زبان چینی

زبان چینی یا دقیقتر: زبان‌های چینی بخشی از خانواده زبان‌های سینی-تبتی را تشکیل می‌دهند.زبان مادری حدود یک پنجم مردم جهان یکی از انواع زبان چینی است. این زبان در خود زبان چینی و سرزمین چین به نامهای جُونگ ون (中文، Zhōngwén)که برای نامیدن زبان نوشتاری بکار می‌رود، خن یو (汉语/漢語، Hànyǔ)و خوَیو (华语/華語، Huáyǔ) نامیده می‌شود. زبان اصلی و عمده و رسمی در سرزمین چین، چینی ماندارین یا پوتونگ خوا می‌باشد.

محتویات [نمایش]
اهمیت آهنگ‌ها در زبان چینی [ویرایش]

فرق عمده زبان چینی ماندارین با اکثر زبانهای دیگر جهان در آهنگین بودن آن می‌باشد.بدین صورت که هر هجا در این زبان (chang, chung, bei, ba, lai و...) در ۴ آهنگ و تعدادی ازهجاها نیز بصورت استثنائی در ۵ آهنگ تلفّظ می‌شوند.

در آهنگ اوّل هجا به صورت یکنواخت و کشیده تلفظ می‌شود.
در آهنگ دوّم، در هنگام تلفّظ هجا صدای فرد به صورت تدریجی به سمت بالا می‌رود.
در آهنگ سوّم صدای فرد ابتدا به سمت پایین سقوط می‌کند و سپس به سمت بالا اوج می‌گیرد.
در آهنگ چهارم هجا بصورت دفعی و ضربتی تلفّظ می‌شود.
تلفّظ پنجم هم که بصورت استثنائی در برخی هجاها وجود دارد فاقد آهنگ است و هجا بصورت معمولی بیان می‌شود.
مثال از آهنگ‌ها [ویرایش]
به عنوان مثال هجای ma در آهنگ اوّل معنی مادر را می‌دهد و بدین شکل نوشته می‌شود:(媽/妈). در اهنگ دوّم معنای کَنَف را می‌دهد و بدین شکل نوشته می‌شود:(麻). در آهنگ سوّم معنی اسب را می‌دهد و بدین شکل نوشته می‌شود:(馬/马). در آهنگ چهارم معنای توامان سرزنش کردن و توهین کردن را می‌دهد و بدین شکل نوشته می‌شود:(罵/骂). در آهنگ پنجم به عنوان جزء پایانی جمله سؤالی بکار می‌رود و جمله را سؤالی می‌کند و بدین شکل نوشته می‌شود:(嗎/吗).

گوش‌کردن به آهنگ‌های واژگان در زبان چینی

چهار آهنگ اصلی زبان چینی


آیا در شنیدن پرونده مشکل دارید؟ راهنمای رسانه را ببینید.


خط چینی [ویرایش]



سبک‌های مختف نوشتاری خط چینی
در زبان چینی نگارش به دو صورت است:

سنّتی یا کلاسیک
ساده شده
مورد اوّل خط اصیل زبان چینی می‌باشد که از سده‌های دور برای نگارش این زبان به کار می‌رفته‌است و اکنون در کشورهای جمهوری چین(تایوان)، هنگ کنگ، ماکائو و چینی‌های مقیم ایالات متّحده و غرب رایج است. مورد دوّم ساده شده همان خط سنّتی است که در جمهوری خلق چین و سنگاپور رایج است.این خط به دستور مائوزِدونگ مؤسّس جمهوری خلق چین ازساده کردن خط سنّتی به دست آمده‌است.

تعداد کاراکترهای(علائم نگارشی)این زبان که در چینی به آنها خَنزی (汉字)به طور سنّتی بالغ بر ۷۰٬۰۰۰تا۸۰٬۰۰۰ عدد می‌باشد که البته امروزه همگی آنها (جز برای کاربردهای ادبی و مطالعاتی) منسوخ شده‌اند و در حال حاضر یک چینی یا یک خارجی که میخواهد چینی بیاموزد، برای آنکه بتواند بگوید سواد کامل دارد باید تنها حدود ۱۰٬۰۰۰ کاراکتر را بتواند بخواند و بنویسد. امروزه برای آوانویسی یا romanization این زبان از سیستمی مبتنی بر الفبای لاتین به نام پین این(pin yin)استفاده می‌شود.

زبان‌ها و گویش‌های چینی [ویرایش]



گستره گویش‌های مختلف زبان چینی در چین
در سرتاسر کشور چین زبان‌ها و گویش‌های مختلفی وجود دارد که اختلاف و فرق اکثر آنها در چگونگی تلفّظ هجاها می‌باشد که در بالا توضیح داده شد.مثلاً یک هجا در زبان یک ناحیه با یک آهنگ خاص یک معنی می‌دهد و در ناحیه‌ای دیگر با همان طرز بیان و آهنگ معنی دیگر. مثلاً همان طور گفته شد زبان رسمی یا ماندارین دارای ۴ آهنگ ولی زبان کانتونی (یوئه) که در جنوب این کشور در استان گوانگدونگ (کانتون) رایج است دارای ۸ آهنگ برای تلفّظ هجاها می‌باشد.

زبانهای عمده چینی بدین شرح هستند:
کانتونی
ماندارین
وو(شانگهائی)
که جیا(هکّا)
مین دونگ
جین یو
پوشیان
خویی جو
مین جونگ
گَن
شیانگ
مین بِی
مین نَن
پینگ خوا
واژه‌های مهم در زبان چینی [ویرایش]

Phrases

بله = shi

خیر = bu shi

آیا شما می فهمید ؟ = ni ming bai ma

بله . من می فهمم ! = wo ming bai

خیر . من نمی فهمم ! = wo bu ming bai

ببخشید = dui bu qi

بعد از شما = ni xian qing

ممکن هست شما یه کاری برای من انجام بدهید ؟ = you jian shi qing ni bang mang

مشکلی نیست = mei wen ti

Thanks

متشکرم = xie xie

مهم نیست (خوش باش یا وظیفم بود) = hen le yi

خواهش می کنم = bu ke qi

متشکرم از کمکتان = gan xie ni de bang mang

این خوبی شما رو میرسونه = ni zhen hao

از شما قدردانی می کنم = gan xie ni de hou yi

ممنون از همه چیز = gan xie ni wei wo zhun bei de yi qie

ممنون . روز خیلی خوبی بود = gan xie ni zhe mei hao de yi tian

Apology

شرمنده (ببخشید) = dui bu qi

لطفآ من را ببخش = qing yuan liang

من متآسفم که باعث شدم شما منتظر بمانید = dui bu qi, rang ni jiu deng le

این بی دقتی من را نشان میده = shi wo bu xiao xi

من متآسفم . نمی نوانم شما رو همراهی کنم = dui bu qi , wo bu neng lai

من متاسفم که باعث شدم قرار خودمون رو بهم بزنیم = dui bu qi, shi yue le

من معذرت می خواهم که شما رو در زحمت انداختم = hen bao qian , gei ni dai lai le bu bian

من متآسفم که اینقدر مشکل برای شما درست کردم = hen bao qian , gei ni dai lai le ma fan

مشکلی نیست خودتو ناراحت نکن = qing bie zai yi

مشکلی نیست = mei guan xi

اهمیت ندهید = bu yao jin

Asking agian

لطفآ تکرار کنید = qing zai shuo yi ci

چی ؟ =shen me

لطفآ آرام تر صحبت کنید = qing shuo man dian er

لطفآ بلندتر صحبت کنید = qing shuo da sheng dian er

جدآ ؟ = zhen de ma

آیا شما مطمئن هستید ؟ = mei cuo ma

Basic questions

چرا = wei shen me

کی = shen me shi hou

کجا = zai na er

چیه ؟ = zhe shi shen me

کدام = na yi ge

کیه = shi shui ya

چند تا = you duo shao

به چه مدت = you duo jiu

چه قدر دور است = yu duo yuan

Saying hello

سلام = ni hao

صبح بخیر = zao an

بعدازظهر بخیر = wu an

غروب بخیر = wan an

چه طوری =ni hao ma

تا الان همه چیز خوب بوده = yi qie bu cuo

من زیاد بد نیستم = bu tai cha

وقت زیادیه که شما رو ندیدم = hao jiu bu jian le

از آشنایی خوشبختم = hen gao xing jian dao ni

خوشحالم که شما رو دوباره می بینم = hao gao xing zai jian dao ni

پیوند به بیرون [ویرایش]

