NationMaster - Encyclopedia: Chinese language

Chinese 汉语/漢語 Hànyǔ, 中文 Zhōngwén
Spoken in:	China, Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia and other regions with Chinese communities
Region:	(majorities): East Asia (minorities): Southeast Asia, and other regions with Chinese communities
Total speakers:	approx 1.176 billion
Ranking:	Chinese, all: 1 Mandarin: 1 Wu: 12 Cantonese: 18 Min: 22 Hakka: 33 Gan: 42 Image File history File links Zhongwen. ... The UTF-8-encoded Japanese Wikipedia article for mojibake, as displayed in ISO-8859-1 encoding. ... Japanese name Kanji: Hiragana: Korean name Hangul: Hanja: Vietnamese name Quá»‘c ngá»¯: HÃ¡n tá»±: A Chinese character or Han character (simplified Chinese: ; traditional Chinese: ; pinyin: ) is a logogram used in writing Chinese, Japanese, rarely Korean, and formerly Vietnamese. ... This is a list of languages, ordered by the number of native-language speakers, with some data for second-language use. ...
Language family:	Sino-Tibetan Chinese
Writing system:	Chinese characters
Official status
Official language in:	People's Republic of China Hong Kong Macau Republic of China (Taiwan) Singapore United Nations A language family is a group of languages related by descent from a common proto-language. ... The Sino-Tibetan languages form a putative language family composed of Chinese and the Tibeto-Burman languages, including some 250 languages of East Asia. ... Writing systems of the world today. ... Japanese name Kanji: Hiragana: Korean name Hangul: Hanja: Vietnamese name Quá»‘c ngá»¯: HÃ¡n tá»±: A Chinese character or Han character (simplified Chinese: ; traditional Chinese: ; pinyin: ) is a logogram used in writing Chinese, Japanese, rarely Korean, and formerly Vietnamese. ... Image File history File links Flag_of_the_Peoples_Republic_of_China. ... Image File history File links Flag_of_Hong_Kong. ... Image File history File links Flag_of_Macau. ... Image File history File links Flag_of_the_Republic_of_China. ... For the Chinese civilization, see China. ... Image File history File links Flag_of_Singapore. ... Image File history File links Flag_of_the_United_Nations. ... UN redirects here. ...
Regulated by:	In the PRC: National Language Regulating Committee^[1] In the ROC: Mandarin Promotion Council In Singapore: Promote Mandarin Council/Speak Mandarin Campaign^[2]
Language codes
ISO 639-1:	`zh`
ISO 639-2:	`chi (B)`	`zho (T)`
ISO 639-3:	variously: `zho` – Chinese (generic) `cdo` – Min Dong `cjy` – Jinyu `cmn` – Mandarin `cpx` – Pu Xian `czh` – Huizhou `czo` – Min Zhong `gan` – Gan `hak` – Hakka `hsn` – Xiang `mnp` – Min Bei `nan` – Min Nan `wuu` – Wu `yue` – Cantonese
Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode.

Chinese or the Sinitic language(s) (汉语/漢語, pinyin: Hànyǔ; 华语/華語, Huáyǔ; or 中文, Zhōngwén) can be considered a language or language family^[3]. Originally the indigenous languages spoken by the Han Chinese in China, it forms one of the two branches of Sino-Tibetan family of languages. About one-fifth of the world’s population, or over 1 billion people, speak some form of Chinese as their native language. The identification of the varieties of Chinese as "languages" or "dialects" is controversial ^[4]. According to news reports in March 2007, 86 percent of people in the People's Republic of China speak a variant of spoken Chinese.^[5] As a language family, the number of Chinese speakers is 1.136 billion. The same news report indicate 53 percent^[6] of the population, or 700 million speakers, can effectively communicate in Putonghua (commonly called "Mandarin"), outnumbering any other language in the world. The Mandarin Promotion Council (åœ‹èªžæŽ¨è¡Œå§”å“¡æœƒ, pinyin: GuÃ³yÇ” TuÄ«xÃng WÄ›iyuÃ¡nhuÃ¬) was established by the Ministry of Education of the Republic of China with the purpose of standardizing and popularizing the usage of Guoyu in China. ... The Speak Mandarin Campaign (SMC; Simplified Chinese: è®²åŽè¯è¿åŠ¨; Pinyin: jiÇŽng huÃ¡yÇ” yÃ¹ndÃ²ng) is an initiative to encourage Singapores ethnic Chinese population to speak Mandarin, one of the four official languages of Singapore. ... The Speak Mandarin Campaign (SMC; Simplified Chinese: è®²åŽè¯è¿åŠ¨) is an initiative to encourage Singapores ethnic Chinese population to speak Mandarin, the official language of China, commonly referred to as Putonghua in Chinese. ... ISO 639-1 is the first part of the ISO 639 international-standard language-code family. ... ISO 639-2 is the second part of the ISO 639 standard, which lists codes for the representation of the names of languages. ... ISO 639-3 is an international standard for language codes. ... Min Dong Language (or Eastern Min Language, Chinese: é–©æ±èªž, SLC: Má»‰ng TÃ²yng ngá»¹) is the language mainly spoken in the eastern part of Fujian Province (Chinese: ç¦å»º, SLC: Huk KyÅng). ... Jin (simplified: 晋语; traditional: 晉語; pinyin: jìnyǔ), or Jin-yu, is a subdivision of spoken Chinese. ... This article is on all of the Northern and Southwestern Chinese dialects. ... Here is an error. ... The Hui (徽) dialects are unrelated to the Hui (回) ethnic group of China. ... Min Zhong (Simplified Chinese: é—½ä¸; Traditional Chinese: é–©ä¸; pinyin: MÇnzhÅng) is a subcategory of Min, which is a Chinese language. ... GÃ n (èµ£è¯) is one of the major divisions of spoken Chinese, a member of the Sino-Tibetan family of languages, concentrated in and typical of Jiangxi Province. ... Hakka (Simplified Chinese: å®¢å®¶è¯, Traditional Chinese: å®¢å®¶è©±, Pronunciation in Hakka: Hak-ka-fa/-va, Pinyin: KÃ¨jiÄhuÃ ) is a spoken variation of the Chinese language spoken predominantly in southern China by the Hakka ethnic group and descendants in diaspora throughout East and Southeast Asia and around the world. ... Xiang (湘語/湘语), also Hunan, Hunanese, or Hsiang, is a subdivision of spoken Chinese. ... Min Bei is a subcategory of Min, which is a Chinese language. ... Mǐn N n (Chinese: 閩南語), also spelt as Minnan or Min-nan; native name B ; literally means Southern Min or Southern Fujian and refers to the local language/dialect of southern Fujian province, China. ... Wu (Chinese: ; pinyin: ; Chinese: ; pinyin: ) is one of the major divisions of the Chinese language. ... This article is about all of the Cantonese (Yue) dialects. ... The Unicode Standard, Version 5. ... Pinyin, more formally called Hanyu Pinyin (Simplified Chinese: ; Traditional Chinese: ; Pinyin: ), is the most common variant of Standard Mandarin romanization system in use. ... A language family is a group of languages related by descent from a common proto-language. ... Language(s) Chinese languages Religion(s) Predominantly Mahayana Buddhism and Taoism. ... The Sino-Tibetan languages form a putative language family composed of Chinese and the Tibeto-Burman languages, including some 250 languages of East Asia. ... Chinese forms part of the Sino-Tibetan family of languages. ... Spoken Chinese Spoken Chinese comprises many regional variants. ... Map of eastern China and Taiwan, showing the historic distribution of Mandarin Chinese in light brown. ...

