Excerpt from A Dictionary of Colloquial Idioms in the Mandarin Dialect The alphabetical arrangement was adopted for the sake of convenience, and is purely arbitrary, for many sentences would stand as well, and perhaps better, under other headings; but the object was to keep as much as possible to Saxon verbs which are more likely to come uppermost in the flow of ordinary conversation. It is not, however, supposed that every sentence as it now stands will be found of sufficient value to commit to memory, but only that each one contains a useful idiom which was actually heard in conversation, and may be adapted as circumstances require; moreover, that as all trace of dialect or local taint has been carefully eliminated, the speaker will find himself on common ground with educated natives from any one of the eighteen provinces. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.