Learn Chinese فراگرفتن زبان چینی (انگلیسی)
Chinese-English dictionary فرهنگ انگلیسی چینی (انگلیسی)
Learn Chinese
آموزش آنلاین زبان چینی : آموزش به حروف, نوشتن, صحبت کردن, قواعد و گرامر با استفاده از تصویر و صدا به صورت آنلاین و کاملا رایگان
رده‌های صفحه: چینزبان چینی زبان‌های چینی-تبتی زبان‌های چین زبان‌ها
قس عربی
الصینیة (汉语/漢語 هانیو، 华语/華語 هوایو، أو جو یو (لغة الدولة Guo Yu国语) أو 中文 جونگون) لغة الصین ولغة الصینیین فی نواحی کثیرة من العالم، وهی أکبر لغات العالم، فعدد الناطقین 1.2 ملیار. لها لهجات عدیدة تختلف بعضها بقدر کبیر فتعتبر أحیانا لغات مختلفة. هی من اللغات الصینیة التیبتیة.
تکتب الصینیة بنظام کتابة فکریة تسمى "漢字/汉字 هاندزُ"، التی اخترعت قبل 4000 عام. یحتاج التلمیذ إلى 6000 حرفا لیقرأ جریدة عادیة، وأکثر من ذالک لیقرأ الکتب القدیمة. فی الصین وسنغافورة یستعملون "الحروف المبسطة" التی لها أشکال مبسطة، لکن فی هونغ کونغ وتایوان لا یزال یستعملون الحروف التقلیدیة. تکتب أیضا أحیانا بنظام بینیین اللاتینی للتعلیم وللأجانب.
مجموع الرموز الصیینة أکثر من 60000 أو یزید والشخص الصینی العادی یعرف ما بین 5000- 6000 رمز اما الاجانب فالذی یتقن اللغة یعرف ما بین 3000 - 5000 على الأکثر
اللغة الصینیة لا تحتوی علی أبجدیة، وإنما تحتوی علی کلمات. فالرمز الواحد عبارة عن کلمة مستقلة. ویکتب الرمز من الیسار للیمین، ومن أعلى لأسفل، وما یخالف ذلک یعتبر خطأ.
والقوامیس والمعاجم الصینیة إنما تعتمد علی نظام عدد الخطوط فی الرمز الواحد فتجرد الکلمة من الخطوط الزائدة، وما تبقی بعدئذ تعد خطوطه ویأخذ مکانه فی القاموس.
أهم اللهجات (أو اللغات) الصینیة هی المندارینیة، وهی اللهجة الرسمیة فی جمهوریة الصین الشعبیة. ومن أهم اللهجات الأخرى الکانتونیة والتایوانیة والدونگان. کلها لغات نغمیة.
[عدل]طریقة الادخال للکمبیوتر

توجد عدة طرق لادخال الرموز للحاسب الالی واشهرها لدى الصینین هی ما یعرف ب (وو بی تسی) اما الاجانب غالبا ما یستخدمون طریفة التهجئه أو ما یسمى بن یین Pin yin وهی على سبیل المثال : اذا اراد کتابة کلمة انا وتلفظ ووه Wo فانه یطبع على لوحة المفاتیح Wo فتخرج له على الشاشة مجموعة اختیارات لها نفس التهجئة ویختار رقم الرمز المطلوب وهکذا
[عدل]مواقع أخرى

تعلم الصینیة بالعربیة او الدراسة فی الصین
Learn Chinese دروس مجانیة فی اللغة الصینیة فی 15 وحدة. تتألف کل وحدة من حوارات سهلة الفهم وصفحة للتمارین.
Chinese-English dictionary قاموس صینی-إنجلیزی یحتوی أکثر من 34.000 کلمة. یمکن البحث فیه بالحروف الصینیة أو الکتابة الصوتیة أو الإنجلیزیة. توجد أیضا ملفات صوتیة.
قاموس إنجلیزی صینی قاموس إنجلیزی صینی مجانی على الإنترنت.
قالب:الأمم والمناطق الناطقة بالصینیة
[أظهر] ع · ن · تاللغات الرسمیة للأمم المتحدة
[أظهر] ع · ن · تمنظمة شانغهای للتعاون
بوابة اللغة
تصنیفات: لغة صینیةلغات الصینلغات سنغافورةلغات تایوانلغات هونغ کونغلغات عازلة
قس انگلیسی
The Chinese language (汉语/漢語 Hànyǔ; 华语/華語 Huáyǔ; 中文 Zhōngwén) is a language or language family consisting of varieties which are mutually intelligible to varying degrees.[4] Originally the indigenous languages spoken by the Han Chinese in China, it forms one of the branches of Sino-Tibetan family of languages. About one-fifth of the world's population, or over one billion people, speaks some variety of Chinese as their native language. Internal divisions of Chinese are usually perceived by their native speakers as dialects of a single Chinese language, rather than separate languages, although this identification is considered inappropriate by some linguists and sinologists.[5]
Chinese is distinguished by its high level of internal diversity, although all varieties of Chinese are tonal and analytic. There are between 7 and 13 main regional groups of Chinese (depending on classification scheme), of which the most spoken, by far, is Mandarin (about 850 million), followed by Wu (90 million), Cantonese (Yue) (70 million) and Min (50 million). Most of these groups are mutually unintelligible, although some, like Xiang and the Southwest Mandarin dialects, may share common terms and some degree of intelligibility.
Standard Chinese (Putonghua / Guoyu / Huayu) is a standardized form of spoken Chinese based on the Beijing dialect of Mandarin Chinese, referred to as 官话/官話 Guānhuà or 北方话/北方話 Běifānghuà in Chinese. Mandarin Chinese history can be dated back to the 19th century, particularly by the upper classes and ministers in Beijing.[6] Standard Chinese is the official language of the People's Republic of China (PRC) and the Republic of China (ROC, also known as Taiwan), as well as one of four official languages of Singapore. It is one of the six official languages of the United Nations. Of the other varieties of Chinese, Cantonese is influential in Guangdong Province and 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 (known as Hokkien in Philippines, Singapore and Malaysia). There are also sizeable Hakka and Shanghainese diaspora, for example in Taiwan, where most Hakka communities maintain diglossia by being conversant in Taiwanese and Standard Chinese.
Contents [show]
[edit]History


History of China
ANCIENT
3 Sovereigns and 5 Emperors
Xia Dynasty 2100–1600 BCE
Shang Dynasty 1600–1046 BCE
Zhou Dynasty 1045–256 BCE
Western Zhou
Eastern Zhou
Spring and Autumn Period
Warring States Period
IMPERIAL
Qin Dynasty 221 BCE–206 BCE
Han Dynasty 206 BCE–220 CE
Western Han
Xin Dynasty
Eastern Han
Three Kingdoms 220–280
Wei, Shu and Wu
Jin Dynasty 265–420
Western Jin 16 Kingdoms
304–439
Eastern Jin
Southern and Northern Dynasties
420–589
Sui Dynasty 581–618
Tang Dynasty 618–907
(Second Zhou 690–705)
5 Dynasties and
10 Kingdoms
907–960 Liao Dynasty
907–1125
Song Dynasty
960–1279
Northern Song W. Xia
Southern Song Jin
Yuan Dynasty 1271–1368
Ming Dynasty 1368–1644
Qing Dynasty 1644–1911
MODERN
Republic of China 1912–1949
People's Republic
of China
1949–present Republic of
China (Taiwan)
1949–present
Related articles [show]
This box: view talk edit
Main article: History of the Chinese language
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 and many of the techniques developed for analysis of the descent of the (fusional) Indo-European languages from PIE do not apply to Chinese, an isolating language because of "morphological paucity" especially after Old Chinese.[7]
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.
Old Chinese, sometimes known as "Archaic Chinese", was the language common during the early and middle Zhou Dynasty (1122 BCE–256 BCE), 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 loan-words in Chinese have been proposed, notably 蜜 mì "honey", 獅 shī "lion," and perhaps also 馬 mǎ "horse", 豬 zhū "pig", 犬 quǎn "dog", and 鵝 é "goose". The source says the reconstructions of old Chinese are tentative, and not definitive so no conclusions should be drawn. The reconstruction of Old Chinese can not be perfect so this hypothesis may be called into question.[8] The source also notes that southern dialects of Chinese have more monosyllabic words than the Mandarin Chinese dialects.
Middle Chinese was the language used during Southern and Northern Dynasties and the Suí, Táng, and Sòng dynasties (6th through 10th centuries CE). It can be divided into an early period, reflected by the "Qiēyùn" rime book (601 CE), and a late period in the 10th century, reflected by the "Guǎngyùn" rime book. Linguists are more confident of having reconstructed how Middle Chinese sounded. The evidence for the pronunciation of Middle Chinese comes from several sources: modern dialect variations, rhyming dictionaries, foreign transliterations, "rhyming tables" constructed by ancient Chinese philologists to summarize the phonetic system, and Chinese phonetic translations of foreign words. However, all reconstructions are tentative; some scholars have argued that trying to reconstruct, say, modern Cantonese from modern Cantopop rhymes would give a fairly inaccurate picture of the present-day spoken language.
The development of the spoken Chinese languages from early historical times to the present has been complex. Most Chinese people, in Sìchuān and in a broad arc from the north-east (Manchuria) to the south-west (Yunnan), use various Mandarin dialects as their home language. The prevalence of Mandarin throughout northern China is largely due to north China's plains. By contrast, the mountains and rivers of middle and southern China promoted linguistic diversity.
Until the mid-20th century, most southern Chinese only spoke their native local variety of Chinese. As Nanjing was the capital during the early Ming Dynasty, Nanjing Mandarin became dominant at least until the later years of the Qing Dynasty. Since the 17th century, the Qing Dynasty had set up orthoepy academies (正音书院／正音書院; Zhèngyīn Shūyuàn) to make pronunciation conform to the standard of the capital Beijing. For the general population, however, this had limited effect. The non-Mandarin speakers in southern China also continued to use their various languages for every aspect of life. The Beijing Mandarin court standard was used solely by officials and civil servants and was thus fairly limited.
This situation did not change until the mid-20th century with the creation (in both the PRC and the ROC, but not in Hong Kong) of a compulsory educational system committed to teaching Mandarin. As a result, Mandarin is now spoken by virtually all young and middle-aged citizens of mainland China and on Taiwan. Cantonese, not Mandarin, was used in Hong Kong during the time of its British colonial period (owing to its large Cantonese native and migrant populace) and remains today its official language of education, formal speech, and daily life, but Mandarin is becoming increasingly influential after the 1997 handover.
Classical Chinese was once the lingua franca in neighbouring East Asian countries such as Japan, Korea and Vietnam for centuries, before the rise of European influences in the 19th century.[9] In Korea and Vietnam official documents were written in Chinese until the colonial period.
[edit]Influences

