Chinese Language: A Brief Introduction

I. What is "Chinese" exactly?

By Chinese, we usually refer to Mandarin, a northern dialect spoken in a significant proportion of China, including the northeast, the provinces north of the Yangtze River, the northwest and the southwest. Because of its popularity, it is the official language in China, and has also become the lingua franca used by many other national minorities such as Huí, Man, Shé, etc. Modern Chinese is a language that takes the pronunciation of Beijing dialect as its standard speech sound system, the Northern dialect as its basic vernacular, and classic literature writings in modern vernacular as its grammar norm. In addition to China and Taiwan, Chinese is one of the official languages in Singapore, and also one of the seven working languages in the United Nation.

The term Mandarin (In Portuguese mandarim means "a mandarin" which was borrowed from Malay mantri meaning "a minister of state". The word mantri originated from Sanskrit mantrin, is meant "a councilor, minister of state".) has been used by Westerners for many years to refer to the official language in China, parcticularly the main dialect used by officials and educated classes in the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911). The language bears several alternative names in Chinese, depending on where the user is and what he/she prefers. For example, Putonghuà (literally "the common speech") and Hànyu (literally "the Han language" used by the Han nationality which makes up over 90 percent of the population in China, but many of them speak other local dialects, especially in the south.) are primarily used in the People's Republic of China. Huáyu ("Huá" is another name for China, thus meaning "the language of China" literally) is mostly used by oversea Chinese, especially in Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, etc. While Guóyu (literally "national language") is primarily used by people in Taiwan or from Taiwan, the term Huáyu has begun to be used more and more in Taiwan since the 1990's. It seems, however, Zhongwé (literally "Chinese language") is more common among the Chinese communities and academics outside China. Cantonese, Hakka, Taiwanese, etc. are local dialects primarily spoken in soouthern China, although some linguists believe that these are different languages rather than "local dialects" because they are mutually unintelligible.

II. Some distinctive features of Chinese

III. The phonetic systems representing Chinese speech sounds

IV. The writing system in Chinese