Chinese language
Chinese language introduction
In reality we should not talk about Chinese
language, but of Chinese languages. Chinese
is, more than a language, a language family, which
includes several more languages (all mutually unintelligible)
each one with its own dialects.
The Chinese language family is in turn part of the
Sino-Tibetan language family and it is a tonal (it
uses tone to convey different lexical meanings),
synthetic (it is shaped by particles and words order)
language.
Chinese languages classification
There are many different classifications of languages
within the Chinese family, as not all linguists
agree on how to classify it. The reason is that
there are no clear boundaries between the many varieties
of Chinese languages and dialects, linguists do
not even agree on which ones are languages and which
ones are dialects. Also, many people in China speak
more than one Chinese language and/or dialect and
they often mix these different languages together.
Here we list seven main Chinese languages (each
of which has its own wide range of dialects):
-
Mandarin - (not to be confused
with standard Mandarin) is the language spoken
in Northern and South-western China.
-
Wu - Wu is the Chinese language
spoken in most Zhejiang province, in the municipality
of Shangai, in the province of Jiangsu, as well
as in some part of Anhui, Jiangxi and Fujian provinces.
Chinese people judge Wu as a language with a soft,
light and flowing sound.
-
Cantonese – this Chinese
language is spoken in Guangdong and some parts
of Guangxi. Cantonese is also spoken in Hong Kong
and Macau, and in these countries its standard
version is one of the official languages.
-
Min – Min language is spoken
in the southeastern province of Fujian, in Hainan,
in three counties in southern Zhejiang, in the
Zhoushan Archipelago and in Taiwan.
-
Hakka – this Chinese language
is spoken mainly in southern China, by the Hakka
ethnic group.
-
Xiang – Xiang language
in spoken mainly in the Hunan province, but also
in Sichuan and Guangxi
-
Gan – this is a Chinese
language spoken in Jiangxi province.
Standard Chinese or Mandarin
 The
standard Chinese language, also called Standard
Mandarin, Putonghua or Guoyu, is the official language
of the People’s Republic of China and Taiwan,
as well as being one of the official languages in
Singapore and of the United Nations.
Standard Chinese is based on the Beijing dialect
and it has been adopted as lingua franca all over
the People’s Republic of China.
Written Chinese Language
Unlike spoken Chinese, written Chinese language
changed less in time, this is why written Chinese
is quite similar all over China, even if it is used
to write many different Chinese languages. Written
Chinese is made up of symbols, each one representing
a morphem (the smallest linguistic unit that has
a semantic meaning).
Standard written Chinese, until the XX century,
used to be based on Classical Chinese that was very
different from any spoken Chinese. Following the
May the Fourth Movement, in 1919, Vernacular Chinese,
based mostly on Mandarin dialects, became the standard
written form for Chinese languages.
Each Chinese language also has its colloquial non-standard
written form, which differs a bit from standard
written Chinese. Cantonese is the only Chinese language
that has a written colloquial standard form, which
is today popular online, for example in chat rooms.
Chinese calligraphy involves the use of different
styles, such as:
-
The seal script, an archaic style
-
The cursive script, which is
loose and fast to write, but hard to read
-
The clerical script, an archaic
style that, being easy to understand for modern
readers, is used sometimes in advertising or banners
because it has an artistic flavour
-
The standard script, the most
modern script and most widely used today
Finally, Chinese printed characters can also be
written in various fonts, just like with Latin script.
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