Throughout history Chinese culture and politics has had a great influence on unrelated East Asian languages such as Korean, Japanese, and Vietnamese. Korean and Japanese both have writing systems employing Chinese characters (hanzi), which are called Hanja and Kanji, respectively.
The Vietnamese term for Chinese writing is Hán tự. It was the only available method for writing Vietnamese until the 14th century, used almost exclusively by Chinese-educated Vietnamese élites. From the 14th to the late 19th century, Vietnamese was written with Chữ nôm, a modified Chinese script incorporating sounds and syllables for native Vietnamese speakers. Chữ nôm was completely replaced by a modified Latin script created by the Jesuit missionary priest Alexander de Rhodes, which incorporates a system of diacritical marks to indicate tones, as well as modified consonants. Approximately 60% of the modern Vietnamese lexicon is recognized as Hán-Việt (Sino-Vietnamese), the majority of which was borrowed from Middle Chinese. In South Korea, the Hangul alphabet is generally used, but Hanja is used as a sort of boldface. In North Korea, Hanja has been discontinued. Since the modernization of Japan in the late 19th century, there has been debate about abandoning the use of Chinese characters, but the practical benefits of a radically new script have so far not been considered sufficient. Derived Chinese characters or Sawndip are used to write Zhuang songs, even though Zhuang is not a Chinese dialect. Since the 1950s, the Zhuang language has been written in a modified Latin alphabet.[10]
Languages within the influence of Chinese culture also have a very large number of loanwords from Chinese. Fifty percent or more of Korean vocabulary is of Chinese origin,[11] likewise for a significant percentage of Japanese[12] and Vietnamese vocabulary. Loan words from Chinese also exist in European languages such as English. Examples of such words are "tea" from the Minnan pronunciation of 茶 (POJ: tê), "ketchup" from the Cantonese pronunciation of 茄汁 (Jyutping: ke2 zap1) and "kumquat" from the Cantonese pronunciation of (Jyutping: gam1 gwat1).
The term sinophone, coined in 2005 in analogy to anglophone and francophone, refers to those who speak at least one Chinese language natively, or prefer it as a medium of communication. The term is derived from Sinae, the Latin word for ancient China.[13]
[edit]Varieties of Chinese

Main article: Varieties of Chinese
A 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[citation needed]:
Name Abbreviation Pinyin Local Romanization Simp. Trad. Total
Speakers
Mandarin
Notes: includes Standard Chinese Guan; 官 Guānhuà
Běifānghuà Pinyin: Guānhuà
Pinyin: Běifānghuà 官话
北方话 官話
北方話 c. 1.365 billion
Wu
Notes: includes Shanghainese Wu; 吴/吳 Wúyǔ Long-short: Ng Nyiu or Ghu Nyiu 吴语 吳語 c. 90 million
Yue
Notes: includes Cantonese & Taishanese Yue; 粤/粵 Yuèyǔ Yale: Yuht Yúh
Jyutping: Jyut6 Jyu5 粤语 粵語 c. 70 million
Min
Notes: includes Hokkien, Taiwanese & Teochew Min; 闽/閩 Mǐnyǔ POJ: Bân Gú;
BUC: Mìng Ngṳ̄ 闽语 閩語 c. 50 million
Xiang
also known as Hunanese/Sionglish Xiang; 湘 Xiāngyǔ Romanization: Shiāen'ỳ 湘语 湘語 c. 36 million
Hakka Kejia; 客家
Ke; 家 Kèjiāhuà
Kèhuà Hakka Pinyin: Hak-kâ-fa or Hak-kâ-va
Hakka Pinyin: Hak-fa or Hak-va 客家话
客话 客家話
客話 c. 35 million
Gan
also known as Jiangxinese Gan; 贛 Gànyǔ Romanization: Gon Ua 赣语 贛語 c. 31 million
Disputed classifications by some Chinese linguists[by whom?]:
Name Abbreviation Pinyin Local Romanization Simp. Trad. Total
Speakers
Jin
Notes: from Mandarin Jin; 晋/晉 Jìnyǔ None 晋语 晉語 45 million
Huizhou
Notes: from Wu Hui; 徽 Huīhuà
Huīzhōuhuà None 徽话
徽州话 徽話
徽州話 ~3.2 million
Pinghua
Notes: from Yue Ping; 平 Pínghuà
Guǎngxī Pínghuà None 平话
广西平话 平話
廣西平話 ~5 million
There are groups that are not yet classified, such as: Danzhou dialect (儋州话/儋州話), spoken in Danzhou, on Hainan Island; Xianghua (乡话/鄉話), not to be confused with Xiang (湘), spoken in western Hunan; and Shaozhou Tuhua (韶州土话/韶州土話), spoken in northern Guangdong. The Dungan language, spoken in Central Asia, is very closely related to Mandarin. However, it is politically not generally considered "Chinese" since it is written in Cyrillic and spoken by Dungan people outside China who are not considered ethnic Chinese.
In general, the above language-dialect groups do not have sharp boundaries, though Mandarin is the predominant 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 overlap. 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 17 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 small enough to sort them as separate languages.
Generally, 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 that of Guangzhou than is that of Taishan, 60 miles southwest of Guangzhou and separated by several rivers from it (Ramsey, 1987).
[edit]Standard Chinese and diglossia
Main article: Standard Chinese
Putonghua / Guoyu, often called "Mandarin", is the official standard language used by the People's Republic of China, the Republic of China (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 government intends 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.
In mainland 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 Chinese. For example, in addition to putonghua, a resident of Shanghai might speak Shanghainese; and, if he or she grew up elsewhere, then he or she may also be likely to be fluent in the particular dialect of that local area. A native of Guangzhou may speak both 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 Mandarin and Taiwanese, and this mixture is considered normal under most circumstances.
[edit]Linguistics
See also: Varieties of Chinese
In common English usage, Chinese is considered a language and its varieties dialects, a classification that agrees with Chinese speakers' self-perception. Most linguists prefer instead to call Chinese a family of languages, because of its divisions' lack of complete mutual intelligibility. Measuring this mutual intelligibility is not precise, but Chinese is often compared to the Romance languages in this regard. Some linguists find the use of "Chinese languages" also problematic, because it can imply a set of disruptive "religious, economic, political, and other differences" between speakers that exist between for example between French Catholics and English Protestants in Canada, but not between speakers of Cantonese and Mandarin in China, owing to China's near-uninterrupted history of centralized government.[14]
Chinese itself has a term for its unified writing system, Zhongwen (中文), while the closest equivalent used to describe its spoken variants would be Hanyu (汉语/漢語, "spoken language[s] of the Han Chinese")—this term could be translated to either "language" or "languages" since Chinese possesses no grammatical numbers. For centuries in China, owing to the widespread use of a written standard in Classical Chinese, there is much less necessity to maintain a uniform speech-and-writing continuum, as indicated by the employment of two separate character morphemes 语/語 yu and 文 wen. The character morphemes used in written Chinese are logographs that convey semantics graphically rather than phonologically, although some logographs are compounds conveying both semantic meaning (the "radical") and phonological information. 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 dialect.
In Chinese, the major spoken varieties of Chinese are called fangyan (Chinese: 方言; pinyin: fāngyán; literally "regional speech"), customarily translated into English as dialects. Chinese use a different word for mutually intelligible variants within the fangyan: didian fangyan (simplified Chinese: 地点方言; traditional Chinese: 地點方言; pinyin: dìdiǎn fāngyán; literally "local speech"), also translated as "dialect".[14] 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 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 fragmented 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.
[edit]Writing