Spoken Chinese is distinguished by its high level of internal diversity, though all spoken varieties of Chinese are tonal and analytic. There are between six and twelve main regional groups of Chinese (depending on classification scheme), of which the most populous (by far) is Mandarin (c. 850 million), followed by Wu (c. 90 million), Min (c. 70 million) and Cantonese (c. 70 million). Most of these groups are mutually unintelligible, though some, like Xiang and the Southwest Mandarin dialects, may share common terms and some degree of intelligibility. Chinese is classified as a macrolanguage with 13 sub-languages in ISO 639-3, though the identification of the varieties of Chinese as multiple "languages" or as "dialects" of a single language is a contentious issue. Spoken Chinese Spoken Chinese comprises many regional variants. ... Some web browsers may not be able to view this correctly; you may see transcriptions in parentheses after the character, like this: () instead of on top of the character as intended. ... An analytic language is any language where syntax and meaning are shaped more by use of particles and word order than by inflection. ... This article is on all of the Northern and Southwestern Chinese dialects. ... Wu (Chinese: ; pinyin: ; Chinese: ; pinyin: ) is one of the major divisions of the Chinese language. ... Min (Chinese: ; pinyin: ; POJ: BÃ¢n hong-giÃ¢n; BUC: MÃ¬ng huÅng-ngiÃ²ng) is a general term for a group of dialects of the Chinese language spoken in the southeastern Chinese province of Fujian as well as by migrants from this province in Guangdong (around Chaozhou-Swatou... This article is about all of the Cantonese (Yue) dialects. ... In linguistics, mutual intelligibility is a property exhibited by a set of languages when speakers of any one of them can readily understand all the others without intentional study or extraordinary effort. ... Xiang (湘語/湘语), also Hunan, Hunanese, or Hsiang, is a subdivision of spoken Chinese. ... ISO 639-3 defines some languages as macrolanguages. ... ISO 639-3 is an international standard for language codes. ... Chinese forms part of the Sino-Tibetan family of languages. ... For dialects of programming languages, see Programming language dialect. ...

The standardized form of spoken Chinese is Standard Mandarin (Putonghua/Guoyu), based on the Beijing dialect. Standard Mandarin is the official language of the People's Republic of China and the Republic of China (Taiwan), as well as one of four official languages of Singapore. Chinese—de facto, Standard Mandarin—is one of the six official languages of the United Nations. Of the other varieties, Standard Cantonese is common and influential in Cantonese-speaking overseas communities, and remains one of the official languages of Hong Kong (together with English) and of Macau (together with Portuguese). Min Nan, part of the Min language group, is widely spoken in southern Fujian, in neighbouring Taiwan (where it is known as Taiwanese or Hoklo) and in Southeast Asia (where it dominates in Singapore and Malaysia and is known as Hokkien). Map of eastern China and Taiwan, showing the historic distribution of Mandarin Chinese in light brown. ... Note: This page or section contains IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. ... For the Chinese civilization, see China. ... UN redirects here. ... Standard Cantonese is a variant, and is generally considered the prestige dialect of Cantonese Chinese. ... The English language is a West Germanic language that originates in England. ... Mǐn N n (Chinese: 閩南語), also spelt as Minnan or Min-nan; native name B ; literally means Southern Min or Southern Fujian and refers to the local language/dialect of southern Fujian province, China. ... (Chinese: ; pinyin: ; Wade-Giles: Fu-chien; Postal map spelling: Fukien, Foukien; local transliteration Hokkien from Min Nan Hok-kiÃ n) is one of the provinces on the southeast coast of the Peoples Republic of China. ... For other uses, see Formosan languages, Taiwanese Mandarin, and Languages of Taiwan. ... Location of Southeast Asia Southeast Asia is a subregion of Asia. ...

