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Whether you’re on holiday or staying for a slightly longer period of time, your Collins Visual Dictionary is designed to help you find exactly what you need, when you need it. With over a thousand clear and helpful images, you can quickly locate the vocabulary you are looking for.

The Visual Dictionary includes:

 10 chapters arranged thematically, so that you can easily find what you need to suit the situation

 images – illustrating essential items

 YOU MIGHT SAY… – common phrases that you might want to use

 YOU MIGHT HEAR… – common phrases that you might come across

 VOCABULARY – common words that you might need

 YOU SHOULD KNOW… – tips about local customs or etiquette

USING YOUR COLLINS VISUAL DICTIONARY

The points set out below will help to make sure that your Collins Visual Dictionary gives you as much help as possible when using Mandarin Chinese:

1) How to address people politely

At work, you can call your peers by their names – a rule of thumb is to always address people by their job title or occupation with their family name first, for example, 张老师 (zhāng lǎo shī), “Zhang teacher”. You may also hear 小王 (xiǎo Wang), literally “young Wang” or 老李 (lǎo Lǐ), “old Li” in the workplace depending on age and seniority, although this is rather informal.

When invited to meet a friend’s family, unless they are younger or roughly the same age, you shouldn’t call them by their names. You can call their grandparents 爷爷／奶奶 (yé ye/nǎi nai) “grandfather/grandmother”, and their parents or anyone in that generation 叔叔／阿姨 (shū shu/ā yí) “uncle/auntie”, as if they were your own relatives. Addressing the older generations by their names is considered very rude in Chinese culture.

“你” or “您”？ Although both are translated as “you” in English, 您 is used to show respect when addressing, for example, your parents, grandparents, or boss. On the other hand, 你 is used to address friends and peers.

2) Measure words

Measure words are unique to Chinese, and are mandatory when using a noun with a numeral, for example, “one car” is 一辆车 (yī liàng chē) and “three bedrooms” is 三间卧室 (sān jiān wò shì). In these cases, the measure words are 辆 (liàng) and 间 (jiān) respectively. There are many different measure words in Chinese, and they are used for different types of objects. The most common measure word is 个 (gè) and this can be treated as a “default option” when you don’t know the exact measure word to use.

3) Tones for 一 and 不

To maintain consistency, we use yī (first tone) as the Pinyin for the character 一 and bù (fourth tone) for the character 不. This is in line with the authoritative Contemporary Chinese Dictionary. However, the pronunciations for these two characters may vary according to the tones of the characters that proceed or follow them, as shown below:

一	TONE	EXAMPLES
When it’s the last character of a phrase or sentence	First tone	第一 (dì yī) first统一 (tǒng yī) unity
When followed by characters of the first, second, and third tones	Fourth tone	一天 (yì tiān) one day一起 (yì qǐ) together
When followed by characters of the fourth tone	Second tone	一夜 (yí yè) one night一切 (yí qiè) all

不	TONE	EXAMPLES
When it’s the last character of a phrase or sentence	Fourth tone	绝不 (jué bù) never也不 (yě bù) nor
When followed by characters of the first, second, and third tones	Fourth tone	不行 (bù xíng) no不好 (bù hǎo) bad
When followed by characters of the fourth tone	Second tone	不错 (bú cuò) good不去 (bú qù) not going to

FREE AUDIO

We have created a free audio resource to help you learn and practise the Chinese words for all of the images shown in this dictionary. The Chinese words in each chapter are spoken by native speakers, giving you the opportunity to listen to each word twice and repeat it yourself. Download the audio from the website below to learn all of the vocabulary you need for communicating in Chinese.

www.collinsdictionary.com/resources