Chinese (, especially when referring to
written Chinese) is a group of
languages spoken natively by the ethnic
Han Chinese majority and
many minority ethnic groups in
Greater China
Greater China is an informal geographical area that shares commercial and cultural ties with the Han Chinese people. The notion of "Greater China" refers to the area that usually encompasses Mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan in East ...
. About 1.3 billion people (or approximately 16% of the world's population) speak a variety of Chinese as their
first language.
Chinese languages form the
Sinitic
The Sinitic languages (漢語族/汉语族), often synonymous with "Chinese languages", are a group of East Asian analytic languages that constitute the major branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family. It is frequently proposed that there is ...
branch of the
Sino-Tibetan languages family. The spoken
varieties of Chinese are usually considered by native speakers to be
variants of a single language. However, their lack of
mutual intelligibility means they are sometimes considered separate languages in a
family. Investigation of the historical relationships among the varieties of Chinese is ongoing. Currently, most classifications posit 7 to 13 main regional groups based on phonetic developments from
Middle Chinese, of which the most spoken by far is
Mandarin (with about 800 million speakers, or 66%), followed by
Min (75 million, e.g.
Southern Min),
Wu (74 million, e.g.
Shanghainese), and
Yue (68 million, e.g.
Cantonese). These branches are unintelligible to each other, and many of their subgroups are unintelligible with the other varieties within the same branch (e.g. Southern Min). There are, however, transitional areas where varieties from different branches share enough features for some limited intelligibility, including
New Xiang
New Xiang, also known as Chang-Yi (长益片 / 長益片) is the dominant form of Xiang Chinese. It is spoken in northeastern areas of Hunan, China adjacent to areas where Southwestern Mandarin and Gan are spoken. Under their influence, it has lo ...
with
Southwest Mandarin
Southwestern Mandarin (), also known as Upper Yangtze Mandarin (), is a Mandarin Chinese language spoken in much of Southwest China, including in Sichuan, Yunnan, Chongqing, Guizhou, most parts of Hubei, the northwestern part of Hunan, the northe ...
,
Xuanzhou Wu with
Lower Yangtze Mandarin,
Jin with
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, n ...
and certain divergent dialects of
Hakka with
Gan (though these are unintelligible with mainstream Hakka). All varieties of Chinese are
tonal to at least some degree, and are largely
analytic.
The earliest Chinese written records are
Shang dynasty-era
oracle bone inscriptions, which can be dated to 1250 BCE. The phonetic categories of
Old Chinese can be reconstructed from the rhymes of ancient poetry. During the
Northern and Southern dynasties period, Middle Chinese went through several
sound changes and split into several varieties following prolonged geographic and political separation. ''
Qieyun'', a
rime dictionary, recorded a compromise between the pronunciations of different regions. The royal courts of the Ming and early
Qing dynasties
The Qing dynasty ( ), officially the Great Qing,, was a Manchu-led imperial dynasty of China and the last orthodox dynasty in Chinese history. It emerged from the Later Jin dynasty founded by the Jianzhou Jurchens, a Tungusic-speaki ...
operated using a
koiné language (
Guanhua) based on
Nanjing dialect of
Lower Yangtze Mandarin.
Standard Chinese (Standard Mandarin), based on the
Beijing dialect of Mandarin, was adopted in the 1930s and is now an official language of both the
People's Republic of China and the
Republic of China (Taiwan), one of the four
official languages of Singapore, and one of the six
official languages of the United Nations
The Official Languages of the United Nations are the six languages that are used in UN meetings and in which all official UN documents are written. In the six languages, four are the official language or national language of permanent members ...
. The written form, using the
logograms
In a written language, a logogram, logograph, or lexigraph is a written character that represents a word or morpheme. Chinese characters (pronounced ''hanzi'' in Mandarin, ''kanji'' in Japanese, ''hanja'' in Korean) are generally logograms, as ...
known as
Chinese characters, is shared by literate speakers of mutually unintelligible dialects. Since the 1950s,
simplified Chinese characters have been promoted for use by the government of the People's Republic of China, while Singapore officially adopted simplified characters in 1976.
Traditional characters remain in use in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau, and other countries with significant overseas Chinese speaking communities such as Malaysia (which although adopted simplified characters as the ''de facto'' standard in the 1980s, traditional characters still remain in widespread use).
Classification
Linguists classify all varieties of Chinese as part of the
Sino-Tibetan language family, together with
Burmese,
Tibetan and many other languages spoken in the
Himalayas and the
Southeast Asian Massif
The term Southeast Asian Massif was proposed in 1997 by anthropologist Jean Michaud to discuss the human societies inhabiting the lands above approximately in the southeastern portion of the Asian landmass, thus not merely in the uplands of conven ...
. Although the relationship was first proposed in the early 19th century and is now broadly accepted, reconstruction of Sino-Tibetan is much less developed than that of families such as
Indo-European or
Austroasiatic. Difficulties have included the great diversity of the languages, the lack of
inflection in many of them, and the effects of language contact. In addition, many of the smaller languages are spoken in mountainous areas that are difficult to reach and are often also sensitive
border zone
Border control refers to measures taken by governments to monitor and regulate the movement of people, animals, and goods across land, air, and maritime borders. While border control is typically associated with international borders, it a ...
s. Without a secure reconstruction of proto-Sino-Tibetan, the higher-level structure of the family remains unclear. A top-level branching into Chinese and
Tibeto-Burman languages is often assumed, but has not been convincingly demonstrated.
History
The first written records appeared over 3,000 years ago during the
Shang dynasty. As the language evolved over this period, the various local varieties became mutually unintelligible. In reaction, central governments have repeatedly sought to promulgate a unified standard.
Old and Middle Chinese
The earliest examples of Chinese (
Old Chinese) are divinatory inscriptions on
oracle bone
Oracle bones () are pieces of ox scapula and turtle plastron, which were used for pyromancy – a form of divination – in ancient China, mainly during the late Shang dynasty. '' Scapulimancy'' is the correct term if ox scapulae were used for ...
s from around 1250 BCE in the late
Shang dynasty. The next attested stage came from
inscriptions on bronze artifacts of the
Western Zhou
The Western Zhou ( zh, c=, p=Xīzhōu; c. 1045 BC – 771 BC) was a royal dynasty of China and the first half of the Zhou dynasty. It began when King Wu of Zhou overthrew the Shang dynasty at the Battle of Muye and ended when the Quanrong n ...
period (1046–771 BCE), the ''
Classic of Poetry'' and portions of the ''
Book of Documents'' and ''
I Ching''. Scholars have attempted to reconstruct the
phonology of Old Chinese by comparing later varieties of Chinese with the rhyming practice of the ''Classic of Poetry'' and the phonetic elements found in the majority of Chinese characters. Although many of the finer details remain unclear, most scholars agree that Old Chinese differs from Middle Chinese in lacking retroflex and palatal obstruents but having initial
consonant clusters of some sort, and in having voiceless nasals and liquids. Most recent reconstructions also describe an atonal language with consonant clusters at the end of the syllable, developing into
tone distinctions in Middle Chinese. Several
derivational affixes have also been identified, but the language lacks
inflection, and indicated grammatical relationships using word order and
grammatical particles.