[edit] Spoken Chinese

Main article: spoken Chinese

The map below depicts the linguistic subdivisions ("languages" or "dialect groups") within China itself. The traditionally-recognized seven main groups, in order of population size are: Spoken Chinese Spoken Chinese comprises many regional variants. ...

Mandarin 北方话/北方話 or 官話/官话, (c. 850 million)，
Wu 吳/吴 , which includes Shanghainese, (c. 90 million)，
Cantonese (Yue) 粵/粤, (c. 80 million)，
Min 閩/闽, which includes Taiwanese, (c. 50 million),
Xiang 湘, (c. 35 million),
Hakka 客家 or 客, (c. 35 million)，
Gan 贛/赣, (c. 20 million)

Chinese linguists have recently distinguished: This article is on all of the Northern and Southwestern Chinese dialects. ... Wu (Chinese: ; pinyin: ; Chinese: ; pinyin: ) is one of the major divisions of the Chinese language. ... Shanghainese (ä¸Šæµ·è¨€è¯ [] in Shanghainese), sometimes referred to as the Shanghai dialect, is a dialect of Wu Chinese spoken in the city of Shanghai. ... This article is about all of the Cantonese (Yue) dialects. ... Min (Chinese: ; pinyin: ; POJ: BÃ¢n hong-giÃ¢n; BUC: MÃ¬ng huÅng-ngiÃ²ng) is a general term for a group of dialects of the Chinese language spoken in the southeastern Chinese province of Fujian as well as by migrants from this province in Guangdong (around Chaozhou-Swatou... For other uses, see Formosan languages, Taiwanese Mandarin, and Languages of Taiwan. ... Xiang (湘語/湘语), also Hunan, Hunanese, or Hsiang, is a subdivision of spoken Chinese. ... Hakka (Simplified Chinese: å®¢å®¶è¯, Traditional Chinese: å®¢å®¶è©±, Pronunciation in Hakka: Hak-ka-fa/-va, Pinyin: KÃ¨jiÄhuÃ ) is a spoken variation of the Chinese language spoken predominantly in southern China by the Hakka ethnic group and descendants in diaspora throughout East and Southeast Asia and around the world. ... GÃ n (èµ£è¯) is one of the major divisions of spoken Chinese, a member of the Sino-Tibetan family of languages, concentrated in and typical of Jiangxi Province. ...

Jin 晉/晋 from Mandarin
Hui 徽 from Wu
Ping 平話/平话 partly from Cantonese

There are also many smaller groups that are not yet classified, such as: Danzhou dialect, spoken in Danzhou, on Hainan Island; Xianghua (乡话), not to be confused with Xiang (湘), spoken in western Hunan; and Shaozhou Tuhua, spoken in northern Guangdong. The Dungan language, spoken in Central Asia, is very closely related to Mandarin. However, it is not generally considered "Chinese" since it is written in Cyrillic and spoken by Dungan people outside China who are not considered ethnic Chinese. See List of Chinese dialects for a comprehensive listing of individual dialects within these large, broad groupings. Jin (simplified: 晋语; traditional: 晉語; pinyin: jìnyǔ), or Jin-yu, is a subdivision of spoken Chinese. ... The Hui (徽) dialects are unrelated to the Hui (回) ethnic group of China. ... Pinghua (平話/平话), also Guangxi Nanning, is a subdivision of spoken Chinese. ... Danzhouhua (hua = language) å„‹å·žè©± / å„‹å·žè¯ is an unclassified Chinese dialect spoken in the area of Danzhou on the island Hainan. ... Template:Ã‰bauche ville de Chine Template:Unicode chinese Template:Infobox Ville de Chine Danzhou (å„‹å·ž ; pinyin : DÄnzhÅu) is a city in the northwest of the Chinese island province of Hainan. ... This article does not cite its references or sources. ... Chai Xianghua , Chinese: æŸ´é¦™è¯ Pinyin: ChÃ¡i XiÄnghuÃ ) is a fictional Chinese character designed for the Soul Series of fighting games. ... Not to be confused with the unrelated provinces of Hainan, Henan, and Yunnan. ... Shaozhou Tuhua ( éŸ¶å·žåœŸè©± / éŸ¶å·žåœŸè¯ ) is an unclassified Chinese language spoken in the border region of the provinces Guangdong, Hunan and Guangxi. ... Not to be confused with the former Kwantung Leased Territory in north-eastern China. ... The Dungan language (Dungan: Ð¥ÑƒÑÐ¹Ð·Ñž Ð¹Ò¯ÑÐ½ Huejzw jyian, Russian: tr. ... Map of Central Asia showing three sets of possible boundaries for the region Central Asia located as a region of the world Central Asia is a vast landlocked region of Asia. ... The Cyrillic alphabet (or azbuka, from the old name of the first two letters) is an alphabet used for several East and South Slavic languages; (Belarusian, Bulgarian, Macedonian, Russian, Rusyn, Serbian, and Ukrainian) and many other languages of the former Soviet Union, Asia and Eastern Europe. ... Languages Dungan Religions Islam Related ethnic groups Hui Dungan (Simplified Chinese: ; Traditional Chinese: ; Pinyin: ; Russian: ) is a term used in territories of the former Soviet Union to refer to a Muslim people of Chinese origin. ... Geographic distribution of Sinitic language families within the Peoples Republic of China and the Republic of China The following is a list of Chinese dialects and languages. ...

