A Vat of Water
A Story in Mandarin Chinese
By Lydia Lin
Copyright 2011 Lydia Lin
All rights reserved
Smashwords Edition
Cover design by Lydia Lin
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Foreword
So, you've learned Chinese for about a year. You are eager to know where you are as far as reading ability goes. A page from a Chinese newspaper will probably be too challenging for you. At this stage, you still need the phonetic marks to enable you to confirm your pronunciation of words that you already know and to help you sound out the unfamiliar words. However, aside from your Chinese text book, most other Chinese books and documents just don't come with such phonetic marks.
Well, try reading the following short story. This is a well known Chinese story retold for you, complete with pinyin phonetic marks and English translation. The Chinese characters used in this story are the Simplified Characters. If you can read this story without hesitation, then, "Congratulations!" If not, please study the vocabulary section at the end of the story.
Pinyin Notation
If you need help to correctly pronounce the Chinese characters, please connect with me online and download a complete Pinyin Guide from my blog site. This guide is easy to understand and follow as it arranges the vowel and consonant sounds in the order of the English alphabet. It shows you how to pronounce the pinyin by employing similar English vowel and consonant sounds.
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