Middle Chinese was the language used during
Northern and Southern dynasties and the
Sui,
Tang, and
Song dynasties (6th through 10th centuries CE). It can be divided into an early period, reflected by the ''
Qieyun''
rime book (601 CE), and a late period in the 10th century, reflected by
rhyme table A rime table or rhyme table () is a Chinese phonological model, tabulating the syllables of the series of rime dictionaries beginning with the ''Qieyun'' (601) by their onsets, rhyme groups, tones and other properties. The method gave a significa ...
s such as the ''
Yunjing
The ''Yunjing'' () is one of the two oldest existing examples of a Chinese rhyme table – a series of charts which arrange Chinese characters in large tables according to their tone and syllable structures to indicate their proper pronunciation ...
'' constructed by ancient Chinese philologists as a guide to the ''Qieyun'' system. These works define phonological categories, but with little hint of what sounds they represent. Linguists have identified these sounds by comparing the categories with pronunciations in modern
varieties of Chinese,
borrowed Chinese words in Japanese, Vietnamese, and Korean, and transcription evidence. The resulting system is very complex, with a large number of consonants and vowels, but they are probably not all distinguished in any single dialect. Most linguists now believe it represents a
diasystem
In the field of dialectology, a diasystem or polylectal grammar is a linguistic analysis set up to encode or represent a range of related varieties in a way that displays their structural differences.
The term ''diasystem'' was coined by linguis ...
encompassing 6th-century northern and southern standards for reading the classics.
Classical and literary forms
The relationship between spoken and written Chinese is rather complex ("
diglossia"). Its spoken varieties have evolved at different rates, while written Chinese itself has changed much less.
Classical Chinese literature began in the
Spring and Autumn period.
Rise of northern dialects
After the fall of the
Northern Song
Northern may refer to the following:
Geography
* North, a point in direction
* Northern Europe, the northern part or region of Europe
* Northern Highland, a region of Wisconsin, United States
* Northern Province, Sri Lanka
* Northern Range, a r ...
dynasty and subsequent reign of the
Jin (Jurchen) and
Yuan (Mongol) dynasties in northern China, a common speech (now called
Old Mandarin
Old Mandarin or Early Mandarin was the speech of northern China during the Jurchen-ruled Jin dynasty and the Mongol-led Yuan dynasty (12th to 14th centuries). New genres of vernacular literature were based on this language, including verse, dram ...
) developed based on the dialects of the
North China Plain around the capital.
The ''
Zhongyuan Yinyun'' (1324) was a dictionary that codified the rhyming conventions of new ''
sanqu
''Sanqu'' () is a fixed-rhythm form of Classical Chinese poetry or "literary song".Crump (1990), 125 Specifically ''sanqu'' is a subtype of the '' qu'' formal type of poetry. ''Sanqu'' was a notable Chinese poetic form, possibly beginning in the ...
'' verse form in this language.
Together with the slightly later ''
Menggu Ziyun'', this dictionary describes a language with many of the features characteristic of modern
Mandarin dialects
Mandarin (; ) is a group of Chinese (Sinitic) dialects that are natively spoken across most of northern and southwestern China. The group includes the Beijing dialect, the basis of the phonology of Standard Chinese, the official language of ...
.
Up to the early 20th century, most Chinese people only spoke their local variety.
Thus, as a practical measure, officials of the
Ming and
Qing dynasties carried out the administration of the empire using a
common language based on Mandarin varieties, known as ''Guānhuà'' (/, literally "language of officials").
For most of this period, this language was a
koiné based on dialects spoken in the
Nanjing area, though not identical to any single dialect.
By the middle of the 19th century, the Beijing dialect had become dominant and was essential for any business with the imperial court.
In the 1930s, a
standard national language, ''Guóyǔ'' (/ ; "national language") was adopted. After much dispute between proponents of northern and southern dialects and an abortive attempt at an artificial pronunciation, the
National Language Unification Commission finally settled on the Beijing dialect in 1932. The People's Republic founded in 1949 retained this standard but renamed it ''pǔtōnghuà'' (/; "common speech"). The national language is now used in education, the media, and formal situations in both Mainland China and Taiwan. Because of their colonial and linguistic history, the language used in education, the media, formal speech, and everyday life in
Hong Kong and
Macau is the local
Cantonese, although the standard language, Mandarin, has become very influential and is being taught in schools.
Influence
Historically, the Chinese language has spread to its neighbors through a variety of means. Northern Vietnam was incorporated into the
Han empire
The Han dynasty (, ; ) was an imperial dynasty of China (202 BC – 9 AD, 25–220 AD), established by Liu Bang (Emperor Gao) and ruled by the House of Liu. The dynasty was preceded by the short-lived Qin dynasty (221–207 BC) and a warr ...
in 111 BCE, marking the beginning of a
period of Chinese control that ran almost continuously for a millennium. The
Four Commanderies were established in northern Korea in the first century BCE, but disintegrated in the following centuries.
Chinese Buddhism spread over East Asia between the 2nd and 5th centuries CE, and with it the study of scriptures and literature in
Literary Chinese. Later
Korea,
Japan, and
Vietnam developed strong central governments modeled on Chinese institutions, with Literary Chinese as the language of administration and scholarship, a position it would retain until the late 19th century in
Korea and (to a lesser extent) Japan, and the early 20th century in Vietnam. Scholars from different lands could communicate, albeit only in writing, using Literary Chinese.
Although they used Chinese solely for written communication, each country had its own tradition of reading texts aloud, the so-called
Sino-Xenic pronunciations
Sino-Xenic or Sinoxenic pronunciations are regular systems for reading Chinese characters in Japan, Korea and Vietnam, originating in medieval times and the source of large-scale borrowings of Chinese words into the Japanese, Korean and Vietnames ...
. Chinese words with these pronunciations were also extensively imported into the
Korean
Korean may refer to:
People and culture
* Koreans, ethnic group originating in the Korean Peninsula
* Korean cuisine
* Korean culture
* Korean language
**Korean alphabet, known as Hangul or Chosŏn'gŭl
**Korean dialects and the Jeju language
** ...
,
Japanese
Japanese may refer to:
* Something from or related to Japan, an island country in East Asia
* Japanese language, spoken mainly in Japan
* Japanese people, the ethnic group that identifies with Japan through ancestry or culture
** Japanese diaspor ...
and
Vietnamese
Vietnamese may refer to:
* Something of, from, or related to Vietnam, a country in Southeast Asia
** A citizen of Vietnam. See Demographics of Vietnam.
* Vietnamese people, or Kinh people, a Southeast Asian ethnic group native to Vietnam
** Overse ...
languages, and today comprise over half of their vocabularies. This massive influx led to changes in the phonological structure of the languages, contributing to the development of
moraic structure in Japanese and the disruption of
vowel harmony in Korean.
Borrowed Chinese morphemes have been used extensively in all these languages to coin compound words for new concepts, in a similar way to the use of
Latin
Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...
and
Ancient Greek roots in European languages. Many new compounds, or new meanings for old phrases, were created in the late 19th and early 20th centuries to name Western concepts and artifacts. These coinages, written in shared Chinese characters, have then been borrowed freely between languages. They have even been accepted into Chinese, a language usually resistant to loanwords, because their foreign origin was hidden by their written form. Often different compounds for the same concept were in circulation for some time before a winner emerged, and sometimes the final choice differed between countries. The proportion of vocabulary of Chinese origin thus tends to be greater in technical, abstract, or formal language. For example, in Japan,
Sino-Japanese words account for about 35% of the words in entertainment magazines, over half the words in newspapers, and 60% of the words in science magazines.