The varieties of spoken Chinese in China and Taiwan

In general, the above language-dialect groups do not have sharp boundaries, though Mandarin is the pre-dominant Sinitic language in the North and the Southwest, and the rest are mostly spoken in Central or Southeastern China. Frequently, as in the case of the Guangdong province, native speakers of major variants overlapped. As with many areas that were linguistically diverse for a long time, it is not always clear how the speeches of various parts of China should be classified. The Ethnologue lists a total of 14, but the number varies between seven and seventeen depending on the classification scheme followed. For instance, the Min variety is often divided into Northern Min (Minbei, Fuchow) and Southern Min (Minnan, Amoy-Swatow); linguists have not determined whether their mutual intelligibility is large enough to sort them as separate languages. Image File history File links Map_of_sinitic_languages-en. ... Image File history File links Map_of_sinitic_languages-en. ... Not to be confused with the former Kwantung Leased Territory in north-eastern China. ... Ethnologue: Languages of the World is a web and print publication of SIL International (formerly known as the Summer Institute of Linguistics), a Christian linguistic service organization which studies lesser-known languages primarily to provide the speakers with Bibles in their native language. ...

In general, mountainous South China displays more linguistic diversity than the flat North China. In parts of South China, a major city's dialect may only be marginally intelligible to close neighbours. For instance, Wuzhou is about 120 miles upstream from Guangzhou, but its dialect is more like Standard Cantonese spoken in Guangzhou, than is that of Taishan, 60 miles southwest of Guangzhou and separated by several rivers from it (Ramsey, 1987). Wuzhou is a prefecture-level city on the Eastern fringe of Guangxi Region of the Peoples Republic of China. ... CITIC Plaza Guangzhou (simplified Chinese: ; traditional Chinese: ; pinyin: ; jyutping : GwongÂ²zauÂ¹) is the capital and a sub-provincial city of Guangdong Province in the southern part of the Peoples Republic of China. ... Standard Cantonese is a variant, and is generally considered the prestige dialect of Cantonese Chinese. ... Taishan (å°å±±; Mandarin: TÃ¡ishÄn; Cantonese: Toisan; Taishanese: Hoisan, Other: Toishan, Toisaan) is a coastal county-level city in Guangdong Province, China. ... This article is about the year 1987. ...

[edit] Standard Mandarin and diglossia

Main article: Standard Mandarin

Putonghua / Guoyu, often called "Mandarin", is the official standard language used by the People's Republic of China, the Republic of China (on Taiwan), and Singapore (where it is called "Huayu"). It is based on the Beijing dialect, which is the dialect of Mandarin as spoken in Beijing. The governments 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. Map of eastern China and Taiwan, showing the historic distribution of Mandarin Chinese in light brown. ... Map of eastern China and Taiwan, showing the historic distribution of Mandarin Chinese in light brown. ... A standard language (also standard dialect or standardized dialect) is a particular variety of a language that has been given either legal or quasi-legal status. ... For the Chinese civilization, see China. ... Note: This page or section contains IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. ... This article is on all of the Northern and Southwestern Chinese dialects. ... Peking redirects here. ...

In both China and Taiwan, diglossia has been a common feature: it is common for a Chinese to be able to speak two or even three varieties of the Sinitic languages (or “dialects”) together with Standard Mandarin. For example, in addition to putonghua a resident of Shanghai might speak Shanghainese and if they did not grow up there; his or her local dialect as well. A native of Guangzhou may speak Standard Cantonese and putonghua, a resident of Taiwan, both Taiwanese and putonghua/guoyu. A person living in Taiwan may commonly mix pronunciations, phrases, and words from Standard Mandarin and Taiwanese, and this mixture is considered socially appropriate under many circumstances. In Hong Kong, standard Mandarin is beginning to take its place beside English and Standard Cantonese, the official languages. Look up Diglossia in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... For other uses, see Shanghai (disambiguation). ... Shanghainese (ä¸Šæµ·è¨€è¯ [] in Shanghainese), sometimes referred to as the Shanghai dialect, is a dialect of Wu Chinese spoken in the city of Shanghai. ... CITIC Plaza Guangzhou (simplified Chinese: ; traditional Chinese: ; pinyin: ; jyutping : GwongÂ²zauÂ¹) is the capital and a sub-provincial city of Guangdong Province in the southern part of the Peoples Republic of China. ... For other uses, see Formosan languages, Taiwanese Mandarin, and Languages of Taiwan. ... Map of eastern China and Taiwan, showing the historic distribution of Mandarin Chinese in light brown. ... For other uses, see Formosan languages, Taiwanese Mandarin, and Languages of Taiwan. ...

[edit] Language or language family?

Main article: Identification of the varieties of Chinese

Linguists often view Chinese as a language family, though owing to China's socio-political and cultural situation, and the fact that all spoken varieties use one common written system, it is customary to refer to these generally mutually unintelligible variants as “the Chinese language”. The diversity of Sinitic variants is comparable to the Romance languages. Chinese forms part of the Sino-Tibetan family of languages. ... A language family is a group of languages related by descent from a common proto-language. ... The Romance languages (sometimes referred to as Romanic languages) are a branch of the Indo-European language family that comprises all the languages that descend from Latin, the language of the Roman Empire. ...

From a purely descriptive point of view, "languages" and "dialects" are simply arbitrary groups of similar idiolects, and the distinction is irrelevant to linguists who are only concerned with describing regional speeches technically. However, the idea of a single language has major overtones in politics and cultural self-identity, and explains the amount of emotion over this issue. Most Chinese and Chinese linguists refer to Chinese as a single language and its subdivisions dialects, while others call Chinese a language family. In linguistics, prescription can refer both to the codification and the enforcement of rules governing how a language is to be used. ...