Main article: Written Chinese
The relationship between the Chinese spoken and written language is rather complex. Its spoken varieties 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 BCE Shang dynasty oracle bones using the oracle bone scripts.
The Chinese orthography centers on Chinese characters, hanzi, which are 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, jat 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.
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 many formal occasions.
In Hunan, women in certain areas write their local language in Nü Shu, a syllabary derived from Chinese characters. The Dungan language, considered by many a dialect of Mandarin, is nowadays written in Cyrillic, and was previously written in the Arabic script. The Dungan people live outside China.
[edit]Chinese characters
Main article: Chinese character
Chinese characters evolved over time from earlier 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; hill), shui 水 (water), may be wholly pictorial in origin. In 100 CE, the famed scholar Xǔ Shèn in the Hàn Dynasty classified characters into six categories, namely pictographs, simple ideographs, compound ideographs, phonetic loans, phonetic compounds and derivative characters. Of these, only 4% were categorized as pictographs, and 80–90% as phonetic complexes consisting of a semantic element that indicates meaning, and a phonetic element that indicates the pronunciation. There are about 214 radicals recognized in the Kangxi Dictionary.


"Preface to the Poems Composed at the Orchid Pavilion" by Wang Xizhi, written in semi-cursive style
Modern characters are styled after the regular script (楷书／楷書 kǎishū) (see styles, below). Various other written styles are also used in Chinese 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.
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.
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 reader today recognizes approximately 5,000–7,000 characters; approximately 3,000 characters are required to read a Mainland newspaper. The PRC government defines literacy amongst workers as a knowledge of 2,000 characters, though this would be only functional literacy. A large unabridged dictionary, like the Kangxi Dictionary, contains over 40,000 characters, including obscure, variant, rare, and archaic characters; fewer than a quarter of these characters are now commonly used.
[edit]Phonology

This article contains IPA phonetic symbols. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Unicode characters.
Main article: Varieties of Chinese
The phonological structure of each syllable consists of a nucleus consisting of a vowel (which can be a monophthong, diphthong, or even a triphthong in certain varieties) with an optional onset or coda consonant as well as a tone. There are some instances where a vowel is not used as a nucleus. An example of this is in Cantonese, where the nasal sonorant consonants /m/ and /ŋ/ can stand alone as their own syllable.
Across all the spoken varieties, most syllables tend to be open syllables, meaning they have no coda, but syllables that do have codas are restricted to /m/, /n/, /ŋ/, /p/, /t/, /k/, or /ʔ/. Some varieties allow most of these codas, whereas others, such as Mandarin, are limited to only two, namely /n/ and /ŋ/. Consonant clusters do not generally occur in either the onset or coda. The onset may be an affricate or a consonant followed by a semivowel, but these are not generally considered consonant clusters.
The number of sounds in the different spoken dialects varies, but in general there has been a tendency to a reduction in sounds from Middle Chinese. The Mandarin dialects in particular have experienced a dramatic decrease in sounds and so have far more multisyllabic words than most other spoken varieties. The total number of syllables in some varieties is therefore only about a thousand, including tonal variation, which is only about an eighth as many as English.[15]
All varieties of spoken Chinese use tones. A few dialects of north China may have as few as three tones, while some dialects in south China have up to 6 or 10 tones, depending on how one counts. One exception from this is Shanghainese which has reduced the set of tones to a two-toned pitch accent system much like modern Japanese.
A very common example used to illustrate the use of tones in Chinese are four tones of Standard Chinese applied to the syllable "ma." The tones correspond to these five characters:
This article contains Ruby annotation. Without proper rendering support, you may see transcriptions in parentheses after the character instead of ruby glosses.
妈／媽
mā
"mother"—high level
麻
má
"linen" or "numb"—high rising
马／馬
mǎ
"horse"—low falling-rising
骂／罵
mà
"scold"—high falling
吗／嗎
ma
"question particle"—neutral

Listen to the tones

This is a recording of the four main tones. Fifth, or neutral, tone is not included.
Problems listening to this file? See media help.
[edit]Phonetic transcriptions

The Chinese had no uniform phonetic transcription system until the mid-20th century, although enunciation patterns were recorded in early rime books and dictionaries. Early Indian translators, working in Sanskrit and Pali, were the first to attempt to describe the sounds and enunciation patterns of Chinese in a foreign language. After the 15th century, the efforts of Jesuits and Western court missionaries resulted in some rudimentary Latin transcription systems, based on the Nanjing Mandarin dialect.
[edit]Romanization


"National language" (國語; Guóyǔ) written in Traditional and Simplified Chinese characters, followed by various romanizations.
See also: Chinese language romanisation in Singapore and Romanization of Mandarin Chinese
Romanization is the process of transcribing a language into the Latin script. There are many systems of romanization for the Chinese languages due to the lack of a native phonetic transcription until modern times. Chinese is first known to have been written in Latin characters by Western Christian missionaries in the 16th century.
Today the most common romanization standard for Standard Chinese is Hanyu Pinyin, often known simply as pinyin, introduced in 1956 by the People's Republic of China, and later adopted by Singapore and Taiwan. Pinyin is almost universally employed now for teaching standard spoken Chinese in schools and universities across America, Australia and Europe. Chinese parents also use Pinyin to teach their children the sounds and tones of new words. In school books that teach Chinese, the Pinyin romanization is often shown below a picture of the thing the word represents, with the Chinese character alongside.
The second-most common romanization system, the Wade-Giles, was invented by Thomas Wade in 1859 and modified by Herbert Giles in 1892. As this system approximates the phonology of Mandarin Chinese into English consonants and vowels, i.e. it is an Anglicization, it may be particularly helpful for beginner Chinese speakers of an English-speaking background. Wade-Giles was found in academic use in the United States, particularly before the 1980s, and until recently[when?] was widely used in Taiwan.
When used within European texts, the tone transcriptions in both pinyin and Wade-Giles are often left out for simplicity; Wade-Giles' extensive use of apostrophes is also usually omitted. Thus, most Western readers will be much more familiar with Beijing than they will be with Běijīng (pinyin), and with Taipei than T'ai²-pei³ (Wade-Giles).
Here are a few examples of Hanyu Pinyin and Wade-Giles, for comparison:
Mandarin Romanization Comparison
Characters Wade-Giles Hanyu Pinyin Notes
中国／中國 Chung¹-kuo² Zhōngguó "China"
北京 Pei³-ching¹ Běijīng Capital of the People's Republic of China
台北 T'ai²-pei³ Táiběi Capital of the Republic of China (Taiwan)
毛泽东／毛澤東 Mao² Tse²-tung¹ Máo Zédōng Former Communist Chinese leader
蒋介石／蔣介石 Chiang³ Chieh⁴-shih² Jiǎng Jièshí Former Nationalist Chinese leader (better known to English speakers as Chiang Kai-shek, with Cantonese pronunciation)
孔子 K'ung³ Tsu³ Kǒng Zǐ "Confucius"
Other systems of romanization for Chinese include Gwoyeu Romatzyh, the French EFEO, the Yale (invented during WWII for U.S. troops), as well as separate systems for Cantonese, Minnan, Hakka, and other Chinese languages or dialects.
[edit]Other phonetic transcriptions
Chinese languages have been phonetically transcribed into many other writing systems over the centuries. The 'Phags-pa script, for example, has been very helpful in reconstructing the pronunciations of pre-modern forms of Chinese.
Zhuyin (also called bopomofo), a semi-syllabary is still widely used in Taiwan's elementary schools to aid standard pronunciation. Although bopomofo characters are reminiscent of katakana script, there is no source to substantiate the claim that Katakana was the basis for the zhuyin system. A comparison table of zhuyin to pinyin exists in the zhuyin article. Syllables based on pinyin and zhuyin can also be compared by looking at the following articles:
Pinyin table
Zhuyin table
There are also at least two systems of cyrillization for Chinese. The most widespread is the Palladius system.
[edit]Grammar and morphology

