Chinese Pronouns
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Chinese Pronouns
Chinese pronouns are pronouns in the Chinese languages. This article highlights Mandarin Chinese pronouns. There are also Cantonese pronouns and Hokkien pronouns. Chinese pronouns differ somewhat from English pronouns and those of other Indo-European languages. For instance, there is no differentiation in the spoken language between "he", "she" and "it" (though a written difference was introduced after contact with the West), and pronouns are not inflected to indicate whether they are the subject or object of a sentence. Mandarin Chinese further lacks a distinction between the possessive adjective ("my") and possessive pronoun ("mine"); both are formed by appending the particle ''de''. Pronouns in Chinese are often substituted by honorific alternatives. Personal pronouns In Mandarin :* / can be either inclusive or exclusive, depending on the circumstance where it is used. :† / is mainly used by northern speakers. Following the iconoclastic May Fourth Movement in ...
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Pronoun
In linguistics and grammar, a pronoun (Interlinear gloss, glossed ) is a word or a group of words that one may substitute for a noun or noun phrase. Pronouns have traditionally been regarded as one of the part of speech, parts of speech, but some modern theorists would not consider them to form a single class, in view of the variety of functions they perform cross-linguistically. An example of a pronoun is "you", which can be either singular or plural. Sub-types include personal pronoun, personal and possessive pronouns, reflexive pronoun, reflexive and reciprocal pronoun, reciprocal pronouns, demonstrative pronouns, relative pronoun, relative and interrogative pronouns, and indefinite pronouns. The use of pronouns often involves anaphora (linguistics), anaphora, where the meaning of the pronoun is dependent on an antecedent (grammar), antecedent. For example, in the sentence ''That poor man looks as if he needs a new coat'', the meaning of the pronoun ''he'' is dependent on its ...
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Chinese Civil War
The Chinese Civil War was fought between the Kuomintang-led Nationalist government, government of the Republic of China (1912–1949), Republic of China and the forces of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Armed conflict continued intermittently from 1 August 1927 until Communist victory resulted in their total control over mainland China on 7 December 1949. The war is generally divided into two phases with an interlude: from August 1927 to 1937, the First United Front alliance of the KMT and CCP collapsed during the Northern Expedition, and the Nationalists controlled most of China. From 1937 to 1945, hostilities were mostly put on hold as the Second United Front fought the Second Sino-Japanese War, Japanese invasion of China with eventual help from the Allies of World War II. However, armed clashes between the groups remained common. Exacerbating the divisions within China further was the formation of the Wang Jingwei regime, a Japan-sponsored puppet government led by Wang ...
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Baxter's Transcription For Middle Chinese
William H. Baxter's transcription for Middle Chinese is an alphabetic notation recording phonological information from medieval sources, rather than a reconstruction. It was introduced by Baxter as a reference point for his reconstruction of Old Chinese phonology. Sources for Middle Chinese The centre of the study of Chinese historical phonology is the '' Qieyun'', a rime dictionary created by Lu Fayan in 601 CE as a guide to the proper reading of classic texts. The dictionary divided characters between the four tones, which were subdivided into 193 rhyme groups and then into homophone groups. The pronunciation of each homophone group is given by a fanqie formula, a pair of common characters respectively indicating the initial and final sounds of the syllable. Lu Fayan's work was very influential, and led to a series of expanded and corrected versions following the same structure. The most important of these was the '' Guangyun'' (1007–08), in which the number of rhyme gr ...
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Tang Dynasty
The Tang dynasty (, ; zh, c=唐朝), or the Tang Empire, was an Dynasties of China, imperial dynasty of China that ruled from 618 to 907, with an Wu Zhou, interregnum between 690 and 705. It was preceded by the Sui dynasty and followed by the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period. Historians generally regard the Tang as a high point in Chinese civilisation, and a Golden age (metaphor), golden age of cosmopolitan culture. Tang territory, acquired through the military campaigns of its early rulers, rivalled that of the Han dynasty. The House of Li, Li family founded the dynasty after taking advantage of a period of Sui decline and precipitating their final collapse, in turn inaugurating a period of progress and stability in the first half of the dynasty's rule. The dynasty was formally interrupted during 690–705 when Empress Wu Zetian seized the throne, proclaiming the Wu Zhou dynasty and becoming the only legitimate Chinese empress regnant. The An Lushan rebellion (755 ...
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Northern And Southern Dynasties
The Northern and Southern dynasties () was a period of political division in the history of China that lasted from 420 to 589, following the tumultuous era of the Sixteen Kingdoms and the Eastern Jin dynasty. It is sometimes considered as the latter part of a longer period known as the Six Dynasties (220–589). The period featured civil war and political chaos, but was also a time of flourishing arts and culture, advancement in technology, and the spread of Mahayana Buddhism and Taoism. The period saw large-scale migration of Han people to lands south of the Yangtze. The period came to an end with the unification of China proper by Emperor Wen of the Sui dynasty. During this period, the process of sinicization accelerated among the non-Han ethnicities in the north and among the indigenous peoples in the south. This process was also accompanied by the increasing popularity of Buddhism in both northern and southern China and Daoism gaining influence as well, with t ...
