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Brief introduction of
Chinese language |
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The
Chinese language group |
The Chinese languages are
the languages of the Han people, the major ethnic group of China,
including both the People's Republic of China and the Republic of
China. The Chinese languages are spoken by over one billion people.
Approximately 95 percent of the Chinese population speaks Chinese, as
opposed to the non-Chinese languages such as Tibetan, Mongolian, Lolo,
Miao, and Tai spoken by minorities. The vast majority of the
Chinese-speaking population is in China (over 980 million), Hong Kong,
and Taiwan (19 million), but substantial numbers are also found
throughout the whole of southeast Asia, especially in Singapore,
Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand. Important Chinese-speaking
communities are also found in many other parts of the world,
especially in Europe, North and South America, and the Hawaiian
Islands. |
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General
linguistic characteristics |
Chinese, together with
Tibetan and Myanmar (formerly known as Burmese) and the many tribal
languages of South and Southeast Asia, belongs to the family of
Sino-Tibetan languages. Besides a core vocabulary and sounds, Chinese
and most related languages share features that distinguish them from
most Western languages: they are monosyllabic, have little inflection,
and are tonal. In order to indicate differences in meaning between
words similar in sound, tone languages assign to words a distinctive
relative pitch-high or low-or a distinctive pitch contour-level,
rising, or falling. |
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Language versus dialects |
Spoken
Chinese comprises many regional variants, generally referred to as
dialects. However, the mutual unintelligibility of the subvarieties is
the main ground for classifying them as separate languages or dialect
groups. Each dialect group consists of a large number of dialects,
many of which may themselves be referred to as languages. The
boundaries between one so-called language and the next are not always
easy to define. Because each dialect group preserves different
features of Middle Chinese (dating back to early or even pre-T'ang
times), they have proven to be valuable research tools in the
phonological reconstruction of Middle and even to some extent its
ancestor, Old Chinese. Most Chinese speak one of the Mandarin
dialects, which are largely mutually intelligible. |
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Members
of the Chinese language group |
Chinese has seven major
language groups of which the Mandarin language group forms the largest
group. The Mandarin group consists of a wide range of dialects in the
northern, central, and western regions. The Cantonese dialects are
spoken in Hong Kong, Guangdong, Southern Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous
Region, parts of Hainan, Macau, and in many overseas settlements. The
Hakka (Kejia) languages are spoken in Guangdong, southwestern Fujian,
Jiangxi, Hunan, Yunnan, Guangxi, Guizhou, Sichuan, Hainan, Taiwan,
Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, many overseas Chinese communities, and
in pockets throughout Southeast Asia. Most of the inhabitants of the
south central region, in Hunan use the Xiang dialects, also known as
Hunanese. The Min dialects are spoken in most of Fujian, large areas
of Taiwan and Hainan, parts of Eastern Guangdong and the Leizhou
Bandao Peninsula, and in areas of Southeast Asia. Most of the people
living in Jiangxi, eastern part of Hunan, and the southeastern corner
of Hubei use the Gan dialects. The majority of the inhabitants of
Zhejiang, as well as people living in southern areas of Jiangsu and
Anhui, speak the Wu dialects. The Wu dialects share marginal mutual
intelligibility with the Mandarin and Gan dialects. |
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The
national language |
The need to establish an
official national language was felt as early as the 17th century when
the Ch'ing dynasty established a number of "correct pronunciation
institutes" to teach standard Peking pronunciation, particularly in
the Cantonese and Fukienese-speaking southern provinces. The success
of these schools, however, was extremely limited. The concept of a
national language coalesced around 1910. In 1913, the Ministry of
Education convened a Commission on the Unification of Pronunciation to
establish a standard national tongue. Wu Ching-heng (also known as Wu
Chih-hui, a philosopher and one of the founders of the Republic of
China, was chosen to direct the task of creating a truly national
language that would transcend locality and dialect. Due to the
domination of the numerically superior Mandarin-speaking delegates,
the Peking dialect was voted for the general foundation of the new
national language 'guoyu' (national speech). It embodies the
pronunciation of Peking, the grammar of the Mandarin dialects, and the
vocabulary of modern vernacular Chinese literature, but features of
various local dialects were also incorporated. Guoyu is now the
official language of mainland China, Taiwan and one of the official