Main article: Chinese grammar
See also: Chinese classifiers
Chinese is often described as a "monosyllabic" language. However, this is only partially correct. It is largely accurate when describing Classical Chinese and Middle Chinese; in Classical Chinese, for example, perhaps 90% of words correspond to a single syllable and a single character. In the modern varieties, it is still usually the case that a morpheme (unit of meaning) is a single syllable; contrast English, with plenty of multi-syllable morphemes, both bound and free, such as "seven", "elephant", "para-" and "-able". Some of the conservative southern varieties of modern Chinese still have largely monosyllabic words, especially among the more basic vocabulary.
In modern Mandarin, however, most nouns, adjectives and verbs are largely disyllabic. A significant cause of this is phonological attrition. Sound change over time has steadily reduced the number of possible syllables. In modern Mandarin, there are now only about 1,200 possible syllables, including tonal distinctions, compared with about 5,000 in Vietnamese (still largely monosyllabic) and over 8,000 in English.[16]
This phonological collapse has led to a corresponding increase in the number of homophones. As an example, the small Langenscheidt Pocket Chinese Dictionary[17] lists six common words pronounced shí (tone 2): 十 "ten"; 实 "real, actual"; 识 "know (a person), recognize"; 石 "stone"; 时 "time"; 食 "food". According to William Baxter's transcription, these were all pronounced differently in Early Middle Chinese: /dʑip/, /ʑit/, /ɕik/, /dʑjek/, /dʑī/, /ʑik/ respectively. In modern spoken Mandarin, however, tremendous ambiguity would result if all of these words could be used as-is, and so most of them have been replaced (in speech, if not in writing) with a longer, less-ambiguous compound. Only the first one, 十 "ten", normally appears as such when spoken; the rest are normally replaced with, respectively, 实际 shíjì (lit. "actual-connection"); 认识 rènshi (lit. "recognize-know"); 石头 shítou (lit. "stone-head"); 时间 shíjiān (lit. "time-interval"); 食物 shíwù (lit. "food-thing"). In each case, the homophone was disambiguated by adding another morpheme, typically either a synonym or a generic word of some sort (for example, "head", "thing"), whose purpose is simply to indicate which of the possible meanings of the other, homophonic syllable should be selected.
However, when one of the above words forms part of a compound, the disambiguating syllable is generally dropped and the resulting word is still disyllabic. For example, 石 shí alone, not 石头 shítou, appears in compounds meaning "stone-", for example, 石膏 shígāo "plaster" (lit. "stone cream"), 石灰 shíhuī "lime" (lit. "stone dust"), 石窟 shíkū "grotto" (lit. "stone cave"), 石英 shíyīng "quartz" (lit. "stone flower"), 石油 shíyóu "petroleum" (lit. "stone oil").
Most modern varieties of Chinese have the tendency to form new words through disyllabic, trisyllabic and tetra-character compounds. In some cases, monosyllabic words have become disyllabic without compounding, as in 窟窿 kulong from 孔 kong; this is especially common in Jin.
Chinese morphology is strictly bound to a set number of syllables with a fairly rigid construction which are the morphemes, the smallest blocks of the language. While many of these single-syllable morphemes (字, zì) can stand alone as individual words, they more often than not form multi-syllabic compounds, known as cí (词／詞), which more closely resembles the traditional Western notion of a word. A Chinese cí (“word”) can consist of more than one character-morpheme, usually two, but there can be three or more.
For example:
Yun 雲—"cloud" (traditional)
Yun 云—"cloud" (simplified)
Han-bao-bao/Hanbao 漢堡包／漢堡—"hamburger" (traditional)
Han-bao-bao/Hanbao 汉堡包／汉堡—"hamburger" (simplified)
Wo 我—"I, me"
Ren 人—"people"
Di-qiu 地球—"earth"
Shan-dian 閃電—"lightning" (traditional)
Shan-dian 闪电—"lightning" (simplifed)
Meng 夢—"dream" (traditional)
Meng 梦—"dream" (simplified)
All varieties of modern Chinese are analytic languages, in that they depend on syntax (word order and sentence structure) rather than morphology—i.e., changes in form of a word—to indicate the word's function in a sentence. In other words, Chinese has very few grammatical inflections—it possesses no tenses, no voices, no numbers (singular, plural; though there are plural markers, for example for personal pronouns), and only a few articles (i.e., equivalents to "the, a, an" in English). There is, however, a gender difference in the written language (他 as "he" and 她 as "she"), but it should be noted that this is a relatively new introduction to the Chinese language in the twentieth century, and both characters are pronounced in exactly the same way.
They make heavy use of grammatical particles to indicate aspect and mood. In Mandarin Chinese, this involves the use of particles like le 了 (perfective), hai 还／還 (still), yijing 已经／已經 (already), and so on.
Chinese features a subject–verb–object word order, and like many other languages in East Asia, makes frequent use of the topic–comment construction to form sentences. Chinese also has an extensive system of classifiers and measure words, another trait shared with neighbouring languages like Japanese and Korean.
Other notable grammatical features common to all the spoken varieties of Chinese include the use of serial verb construction, pronoun dropping and the related subject dropping.
Although the grammars of the spoken varieties share many traits, they do possess differences.
[edit]Tones and homophones
Official modern Mandarin has only 400 spoken monosyllables but over 10,000 written characters, so there are many homophones only distinguishable by the four tones. Even this is often not enough unless the context and exact phrase or cí is identified.
The mono-syllable jī, first tone in Mandarin, corresponds to the following characters: 鸡／雞 chicken, 机／機 machine, 基 basic, 击／擊 (to) hit, 饥／饑 hunger, and 积／積 product. In speech, the glyphing of a monosyllable to its meaning must be determined by context or by relation to other morphemes (for example, "some" as in the opposite of "none"). Native speakers may state which words or phrases their names are found in, for convenience of writing: 名字叫嘉英，嘉陵江的嘉，英國的英 Míngzi jiào Jiāyīng, Jiālíng Jiāng de jiā, Yīngguó de yīng "My name is Jiāyīng, the Jia for Jialing River and the ying for the short form in Chinese of UK."
Southern Chinese varieties like Cantonese and Hakka preserved more of the rimes of Middle Chinese and have more tones. The previous examples of jī, have more distinct pronunciations in Cantonese (romanized using jyutping): gai1, gei1, gei1, gik1, gei1, and zik1 respectively. For this reason, southern varieties tend to need to employ fewer multi-syllabic words.
[edit]Vocabulary

The entire Chinese character corpus since antiquity comprises well over 20,000 characters, of which only roughly 10,000 are now commonly in use. However Chinese characters should not be confused with Chinese words; since most Chinese words are made up of two or more different characters, there are many times more Chinese words than there are characters.
Estimates of the total number of Chinese words and phrases vary greatly. The Hanyu Da Zidian, a compendium of Chinese characters, includes 54,678 head entries for characters, including bone oracle versions. The Zhonghua Zihai (1994) contains 85,568 head entries for character definitions, and is the largest reference work based purely on character and its literary variants. The CC-CEDICT project (2010) contains 97,404 contemporary entries including idioms, technology terms and names of political figures, businesses and products. The 2009 version of the Webster's Digital Chinese Dictionary (WDCD),[18] based on CC-CEDICT, contains over 84,000 entries.
The most comprehensive pure linguistic Chinese-language dictionary, the 12-volumed Hanyu Da Cidian, records more than 23,000 head Chinese characters and gives over 370,000 definitions. The 1999 revised Cihai, a multi-volume encyclopedic dictionary reference work, gives 122,836 vocabulary entry definitions under 19,485 Chinese characters, including proper names, phrases and common zoological, geographical, sociological, scientific and technical terms.
The latest 2007 5th edition of Xiandai Hanyu Cidian 现代汉语词典／現代漢語詞典, an authoritative one-volume dictionary on modern standard Chinese language as used in mainland China, has 65,000 entries and defines 11,000 head characters.
[edit]Loanwords

