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Mandarin-language Television Shows
Mandarin ( ; zh, s=, t=, p=Guānhuà, l= officials' speech) is the largest branch of the Sinitic languages. Mandarin varieties are spoken by 70 percent of all Chinese speakers over a large geographical area that stretches from Yunnan in the southwest to Xinjiang in the northwest and Heilongjiang in the northeast. Its spread is generally attributed to the greater ease of travel and communication in the North China Plain compared to the more mountainous south, combined with the relatively recent spread of Mandarin to frontier areas. Many varieties of Mandarin, such as those of the Southwest (including Sichuanese) and the Lower Yangtze, are not mutually intelligible with the Beijing dialect (or are only partially intelligible). Nevertheless, Mandarin as a group is often placed first in lists of languages by number of native speakers (with nearly one billion). Because Mandarin originated in North China and most Mandarin varieties are found in the north, the group is sometimes ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
China
China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. With population of China, a population exceeding 1.4 billion, it is the list of countries by population (United Nations), second-most populous country after India, representing 17.4% of the world population. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and Borders of China, borders fourteen countries by land across an area of nearly , making it the list of countries and dependencies by area, third-largest country by land area. The country is divided into 33 Province-level divisions of China, province-level divisions: 22 provinces of China, provinces, 5 autonomous regions of China, autonomous regions, 4 direct-administered municipalities of China, municipalities, and 2 semi-autonomous special administrative regions. Beijing is the country's capital, while Shanghai is List of cities in China by population, its most populous city by urban area and largest financial center. Considered one of six ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Beijing Mandarin (division Of Mandarin)
In Chinese dialectology, Beijing Mandarin () refers to a major branch of Mandarin Chinese recognized by the ''Language Atlas of China'', encompassing a number of dialects spoken in areas of Beijing, Hebei, Inner Mongolia, Liaoning, and Tianjin, the most important of which is the Beijing dialect, which provides the phonological basis for Standard Chinese. Both Beijing Mandarin and its Beijing dialect are also called Beijingese. Classification Beijing Mandarin and Northeastern Mandarin were proposed by Chinese linguist Li Rong as two separate branches of Mandarin in the 1980s. In Li's 1985 paper, he suggested using tonal reflexes of Middle Chinese checked tone characters as the criterion for classifying Mandarin dialects. In this paper, he used the term "Beijing Mandarin" () to refer the dialect group in which checked tone characters with a voiceless initial have dark level, light level, rising and departing tone reflexes. He chose the name Beijing Mandarin as this Mandarin grou ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pinyin
Hanyu Pinyin, or simply pinyin, officially the Chinese Phonetic Alphabet, is the most common romanization system for Standard Chinese. ''Hanyu'' () literally means 'Han Chinese, Han language'—that is, the Chinese language—while ''pinyin'' literally means 'spelled sounds'. Pinyin is the official romanization system used in China, Singapore, Taiwan, and by the United Nations. Its use has become common when transliterating Standard Chinese mostly regardless of region, though it is less ubiquitous in Taiwan. It is used to teach Standard Chinese, normally written with Chinese characters, to students in mainland China and Singapore. Pinyin is also used by various Chinese input method, input methods on computers and to lexicographic ordering, categorize entries in some Chinese dictionaries. In pinyin, each Chinese syllable is spelled in terms of an optional initial (linguistics), initial and a final (linguistics), final, each of which is represented by one or more letters. Initi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Two-Cell Chinese Braille