Vietnam, Korea, and Japan each developed writing systems for their own languages, initially based on
Chinese characters, but later replaced with the ''
hangul'' alphabet for Korean and supplemented with ''
kana'' syllabaries for Japanese, while Vietnamese continued to be written with the complex ''
chữ nôm'' script. However, these were limited to popular literature until the late 19th century. Today Japanese is written with a composite script using both Chinese characters (''
kanji'') and kana. Korean is written exclusively with hangul in North Korea (although knowledge of the supplementary Chinese characters - ''
hanja'' - is still required), and hanja are increasingly rarely used in South Korea. As a result of former
French colonization, Vietnamese switched to
a Latin-based alphabet.
Examples of
loan words in English include "
tea
Tea is an aromatic beverage prepared by pouring hot or boiling water over cured or fresh leaves of ''Camellia sinensis'', an evergreen shrub native to East Asia which probably originated in the borderlands of southwestern China and north ...
", from
Hokkien (Min Nan) (), "
dim sum", from Cantonese ''dim
2 sam
1'' () and "
kumquat
Kumquats (; zh, 金桔), or cumquats in Australian English, are a group of small fruit-bearing trees in the flowering plant family Rutaceae. Their taxonomy is disputed. They were previously classified as forming the now-historical genus ''For ...
", from Cantonese ''gam
1gwat
1'' ().
Varieties
Jerry Norman estimated that there are hundreds of mutually unintelligible varieties of Chinese. These varieties form a
dialect continuum, in which differences in speech generally become more pronounced as distances increase, though the rate of change varies immensely. Generally, mountainous South China exhibits more linguistic diversity than the
North China Plain. In parts of South China, a major city's dialect may only be marginally intelligible to close neighbors. For instance,
Wuzhou
Wuzhou (, postal: Wuchow; za, Ngouzcouh / Ŋouƨcouƅ), formerly Ngchow, is a prefecture-level city in the east of Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, People's Republic of China.
Geography and climate
Wuzhou is located in eastern Guangxi borde ...
is about upstream from
Guangzhou, but the
Yue variety spoken there is more like that of Guangzhou than is that of
Taishan, southwest of Guangzhou and separated from it by several rivers. In parts of
Fujian the speech of neighboring counties or even villages may be mutually unintelligible.
Until the late 20th century, Chinese emigrants to Southeast Asia and North America came from southeast coastal areas, where Min, Hakka, and Yue dialects are spoken.
The vast majority of Chinese immigrants to North America up to the mid-20th century spoke the
Taishan dialect, from a small coastal area southwest of
Guangzhou.
Grouping
Local varieties of Chinese are conventionally classified into seven dialect groups, largely on the basis of the different evolution of
Middle Chinese voiced initials:
*
Mandarin, including
Standard Chinese,
Pekingese
The Pekingese (also spelled Pekinese) is a breed of toy dog, originating in China. The breed was favored by royalty of the Chinese Imperial court as a companion dog, and its name refers to the city of Peking (Beijing) where the Forbidden City i ...
,
Sichuanese, and also the
Dungan language spoken in
Central Asia
*
Wu, including
Shanghainese,
Suzhounese
Suzhounese (; Suzhounese: ''sou1 tseu1 ghe2 gho6'' [] ), also known as the Suzhou dialect, is the Varieties of Chinese, variety of Chinese traditionally spoken in the city of Suzhou in Jiangsu, Jiangsu Province, China. Suzhounese is a varie ...
, and
Wenzhounese
Wenzhounese (), also known as Oujiang (), Tong Au () or Au Nyü (), is the language spoken in Wenzhou, the southern prefecture of Zhejiang, China. Nicknamed the "Devil's Language" () for its complexity and difficulty, it is the most divergent div ...
*
Gan
*
Xiang
*
Min, including
Fuzhounese,
Hainanese,
Hokkien and
Teochew
*
Hakka
*
Yue, including
Cantonese and
Taishanese
Taishanese (), alternatively romanized in Cantonese as Toishanese or Toisanese, in local dialect as Hoisanese or Hoisan-wa, is a dialect of Yue Chinese native to Taishan, Guangdong. Although it is related to Cantonese, Taishanese has littl ...
The classification of
Li Rong, which is used in the ''
Language Atlas of China'' (1987), distinguishes three further groups:
*
Jin, previously included in Mandarin.
*
Huizhou
Huizhou ( zh, c= ) is a city in central-east Guangdong Province, China, forty-three miles north of Hong Kong. Huizhou borders the provincial capital of Guangzhou to the west, Shenzhen and Dongguan to the southwest, Shaoguan to the north, Heyu ...
, previously included in Wu.
*
Pinghua
Pinghua (; Yale: ''Pìhng Wá''; sometimes disambiguated as /) is a pair of Sinitic languages spoken mainly in parts of the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, with some speakers in Hunan province. Pinghua is a trade language in some areas of Gu ...
, previously included in Yue.
Some varieties remain unclassified, including
Danzhou dialect (spoken in
Danzhou, on
Hainan Island),
Waxianghua (spoken in western
Hunan) and
Shaozhou Tuhua (spoken in northern
Guangdong).
Standard Chinese
Standard Chinese, often called Mandarin, is the official
standard language of
China, de facto official language of
Taiwan
Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is a country in East Asia, at the junction of the East and South China Seas in the northwestern Pacific Ocean, with the People's Republic of China (PRC) to the northwest, Japan to the nort ...
, and one of the four official languages of
Singapore (where it is called "Huáyŭ" / or Chinese). Standard Chinese is based on the
Beijing dialect, the dialect of
Mandarin as spoken in
Beijing. The governments of both China and Taiwan intend for speakers of all Chinese speech varieties to use it as a common language of communication. Therefore, it is used in government agencies, in the media, and as a language of instruction in schools.
In China and Taiwan,
diglossia has been a common feature. For example, in addition to Standard Chinese, a resident of
Shanghai might speak
Shanghainese; and, if they grew up elsewhere, then they are also likely to be fluent in the particular dialect of that local area. A native of
Guangzhou may speak both Cantonese and Standard Chinese. In addition to Mandarin, most
Taiwanese also speak
Taiwanese Hokkien (commonly "Taiwanese" ),
Hakka, or an
Austronesian language. A Taiwanese may commonly mix pronunciations, phrases, and words from Mandarin and other
Taiwanese languages, and this mixture is considered normal in daily or informal speech.
Due to their traditional cultural ties to
Guangdong province and colonial histories,
Cantonese is used as the standard variant of Chinese in
Hong Kong and
Macau instead.
Nomenclature
The official Chinese designation for the major branches of Chinese is ''fāngyán'' (, literally "regional speech"), whereas the more closely related varieties within these are called ''dìdiǎn fāngyán'' (/ "local speech"). Conventional English-language usage in Chinese linguistics is to use ''dialect'' for the speech of a particular place (regardless of status) and ''dialect group'' for a regional grouping such as Mandarin or Wu. Because varieties from different groups are not
mutually intelligible, some scholars prefer to describe Wu and others as separate languages.
Jerry Norman called this practice misleading, pointing out that Wu, which itself contains many mutually unintelligible varieties, could not be properly called a single language under the same criterion, and that the same is true for each of the other groups.