Chinese itself has a term for its unified writing system, zhongwen (中文), while the closest equivalent used to described its spoken variants would be Hanyu (汉语,“spoken language[s] of the Han Chinese) – this term could be translated to either “language” or “languages” since Chinese possesses no grammatical numbers. In the Chinese language, there is much less need for a uniform speech-and-writing continuum, as indicated by two separate character morphemes 语 yu and 文 wen. Ethnic Chinese often consider these spoken variations as one single language for reasons of nationality and as they inherit one common cultural and linguistic heritage in Classical Chinese. Han native speakers of Wu, Min, Hakka, and Cantonese, for instance, may consider their own linguistic varieties as separate spoken languages, but the Han Chinese race as one – albeit internally very diverse – ethnicity. To Chinese nationalists, the idea of Chinese as a language family may suggest that the Chinese identity is much more fragmentary and disunified than it actually is and as such is often looked upon as culturally and politically provocative. Additionally, in Taiwan, it is closely associated with Taiwanese independence, where some supporters of Taiwanese independence promote the local Taiwanese Minnan-based spoken language. Language(s) Chinese languages Religion(s) Predominantly Mahayana Buddhism and Taoism. ... For other uses of number, see number (disambiguation). ... In English usage, nationality is the legal relationship between a person and a country. ... Classical Chinese or Literary Chinese is a traditional style of written Chinese based on the grammar and vocabulary of very old forms of Chinese , making it very different from any modern spoken form of Chinese. ... Language(s) Chinese languages Religion(s) Predominantly Mahayana Buddhism and Taoism. ... Taiwan independence (台灣獨立, pinyin: Táiwān dúlì, Taiwanese Church Romanization: Tâi-oân To̍k-li̍p; abbreviated to 台獨, Táidú, Tâi-to̍k) is a political movement whose goal is — depending on ones interpretation of the state of affairs between the land directly administered by the Peoples Republic of China (from Beijing... Mǐn Nán (Chinese: 閩南語), also spelt as Minnan or Min-nan; native name Bân-lâm-gú; literally means Southern Min or Southern Fujian and refers to the local language/dialect of southern Fujian province, China. ...

Within the People’s Republic of China and Singapore, it is common for the government to refer to all divisions of the Sinitic language(s) beside standard Mandarin as fangyan (“regional tongues”, often translated as “dialects”). Modern-day Chinese speakers of all kinds communicate using one formal standard written language, although this modern written standard is modeled after Mandarin, generally the modern Beijing substandard. For dialects of programming languages, see Programming language dialect. ... Vernacular Chinese (pinyin: bÃ¡ihuÃ ; Wade-Giles: paihua) is a style or register of the written Chinese language essentially modeled after the spoken language and associated with Standard Mandarin. ...

[edit] Language and nationality

The term sinophone, coined in analogy to anglophone and francophone, refers to those who speak the Chinese language natively, or prefer it as a medium of communication. It may be applied to some Overseas Chinese in other countries, and when applied to China itself is largely synonymous with the Han nationality, but also applies to the Hui nationality, who alone among the officially recognized nationalities of China are distinguished only by religion and not by language, and are sometimes referred to as "sinophone Muslims". In fact people of the Manchu nationality also speak Chinese natively, with the Manchu language now a dead language of historical interest, and some other minorities like the Tujia and She people have also predominantly shifted to regional varieties of Chinese, while people of any nationality who have been educated in the Chinese educational system are also able to use Chinese as a medium of communication. Look up Anglophone in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... This article or section does not adequately cite its references or sources. ... Languages various Religions Predominantly Taoism, Mahayana Buddhism, traditional Chinese religions, and atheism. ... // Han in China Chinese (æ¼¢), an abbreviation or adjectival modifier for things Chinese. ... Look up Hui in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... Ethnolinguistic map of China The Peoples Republic of China (PRC) is a multi-ethnic unitary state and, as such, officially recognizes 56 nationalities or mÃnzÃº (æ°‘æ—), within China: the Han being the majority (>92%), and the remaining 55 nationalities being the national minorities. ... There is also a collection of Hadith called Sahih Muslim A Muslim (Arabic: Ù…Ø³Ù„Ù…, Persian: Mosalman or Mosalmon Urdu: Ù…Ø³Ù„Ù…Ø§Ù†, Turkish: MÃ¼slÃ¼man, Albanian: Mysliman, Bosnian: Musliman) is an adherent of the religion of Islam. ... The Manchu people (Manchu: Manju; Simplified Chinese: ; Traditional Chinese: ; Pinyin: , Mongolian: ÐœÐ°Ð½Ð¶) are a Tungusic people who originated in Manchuria (todays Northeastern China). ... The Manchu language is a Tungusic language spoken by Manchus in Manchuria; it is the language of the Manchu, though now most Manchus speak Mandarin Chinese and there are fewer than 70 native speakers of Manchu out of a total of nearly 10 million ethnic Manchus. ... The Tujia (土家族) are an ethnic group numbering about 8 million, living in the Wuling Mountains of Chinas Hunan and Hubei provinces. ... The She (ç•²) people are an ethnic group. ...