Two-cell Chinese Braille was designed in the 1970s and is used in parallel with traditional Chinese Braille in China. Each syllable is rendered with two braille characters. The first combines the initial and medial; the second the rime and tone. The base letters represent the initial and rime; these are modified with diacritics for the medial and tone. Thus each of the braille cells has aspects of an abugida. Braille charts Onsets The first cell indicates the initial, generally in dots 1 to 4, and the medial in dots 5 and 6. This design exploits restrictions on co-occurrence of initials and medials to fit all the allowable combinations in a single cell. The medial ''-i-'' is represented by dot 5 (), the medial ''-u-'' by dot 6 (), and the medial ''-ü-'' by both dots 5 and 6 (). The ''z c s'' series is derived from ''zh ch sh'' as if they contained a ''-i-'' medial; these two series are not distinguished in many Mandarin dialects. As in traditional Chinese Braille, ''k g ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Taiwanese Braille
Taiwanese Braille is the braille script used in Taiwan for Taiwanese Mandarin (''Guoyu''). Although based marginally on international braille, most consonants have been reassigned; also, like Chinese Braille, Taiwanese Braille is a semi-syllabary. An example is, Charts Initials The braille letters for zhuyin/pinyin ㄍ ''g'' (), ㄘ ''c'' (), and ㄙ ''s'' () double for the alveolo-palatal consonants ㄐ ''j'' (), ㄑ ''q'' (), and ㄒ ''x'' (). The latter are followed by close front vowels, namely ㄧ ''i'' () and ㄩ ''ü'' (), so the distinction between ''g, c, s'' (or ''z, k, h'') and ''j, q, x'' in zhuyin and pinyin is redundant. Medial + rime Each medial + rime in zhuyin is written with a single letter in braille. is used for both the empty rime ''-i'' (), which is not written in zhuyin, and the rime ㄦ ''er'' (). See for example 斯 ''sī'' () located above the word ''Daguerre'' in the image at right. Tone Marks Tone is always marked. This includes ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mainland Chinese Braille
Mainland Chinese Braille is a braille script for Standard Chinese used in China. Consonants and basic finals conform to international braille, but additional finals form a semi-syllabary, as in bopomofo. Each syllable is written with up to three Braille cells, representing the initial, final, and tone, respectively. In practice tone is generally omitted as it is in pinyin. Braille charts Traditional Chinese Braille is as follows: Initials Chinese Braille initials generally follow the pinyin assignments of international braille. However, ''j, q, x'' are replaced with ''g, k, h'', as the difference is predictable from the final. (This reflects the historical change of ''g, k, h'' (and also ''z, c, s'') to ''j, q, x'' before ''i'' and ''ü''.) The digraphs ''ch, sh, zh'' are assigned to (its pronunciation in Russian Braille), (a common pronunciation in international braille), and . ''R'' is assigned to , reflecting the old Wade-Giles transcription of . ( is used for t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Traditional Chinese Characters
Traditional Chinese characters are a standard set of Chinese character forms used to written Chinese, write Chinese languages. In Taiwan, the set of traditional characters is regulated by the Ministry of Education (Taiwan), Ministry of Education and standardized in the ''Standard Form of National Characters''. These forms were predominant in written Chinese until the middle of the 20th century, when various Chinese family of scripts, countries that use Chinese characters began standardizing simplified sets of characters, often with characters that existed before as well-known variant Chinese characters, variants of the predominant forms. Simplified characters as codified by the People's Republic of China are predominantly used in mainland China, Malaysia, and Singapore. "Traditional" as such is a retronym applied to non-simplified character sets in the wake of widespread use of simplified characters. Traditional characters are commonly used in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau, as ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Simplified Chinese Characters
Simplified Chinese characters are one of two standardized Chinese characters, character sets widely used to write the Chinese language, with the other being traditional characters. Their mass standardization during the 20th century was part of an initiative by the People's Republic of China (PRC) to promote literacy, and their use in ordinary circumstances on the mainland has been encouraged by the Chinese government since the 1950s. They are the official forms used in mainland China, Malaysia, and Singapore, while traditional characters are officially used in Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan. Simplification of a component—either a character or a sub-component called a Radical (Chinese characters), radical—usually involves either a reduction in its total number of Chinese character strokes, strokes, or an apparent streamlining of which strokes are chosen in what places—for example, the radical used in the traditional character is simplified to to form the simplified charac ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Chinese Characters