Mutual intelligibility is considered by some linguists to be the main criterion for determining whether varieties are separate languages or dialects of a single language, although others do not regard it as decisive, particularly when cultural factors interfere as they do with Chinese. As explains, linguists often ignore mutual intelligibility when varieties share intelligibility with a central variety (i.e.
prestige variety
In sociolinguistics, prestige is the level of regard normally accorded a specific language or dialect within a speech community, relative to other languages or dialects. Prestige varieties are language or dialect families which are generally cons ...
, such as
Standard Mandarin), as the issue requires some careful handling when mutual intelligibility is inconsistent with language identity.
John DeFrancis argues that it is inappropriate to refer to Mandarin, Wu and so on as "dialects" because the mutual unintelligibility between them is too great. On the other hand, he also objects to considering them as separate languages, as it incorrectly implies a set of disruptive "religious, economic, political, and other differences" between speakers that exist, for example, between
French Catholics and English Protestants in Canada, but not between speakers of Cantonese and Mandarin in China, owing to China's near-uninterrupted history of centralized government.
Because of the difficulties involved in determining the difference between language and dialect, other terms have been proposed. These include ''vernacular'', ''
lect'', ''regionalect'', ''topolect'', and ''
variety
Variety may refer to:
Arts and entertainment Entertainment formats
* Variety (radio)
* Variety show, in theater and television
Films
* ''Variety'' (1925 film), a German silent film directed by Ewald Andre Dupont
* ''Variety'' (1935 film), ...
''.
Most Chinese people consider the spoken varieties as one single language because speakers share a common culture and history, as well as a shared national identity and a common written form.
Phonology
Syllables in the Chinese languages have some unique characteristics. They are tightly related to the
morphology
Morphology, from the Greek and meaning "study of shape", may refer to:
Disciplines
* Morphology (archaeology), study of the shapes or forms of artifacts
* Morphology (astronomy), study of the shape of astronomical objects such as nebulae, galaxies ...
and also to the characters of the writing system; and
phonologically they are structured according to fixed rules.
The structure of each syllable consists of a
nucleus that has a
vowel (which can be a
monophthong
A monophthong ( ; , ) is a pure vowel sound, one whose articulation at both beginning and end is relatively fixed, and which does not glide up or down towards a new position of articulation. The monophthongs can be contrasted with diphthongs, wh ...
,
diphthong, or even a
triphthong
In phonetics, a triphthong (, ) (from Greek τρίφθογγος, "triphthongos", literally "with three sounds," or "with three tones") is a monosyllabic vowel combination involving a quick but smooth movement of the articulator from one vowel q ...
in certain varieties), preceded by an
onset (a single
consonant, or consonant+
glide
Glide may refer to:
* Gliding flight, to fly without thrust
Computing
*Glide API, a 3D graphics interface
*Glide OS, a web desktop
*Glide (software), an instant video messenger
*Glide, a molecular docking software by Schrödinger (company), Schr� ...
; zero onset is also possible), and followed (optionally) by a
coda consonant; a syllable also carries a
tone. There are some instances where a vowel is not used as a nucleus. An example of this is in
Cantonese, where the
nasal sonorant consonants and can stand alone as their own syllable.
In Mandarin much more than in other spoken varieties, most syllables tend to be open syllables, meaning they have no coda (assuming that a final
glide
Glide may refer to:
* Gliding flight, to fly without thrust
Computing
*Glide API, a 3D graphics interface
*Glide OS, a web desktop
*Glide (software), an instant video messenger
*Glide, a molecular docking software by Schrödinger (company), Schr� ...
is not analyzed as a coda), but syllables that do have codas are restricted to nasals , , , the retroflex approximant , and voiceless stops , , , or . Some varieties allow most of these codas, whereas others, such as
Standard Chinese, are limited to only , , and .
The number of sounds in the different spoken dialects varies, but in general there has been a tendency to a reduction in sounds from
Middle Chinese. The Mandarin dialects in particular have experienced a dramatic decrease in sounds and so have far more multisyllabic words than most other spoken varieties. The total number of syllables in some varieties is therefore only about a thousand, including tonal variation, which is only about an eighth as many as English.
Tones
All varieties of spoken Chinese use
tones to distinguish words. A few dialects of north China may have as few as three tones, while some dialects in south China have up to 6 or 12 tones, depending on how one counts. One exception from this is
Shanghainese which has reduced the set of tones to a two-toned
pitch accent system much like modern Japanese.
A very common example used to illustrate the use of tones in Chinese is the application of the four tones of
Standard Chinese (along with the neutral tone) to the syllable ''ma''. The tones are exemplified by the following five Chinese words:
Standard
Cantonese, in contrast, has six tones. Historically, finals that end in a
stop consonant were considered to be "
checked tone
A checked tone, commonly known by the Chinese calque entering tone, is one of the four syllable types in the phonology of Middle Chinese. Although usually translated as "tone", a checked tone is not a tone in the phonetic sense but rather a sy ...
s" and thus counted separately for a total of nine tones. However, they are considered to be duplicates in modern linguistics and are no longer counted as such:
Grammar
Chinese is often described as a "monosyllabic" language. However, this is only partially correct. It is largely accurate when describing
Classical Chinese and
Middle Chinese; in Classical Chinese, for example, perhaps 90% of words correspond to a single syllable and a single character. In the modern varieties, it is usually the case that a
morpheme (unit of meaning) is a single syllable; in contrast, English has many multi-syllable morphemes, both bound and free, such as "seven", "elephant", "para-" and "-able".
Some of the conservative southern varieties of modern Chinese have largely monosyllabic words, especially among the more basic vocabulary. In modern Mandarin, however, most
nouns,
adjectives and
verbs are largely disyllabic. A significant cause of this is
phonological attrition.
Sound change over time has steadily reduced the number of possible syllables. In modern Mandarin, there are now only about 1,200 possible syllables, including tonal distinctions, compared with about 5,000 in
Vietnamese
Vietnamese may refer to:
* Something of, from, or related to Vietnam, a country in Southeast Asia
** A citizen of Vietnam. See Demographics of Vietnam.
* Vietnamese people, or Kinh people, a Southeast Asian ethnic group native to Vietnam
** Overse ...
(still largely monosyllabic) and over 8,000 in English.
This phonological collapse has led to a corresponding increase in the number of
homophones. As an example, the small Langenscheidt Pocket Chinese Dictionary lists six words that are commonly pronounced as ''shí'' (tone 2): 'ten'; / 'real, actual'; / 'know (a person), recognize'; 'stone'; / 'time'; 'food, eat'. These were all pronounced differently in
Early Middle Chinese
Middle Chinese (formerly known as Ancient Chinese) or the Qieyun system (QYS) is the historical variety of Chinese recorded in the ''Qieyun'', a rime dictionary first published in 601 and followed by several revised and expanded editions. The S ...
