What's the difference between "刚" and “刚才”？ 一、意思不同 1、刚才：指刚过去不久的时间。 2、刚：仅仅非常短的时间以前。 一般可以通用．”刚刚”比”刚才”的时间要短，强调时间。”刚刚”还有一种意思是恰恰好，如：不多不少,刚刚两颗。 二、词性不同。 1、刚是副词，只能做状语。表示不多不少：刚刚一杯；这箱子刚刚装下衣服和书。 2、刚才是名词，可以做定语，也可以做主语。 三、用法不同： 1、“刚才”是时间名词，在句中可以作时间状语，放在主语后或主语前。还可以作主语，如：刚才比现在凉快一点儿。做定语，如：他把刚才的事忘了。 2、“刚”是副词，只能放在动词前，作状语。此外，“刚”可以和“就、又”连用，表示前后两个动作中间的时间很短。“刚”和“要、想”连用，表示某事即将发生还没发生，如：他刚要出门，电话铃响了。 四、否定形式不同 刚才+没/不：他刚才没有去学校吗？ 不是+刚：他不是刚来的，他来好一会儿了。

History of China In 221 BC, Qin Shi Huang conquered the various warring states and created for himself the title of Huangdi or "emperor" of the Qin, marking the beginning of imperial China. However, the oppressive government fell soon after his death, and was supplanted by the longer-lived Han dynasty (206 BC – 220 AD). Successive dynasties developed bureaucratic systems that enabled the emperor to control vast territories directly. In the 21 centuries from 206 BC until AD 1912, routine administrative tasks were handled by a special elite of scholar-officials. Young men, well-versed in calligraphy, history, literature, and philosophy, were carefully selected through difficult government examinations. China's last dynasty was the Qing (1644–1912), which was replaced by the Republic of China in 1912, and then in the mainland by the People's Republic of China in 1949. The Republic of China retreated to the island of Taiwan in 1949. Both the PRC and the ROC currently claim to be the sole legitimate government of China, resulting in an ongoing dispute even after the United Nations recognized the PRC as the government to represent China at all UN conferences in 1971. Hong Kong and Macau transferred sovereignty to China in 1997 and 1999 from the United Kingdom and Portugal respectively, becoming special administrative regions (SARs) of the PRC. Chinese history has alternated between periods of political unity and peace, and periods of war and failed statehood—the most recent being the Chinese Civil War (1927–1949). China was occasionally dominated by steppe peoples, most of whom were eventually assimilated into the Han Chinese culture and population. Between eras of multiple kingdoms and warlordism, Chinese dynasties have ruled parts or all of China; in some eras control stretched as far as Xinjiang, Tibet and Inner Mongolia, as at present. Traditional culture, and influences from other parts of Asia and the Western world (carried by waves of immigration, cultural assimil

History of China The earliest known written records of the history of China date from as early as 1250 BC, from the Shang dynasty (c. 1600–1046 BC), during the king Wu Ding's reign, who was mentioned as the twenty-first Shang king by the same. Ancient historical texts such as the Book of Documents (early chapters, 11th century BC), the Bamboo Annals (c. 296 BC) and the Records of the Grand Historian (c. 91 BC) mention and describe a Xia dynasty (c. 2070–1600 BC) before the Shang, but no writing is known from the period, and Shang writings do not indicate the existence of the Xia. The Shang ruled in the Yellow River valley, which is commonly held to be the cradle of Chinese civilization. However, Neolithic civilizations originated at various cultural centers along both the Yellow River and Yangtze River. These Yellow River and Yangtze civilizations arose millennia before the Shang. With thousands of years of continuous history, China is among the world's oldest civilizations and is regarded as one of the cradles of civilization. The Zhou dynasty (1046–256 BC) supplanted the Shang, and introduced the concept of the Mandate of Heaven to justify their rule. The central Zhou government began to weaken due to external and internal pressures in the 8th century BC, and the country eventually splintered into smaller states during the Spring and Autumn period. These states became independent and fought with one another in the following Warring States period. Much of traditional Chinese culture, literature and philosophy first developed during those troubled times.

6.Speak a lot and do not second guess The primary sound of Chinese is not hard for an English speaker to make. The Chinese tones are a different story. You’ll need to practice as much as you can, both speaking to yourself and speaking to others. Practice imitating what you’re listening to. Find lines for which you have the audio to listen to a sentence or phrase, then try to imitate the intonation, without worrying too much about individual sounds. You might even need to record yourself to match up to. If you can get connected with the rhythm of the Chinese language, not only will your control of tones enhance, but your choice of Chinese words will also become more native speaker-like. When you speak, do not second guess your words on tones, or any other aspects of the language. Just let the Chinese words and phrases you’ve heard and practiced flow out, mistakes and all. Each time you use mandarin you’re practicing and getting used to it. If you enjoy interacting in Mandarin, if you enjoy getting in the follow, singing to the mandarin rhythm, then your Chinese will continue to improve. Do not worry about mastering pronunciation at the starting. We can’t pronounce what we do not hear, nor imitate sounds and intonation that do not resonate with us. To develop the ability to hear mandarin and to feel the tones of the language, we simply have to listen for thousands of hours and let the brain get used to the mandarin. You cannot rush this process. Instead, you’d trust the fact that you’ll gradually get better. Therefore whatever phase you’re in mandarin, just speak without any fear and trust your instincts. If you continue your listening and reading process, and if you continue speaking, your speaking abilities will naturally boost.

