tactics. For example, few things are more unnerving than the utterly blank stares you encounter when you try out your Chinese; Wolfe carefully explains these situations, which just might save you from a nervous breakdown. Chinese 24/7 also dovetails with free audio files from the Internet, so I’ll post related links on my blog.

For the Westerner, Chinese isn’t merely a different linguistic country, it’s a different linguistic universe. You can blast off with hundreds of bucks worth of books, and hundreds of hours worth of study, only to wind up totally adrift in the void. Thankfully, Chinese 24/7 does an admirable job of keeping your attention grounded where it’s really needed: The street-level realities of speaking Chinese with the Chinese in China.