See also: Translation of neologisms into Chinese and Transcription into Chinese characters
Like any other language, Chinese has absorbed a sizable number of loanwords from other cultures. Most Chinese words are formed out of native Chinese morphemes, including words describing imported objects and ideas. However, direct phonetic borrowing of foreign words has gone on since ancient times.
Words borrowed from along the Silk Road since Old Chinese include 葡萄 "grape", 石榴 "pomegranate" and 狮子／獅子 "lion". Some words were borrowed from Buddhist scriptures, including 佛 "Buddha" and 菩萨／菩薩 "bodhisattva." Other words came from nomadic peoples to the north, such as 胡同 "hutong". Words borrowed from the peoples along the Silk Road, such as 葡萄 "grape" (pútáo in Mandarin) generally have Persian etymologies. Buddhist terminology is generally derived from Sanskrit or Pāli, the liturgical languages of North India. Words borrowed from the nomadic tribes of the Gobi, Mongolian or northeast regions generally have Altaic etymologies, such as 琵琶 "pípa", the Chinese lute, or 酪 "cheese" or "yoghurt", but from exactly which source is not always clear.
[edit]Modern borrowings and loanwords
Modern neologisms are primarily translated into Chinese in one of three ways: free translation (calque, or by meaning), phonetic translation (by sound), or a combination of the two. Today, it is much more common to use existing Chinese morphemes to coin new words in order to represent imported concepts, such as technical expressions and international scientific vocabulary. Any Latin or Greek etymologies are dropped and converted into the corresponding Chinese characters (for example, anti- typically becomes "反", literally opposite), making them more comprehensible for Chinese but introducing more difficulties in understanding foreign texts. For example, the word telephone was loaned phonetically as 德律风／德律風 (Shanghainese: télífon [təlɪfoŋ], Mandarin: délǜfēng) during the 1920s and widely used in Shanghai, but later 电话／電話 diànhuà (lit. "electric speech"), built out of native Chinese morphemes, became prevalent. Other examples include 电视／電視 diànshì (lit. "electric vision") for television, 电脑／電腦 diànnǎo (lit. "electric brain") for computer; 手机／手機 shǒujī (lit. "hand machine") for mobile phone, 蓝牙／藍牙 lányá (lit. "blue tooth") for Bluetooth, and 網誌 wǎng zhì (lit. "internet logbook") for blog Hong Kong and Macau Cantonese. Occasionally half-transliteration, half-translation compromises (phono-semantic matching) are accepted, such as 汉堡包／漢堡包 hànbǎo bāo (lit. "hamburg bun") for "hamburger". Sometimes translations are designed so that they sound like the original while incorporating Chinese morphemes, such as 拖拉机／拖拉機 tuōlājī "tractor" (lit. "dragging-pulling machine"), or 马利奥／馬利奧[clarification needed] for the video game character Mario. This is often done for commercial purposes, for example 奔腾／奔騰 bēnténg (lit. "running leaping") for Pentium and 赛百味／賽百味 Sàibǎiwèi (lit. "better-than hundred tastes") for Subway restaurants.
Foreign words, mainly proper nouns, continue to enter the Chinese language by transcription according to their pronunciations. This is done by employing Chinese characters with similar pronunciations. For example, "Israel" becomes 以色列 yǐsèliè, "Paris" becomes 巴黎 bālí. A rather small number of direct transliterations have survived as common words, including 沙发／沙發 shāfā "sofa", 马达／馬達 mǎdá "motor", 幽默 yōumò "humor", 逻辑／邏輯 luójí "logic", 时髦／時髦 shímáo "smart, fashionable", and 歇斯底里 xiēsīdǐlǐ "hysterics". The bulk of these words were originally coined in the Shanghai dialect during the early 20th century and were later loaned into Mandarin, hence their pronunciations in Mandarin may be quite off from the English. For example, 沙发／沙發 "sofa" and 马达／馬達 "motor" in Shanghainese sound more like their English counterparts.
Western foreign words representing Western concepts have influenced Chinese since the 20th century through transcription. From French came 芭蕾 bāléi "ballet", 香槟 xiāngbīn, "champagne", an from Italian 咖啡 kāfēi "caffè". English influence is particularly pronounced. From early 20th century Shanghainese, many English words are borrowed, such as 高尔夫／高爾夫 gāoěrfū "golf" and the above-mentioned 沙发／沙發 shāfā "sofa". Later United States soft influences gave rise to 迪斯科 dísīkè "disco", 可乐／可樂 kělè "cola", and 迷你 mínǐ "mini [skirt]". Contemporary colloquial Cantonese has distinct loanwords from English, such as 卡通 "cartoon", 基佬 "gay people", 的士 "taxi", and 巴士 "bus". With the rising popularity of the Internet, there is a current vogue in China for coining English transliterations, for example, 粉丝／粉絲 fěnsī "fans", 黑客 hēikè "hacker" (lit. "black guest"), 部落格 bùluōgé "blog" (lit. "interconnected tribes") in Taiwanese Mandarin.
Another result of the English influence on Chinese is the appearance in Modern Chinese texts of so-called 字母词 zìmǔcí (lit. "lettered words") spelled with letters from foreign alphabets. This has appeared in magazines, newspapers, on web sites, and on TV: 三G手机 "3rd generation cell phones" (三 sān "three" + G "generation" + 手机 shǒujī "mobile phones"), IT界 "IT industry", HSK (hànyǔ shuǐpíng kǎoshì, 汉语水平考试), GB (guóbiāo, 国标), CIF价 (Cost, Insurance, Freight + 价 jià "price"), e家庭 "electronic home" (家庭 jiātīng "home"), W时代 "wireless generation" (时代 shídài "generation"), 的士call, TV族, 后РС时代 "post-PC era" (后 hòu "after/post-" + PC "personal computer" + 时代 shídài "epoch"), and so on.
Since the 20th century, another source of words has been Japanese using existing kanji (Chinese characters used in Japanese). Japanese re-molded European concepts and inventions into wasei-kango (和製漢語, lit. "Japanese-made Chinese"), and many of these words have been re-loaned into modern Chinese. Other terms were coined by the Japanese by giving new senses to existing Chinese terms or by referring to expressions used in classical Chinese literature. For example, jīngjì (经济／經濟, keizai), which in the original Chinese meant "the workings of the state", was narrowed to "economy" in Japanese; this narrowed definition was then re-imported into Chinese. As a result, these terms are virtually indistinguishable from native Chinese words: indeed, there is some dispute over some of these terms as to whether the Japanese or Chinese coined them first. As a result of this loaning, Chinese, Korean, Japanese, and Vietnamese share a corpus of linguistic terms describing modern terminology, paralleling the similar corpus of terms built from Greco-Latin and shared among European languages.
[edit]Education

See also: Chinese as a foreign language
With the growing importance and influence of China's economy globally, Mandarin instruction is gaining popularity in schools in the USA, and has become an increasingly popular subject of study amongst the young in the Western world, as in the UK.[19]
In 1991 there were 2,000 foreign learners taking China's official Chinese Proficiency Test (comparable to the English Cambridge Certificate), while in 2005, the number of candidates had risen sharply to 117,660.[20]
[edit]See also

China portal
Language portal
Chinese character
Chinese classifier
Chinese dialects
Chinese exclamative particles
Chinese honorifics
Chinese number gestures
Chinese numerals
Chinese punctuation
Classical Chinese grammar
Four-character idiom
Han unification
Haner language
HSK test
Languages of China
North American Conference on Chinese Linguistics
Nü shu
Regional differences in the Chinese language
[edit]References

Literature
DeFrancis, John (1984). The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy. University of Hawaii Press. ISBN 0-8248-1068-6.
Hannas, William C. (1997). Asia's Orthographic Dilemma. University of Hawaii Press. ISBN 0-8248-1892-X.
Norman, Jerry (1988). Chinese. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-29653-6.
Qiu, Xigui (2000). Chinese Writing. Society for the Study of Early China and Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California, Berkeley. ISBN 1-55729-071-7.
Ramsey, S. Robert (1987). The Languages of China. Princeton University Press. ISBN 0-691-01468-X.
Notes
^ Chinese language at Ethnologue (16th ed., 2009)
^ china-language.gov.cn (Chinese)
^ "Speak Mandarin Campaign". Retrieved 2011-08-09.
^ * David Crystal, The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987) , p. 312. "The mutual unintelligibility of the varieties is the main ground for referring to them as separate languages."
Charles N. Li, Sandra A. Thompson. Mandarin Chinese: A Functional Reference Grammar (1989), p 2. "The Chinese language family is genetically classified as an independent branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family."
Jerry Norman. Chinese (1988), p.1. "The modern Chinese dialects are really more like a family of language."
John DeFrancis. The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy (1984), p.56. "To call Chinese a single language composed of dialects with varying degrees of difference is to mislead by minimizing disparities that according to Chao are as great as those between English and Dutch. To call Chinese a family of languages is to suggest extralinguistic differences that in fact do not exist and to overlook the unique linguistic situation that exists in China."
^ Mair, Victor H. (1991). "What Is a Chinese "Dialect/Topolect"? Reflections on Some Key Sino-English Linguistic Terms" (PDF). Sino-Platonic Papers.
^ http://www.languagetutoring.co.uk/historyofmandarinchinese.html
^ Analysis of the concept "wave" in PST.
^ Encyclopædia Britannica s.v. "Chinese languages": "Old Chinese vocabulary already contained many words not generally occurring in the other Sino-Tibetan languages. The words for ‘honey' and ‘lion,' and probably also ‘horse,' ‘dog,' and ‘goose,' are connected with Indo-European and were acquired through trade and early contacts. (The nearest known Indo-European languages were Tocharian and Sogdian, a middle Iranian language.) A number of words have Austroasiatic cognates and point to early contacts with the ancestral language of Muong–Vietnamese and Mon–Khmer"; Jan Ulenbrook, Einige Übereinstimmungen zwischen dem Chinesischen und dem Indogermanischen (1967) proposes 57 items; see also Tsung-tung Chang, 1988 Indo-European Vocabulary in Old Chinese;.
^ *Sheng Ding and Robert A. Saunders, Talking Up China: An Analysis of China's Rising Cultural Power and Global Promotion of the Chinese Language EASTASIA, Summer 2006, Vol. 23, No. 2, pp. 4
^ Zhou, Minglang: Multilingualism in China: The Politics of Writing Reforms for Minority Languages, 1949–2002 (Walter de Gruyter 2003); ISBN 3-11-017896-6; pp.251–258.
^ Sohn, Ho-Min. The Korean Language (Section 1.5.3 "Korean vocabulary", p. 13), Cambridge University Press, 2001. ISBN 0-521-36943-6
^ Shibatani, Masayoshi. The Languages of Japan (Section 7.2 "Loan words", p.142), Cambridge University Press, 1990. ISBN 0-521-36918-5
^ McDonald, E. (25 March 2011). The '中国通' or the 'Sinophone'? Towards a political economy of Chinese language teaching. China Heritage Quarterly, Australian National University. The term 'sinophone' seems to have been coined separately and simultaneously on both sides of the Pacific: by Geremie Barmé in his 2005 essay 'On New Sinology';[4] and by Shu-Mei Shih in her 'Sinophone Articulations Across the Pacific',[5] and developed at greater length in a book by the same author.
^ a b DeFrancis, John (1984). "Idiolects, Dialects, Regionalects, and Languages". The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy. University of Hawaii Press. pp. 55–57.
^ DeFrancis (1984) p.42 counts Chinese as having 1,277 tonal syllables, and about 398 to 418 if tones are disregarded; he cites Jespersen, Otto (1928) Monosyllabism in English; London, p.15 for a count of over 8000 syllables for English.
^ DeFrancis (1984) p.42 counts Chinese as having 1,277 tonal syllables, and about 398 to 418 if tones are disregarded; he cites Otto Jespersen (Monosyllabism in English, London, 1928, p.15) for a count of over 8,000 syllables for English.
^ Terrell, Peter, ed. (2005). Langenscheidt Pocket Chinese Dictionary. Berlin and Munich: Langenscheidt KG. ISBN 1-58573-057-2.
^ *Dr. Timothy Uy and Jim Hsia, Editors, Webster's Digital Chinese Dictionary – Advanced Reference Edition, July 2009
^ "How hard is it to learn Chinese?". BBC News. January 17, 2006. Retrieved April 28, 2010.
^ (Chinese) "汉语水平考试中心：2005年外国考生总人数近12万",Gov.cn Xinhua News Agency, January 16, 2006.
[edit]Further reading