5.Get the Rhythm of Mandarin to Expert to Tones Focus on mandarin listening, I tried to whatever content I was reading, reading helps you learn Chinese vocabulary, but listening helps you link with the language and get prepared to speak. Listening comprehension is the core ability essentially in order to engage in discussion with people. One of the challenges of the Chinese is the tones. We learn the tones of every character as we get vocabulary, but it’s hard to keep in mind these when speaking. It’s vital to internalize the tones as part of phrases. Listening to the native Chinese speaker. You cannot learn it theoretically. In particular, I found listening to conventional mandarin dialogues, 相声, Xiang Sheng, the best way to get the rhythm of the language and the Chinese tones, since these performers exaggerate the intonation. Currently, you can find these on the internet, including transcripts, and even import them into the system. This was not available in my time. There’s a huge array of listening material available for download on every possible subject, or you can purchase CDs if you’re in China. In current time, all material you can easily find on the internet, or material you might find on CDs, can be converted into downloadable files which can have with you wherever you go on a mobile or MP3 player. Regula listening, even for small-time 5 to 10 minutes while you are waiting somewhere, can dramatically boost the time available of learning any language. Including Chinese. Take benefit and listen to Chinese whenever you can. That’s Advice No.5.

4.Read Mandarin more than you can handle Read mandarin a lot. If I learned faster than my fellows 40 years ago, it’s because I read all I’d get my hands on. I read much more than others. I’m not just talking about special words for learners, but rather a huge range of material on subjects of interest to me. I was assisted by the fact the Yale in Mainland had a great series of Chinese readers with glossaries for every chapter. We started with learner material, Chinese dialogues, and then graduated to a graded history called Lectures on Chinese Culture. This was a fascinating option for me to learn about Chinese culture and history while learning the language. The book consisted only of contents and glossary, no complicated explanations, no questions. When it looks at a few of the textbooks available now aimed at intermediate and even advanced learners, they’re complete of boring content about fictional people in Mainland, someone at university, who met his buddy or went to the barber or went skating, followed by drills and explanations. Not a great idea unless you’re interested in these subjects.

3.Understand Patterns Rather than Rules Focus on patterns. Do not get caught up in complicated grammar explanations, only focus on patterns. When it was learning we had a wonderful Book by P.S. Ni and Harriet Mills. It was called intermediate readier in Chinese. In every single lesion, they introduced patterns and tome that how I sort of got a sense of Chinese language worked. The patterns were the frames around which I’d build what I desired to say. I’ve absolutely no sense of grammar or terms, yet I’m quite fluent. I’ve seen books that introduce some special grammar rules for mandarin. I do not think they’re necessary. It’s great to get used to the technique of the pattern that mandarin natives use to convey things that we convey in English using English patterns. Mandarin has rather uncomplicated, one of the pleasures of learning mandarin. There’re no conjugations, genders, declensions, complicated tense, verb aspects, or another source of confusion that are found in several European languages. Advice No.3 there’s to focus on patterns, write them out and say them to yourself, utilize them when writing or speaking, and watch for them when you read and listen.

Give Time to Memorizing Mandarin Characters The study of Mandarin is a long-term project. It’ll bring you in touch with it and the Chinese culture of well over 20 percent of humanity and a major influence on the history of the world. For this reason, I forever recommend learning mandarin characters if you’re going to learn Chinese. Once you decide to learn characters, work at them regularly. Give half an hour to an hour each day just on learning Chinese characters. Use whatever technique you want, but set aside dedicated Chinese character learning time each day. But why daily? Because you’ll forget the Chinese characters almost as fast as you learn them, and therefore need to relearn them continuously. You might want to use cchatty tools and flashcards to understand characters. I had a set of 1k small cardboard flashcards with the most regular 1000 Chinese characters. I had a sheet of squared paper to practice writing these frequent Chinese characters. I’d pick up 1 card, and write the character ten times down 1 column on the squared paper and then write the pronunciation or meaning of few columns over. Then I’d pick up another flashcard and do the same process. Very soon, I ran into the meaning/sound of the earlier mandarin character that I had written there. I then wrote that out again multiple times, hopefully before I had forgotten it. I did this for the first one thousand characters. After that, I was capable to learn them by reading and discovering new Chinese characters, and randomly writing them out by hand sometimes. As we progress, learning new mandarin characters becomes simpler because several elements repeat in the characters. The mandarin characters all have Radicals components that give a hint of the meaning of a mandarin character. There’re also components of the mandarin characters which suggest that sound. These Chinese radicals are very helpful to understanding the characters, though not at first.