; in
William H. Baxter's transcription they were , , , , and respectively. They are still pronounced differently in today's
Cantonese; in
Jyutping
Jyutping is a romanisation system for Cantonese developed by the Linguistic Society of Hong Kong (LSHK), an academic group, in 1993. Its formal name is the Linguistic Society of Hong Kong Cantonese Romanization Scheme. The LSHK advocates fo ...
they are ''sap9'', ''sat9'', ''sik7'', ''sek9'', ''si4'', ''sik9''. In modern spoken Mandarin, however, tremendous ambiguity would result if all of these words could be used as-is;
Yuen Ren Chao's modern poem
Lion-Eating Poet in the Stone Den exploits this, consisting of 92 characters all pronounced ''shi''. As such, most of these words have been replaced (in speech, if not in writing) with a longer, less-ambiguous compound. Only the first one, 'ten', normally appears as such when spoken; the rest are normally replaced with, respectively, ''shíjì'' / (lit. 'actual-connection'); ''rènshi'' / (lit. 'recognize-know'); ''shítou'' / (lit. 'stone-head'); ''shíjiān'' / (lit. 'time-interval'); ''shíwù'' (lit. 'foodstuff'). In each case, the homophone was disambiguated by adding another morpheme, typically either a synonym or a generic word of some sort (for example, 'head', 'thing'), the purpose of which is to indicate which of the possible meanings of the other, homophonic syllable should be selected.
However, when one of the above words forms part of a compound, the disambiguating syllable is generally dropped and the resulting word is still disyllabic. For example, ''shí'' alone, not ''shítou'' /, appears in compounds meaning 'stone-', for example, ''shígāo'' 'plaster' (lit. 'stone cream'), ''shíhuī'' 'lime' (lit. 'stone dust'), ''shíkū'' 'grotto' (lit. 'stone cave'), ''shíyīng'' 'quartz' (lit. 'stone flower'), ''shíyóu'' 'petroleum' (lit. 'stone oil').
Most modern varieties of Chinese have the tendency to form new words through disyllabic, trisyllabic and tetra-character
compounds. In some cases, monosyllabic words have become disyllabic without compounding, as in ''kūlong'' from ''kǒng'' 孔; this is especially common in
Jin.
Chinese
morphology
Morphology, from the Greek and meaning "study of shape", may refer to:
Disciplines
* Morphology (archaeology), study of the shapes or forms of artifacts
* Morphology (astronomy), study of the shape of astronomical objects such as nebulae, galaxies ...
is strictly bound to a set number of
syllables with a fairly rigid construction. Although many of these single-syllable morphemes (''zì'', ) can stand alone as individual
words
A word is a basic element of language that carries an objective or practical meaning, can be used on its own, and is uninterruptible. Despite the fact that language speakers often have an intuitive grasp of what a word is, there is no conse ...
, they more often than not form multi-syllabic
compounds, known as ''cí'' (/), which more closely resembles the traditional Western notion of a word. A Chinese ''cí'' ('word') can consist of more than one character-morpheme, usually two, but there can be three or more.
For example:
* / 'cloud'
* , /, / 'hamburger'
* 'I, me'
* / 'goalkeeper'
* 'people, human, mankind'
* 'The Earth'
* / 'lightning'
* / 'dream'
All varieties of modern Chinese are
analytic languages, in that they depend on
syntax (word order and sentence structure) rather than
morphology
Morphology, from the Greek and meaning "study of shape", may refer to:
Disciplines
* Morphology (archaeology), study of the shapes or forms of artifacts
* Morphology (astronomy), study of the shape of astronomical objects such as nebulae, galaxies ...
—i.e., changes in form of a word—to indicate the word's function in a sentence. In other words, Chinese has very few
grammatical inflection
In linguistic morphology, inflection (or inflexion) is a process of word formation in which a word is modified to express different grammatical categories such as tense, case, voice, aspect, person, number, gender, mood, animacy, and def ...
s—it possesses no
tenses, no
voices, no
number
A number is a mathematical object used to count, measure, and label. The original examples are the natural numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, and so forth. Numbers can be represented in language with number words. More universally, individual numbers c ...
s (singular, plural; though there are plural markers, for example for personal pronouns), and only a few
articles (i.e., equivalents to "the, a, an" in English).
They make heavy use of
grammatical particles to indicate
aspect
Aspect or Aspects may refer to:
Entertainment
* ''Aspect magazine'', a biannual DVD magazine showcasing new media art
* Aspect Co., a Japanese video game company
* Aspects (band), a hip hop group from Bristol, England
* ''Aspects'' (Benny Carter ...
and
mood. In Mandarin Chinese, this involves the use of particles like ''le'' (perfective), ''hái'' / ('still'), ''yǐjīng'' / ('already'), and so on.
Chinese has a
subject–verb–object word order, and like many other
languages of East Asia
The languages of East Asia belong to several distinct language families, with many common features attributed to interaction. In the Mainland Southeast Asia linguistic area, Chinese varieties and languages of southeast Asia share many areal feature ...
, makes frequent use of the
topic–comment
In linguistics, the topic, or theme, of a sentence is what is being talked about, and the comment (rheme or focus) is what is being said about the topic. This division into old vs. new content is called information structure. It is generally ...
construction to form sentences. Chinese also has an extensive system of
classifiers and
measure word
In linguistics, measure words are words (or morphemes) that are used in combination with a numeral to indicate an amount of something represented by some noun.
Description
Measure words denote a unit or measurement and are used with mass nouns ( ...
s, another trait shared with neighboring languages like
Japanese
Japanese may refer to:
* Something from or related to Japan, an island country in East Asia
* Japanese language, spoken mainly in Japan
* Japanese people, the ethnic group that identifies with Japan through ancestry or culture
** Japanese diaspor ...
and
Korean
Korean may refer to:
People and culture
* Koreans, ethnic group originating in the Korean Peninsula
* Korean cuisine
* Korean culture
* Korean language
**Korean alphabet, known as Hangul or Chosŏn'gŭl
**Korean dialects and the Jeju language
** ...
. Other notable grammatical features common to all the spoken varieties of Chinese include the use of
serial verb construction,
pronoun dropping and the related
subject dropping.
Although the grammars of the spoken varieties share many traits, they do possess differences.
Vocabulary
The entire Chinese character corpus since antiquity comprises well over 50,000 characters, of which only roughly 10,000 are in use and only about 3,000 are frequently used in Chinese media and newspapers. However Chinese characters should not be confused with Chinese words. Because most Chinese words are made up of two or more characters, there are many more Chinese words than characters. A more accurate equivalent for a Chinese character is the
morpheme, as characters represent the smallest grammatical units with individual meanings in the Chinese language.
Estimates of the total number of Chinese words and lexicalized phrases vary greatly. The ''
Hanyu Da Zidian'', a compendium of Chinese characters, includes 54,678 head entries for characters, including
bone oracle versions. The ''
Zhonghua Zihai'' (1994) contains 85,568 head entries for character definitions, and is the largest reference work based purely on character and its literary variants. The
CC-CEDICT
The CEDICT project was started by Paul Denisowski in 1997 and is maintained by a team on mdbg.net under the name CC-CEDICT, with the aim to provide a complete Chinese language, Chinese to English language, English dictionary with pronunciation in p ...
project (2010) contains 97,404 contemporary entries including idioms, technology terms and names of political figures, businesses and products. The 2009 version of the Webster's Digital Chinese Dictionary (WDCD), based on
CC-CEDICT
The CEDICT project was started by Paul Denisowski in 1997 and is maintained by a team on mdbg.net under the name CC-CEDICT, with the aim to provide a complete Chinese language, Chinese to English language, English dictionary with pronunciation in p ...
, contains over 84,000 entries.
