Learning Chinese Through Tone & Color presents a visual system for English speakers learning Mandarin. The book is currently in the Top 40 at Amazon.com for Asian language instruction. We got a hold of linguist and author Nathan Dummitt to talk about his new book.

Ningin: What’s your linguistic background? How many languages can you speak?

Nathan: I first realized that I had an intense interest in languages relatively late in life - after I finished college and was teaching English at a high school in Japan in my early 20s. Since then I’ve dabbled in a few languages, all for varying lengths of time and with varying degrees of success, including: Japanese, Chinese, Spanish, Italian, Korean, French and Russian. I’m really only comfortable in the first three, due largely to the fact that my wife is Japanese and we live in a Chinatown (New York City). I am finishing my master’s degree in Linguistics at the CUNY Graduate Center this spring. More »

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