Chinese characters are logographs used Written Chinese, to write the Chinese languages and others from regions historically influenced by Chinese culture. Of the four independently invented writing systems accepted by scholars, they represent the only one that has remained in continuous use. Over a documented history spanning more than three millennia, the function, style, and means of writing characters have changed greatly. Unlike letters in alphabets that reflect the sounds of speech, Chinese characters generally represent morphemes, the units of meaning in a language. Writing all of the frequently used vocabulary in a language requires roughly 2000–3000 characters; , nearly have been identified and included in ''The Unicode Standard''. Characters are created according to several principles, where aspects of shape and pronunciation may be used to indicate the character's meaning. The first attested characters are oracle bone inscriptions made during the 13th century&n ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Southwestern Mandarin
Southwestern Mandarin (), also known as Upper Yangtze Mandarin (), is a Mandarin Chinese dialect spoken in much of Southwestern China, including in Sichuan, Yunnan, Chongqing, Guizhou, most parts of Hubei, the northwestern part of Hunan, the northern part of Guangxi and some southern parts of Shaanxi and Gansu. Southwestern Mandarin is spoken by roughly 260 million people. If considered a language distinct from central Mandarin, it would be the eighth-most spoken language by native speakers in the world, behind Mandarin itself, Spanish, English, Hindi, Portuguese, Arabic and Bengali. Overview Modern Southwestern Mandarin was formed by the waves of immigrants brought to the regions during the Ming and Qing Dynasties. Because of the comparatively recent move, such dialects show more similarity to modern Standard Mandarin than to other varieties of Chinese like Cantonese or Hokkien. For example, like most Southern Chinese dialects, Southwestern Mandarin does not possess the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lan-Yin Mandarin
Lan–Yin Mandarin (Lanyin) () is a branch of Mandarin Chinese traditionally spoken throughout Gansu province and in the northern part of Ningxia. In recent decades it has expanded into northern Xinjiang. It has also been grouped together with Central Plains Mandarin (). The name is a compound of the capitals of the two former provinces where it dominates, Lanzhou and Yinchuan, which are also two of its principal subdialects. Among Chinese Muslims, it was sometimes written in the Arabic alphabet instead of Chinese characters. The 14th Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso, speaks the Xining dialect as his first language: he has said that his first language was "a broken Xining language which was (a dialect of) the Chinese language", a form of Central Plains Mandarin, and his family speak neither Amdo Tibetan nor Lhasa Tibetan Lhasa Tibetan or Standard Tibetan is a standardized dialect of Tibetan spoken by the people of Lhasa, the capital of the Tibetan Autonomous Region. It i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Central Plains Mandarin
Central Plains Mandarin, or ''Zhongyuan'' Mandarin (), is a variety of Mandarin Chinese spoken in the central and southern parts of Shaanxi, Henan, southwestern part of Shanxi, southern part of Gansu, far southern part of Hebei, northern Anhui, northern parts of Jiangsu, southern Xinjiang and southern Shandong. The archaic dialect in Peking opera is a form of Zhongyuan Mandarin. Among Hui people, Zhongyuan Mandarin is sometimes written with the Arabic script, Arabic alphabet, called Xiao'erjing ("Children's script"). Subdialects * Zheng-Kai (郑开) region: e.g. Kaifeng (开封) dialect, Zhengzhou (郑州) dialect * Luo-Song (洛嵩) region: e.g. Luoyang dialect (洛阳话) * Nan-Lu (南阳) region: e.g. Nanyang dialect, Nanyang (南阳) dialect * Luo-Xiang (漯项) region: e.g. Zhumadian (驻马店) dialect * Shang-Fu (商阜) region: e.g. Shangqiu (商丘) dialect, Fuyang (阜阳) dialect * Xin-Beng (信蚌) region: e.g. Xinyang (信阳) dialect, Bengbu (蚌埠) dialect ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
