Hippocrene Books. 240 pages. Functioning as both a traditional dictionary and a study guide, this list of the 500 most used words (characters) of Mandarin Chinese offers the English-speaking student of Chinese an essential source of vocabulary and a detailed reference to the world's most widely-spoken language. Presented in order of frequency, each entry includes the Chinese character with pinyin transcription (Romanization), meaning, explanations of usage with examples, and a selection of words and expressions that have the entry word as the first element. Two indices also list the 500 words according to frequency and alphabetical order. Foreign language teachers and students will find this dictionary to be an invaluable supplement to a course or textbook at all levels of study.