Language Reform
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Language Reform
Language reform is a kind of language planning by widespread change to a language. The typical methods of language reform are simplification and linguistic purism. Simplification regularises vocabulary, grammar, or spelling. Purism aligns the language with a form which is deemed 'purer'. Language reforms are intentional changes to language; this article does not cover natural language change, such as the Great Vowel Shift. Simplification By far the most common language reform is simplification. The most common simplification is spelling reform, but inflection, syntax, vocabulary and word formation can also be targets for simplification. For example, in English, there are many prefixes which mean "the opposite of", e.g. ''un-'', ''in-'', ''a(n)-'', ''dis-'', and ''de-''. A language reform might propose to replace the redundant prefixes with one, such as ''un-''. Purification Linguistic purism or linguistic protectionism is the prescriptive practice of recognising one form of a l ...
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Language Planning
In sociolinguistics, language planning (also known as language engineering) is a deliberate effort to influence the function, structure or acquisition of languages or language varieties within a speech community.Kaplan B., Robert, and Richard B. Baldauf Jr. ''Language Planning from Practice to Theory.'' Clevedon: Multilingual Matters ltd., 1997 Robert L. Cooper (1989) defines language planning as "the activity of preparing a normative orthography, grammar, and dictionary for the guidance of writers and speakers in a non-homogeneous speech community" (p. 8). Along with language ideology and language practices, language planning is part of language policya typology drawn from Bernard Spolsky's theory of language policy. According to Spolsky, language management is a more precise term than language planning. Language management is defined as "the explicit and observable effort by someone or some group that has or claims authority over the participants in the domain to modify ...
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Hu Shih
Hu Shih ( zh, t=胡適; 17 December 189124 February 1962) was a Chinese academic, writer, and politician. Hu contributed to Chinese liberalism and language reform, and was a leading advocate for the use of written vernacular Chinese. He participated in the May Fourth Movement and China's New Culture Movement. He was a president of Peking University and Academia Sinica. Hu was the editor of the '' Free China Journal'', which was shut down for criticizing Chiang Kai-shek. In 1919, he also criticized Li Dazhao. Hu advocated that the world adopt Western-style democracy. Moreover, Hu criticized Sun Yat-sen's claim that people are incapable of self-rule. Hu criticized the Nationalist government for betraying the ideal of Constitutionalism in ''The Outline of National Reconstruction''. Hu wrote many essays questioning the political legitimacy of Mao Zedong and the Chinese Communist Party. Specifically, Hu said that the autocratic dictatorship system of the CCP was "un-Chinese" a ...
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Adamic Language
The Adamic language, according to Jewish tradition (as recorded in the ''midrashim'') and some Christians, is the language spoken by Adam (and possibly Eve) in the Garden of Eden. It is variously interpreted as either the language used by God to address Adam (the divine language), or the language invented by Adam with which he named all things (including Eve), as in the second Genesis creation narrative (). In the Middle Ages, various Jewish commentators held that Adam spoke Hebrew, a view also addressed in various ways by the late medieval Italian poet Dante Alighieri. In the early modern period, some authors continued to discuss the possibility of an Adamic language, some continuing to hold to the idea that it was Hebrew, while others such as John Locke were more skeptical. According to Ethiopian and Eritrean traditions, the ancient Semitic language of Geʽez is the language of Adam, the first and original language. More recently, a variety of Mormon authors have expressed ...
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Deseret Alphabet
The Deseret alphabet (; Deseret: or ) is a phoneme, phonemic English-language spelling reform developed between 1847 and 1854 by the board of regents of the University of Deseret under the leadership of Brigham Young, the second President of the Church (LDS Church), president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church). George D. Watt is reported to have been the most actively involved in the development of the script's novel characters, which were used to replace those of Isaac Pitman's English Phonotypic Alphabet, English phonotypic alphabet. He was also the "New Alphabet's" first serious user. The script gets its name from the word Deseret (Book of Mormon), ''deseret'', a ''hapax legomenon'' in the Book of Mormon, which is said to mean "honeybee" in the only verse it is used in. The Deseret alphabet was an outgrowth of the Restorationism, Restorationist ideal (ethics), idealism and utopianism of Young and the early LDS Church. Young and the Mormon pioneer ...
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Josef Jungmann
Josef Jungmann (16 July 1773 – 14 November 1847) was a Czech linguist and poet, and a leading figure of the Czech National Revival. Together with Josef Dobrovský, he is considered to be a creator of the modern Czech language. The literary award for the best translation into Czech is named after him. Life Josef Jungmann was born on 16 July 1773 in Hudlice near Beroun. He was the sixth child (out of ten) of a cobbler. His father was of Bohemian German descent and his mother was of Czech descent. The children grew up speaking both languages at home, which contributed heavily to Jungmann's later role as a revivalist of the Czech language. In his youth, he wanted to become a priest. After he completed grammar school in 1788-1792 however, he went on to study Philosophy and Law. Beginning in 1799, he started teaching at the local high school in Litoměřice (today known as Josef Jungmann Gymnasium), which had a German majority at that time. In 1815, he moved to Prague, where he wo ...