[edit] Written Chinese

Main article: Chinese written language

See also: Classical Chinese and Vernacular Chinese

The relationship among the Chinese spoken and written languages is a complex one. Its spoken variations evolved at different rates, while written Chinese itself has changed much less. Classical Chinese literature began in the Spring and Autumn period, although written records have been discovered as far back as the 14th to 11th centuries BC Shang dynasty oracle bones using the oracle bone scripts. Various styles of Chinese calligraphy. ... Classical Chinese or Literary Chinese is a traditional style of written Chinese based on the grammar and vocabulary of very old forms of Chinese , making it very different from any modern spoken form of Chinese. ... Vernacular Chinese (pinyin: bÃ¡ihuÃ ; Wade-Giles: paihua) is a style or register of the written Chinese language essentially modeled after the spoken language and associated with Standard Mandarin. ... Classical Chinese or Literary Chinese is a traditional style of written Chinese based on the grammar and vocabulary of very old forms of Chinese , making it very different from any modern spoken form of Chinese. ... For other uses, see Literature (disambiguation). ... The Spring and Autumn Period (Chinese: ; Pinyin: ) was a period in Chinese history, which roughly corresponds to the first half of the Eastern Zhou dynasty (from the second half of the 8th century BC to the first half of the 5th century). ... Remnants of advanced, stratified societies dating back to the Shang period have been found in the Yellow River Valley. ... Replica of an oracle bone -- turtle shell Oracle bones (Chinese: ç”²éª¨; pinyin: jiÇŽgÇ”piÃ n) are pieces of bone or turtle shell used in royal divination from the mid Shang to early Zhou dynasties in ancient China, and often bearing written inscriptions in what is called oracle bone script. ... Oracle bone script (Chinese: ç”²éª¨æ–‡; Hanyu Pinyin: ; literally shell bone writing) refers to incised (or, rarely, brush-written) ancient Chinese characters found on oracle bones, which are animal bones or turtle shells used in divination in ancient China. ...

By the late Han dynasty however, standard written Chinese had already diverged from the contemporaneous vernacular. By the end of the 19th century, only the educated class could write this formalized classical Chinese, known as wenyan, which was the language of Confucius and the early classics and very far from what was spoken more than two millennia later. During the Ming and Qing dynasty a stream of novels written in the vernacular medium began to gain prominence, and by the 20th century it was clear to many language reformists that the literary written standard should be discarded. The May Fourth Movement of 1919, headed by Hu Shih, advocated for a vernacular idiom; it slowly gained momentum and since the late 1920s, written standard has switched to the baihua vernacular (白話/白话 báihuà). Today this standard, which is closely modeled after how Mandarin is spoken now, is used throughout China, overseas and in virtually all modern literature. Han Dynasty in 87 BC Capital Changan (206 BCâ€“9 AD) Luoyang (25 ADâ€“220 AD) Language(s) Chinese Religion Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism, Chinese folk religion Government Monarchy History - Establishment 206 BC - Battle of Gaixia; Han rule of China begins 202 BC - Interruption of Han rule 9 - 24 - Abdication... Confucius (Chinese: ; pinyin: ; Wade-Giles: Kung-fu-tzu), lit. ... Flag (1890-1912) Anthem Gong Jinou (1911) Qing China at its greatest extent. ... For other uses, see Novel (disambiguation). ... Look up Vernacular in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... Students in Beijing rallied during the May Fourth Movement. ... Year 1919 (MCMXIX) was a common year starting on Wednesday (link will display the full calendar). ... Hu Shih (Simplified: èƒ¡é€‚, Traditional: èƒ¡é©, Pinyin: HÃº ShÃ¬), (December 17, 1891-February 24, 1962) was a Chinese philosopher and essayist. ... Vernacular Chinese (pinyin: bÃ¡ihuÃ ; Wade-Giles: paihua) is a style or register of the written Chinese language essentially modeled after the spoken language and associated with Standard Mandarin. ...

The Chinese orthography centers around Chinese characters, hanzi, which are logograms written within imaginary rectangular blocks, traditionally arranged in vertical columns, read from top to bottom down a column, and right to left across columns. Chinese characters are morphemes independent of phonetic change. Thus the number "one", yi in Mandarin, yat in Cantonese and chi̍t in Hokkien (form of Min), all share an identical character ("一"). Vocabularies from different major Chinese variants have diverged, and colloquial non-standard written Chinese often makes use of unique "dialectal characters", such as 冇 and 係 for Cantonese and Hakka, which are considered archaic or unused in standard written Chinese. The orthography of a language specifies the correct way of using a specific writing system to write the language. ... Egyptian hieroglyphs, which have their origins as logograms. ... In morpheme-based morphology, a morpheme is the smallest lingual unit that carries a semantic interpretation. ... This article is on all of the Northern and Southwestern Chinese dialects. ... This article is about all of the Cantonese (Yue) dialects. ... Min Nan, Minnan, or Min-nan (Simplified Chinese: ; Traditional Chinese: ; pinyin: ; POJ: BÃ¢n-lÃ¢m-gÃº; Southern Min or Southern Fujian language) is the Chinese language/dialect spoken in southern Fujian province, China and neighboring areas, and by descendants of emigrants from these areas in diaspora. ... This article is about all of the Cantonese (Yue) dialects. ... For other uses, see Hakka (disambiguation). ...

Written colloquial Cantonese has become quite popular in online chat rooms and instant messaging amongst Hong-Kongers and Cantonese-speakers elsewhere. Use of it is considered highly informal, and does not extend to any formal occasion. A chat room or chatroom is a term used primarily by mass media to describe any form of synchronous conferencing, occasionally even asynchronous conferencing. ... // Instant messaging (IM) is a form of real-time communication between two or more people based on typed text. ...

Also, in Hunan, some women write their local language in Nü Shu, a syllabary derived from Chinese characters. The Dungan language, considered by some a dialect of Mandarin, is also nowadays written in Cyrillic, and was formerly written in the Arabic alphabet, although the Dungan people live outside China. Not to be confused with the unrelated provinces of Hainan, Henan, and Yunnan. ... NÃ¼ Shu written in NÃ¼ Shu (right to left). ... A syllabary is a set of written symbols that represent (or approximate) syllables, which make up words. ... Japanese name Kanji: Hiragana: Korean name Hangul: Hanja: Vietnamese name Quá»‘c ngá»¯: HÃ¡n tá»±: A Chinese character or Han character (simplified Chinese: ; traditional Chinese: ; pinyin: ) is a logogram used in writing Chinese, Japanese, rarely Korean, and formerly Vietnamese. ... The Dungan language (Dungan: Ð¥ÑƒÑÐ¹Ð·Ñž Ð¹Ò¯ÑÐ½ Huejzw jyian, Russian: tr. ... The Cyrillic alphabet (or azbuka, from the old name of the first two letters) is an alphabet used for several East and South Slavic languages; (Belarusian, Bulgarian, Macedonian, Russian, Rusyn, Serbian, and Ukrainian) and many other languages of the former Soviet Union, Asia and Eastern Europe. ... The Arabic alphabet is the script used for writing languages such as Arabic, Persian, Urdu, and others. ... Dungan (Traditional Chinese: ; pinyin: ; Russian: ) is a term used in territories of the former Soviet Union to refer to a Muslim people of Chinese origin. ...