languages of Singapore. After the establishment of the People's
Republic of China in 1949 it was renamed to mandarin (common language)
. In 1956, it became the medium of instruction in all schools
nationwide and a policy of promoting its use began. It is now the most
widely used form of spoken Chinese. In Taiwan, it still goes under the
name of guoyu, or 'national speech'. In the West it is generally
referred to Mandarin. |
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Phonetic spelling |
After several previous
attempts to write Chinese using the letters of the roman alphabet,
pinyin, a 58-symbol writing system was finally adopted in 1958. Some
strange and unnatural sounds for the x's, q's, and zh's reflect the
graphic choices of Russian linguists. Its main aims are to facilitate
the spread of mandarin, and the learning of Chinese characters. In the
1970s a new map of China was published using the alphabet, and a list
of standard spellings for Chinese placenames was compiled. |
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Traditional and simplified writing system |
In mainland China a
simplified writing system is used, whereas in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and
overseas regions the traditional script is being used. Starting from
the second half of the nineteenth century, there was a growing
consensus that the writing system constituted an obstacle to the
achievement of a higher literacy rate. The simplified writing system
differs in two ways from the traditional writing system: (1) a
reduction of the number of strokes per character and (2) the reduction
of the number of characters in common use (two different characters
are now written with the same character). A large-scale reform was
continued after the founding of the PRC. In 1955 1,053 variant
characters were eliminated. In 1956, the Scheme of Simplified Chinese
Characters, known later as the First Scheme, was promulgated by the
PRC government. It was composed of 525 simplified characters and 54
simplified basic components of characters. The Second Scheme of
Simplified Chinese Characters was promulgated in 1977 but was repealed
in 1986 amid general disapproval. |
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The
comeback of the traditional writing system |
The use of the simplified
script has also given rise to some problems. When some simplified
characters become easier to learn and write, they may not necessarily
be easier to recognize. Characters may become less differentiated from
each other as a result of simplification of their shape (e.g.
'phoenix' vs , 'wind'). There is no balance between the legibility and
distinctiveness of its basic symbols. Furthermore, simplified
characters offer even fewer clues to their pronunciation than their
traditional counterparts, making them more prone to mispronunciation.
Finally, it is argued that the simplified script hinders access to
writings before 1956, as well as those from outside mainland China. In
comparison with the twenty-year period following 1956, the 1980s and
1990s have witnessed a comeback of the original traditional
characters.They are everywhere to be seen on signboards of streets,
stores, schools, companies, and government institutions, as well as in
advertisements, slogans, and televisions subtitles. More than 50% of
the universities in Beijing use traditional characters in their signs,
as is the case for 85% of the restaurants in Beijing. In the southern
parts of China these rates are even higher. In the ShenZhen area some
schools have started to teach the traditional script again because
people were not able to understand writings and contracts from the
neighoring Hong Kong Special Administrative Region. |
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Differences between Mandarin and Guoyu |
Obviously, there are some
slight deviations between the Mandarin variants spoken in Beijing,
Taiwan, Singapore, and Hong Kong SAR. These include deviations in
grammar, vocabulary, stylistic aspects, and loan words. For example,
there is a 23% discrepancy in standard pronunciation between the 3,500
most commonly used characters in the 'Xinhua zidian' of the mainland
and 'Guoyu cidian' of Taiwan. All radio and television broadcast
announcers in Beijing, both men and women, broadcast in a pitch range
noticeably higher than that of their normal speaking voices. Each
sentence begins high and shrill. Then pitch falls gradually, reaching
a lower key by the end of the sentence. Pauses are exaggerated and
more drawn out. This special type of intonation seems intended to
arouse in the audience an impression of struggle and determination. In
Taiwan, by contrast, announcers broadcast in a more conversational
speaking voice. |
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Bilingual education |
Bilingual education is now
common in Taiwan as a way of reversing the previous neglect of Chinese
dialects other than the national language. Although the mainland
central government acknowledges the importance of local dialects they
are several steps behind bilingual education due to the continuing
efforts to establish mandarin as the national language. |
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