An analysis of two textbook series commonly used to teach university-level Chinese identifies obsolete conventions, expressions, and classifiers and other problems in the series, published over 20 years ago, and suggests some updated supplementary materials that could be used with the series. (CB)

Claiming that understanding the social context in which words are formed is necessary to appreciate the richness and vitality of language, this book presents an informal, discursive examination of how and why American speech came to be the way it is, and in particular where the words came from. The book follows a roughly chronological format from…