[edit] Chinese characters

Main article: Chinese character

The Chinese written language employs Chinese characters (漢字/汉字 pinyin: hànzì), which are logograms: each symbol represents a semanteme or morpheme (a meaningful unit of language), as well as one syllable; the written language can thus be termed a morphemo-syllabic script. Japanese name Kanji: Hiragana: Korean name Hangul: Hanja: Vietnamese name Quá»‘c ngá»¯: HÃ¡n tá»±: A Chinese character or Han character (simplified Chinese: ; traditional Chinese: ; pinyin: ) is a logogram used in writing Chinese, Japanese, rarely Korean, and formerly Vietnamese. ... Japanese name Kanji: Hiragana: Korean name Hangul: Hanja: Vietnamese name Quá»‘c ngá»¯: HÃ¡n tá»±: A Chinese character or Han character (simplified Chinese: ; traditional Chinese: ; pinyin: ) is a logogram used in writing Chinese, Japanese, rarely Korean, and formerly Vietnamese. ... Pinyin, more formally called Hanyu Pinyin (Simplified Chinese: ; Traditional Chinese: ; Pinyin: ), is the most common variant of Standard Mandarin romanization system in use. ... Egyptian hieroglyphs, which have their origins as logograms. ... In morpheme-based morphology, a morpheme is the smallest lingual unit that carries a semantic interpretation. ... For the computer operating system, see Syllable (operating system). ...

Chinese characters evolved over time from earliest forms of hieroglyphs. The idea that all Chinese characters are either pictographs or ideographs is an erroneous one: most characters contain phonetic parts, and are composites of phonetic components and semantic Radicals. Only the simplest characters, such as ren 人 (human), ri 日 (sun), shan 山 (mountain), shui 水 (water), may be wholly pictorial in origin. In 100 AD, the famed scholar Xǚ Shèn in the Hàn Dynasty classified characters into 6 categories, namely pictographs, simple ideographs, compound ideographs, phonetic loans, phonetic compounds and derivative characters. Of these, only 4% as pictographs, and 80-90% as phonetic complexes consisting of a semantic element that indicates meaning, and a phonetic element that arguably once indicated the pronunciation. There are about 214 radicals recognized in the Kangxi Dictionary, which indicate what the character is about semantically. Hieroglyphics redirects here. ... Pictogram for public toilets A pictogram or pictograph is a symbol which represents an object or a concept by illustration. ... A Chinese character. ... The left part of mÄ, a Chinese character meaning mother, is a radical that means woman A radical (from Latin radix, meaning root) is a basic identifiable component of every Chinese character. ... Pliny the Younger advances to consulship. ... XÇ” ShÃ¨n XÇ” ShÃ¨n (è¨±æ…Ž) was the author of ShuÅwÃ©n JiÄ›zÃ¬, which was the first Chinese character dictionary. ... Han Dynasty in 87 BC Capital Changan (206 BCâ€“9 AD) Luoyang (25 ADâ€“220 AD) Language(s) Chinese Religion Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism, Chinese folk religion Government Monarchy History - Establishment 206 BC - Battle of Gaixia; Han rule of China begins 202 BC - Interruption of Han rule 9 - 24 - Abdication... The Kangxi Dictionary The Kangxi Dictionary (Chinese: åº·ç†™å—å…¸; Pinyin: KÄngxÄ« ZÃ¬diÇŽn; Wade-Giles: Kang-hsi tzu-tien) was the standard Chinese character dictionary during the 18th and 19th centuries. ...

Modern characters are styled after the standard script (楷书/楷書 kǎishū) (see styles, below). Various other written styles are also used in East Asian calligraphy, including seal script (篆书/篆書 zhuànshū), cursive script (草书/草書 cǎoshū) and clerical script (隶书/隸書 lìshū). Calligraphy artists can write in traditional and simplified characters, but tend to use traditional characters for traditional art. Calligraphy in the Kaishu style The Regular Script, or in Chinese Kaishu (楷書 Pinyin: kǎishū) and Japanese Kaisho, also commonly known as Standard Regular (正楷), is the newest of the Chinese calligraphy style (peaked at the 7th century), hence most common in modern writings and publications (after the non-calligraphy... Japanese name Kanji: Hiragana: Korean name Hangul: Hanja: Vietnamese name Quá»‘c ngá»¯: HÃ¡n tá»±: The art of calligraphy is widely practiced and revered in the East Asian civilizations that use Chinese characters. ...

Various styles of Chinese calligraphy.