Shang wu yin shu kuan (1903). English and Chinese pronouncing dictionary. Shanghai: Commercial Press. Retrieved 2011-06-27.(Original from Harvard University)
ABC Chinese-English Comprehensive Dictionary. Editor: John de Francis. (2003) University of Hawaii Press. ISBN 0-8248-2766-X.
ABC Etymological Dictionary of Old Chinese. Axel Schuessler. 2007. University of Hawaii Press, Honolulu. ISBN 978-0-8248-2975-9.
Chinese Phrase Book, sinoplanet, 2009
Chinese for everyone: for all ages and learning styles. Marie- Laure de Shazer (2007), International edition.
[edit]External links

Chinese language edition of Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Classical Chinese texts – Chinese Text Project
Keys to the Chinese Language: Book II—Google Books
USA Foreign Service Institute Chinese basic course
Free Online Dictionary Look up Chinese, Pinyin or English; includes stroke animation and sound.
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mySwTPoFAhE Mandarin Chinese childrens story in simplified Chinese showing the stroke order for every character.
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Categories: Chinese languageSinologyIsolating languages
قس چینی
漢語，又称中文、汉文，其他名稱有唐文、中國語，唐話、中國話等[1]，是属汉藏语系的分析语，具有声调。汉语的文字系统——汉字是一种意音文字，表意的同時也具一定的表音功能。漢語包含書面語以及口語兩部分，古代書面汉语称为文言文，现代书面汉语一般指使用現代標準漢語語法，詞彙的中文通行文体。目前全球有五分一人口使用漢語作為母語。現代漢語書面語高度統一，口語則有官話 、吳語、湘語、贛語、客家話、粵語、閩語等七種主要方言。
目录 [显示]
[编辑]定义

[编辑]標準漢語
主条目：標準漢語
一般标准意義上，“漢語”這個詞，指現代標準漢語[來源請求] ，以北京話为标准语音、以北方官话为基础方言、以典範的現代白话文著作为语法规範。在非表音情況下，僅指現代白話文的書面語，其他的方言白話文不能作為書面語。中國中小學中教授漢語的文字、語法、文學等的科目叫語文、中文、國文等，都是中國語文科之謂。中国大陆的語文課，以普通話授課；在香港和澳門因為擁有自己的法律和行政權所以學校會以粵語授課
而在台灣則以正體字的國語授課。台灣之“國語”，此外,台灣是目前唯一以正體字為法定語言的地区。
而漢語作為一個語種是普通話以及国语、粵語、吳語、閩南語、客家話等語言的統稱。
漢語是联合国的六种正式語言和工作语文之一，亦為當今世界上作为母语使用人数最多的語言。在中华民国，中华人民共和国香港特别行政区，澳门特别行政区和新加坡，漢語被定為官方語言，而在中华人民共和国大陆地区作为非法定的行政用语。 很多國家都開始將漢語列為第二外語，加入授課內容。
[编辑]漢語方言
主条目：漢語方言
在2007年的国际认证 ISO 639-3 国际语种代号的编制中，国际标准化组织把汉语分为13种方言，cdo – 闽东方言，cjy – 晋方言，cmn – 官方言，cpx – 莆仙方言，czh – 徽方言，czo – 闽中方言，gan – 赣方言，hak – 客家方言，hsn – 湘方言，mnp – 闽北方言，nan – 闽南方言，wuu – 吴方言，yue – 粤方言。
目前，大陆以北京話為通用語言，台湾以国語為通用語言,兩者有一些不同之處. 同时在广东、香港與澳門等地区以及部份海外華人以粵語作為通用語，另外使用普通话、客家話、閩南話或其他家乡语言（漢语）的人会使用自己的母语作為交際通用語言。
[编辑]文體
汉语作为以语素文字为文字系统的语言，文字高度的统一与规范，现代汉语有统一和规范的语法。而汉字在表音上面更富於變化。在漫长的历史时期、廣袤的領土疆域內，汉字的读音有一定因時因地的變遷，并导致方言的產生。但是汉语书面语言规范，消除了因為方言差异造成的交流障碍。
白话文运动之前所使用的书面语叫做“文言”，是一种以上古汉语所使用的以“雅言”为基础的书面语。在现代汉语的书面语中，雖然文言已经很少使用了，但是在台灣、香港、澳門和中國大陸的中國語文教學中，文言文仍然佔有重要的地位。白话文运动之后所推动的书面汉语通常被称为“白话”，即以北方官話为基础的现代书面语。[來源請求]
文言文在古代的一些東亞、東南亞國家都是官方行文的標準，而現時東亞國家使用文言文亦可交流，但是這種傳統的語言因為使用者越來越少，而改為使用現代文體，及學習外語來交流。
[编辑]历史

汉语是世界上最古老和至今通用语言时间最长的语言之一。现代的中國人可以明白兩千年前孔子所寫的文章。
[编辑]上古汉语
主条目：上古汉语
相传黄帝时中原有“万国”，夏朝时还有三千国，周初分封八百诸侯，而“五方之民，言语不通”（《礼记·王制》）。上古汉语存在于周朝前期和中期（前11-前7世纪），文字记录有青铜器上的刻铭、《诗经》、历史书《书经》以及部分《易经》。春秋初期，见于记载的诸侯国还有170多个。至战国时期，形成“七雄”，“诸侯力政，不统于王，……言语异声，文字异形”（《说文解字·叙》）。先秦诸子百家在著作中使用被称为“雅言”的共同语。“子所雅言，《诗》、《书》、执礼，皆雅言也。”（《论语·述而》）秦统一天下之后，实行“车同轨，书同文，行同伦”，规范了文字，以小篆作为正式官方文字。
重构上古汉语发音的工作开始于清朝的语言学家。西方的古汉语先锋是瑞典的语言学家高本汉，他主要研究汉字的形式和诗经的韵律。
[编辑]中古汉语（文言）
主条目：中古汉语
这种汉语使用于隋朝、唐朝和宋朝（7-10世纪），可以分《切韵》（601年）涉及到的早期以及《广韵》（10世纪）所反映的晚期。高本汉把这个阶段称为“古代汉语”。
语言学家已能较自信地重构中古汉语的语音系统。这种证据来自几个方面：多样的现代方言、韵书以及对外语的翻译。
正如印欧语系的语言可以由现代印欧语言重构一样，中古汉语也可以由方言重建。另外，中国古代的文学家花费了很大的精力来总结汉语的语音体系，这些资料仍然是现代语言学家工作的基础。最后，汉语的语音可以从对外国语言的翻译中了解到。
[编辑]近代汉语（白话）
主条目：近代汉语
近代汉语是古代汉语与现代汉语之间以早期白话文献为代表的汉语。 《水浒传》《西游记》等书所用语言即为近代汉语。[來源請求]
請注意，此時的“近代漢語”，已經縮指為“近代北方漢語”，因為此時南方多數方言已經形成並與官話脫離，故此“近代音系”系僅指近代北方音系。
[编辑]现代汉语
主条目：現代標準漢語
现代汉语是以北方话为基础方言，以典范的现代白话文著作为语法规范的汉语。1913年，读音统一会通过投票方式确定了“国音”标准，这种标准音习惯上称之为“老国音”。1923年，当时的国语统一筹备会成立了“国音字典增修委员会”，决定采用北京语音标准，称之为“新国音”。
[编辑]使用現狀