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Czech Language
Czech ( ; ), historically known as Bohemian ( ; ), is a West Slavic language of the Czech–Slovak group, written in Latin script. Spoken by over 12 million people including second language speakers, it serves as the official language of the Czech Republic. Czech is closely related to Slovak, to the point of high mutual intelligibility, as well as to Polish to a lesser degree. Czech is a fusional language with a rich system of morphology and relatively flexible word order. Its vocabulary has been extensively influenced by Latin and German. The Czech–Slovak group developed within West Slavic in the high medieval period, and the standardization of Czech and Slovak within the Czech–Slovak dialect continuum emerged in the early modern period. In the later 18th to mid-19th century, the modern written standard became codified in the context of the Czech National Revival. The most widely spoken non-standard variety, known as Common Czech, is based on the vernacular of ...
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Overseas Chinese
Overseas Chinese people are Chinese people, people of Chinese origin who reside outside Greater China (mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan). As of 2011, there were over 40.3 million overseas Chinese. As of 2023, there were 10.5 million people living outside mainland China who were born in mainland China. Overall, China has a low percent of population List of sovereign states by immigrant and emigrant population, living overseas. Terminology () refers to people of Chinese citizenship residing outside of either the China, PRC or Republic of China, ROC (Taiwan). The government of China realized that the overseas Chinese could be an asset, a source of foreign investment and a bridge to overseas knowledge; thus, it began to recognize the use of the term Huaqiao. Ching-Sue Kuik renders in English as "the Chinese wikt:sojourner, sojourner" and writes that the term is "used to disseminate, reinforce, and perpetuate a monolithic and essentialist Chinese identity" by both t ...
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Macau
Macau or Macao is a special administrative regions of China, special administrative region of the People's Republic of China (PRC). With a population of about people and a land area of , it is the most List of countries and dependencies by population density, densely populated region in the world. Formerly a Portuguese Empire, Portuguese colony, the territory of Portuguese Macau was first leased to Portugal by the Ming dynasty as a trading post in 1557. Portugal paid an annual rent and administered the territory under Chinese sovereignty until 1887, when Portugal gained perpetual colonial rights with the signing of the Sino-Portuguese Treaty of Peking. The colony remained under Portuguese rule until the 1999 handover to China. Macau is a Special administrative regions of China, special administrative region of China, which maintains separate governing and economic systems from those of mainland China under the principle of "one country, two systems".. The unique blend of Port ...
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Hong Kong
Hong Kong)., Legally Hong Kong, China in international treaties and organizations. is a special administrative region of China. With 7.5 million residents in a territory, Hong Kong is the fourth most densely populated region in the world. Hong Kong was established as a colony of the British Empire after the Qing dynasty ceded Hong Kong Island in 1841–1842 as a consequence of losing the First Opium War. The colony expanded to the Kowloon Peninsula in 1860 and was further extended when the United Kingdom obtained a 99-year lease of the New Territories in 1898. Hong Kong was occupied by Japan from 1941 to 1945 during World War II. The territory was handed over from the United Kingdom to China in 1997. Hong Kong maintains separate governing and economic systems from that of mainland China under the principle of one country, two systems. Originally a sparsely populated area of farming and fishing villages,. the territory is now one of the world's most signific ...
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Taiwan
Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is a country in East Asia. The main geography of Taiwan, island of Taiwan, also known as ''Formosa'', lies between the East China Sea, East and South China Seas in the northwestern Pacific Ocean, with the China, People's Republic of China (PRC) to the northwest, Japan to the northeast, and the Philippines to the south. It has an area of , with mountain ranges dominating the eastern two-thirds and plains in the western third, where its Urbanization by country, highly urbanized population is concentrated. The combined Free area of the Republic of China, territories under ROC control consist of list of islands of Taiwan, 168 islands in total covering . The Taipei–Keelung metropolitan area, largest metropolitan area is formed by Taipei (the capital), New Taipei City, and Keelung. With around 23.9 million inhabitants, Taiwan is among the List of countries and dependencies by population density, most densely populated countries. Tai ...
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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 ...
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Malaysia
Malaysia is a country in Southeast Asia. Featuring the Tanjung Piai, southernmost point of continental Eurasia, it is a federation, federal constitutional monarchy consisting of States and federal territories of Malaysia, 13 states and three federal territories, separated by the South China Sea into two regions: Peninsular Malaysia on the Mainland Southeast Asia, Indochinese Peninsula and East Malaysia on the island of Borneo. Peninsular Malaysia shares land and maritime Malaysia–Thailand border, borders with Thailand, as well as maritime borders with Singapore, Vietnam, and Indonesia; East Malaysia shares land borders with Brunei and Indonesia, and a maritime border with the Philippines and Vietnam. Kuala Lumpur is the country's national capital, List of cities and towns in Malaysia by population, largest city, and the seat of the Parliament of Malaysia, legislative branch of the Government of Malaysia, federal government, while Putrajaya is the federal administrative capi ...
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