China Facts Tag: Chinese Language,

There are totally 7 topics with "Chinese Language," included.

Introduction of Chinese Language
Introduction of Chinese Language
Created by samshen at 2011-10-19 3:42:00; Last updated by samshen at 2013-4-22 21:06:00
It would seem that written language, which was predated by spoken language by a very large margin, arose during the agrarian phase of human development, i.e., following the strictly hunter-gatherer phase, and for this reason, written language arose in different cultures at different chronological periods, as witnessed by the fact that the Neolithic Age, or New Stone Age, occured in different geographical regions at different chronological periods.*(1, 2) (If, according to the prevailing curre... »View details
Origins of Chinese Language
Origins of Chinese Language
Created by samshen at 2011-10-19 4:12:00; Last updated by samshen at 2013-4-23 0:06:00
The earliest Chinese written language was the pictographic characters that belong to the so-called Oracle-Bone script. By the time of the late Han (BCE 206 CE 220) Dynasty (in fact, during the Eastern Han (CE 25-220) Dynasty period, or the second half, as it were, of the Han Dynasty), a comprehensive set of more stylized characters officially called hanzi (han zi = Han (Dynasty) writing) though more often referred to today as traditional characters... »View details
Influences of Chinese Language
Influences of Chinese Language
Created by samshen at 2011-10-19 4:55:00; Last updated by samshen at 2013-4-23 0:06:00
In an earlier historical period, the Chinese character script was the only script used to write the languages of Japan, Korea and Vietnam, three countries that are China's closest neighbors. A number of Chinese characters are still used today to write certain Japanese words (the Japanese language has long since developed its own written characters, the hiragana and katakana scripts), and a lesser number of Chinese characters are still in use to write Korean. On the other hand, the lan... »View details
Evolution Of The Chinese Script
Evolution Of The Chinese Script
Created by samshen at 2011-10-19 4:20:00; Last updated by samshen at 2013-4-23 0:07:00
The Chinese script has evolved dramatically over the years, as indicated in the introduction, from a simple, ideo- and pictographic script to a highly stylized script that eventually underwent a change from the perhaps overly complex albeit very artistic to the highly simplified before making the shift to a Latin-based (Romanized) script that would not only facilitate the Chinese government's efforts to eradicate illiteracy, but which would make the Chinese language much more ... »View details
Chinese Learning
Chinese Learning
Created by joyce at 2011-9-15 4:12:00; Last updated by fabiowzgogo at 2013-5-7 4:27:00
Pronunciation for some basic Chinese characters The following table is about pronunciation for some basic Chinese characters: English words Chinese characters Pronunciation... »View details
Homophones
Homophones
Created by samshen at 2011-10-19 4:23:00; Last updated by samshen at 2013-4-23 0:04:00
There are some 1700 syllable-characters in Mandarin (and thus in baihua), while the English language, in contrast, has over 8000 possible unique syllables. How is it then that a language with only 1700 syllable-characters can express the same range of nuances as, say, the English language? The answer lies in the homophone, or the syllable-character that sounds the same but signifies very different things. This is most easily demonstrated in Pinyin (the transcription of the phonemes"... »View details
Spoken Chinese
Spoken Chinese
Created by samshen at 2011-10-19 4:49:00; Last updated by samshen at 2013-4-23 0:07:00
While spoken Chinese is a large family of regional, mutually unintelligible languages (aka fāngyn, or regional languages) all belonging to the Sino-Tibetan language family, within each separate language there may be numerous dialects which, in contrast, are mutually intelligible within the given language and note that these individual languages may be spread across national borders, especially as regards Southeast Asia. Fangyan: regional la... »View details

Hot Searched Tags

» See all tags on China facts