The most comprehensive pure linguistic Chinese-language dictionary, the 12-volume ''
Hanyu Da Cidian'', records more than 23,000 head Chinese characters and gives over 370,000 definitions. The 1999 revised ''
Cihai
The ''Cihai'' is a large-scale dictionary and encyclopedia of Standard Mandarin Chinese. The Zhonghua Book Company published the first ''Cihai'' edition in 1938, and the Shanghai Lexicographical Publishing House revised editions in 1979, 1989, ...
'', a multi-volume encyclopedic dictionary reference work, gives 122,836 vocabulary entry definitions under 19,485 Chinese characters, including proper names, phrases and common zoological, geographical, sociological, scientific and technical terms.
The 7th (2016) edition of ''
Xiandai Hanyu Cidian
''Xiandai Hanyu Cidian'' (), also known as ''A Dictionary of Current Chinese'' or ''Contemporary Chinese Dictionary'' is an important one-volume dictionary of Standard Mandarin Chinese published by the Commercial Press, now into its 7th (2016) ed ...
'', an authoritative one-volume dictionary on modern standard Chinese language as used in
mainland China, has 13,000 head characters and defines 70,000 words.
Loanwords
Like any other language, Chinese has absorbed a sizable number of
loanwords from other cultures. Most Chinese words are formed out of native Chinese
morphemes
A morpheme is the smallest meaningful constituent of a linguistic expression. The field of linguistic study dedicated to morphemes is called morphology.
In English, morphemes are often but not necessarily words. Morphemes that stand alone a ...
, including words describing imported objects and ideas. However, direct phonetic borrowing of foreign words has gone on since ancient times.
Some early
Indo-European loanwords in Chinese have been proposed, notably ''mì'' "honey", / ''shī'' "lion," and perhaps also / ''mǎ'' "horse", / ''zhū'' "pig", ''quǎn'' "dog", and / ''é'' "goose".
Ancient words borrowed from along the
Silk Road since
Old Chinese include ''pútáo'' "
grape", ''shíliu''/''shíliú'' "
pomegranate
The pomegranate (''Punica granatum'') is a fruit-bearing deciduous shrub in the family Lythraceae, subfamily Punicoideae, that grows between tall.
The pomegranate was originally described throughout the Mediterranean Basin, Mediterranean re ...
" and / ''shīzi'' "
lion". Some words were borrowed from Buddhist scriptures, including ''Fó'' "Buddha" and / ''Púsà'' "bodhisattva." Other words came from nomadic peoples to the north, such as ''hútòng'' "
hutong". Words borrowed from the peoples along the Silk Road, such as "grape," generally have
Persian etymologies. Buddhist terminology is generally derived from
Sanskrit or
Pāli
Pali () is a Middle Indo-Aryan liturgical language native to the Indian subcontinent. It is widely studied because it is the language of the Buddhist ''Pāli Canon'' or '' Tipiṭaka'' as well as the sacred language of ''Theravāda'' Buddhi ...
, the
liturgical language
A sacred language, holy language or liturgical language is any language that is cultivated and used primarily in church service or for other religious reasons by people who speak another, primary language in their daily lives.
Concept
A sacr ...
s of
North India. Words borrowed from the nomadic tribes of the
Gobi, Mongolian or northeast regions generally have
Altaic
Altaic (; also called Transeurasian) is a controversial proposed language family that would include the Turkic, Mongolic and Tungusic language families and possibly also the Japonic and Koreanic languages. Speakers of these languages are ...
etymologies, such as ''pípá'', the Chinese lute, or ''lào''/''luò'' "cheese" or "
yogurt", but from exactly which source is not always clear.
Modern borrowings
Modern neologisms are primarily translated into Chinese in one of three ways: free translation (''
calque'', or by meaning), phonetic translation (by sound), or
a combination of the two. Today, it is much more common to use existing Chinese morphemes to coin new words to represent imported concepts, such as technical expressions and
international scientific vocabulary. Any
Latin
Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...
or
Greek
Greek may refer to:
Greece
Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe:
*Greeks, an ethnic group.
*Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family.
**Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...
etymologies are dropped and converted into the corresponding Chinese characters (for example, ''anti-'' typically becomes "", literally ''opposite''), making them more comprehensible for Chinese but introducing more difficulties in understanding foreign texts. For example, the word ''telephone'' was initially loaned phonetically as / (Shanghainese: ''télífon'' , Mandarin: ''délǜfēng'') during the 1920s and widely used in Shanghai, but later / ''diànhuà'' (lit. "electric speech"), built out of native Chinese morphemes, became prevalent ( is in fact from the Japanese ''denwa''; see below for more Japanese loans). Other examples include / ''diànshì'' (lit. "electric vision") for television, / ''diànnǎo'' (lit. "electric brain") for computer; / ''shǒujī'' (lit. "hand machine") for mobile phone, / ''lányá'' (lit. "blue tooth") for
Bluetooth, and / ''wǎngzhì'' (lit. "internet logbook") for blog in Hong Kong and Macau Cantonese. Occasionally half-transliteration, half-translation compromises are accepted, such as / ''hànbǎobāo'' ( ''hànbǎo'' "Hamburg" + ''bāo'' "bun") for "hamburger". Sometimes translations are designed so that they sound like the original while incorporating Chinese morphemes (
phono-semantic matching), such as / Mǎlì'ào for the video game character
Mario. This is often done for commercial purposes, for example / ''bēnténg'' (lit. "dashing-leaping") for
Pentium
Pentium is a brand used for a series of x86 architecture-compatible microprocessors produced by Intel. The original Pentium processor from which the brand took its name was first released on March 22, 1993. After that, the Pentium II and P ...
and / ''Sàibǎiwèi'' (lit. "better-than hundred tastes") for
Subway restaurants
Subway is an American multinational fast food restaurant franchise that specializes in submarine sandwiches (subs), wraps, salads and drinks.
Subway was founded by 17-year-old Fred DeLuca and financed by Peter Buck in 1965 as Pete's Super ...
.
Foreign words, mainly
proper noun
A proper noun is a noun that identifies a single entity and is used to refer to that entity (''Africa'', ''Jupiter'', '' Sarah'', ''Microsoft)'' as distinguished from a common noun, which is a noun that refers to a class of entities (''continent, ...
s, continue to enter the Chinese language by transcription according to their pronunciations. This is done by employing Chinese characters with similar pronunciations. For example, "Israel" becomes ''Yǐsèliè'', "Paris" becomes ''Bālí''. A rather small number of direct transliterations have survived as common words, including / ''shāfā'' "sofa", / ''mǎdá'' "motor", ''yōumò'' "humor", / ''luóji''/''luójí'' "logic", / ''shímáo'' "smart, fashionable", and ''xiēsīdǐlǐ'' "hysterics". The bulk of these words were originally coined in the Shanghai dialect during the early 20th century and were later loaned into Mandarin, hence their pronunciations in Mandarin may be quite off from the English. For example, / "sofa" and / "motor" in Shanghainese sound more like their English counterparts. Cantonese differs from Mandarin with some transliterations, such as ''so
1 faa
3*2'' "sofa" and ''mo
1 daa
2'' "motor".