There are currently two systems for Chinese characters. The traditional system, still used in Hong Kong, Taiwan, Macau and Chinese speaking communities (except Singapore and Malaysia) outside mainland China, takes its form from standardized character forms dating back to the late Han dynasty. The Simplified Chinese character system, developed by the People's Republic of China in 1954 to promote mass literacy, simplifies most complex traditional glyphs to fewer strokes, many to common caoshu shorthand variants. It is undecided in the discussion on which one is simpler between the Traditional Chinese character and Simplified Chinese character. Image File history File links Shodo. ... Image File history File links Shodo. ... Traditional Chinese characters refers to one of two standard sets of printed Chinese characters. ... ... Han Dynasty in 87 BC Capital Changan (206 BCâ€“9 AD) Luoyang (25 ADâ€“220 AD) Language(s) Chinese Religion Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism, Chinese folk religion Government Monarchy History - Establishment 206 BC - Battle of Gaixia; Han rule of China begins 202 BC - Interruption of Han rule 9 - 24 - Abdication... Simplified Chinese character (Simplified Chinese: or ; traditional Chinese: or ; pinyin: or ) is one of two standard sets of Chinese characters of the contemporary Chinese written language. ... Year 1954 (MCMLIV) was a common year starting on Friday (link will display full 1954 Gregorian calendar). ... Children reading. ... variant glyphs representing the character a (allographs of a) in the Zapfino typeface. ... Shorthand is an abbreviated, symbolic writing method that improves speed of writing or brevity as compared to a normal method of writing a language. ...

Singapore, which has a large Chinese community, is the first – and at present the only – foreign nation to officially adopt simplified characters, although it has also become the de facto standard for younger ethnic Chinese in Malaysia. The Internet provides the platform to practice reading the alternative system, be it traditional or simplified.

A well-educated Chinese today recognizes approximately 6,000-7,000 characters; some 3,000 of them are required to read a Mainland newspaper. The PRC government defines literacy amongst workers as a knowledge of 2,000 characters, though this literacy could be pretty functional. A large unabridged dictionary like the Kangxi Dictionary contains over 40,000 characters, including obscure, variant and archaic characters; only a quarter are now commonly used. For other uses, see Dictionary (disambiguation). ... The Kangxi Dictionary The Kangxi Dictionary (Chinese: åº·ç†™å—å…¸; Pinyin: KÄngxÄ« ZÃ¬diÇŽn; Wade-Giles: Kang-hsi tzu-tien) was the standard Chinese character dictionary during the 18th and 19th centuries. ...

[edit] History and evolution

Most linguists classify all varieties of modern spoken Chinese as part of the Sino-Tibetan language family and believe that there was an original language, termed Proto-Sino-Tibetan, from which the Sinitic and Tibeto-Burman languages descended. The relation between Chinese and other Sino-Tibetan languages is an area of active research, as is the attempt to reconstruct Proto-Sino-Tibetan. The main difficulty in this effort is that, while there is enough documentation to allow one to reconstruct the ancient Chinese sounds, there is no written documentation that records the division between proto-Sino-Tibetan and ancient Chinese. In addition, many of the older languages that would allow us to reconstruct Proto-Sino-Tibetan are very poorly understood. A language family is a group of languages related by descent from a common proto-language. ...

Categorization of the development of Chinese is a subject of scholarly debate. One of the first systems was devised by the Swedish linguist Bernhard Karlgren in the early 1900s; most present systems rely heavily on Karlgren's insights and methods. Bernhard Karlgren (1889 - 1978) was a Swedish sinologist and eminent philologist, and the founder of Swedish sinology as a scholarly discipline. ... This article is about the decade starting in 1900 and ending in 1909. ...

Old Chinese (T:上古漢語; S:上古汉语; P:Shànggǔ Hànyǔ), sometimes known as "Archaic Chinese", was the language common during the early and middle Zhōu Dynasty (1122 BC - 256 BC), texts of which include inscriptions on bronze artifacts, the poetry of the Shījīng, the history of the Shūjīng, and portions of the Yìjīng (I Ching). The phonetic elements found in the majority of Chinese characters provide hints to their Old Chinese pronunciations. The pronunciation of the borrowed Chinese characters in Japanese, Vietnamese and Korean also provide valuable insights. Old Chinese was not wholly uninflected. It possessed a rich sound system in which aspiration or rough breathing differentiated the consonants, but probably was still without tones. Work on reconstructing Old Chinese started with Qīng dynasty philologists. Some early Indo-European loanwords in Chinese have been proposed, notably 蜜 mì "honey", 獅 shī "lion," and perhaps also 馬 mǎ "horse", 犬 quǎn "dog", and 鵝 gǔ "goose".^[7] The Seal script characters for harvest (later year) and person. ... Traditional Chinese characters refers to one of two standard sets of printed Chinese characters. ... Simplified Chinese character (Simplified Chinese: or ; traditional Chinese: or ; pinyin: or ) is one of two standard sets of Chinese characters of the contemporary Chinese written language. ... Pinyin, more formally called Hanyu Pinyin (Simplified Chinese: ; Traditional Chinese: ; Pinyin: ), is the most common variant of Standard Mandarin romanization system in use. ... Alternative meaning: Zhou Dynasty (690 CE - 705 CE) The Zhou Dynasty (周朝; Wade-Giles: Chou Dynasty) (late 10th century BC to late 9th century BC - 256 BC) followed the Shang (Yin) Dynasty and preceded the Qin Dynasty in China. ... (Redirected from 1122 BC) Centuries: 13th century BC - 12th century BC - 11th century BC Decades: 1170s BC 1160s BC 1150s BC 1140s BC 1130s BC - 1120s BC - 1110s BC 1100s BC 1090s BC 1080s BC 1070s BC Events and Trends 1126 BC - Thymoetes, legendary King of Athens dies childless after... Centuries: 4th century BC - 3rd century BC - 2nd century BC Decades: 300s BC 290s BC 280s BC 270s BC 260s BC - 250s BC - 240s BC 230s BC 220s BC 210s BC 200s BC Years: 261 BC 260 BC 259 BC 258 BC 257 BC - 256 BC - 255 BC 254 BC... Shī Jīng (詩經), translated variously as the Classic of Poetry, the Book of Songs or the Book of Odes

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