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Chinese Language Profile 中文 |
The word 'Chinese' does not refer to a single and distinct language
shared by all Chinese populations; rather, it denotes a family of related
languages, or dialects, first spoken in different regions of South and
Southeast Asia. Traditionally, the main dialect groups of Chinese are
Mandarin, Wu, Cantonese, Min, and Hakka. Cantonese, as the language
of Chinese settlements in North America and elsewhere, is best known
in the United States. Mandarin, as the official language of the People's
Republic of China and Taiwan and as one of the official languages of
Singapore, is the most widespread of the dialects. 
Chinese belongs to the Sino-Tibetan language family. The most striking
features of the language are the use of characters in writing and the
element of tones in speech. All Chinese dialects use tone as a word-forming
constituent: the same syllable, or word (tsu, monosyllabic
unit) pronounced with a different pitch, will render different meanings.
Mandarin Chinese makes use of four distinct tones; other dialects might
have as many as ten or eleven. With only 400 or so syllables available
to Chinese, it is tones and the use of compound syllables that multiply
the number of possible words. 
Written Chinese employs characters - variously classified as pictographs,
ideographs or logographs - to convey meaning, each character being a
distinct visual representation of an object, word or idea. The average
Chinese speaker can recognize and write about 10,000 characters. Three
to four thousand are needed to read the newspaper. One writing system
was in use throughout China from antiquity to modern times and, remarkably,
given the size of the country, underwent few changes. With the establishment
of the People's Republic of China in 1948, a new alphabet - simplified
Chinese - was introduced to facilitate literacy. Thus two writing systems
exist side by side, one in use in mainland China, and one - traditional
Chinese - in use throughout much of Asia and among Chinese populations
all over the world. |