Western foreign words representing Western concepts have influenced Chinese since the 20th century through transcription. From
French came ''bālěi'' "ballet" and / ''xiāngbīn'', "champagne"; from
Italian
Italian(s) may refer to:
* Anything of, from, or related to the people of Italy over the centuries
** Italians, an ethnic group or simply a citizen of the Italian Republic or Italian Kingdom
** Italian language, a Romance language
*** Regional Ita ...
, ''kāfēi'' "caffè". English influence is particularly pronounced. From early 20th century Shanghainese, many English words are borrowed, such as / ''gāoěrfū'' "golf" and the above-mentioned / ''shāfā'' "sofa". Later, the United States
soft influences gave rise to ''dísikē''/''dísīkē'' "disco", / ''kělè'' "cola", and ''mínǐ'' "mini
kirt. Contemporary colloquial Cantonese has distinct loanwords from English, such as ''kaa
1 tung
1'' "cartoon", ''gei
1 lou
2'' "gay people", ''dik
1 si
6*2'' "taxi", and ''baa
1 si
6*2'' "bus". With the rising popularity of the Internet, there is a current vogue in China for coining English transliterations, for example, / ''fěnsī'' "fans", ''hēikè'' "hacker" (lit. "black guest"), and ''bókè'' "blog". In Taiwan, some of these transliterations are different, such as ''hàikè'' for "hacker" and ''bùluògé'' for "blog" (lit. "interconnected tribes").
Another result of the English influence on Chinese is the appearance in Modern Chinese texts of so-called / ''zìmǔcí'' (lit. "lettered words") spelled with letters from the English alphabet. This has appeared in magazines, newspapers, on web sites, and on TV: / "3rd generation cell phones" ( ''sān'' "three" + G "generation" + / ''shǒujī'' "mobile phones"), "IT circles" (IT "information technology" + ''jiè'' "industry"), HSK (''Hànyǔ Shuǐpíng Kǎoshì'', /), GB (''Guóbiāo'', /), / (CIF "Cost, Insurance, Freight" + / ''jià'' "price"), "e-home" (e "electronic" + ''jiātíng'' "home"), / "wireless era" (W "wireless" + / ''shídài'' "era"), "TV watchers" (TV "television" + ''zú'' "social group; clan"), / "post-PC era" (/ ''hòu'' "after/post-" + PC "personal computer" + /), and so on.
Since the 20th century, another source of words has been
Japanese
Japanese may refer to:
* Something from or related to Japan, an island country in East Asia
* Japanese language, spoken mainly in Japan
* Japanese people, the ethnic group that identifies with Japan through ancestry or culture
** Japanese diaspor ...
using existing
kanji (Chinese characters used in Japanese). Japanese re-molded European concepts and inventions into , and many of these words have been re-loaned into modern Chinese. Other terms were coined by the Japanese by giving new senses to existing Chinese terms or by referring to expressions used in classical Chinese literature. For example, ''jīngjì'' (/; ''keizai'' in Japanese), which in the original Chinese meant "the workings of the state", was narrowed to "economy" in Japanese; this narrowed definition was then
reimported into Chinese. As a result, these terms are virtually indistinguishable from native Chinese words: indeed, there is some dispute over some of these terms as to whether the Japanese or Chinese coined them first. As a result of this loaning, Chinese, Korean, Japanese, and Vietnamese share a corpus of linguistic terms describing modern terminology, paralleling the similar corpus of terms built from Greco-Latin and shared among European languages.
Writing system
The Chinese
orthography centers on
Chinese characters, which are written within imaginary square blocks, traditionally arranged in vertical columns, read from top to bottom down a column, and right to left across columns, despite alternative arrangement with rows of characters from left to right within a row and from top to bottom across rows (like English and other Western writing systems) having become more popular since the 20th century. Chinese characters denote
morphemes independent of phonetic variation in different languages. Thus the character ("one") is uttered in
Standard Chinese, in
Cantonese and ''it'' in
Hokkien (a form of Min).
Most written Chinese documents in the modern time, especially the more formal ones, are created using the grammar and syntax of the
Standard Mandarin Chinese variants, regardless of dialectical background of the author or targeted audience. This replaced the old writing language standard of
Literary Chinese before the 20th century. However, vocabularies from different Chinese-speaking areas have diverged, and the divergence can be observed in written Chinese.
Meanwhile, colloquial forms of various Chinese language variants have also been written down by their users, especially in less formal settings. The most prominent example of this is the
written colloquial form of Cantonese, which has become quite popular in
tabloids,
instant messaging applications, and on the internet amongst Hong-Kongers and Cantonese-speakers elsewhere.
Because some Chinese variants have diverged and developed a number of unique morphemes that are not found in Standard Mandarin (despite all other common morphemes), unique characters rarely used in Standard Chinese have also been created or inherited from archaic literary standard to represent these unique morphemes. For example, characters like and for Cantonese and
Hakka, are actively used in both languages while being considered archaic or unused in standard written Chinese.
The Chinese had no uniform phonetic transcription system for most of its speakers until the mid-20th century, although enunciation patterns were recorded in early
rime books and dictionaries. Early
India
India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...
n translators, working in
Sanskrit and
Pali, were the first to attempt to describe the sounds and enunciation patterns of Chinese in a foreign language. After the 15th century, the efforts of Jesuits and Western court missionaries resulted in some Latin character transcription/writing systems, based on various variants of Chinese languages. Some of these Latin character based systems are still being used to write various Chinese variants in the modern era.
In
Hunan, women in certain areas write their local Chinese language variant in
Nü Shu, a
syllabary derived from
Chinese characters. The
Dungan language, considered by many a dialect of Mandarin, is nowadays written in
Cyrillic, and was previously written in the
Arabic script. The
Dungan people are primarily Muslim and live mainly in
Kazakhstan,
Kyrgyzstan, and
Russia; some of the related
Hui people also speak the language and live mainly in China.
Chinese characters
Each Chinese character represents a monosyllabic Chinese word or morpheme. In 100 CE, the famed
Han dynasty scholar
Xu Shen
Xu Shen ( CE) was a Chinese calligrapher, philologist, politician, and writer of the Eastern Han Dynasty (25-189). He was born in the Zhaoling district of Run'an prefecture (today known as Luohe in Henan Province). During his own lifetime, ...
classified characters into six categories, namely
pictograph
A pictogram, also called a pictogramme, pictograph, or simply picto, and in computer usage an icon, is a graphic symbol that conveys its meaning through its pictorial resemblance to a physical object. Pictographs are often used in writing and g ...
s, simple
ideographs, compound ideographs, phonetic loans, phonetic compounds and derivative characters. Of these, only 4% were categorized as pictographs, including many of the simplest characters, such as ''rén'' (human), ''rì'' (sun), ''shān'' (mountain; hill), ''shuǐ'' (water). Between 80% and 90% were classified as phonetic compounds such as ''chōng'' (pour), combining a phonetic component ''zhōng'' (middle) with a semantic
radical (water). Almost all characters created since have been made using this format. The 18th-century
Kangxi Dictionary recognized 214 radicals.
Modern characters are styled after the
regular script. Various other written styles are also used in
Chinese calligraphy
Chinese calligraphy is the writing of Chinese characters as an art form, combining purely visual art and interpretation of the literary meaning. This type of expression has been widely practiced in China and has been generally held in high este ...
, including
seal script,
cursive script and
clerical script
The clerical script (; Japanese: 隷書体, ''reishotai''; Korean: 예서 (old spelling 례서); Vietnamese: lệ thư), sometimes also chancery script, is a style of Chinese writing which evolved from the late Warring States period to the Qi ...
. Calligraphy artists can write in traditional and simplified characters, but they tend to use traditional characters for traditional art.