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Zhou Dynasty
The Zhou dynasty ( ) was a royal dynasty of China that existed for 789 years from until 256 BC, the longest span of any dynasty in Chinese history. During the Western Zhou period (771 BC), the royal house, surnamed Ji, had military control over territories centered on the Wei River valley and North China Plain. Even as Zhou suzerainty became increasingly ceremonial over the following Eastern Zhou period (771–256 BC), the political system created by the Zhou royal house survived in some form for several additional centuries. A date of 1046 BC for the Zhou's establishment is supported by the Xia–Shang–Zhou Chronology Project and David Pankenier, but David Nivison and Edward L. Shaughnessy date the establishment to 1045 BC. The latter Eastern Zhou period is itself roughly subdivided into two parts. During the Spring and Autumn period (), power became increasingly decentralized as the authority of the royal house diminished. The Warring States ...
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Shang Dynasty
The Shang dynasty (), also known as the Yin dynasty (), was a Chinese royal dynasty that ruled in the Yellow River valley during the second millennium BC, traditionally succeeding the Xia dynasty and followed by the Western Zhou dynasty. The classic account of the Shang comes from texts such as the '' Book of Documents'', '' Bamboo Annals'' and '' Shiji''. Modern scholarship dates the dynasty between the 16th and 11th centuries BC, with more agreement surrounding the end date than beginning date. The Shang dynasty is the earliest dynasty within traditional Chinese history that is firmly supported by archaeological evidence. The archaeological site of Yinxu, near modern-day Anyang, corresponds to the final Shang capital of Yin. Excavations at Yinxu have revealed eleven major royal tombs, the foundations of former palace buildings, and the remains of both animals and humans that were sacrificed in official state rituals. Tens of thousands of bronze, jade, ...
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Classical Chinese
Classical Chinese is the language in which the classics of Chinese literature were written, from . For millennia thereafter, the written Chinese used in these works was imitated and iterated upon by scholars in a form now called Literary Chinese, which was used for almost all formal writing in China until the early 20th century. Each written character corresponds to a single spoken syllable, and almost always to a single independent word. As a result, the characteristic style of the language is comparatively terse. Starting in the 2nd century CE, use of Literary Chinese spread to the countries surrounding China, including Vietnam, Korea, Japan, and the Ryukyu Islands, where it represented the only known form of writing. Literary Chinese was adopted as the language of civil administration in these countries, creating what is known as the Sinosphere. Each additionally developed systems of readings and annotations that enabled non-Chinese speakers to interpret Literary ...
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Written Cantonese
Written Cantonese is the most complete written form of a Chinese language after that for Mandarin Chinese and Classical Chinese. Written Chinese was the main literary language of China until the 19th century. Written vernacular Chinese first appeared in the 17th century, and a written form of Mandarin became standard throughout China in the early 20th century. Cantonese is a common language in places like Hong Kong and Macau. While the Mandarin form can to some extent be read and spoken word for word in other Varieties of Chinese, Chinese varieties, its intelligibility to non-Mandarin speakers is poor to incomprehensible because of differences in idioms, grammar and usage. Modern Cantonese speakers have therefore developed new Chinese character, characters for words that do not have characters for them and have retained others that have been lost in standard Chinese. With the advent of the computer and standardization of character sets specifically for Cantonese, many printed m ...
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Taiwanese Hokkien
Taiwanese Hokkien ( , ), or simply Taiwanese, also known as Taigi ( zh, c=臺語, tl=Tâi-gí), Taiwanese Southern Min ( zh, c=臺灣閩南語, tl=Tâi-uân Bân-lâm-gí), Hoklo and Holo, is a variety of the Hokkien language spoken natively by more than 70 percent of the population of Taiwan. It is spoken by a significant portion of those Taiwanese people who are descended from Hoklo immigrants of Minnan region, southern Fujian. It is one of the national languages of Taiwan. Taiwanese is generally similar to Hokkien spoken in Amoy dialect, Amoy, Quanzhou dialect, Quanzhou, and Zhangzhou dialect, Zhangzhou, as well as dialectal forms used in Southeast Asia, such as Singaporean Hokkien, Penang Hokkien, Philippine Hokkien, Medan Hokkien, and Southern Peninsular Malaysian Hokkien. It is mutually intelligible with the Amoy and Zhangzhou varieties at the mouth of the Jiulong River in mainland China, and with Philippine Hokkien to the south in the Philippines, spoken altogether by a ...
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Simplified Chinese Character
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 ...
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Traditional Chinese Character
Traditional Chinese characters are a standard set of Chinese character forms used to write Chinese languages. In Taiwan, the set of traditional characters is regulated by the 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 countries that use Chinese characters began standardizing simplified sets of characters, often with characters that existed before as well-known 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 well as in most overseas Chinese communities outside of Southeast Asia. As for non-Chinese language ...
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