A handy guide to the Chinese language, Survival Chinese contains basic expressions and key words that are necessary for getting around. The notorious tonal changes in the pronunciation of Chinese words are a challenge for any beginner in the language. De Mente shows how these variations become a breeze to learn with his additional guidelines on how the Pinyin phonetic alphabet letters are pronounced when used in Chinese words. Together with the standard Pinyin pronunciations, these English phonetics serve as an excellent guide to approximating the correct Chinese pronunciation as closely as possible.