There are currently two systems for Chinese characters. The
traditional system, used in
Hong Kong,
Taiwan
Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is a country in East Asia, at the junction of the East and South China Seas in the northwestern Pacific Ocean, with the People's Republic of China (PRC) to the northwest, Japan to the nort ...
,
Macau and Chinese speaking communities (except
Singapore and
Malaysia
Malaysia ( ; ) is a country in Southeast Asia. The federation, federal constitutional monarchy consists of States and federal territories of Malaysia, thirteen states and three federal territories, separated by the South China Sea into two r ...
) outside
mainland China, takes its form from standardized character forms dating back to the late Han dynasty. The
Simplified Chinese character system, introduced by the People's Republic of China in 1954 to promote mass
literacy, simplifies most complex traditional
glyphs to fewer strokes, many to common cursive
shorthand variants.
Singapore, which has a large Chinese community, was the second nation to officially adopt simplified characters, although it has also become the ''de facto'' standard for younger ethnic Chinese in
Malaysia
Malaysia ( ; ) is a country in Southeast Asia. The federation, federal constitutional monarchy consists of States and federal territories of Malaysia, thirteen states and three federal territories, separated by the South China Sea into two r ...
.
The
Internet provides the platform to practice reading these alternative systems, be it traditional or simplified. Most Chinese users in the modern era are capable of, although not necessarily comfortable with, reading (but not writing) the alternative system, through experience and guesswork.
A well-educated Chinese reader today recognizes approximately 4,000 to 6,000 characters; approximately 3,000 characters are required to read a
Mainland newspaper. The PRC government defines literacy amongst workers as a knowledge of 2,000 characters, though this would be only functional literacy. School-children typically learn around 2,000 characters whereas scholars may memorize up to 10,000. A large unabridged
dictionary, like the Kangxi Dictionary, contains over 40,000 characters, including obscure, variant, rare, and archaic characters; fewer than a quarter of these characters are now commonly used.
Romanization
Romanization is the process of transcribing a language into the
Latin script. There are many systems of romanization for the Chinese varieties, due to the lack of a native phonetic transcription until modern times. Chinese is first known to have been written in Latin characters by Western
Christian missionaries in the 16th century.
Today the most common romanization standard for Standard Mandarin is ''
Hanyu Pinyin'', introduced in 1956 by the
People's Republic of China, and later adopted by
Singapore and
Taiwan
Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is a country in East Asia, at the junction of the East and South China Seas in the northwestern Pacific Ocean, with the People's Republic of China (PRC) to the northwest, Japan to the nort ...
. Pinyin is almost universally employed now for teaching standard spoken Chinese in schools and universities across the
Americas,
Australia, and
Europe. Chinese parents also use Pinyin to teach their children the sounds and tones of new words. In school books that teach Chinese, the Pinyin romanization is often shown below a picture of the thing the word represents, with the Chinese character alongside.
The second-most common romanization system, the
Wade–Giles, was invented by Thomas Wade in 1859 and modified by Herbert Giles in 1892. As this system approximates the phonology of Mandarin Chinese into English consonants and vowels, i.e. it is largely an
Anglicization, it may be particularly helpful for beginner Chinese speakers of an English-speaking background. Wade–Giles was found in academic use in the
United States
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territori ...
, particularly before the 1980s, and
until 2009 was widely used in Taiwan.
When used within European texts, the
tone transcriptions in both pinyin and Wade–Giles are often left out for simplicity; Wade–Giles' extensive use of apostrophes is also usually omitted. Thus, most Western readers will be much more familiar with ''Beijing'' than they will be with ''Běijīng'' (pinyin), and with ''Taipei'' than ''T'ai²-pei³'' (Wade–Giles). This simplification presents syllables as homophones which really are none, and therefore exaggerates the number of homophones almost by a factor of four.
Here are a few examples of ''Hanyu Pinyin'' and Wade–Giles, for comparison:
Other systems of romanization for Chinese include
Gwoyeu Romatzyh, the French
EFEO, the
Yale system (invented during WWII for U.S. troops), as well as separate systems for
Cantonese,
Min Nan
Southern Min (), Minnan ( Mandarin pronunciation: ) or Banlam (), is a group of linguistically similar and historically related Sinitic languages that form a branch of Min Chinese spoken in Fujian (especially the Minnan region), most of Taiwan ...
,
Hakka, and other Chinese varieties.
Other phonetic transcriptions
Chinese varieties have been phonetically transcribed into many other writing systems over the centuries. The
'Phags-pa script, for example, has been very helpful in reconstructing the pronunciations of premodern forms of Chinese.
Zhuyin
Bopomofo (), or Mandarin Phonetic Symbols, also named Zhuyin (), is a Chinese transliteration system for Mandarin Chinese and other related languages and dialects. More commonly used in Taiwanese Mandarin, it may also be used to transcribe ...
(colloquially ''bopomofo''), a
semi-syllabary is still widely used in Taiwan's
elementary schools to aid standard pronunciation. Although zhuyin characters are reminiscent of
katakana script, there is no source to substantiate the claim that Katakana was the basis for the zhuyin system. A comparison table of zhuyin to pinyin exists in the
zhuyin article. Syllables based on pinyin and zhuyin can also be compared by looking at the following articles:
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Pinyin table
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Zhuyin table
There are also at least two systems of
cyrillization for Chinese. The most widespread is the
Palladius system.
As a foreign language
With the growing importance and influence of China's economy globally,
Mandarin instruction has been gaining popularity in schools throughout East Asia, Southeast Asia, and the Western world.
Besides Mandarin,
Cantonese is the only other Chinese language that is widely taught as a foreign language, largely due to the economic and cultural influence of Hong Kong and its widespread usage among significant Overseas Chinese communities.
In 1991 there were 2,000 foreign learners taking China's official
Chinese Proficiency Test (also known as HSK, comparable to the English
Cambridge Certificate), then the number of candidates had risen sharply to 117,660 in 2005 and 750,000 in 2010.
See also
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Chinese exclamative particles
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Chinese honorifics
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Chinese numerals
Chinese numerals are words and characters used to denote numbers in Chinese.
Today, speakers of Chinese use three written numeral systems: the system of Arabic numerals used worldwide, and two indigenous systems. The more familiar indigenous s ...
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Chinese punctuation
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Classical Chinese grammar
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Four-character idiom
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Han unification
Han unification is an effort by the authors of Unicode and the Universal Character Set to map multiple character sets of the Han characters of the so-called CJK languages into a single set of unified characters. Han characters are a featur ...
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Languages of China
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North American Conference on Chinese Linguistics
The North American Conference on Chinese Linguistics (NACCL) is an annual academic conference that focuses on research in Chinese language and linguistics.
The conference was first held in 1989 at Ohio State University, as the Northeast Conferen ...
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Protection of the Varieties of Chinese
Notes
References
Citations
Sources
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Further reading
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* R. L. G.
Language borrowing Why so little Chinese in English? ''
The Economist''. 6 June 2013.
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External links
Classical Chinese texts– Chinese Text Project
Marjorie Chan's ChinaLinks at the Ohio State University with hundreds of links to Chinese related web pages
{{DEFAULTSORT:Chinese Language
Analytic languages
Isolating languages
Language
Languages of China
Languages of Hong Kong
Languages of Macau
Languages of Singapore
Languages of Taiwan
Languages with own distinct writing systems
Lingua francas