世界上大約有五分之一人口以漢語為母語，主要集中在中國。同時在海外華人當中使用。不过，漢語方言之間不一定能互通，不同方言的人之間一般人會使用漢語標準語（大陸稱為普通話，台湾稱為國語、东南亚称为华语）來通話。在其他許多地區，也有很多學習者。
[编辑]系統

[编辑]汉语声调
汉语所有方言基本均为声调语言（吳語通常被看為由聲調語言向音高重音語言演化中），其声调在漫长的历史时期中不断地分化组合。在学术界，通常以“平上去入”四声作为基本声调分类。在平上去入四类的基础上，加上阴，阳，上，下等形容词作为清浊的标记。例如“阴入”，“阳入”，意为“清入声”和“浊入声”。其他以此类推。
汉语声调的变化，是推断古汉语语音的一个重要语音学证据。现存各方言中的声调调类和调值，也是推断此方言保留继承了那一历史时期的古汉语语音的最重要的语音学证据。
上古汉语的声调，现在学术界比较倾向于王力的“促舒四调”一说，舒声调有平声，上声，浊声调为长入，短入。
随后在两汉时期，去声大量从“浊上”这一声调中转化出来，被称为“浊上变去”。
在魏晋南北朝期间，汉语四声稳定为“平上去入”四声，但具体清浊调值则尚未研究清楚。此后，“平上去入”四声作为汉语的标准四声规范，一直沿用到宋元时期。
入声通常以−p，−t，−k为辅音结尾。但在宋代，三种辅音结尾开始界限模糊，出现了混合入声。随后在元代，官话方言逐渐形成，入声在华北等地的官话方言中消亡，原本唸入聲的字，分到了別的音裡面，例如：雪、白等，有時造成詩歌裡平仄分辨錯誤的狀況。但是同时期的南方方言和一些官话方言在南方地区的次级方言，仍然保留了入声。
到了明清，入声消亡的情形在北方地区进一步加剧，并且“平声”逐渐出现了清浊之分，是为“阴平”和“阳平”。到了现代，以北方方言为基础的大陆地区“普通话”，台湾地区“国语”，马来西亚和新加坡的“标准华语”，均没有入声。但是，这三种官方语言的声调为“阴平，阳平，上声，去声”，仍然为四声，只是此“四声”并非中古汉语“四声”。
汉语各方言可从其声调的类别和入声的存在和消亡程度粗略的推断出其保留了哪一时期的古汉语音韵结构。
其中，闽南语有 −p，−t，−k，，和模糊入声都有，证明闽南语历史上受到不同时期汉语音韵的多次重叠覆盖，可认为是较多的保留了上古并中古汉语音韵。 粤语中有−p，−t，−k，卻没有混合入声，但保留有极少见的“长入”和“短入”之分，并保留了中古汉语音韵。
客家话與赣语有−p，−t，−k，有入声韵尾，并保留中古汉语音韵。吴语和湘语都只有混合入声。
“官话方言”绝大多数次级方言都没有入声，学术界基本认定“官话方言”形成于宋元之后。[來源請求]
[编辑]汉语书面语
文言文和白话文都是汉语的书面语。
白话文运动之前所使用的书面语叫做“文言”，是一种以孔子时代所使用的以“雅言”为基础的书面语。白话文运动之后所推动的书面汉语通常被称为“白话”，即以北方官話为基础的现代书面语。在现代汉语的书面语中，文言已经很少使用了。[來源請求]
语言的特点也不是纯粹用时间作标准就可以划分开的，比如宋、元人的一些笔记小说，以及后来的一些白话小说，与现代汉语很相似，但同正式场合使用的文体不同。同样的，就在白话文运动以后，一些官方文书和文艺作品仍然采用文言文文体，另一些作品则介于两者之间。
[编辑]汉字
主条目：汉字
漢字是漢語書寫的最基本單元，其使用最晚始於商代，歷經甲骨文、大篆、小篆、隸書、楷書（草書、行書）諸般書體變化。秦始皇統一中國，李斯整理小篆，“書同文”的歷史從此開始。儘管漢語方言發音差異很大，但是書寫系統的統一減少了方言差異造成的交流障礙。汉字的书写也不尽相同，所以出现许多异体字，还有历朝历代规定一些避讳的汉字书写（改字，缺笔等），但一般不影响阅读。
東漢許慎在《說文解字》中將漢字構造規律概括為“六書”：象形、指事、會意、形聲、轉注、假借。其中，象形、指事、會意、形聲四項為造字原理，是“造字法”；而轉注、假借則為用字規律，是“用字法”。
三千餘年來，漢字的書寫方式變化不大，使得後人得以閱讀古文而不生窒礙。中國大陸將漢字筆劃參考異體字行書草書加以省簡，於1956年1月28日審訂通過《簡化字總表》，在中國大陸。馬來西亞及新加坡使用至今。[來源請求] 台灣、香港和澳門則一直使用傳統漢字（台湾亦稱正體中文）。
[编辑]汉语语法
主条目：汉语语法
汉语是一种分析语，汉语存在用于表达时间的副词（“昨日”、“以后”）以及一些表示不同动作状态的助词。助词也用来表达问句；现代标准汉语中问句的语序与陈述句的语序相同（主—谓—宾结构），只使用末尾的语气助词，例如在普通话中的“吗”，来表达疑问语气。名词的复数形式只在代词及多音节（指人）名词中出现。
因为没有曲折变化，汉语与欧洲语言，如罗曼语族语言相比，语法看似简单。然而，汉语语法中由词序、助词等所构成的句法复杂程度却又大大地超过了以拉丁语为例的曲折性语言。例如，汉语中存在“体”用于表达不同的时间发生的动作及其状态（目前这种看法存在分歧）。如“了”或“过”常用于表示已经发生的动作，但二者存在差别：第一个是指「完成式」，表示完成某件事，例如“我做完了這項工作”（I have finished this task），另一个却意味着「過去式」表示曾經做過某件事，并不与目前相关，例如“我做過這項工作”（I have done this task before）。汉语还有一套复杂的系统用于区分方向、可能以及动作是否成功，例如“走”及“走上来”、“打”及“打碎”、“看”及“看不懂”、“找”及“找到”。最后，现代标准汉语的名词与数词连接时通常要求有量词。因此必须说“兩條麵包”（two loaves of bread）而不是“兩麵包”（*two breads）。其中的“條”是一个量词。在汉语中有大量的量词，而且在现代标准汉语中每一个量词都对应一定的名词使用。
此外，漢語文言文中的助詞運用十分的多且複雜。例如:「有朋自遠方來，不亦樂乎」（孔子）其中的「乎」便是無意義的語尾助詞，「大去之期不遠矣」的「矣」亦是。
过去认为汉语方言间的语法区别不大，通过近二十年的工作，这个结论受到了挑战。在使用白话文之后，如果依照“普通话”，“国语”和标准华语所规定的以“北方白话文为语法规范”而书写，各地方言语法也是高度统一的。但是如果严格按照各地方言自身的“白话文”（即口语）来书写的话，将导致相互难以沟通。
目前，将本地方言白话文，而非北方白話文作为普遍书写习惯的地区有广东，香港和澳门。書寫粤语白话文在香港十分普遍，澳門社會亦受香港粵語影響，部份詞彙亦為通用澳門[2]。香港普遍的正式学校教育粤语授課，而粤语又能和官話對字的一個（即每個官話單字都可對應一個粵語單字），學校都教授学生写作标准的北方白話文文章，並符合現代漢語語法，能應對普通話，這樣不论身處那裡，習慣說那種文言的華人都能读能懂，政府、商界、民間官方文件和正式公文往來必以北方白話文行文。香港报章正文（如头版、本地、国际、财经等）大多以官話行文，其他副刊内文，如娱乐、体育等则適度以粤语入文，可见现代汉语与「粵語入文」仍有主次之分。很多香港居民和澳门居民在非正式书写时，会使用粤语白话文，相当多媒体也会使用粤语白话文。
[编辑]漢語詞類表
主条目：汉语语法#词类
实词，词汇中含有实际意义的词语
名詞：表示人或事物（包括具體事物、抽象事物、時間、處所、方位等）的名稱。
動詞：表示動作行為、發展變化、心理活動、可能意願等意義。
形容詞：表示事物的形狀、性質、狀態等。
副詞：用來修飾、限制動詞或形容詞，表示時間、頻率、範圍、語氣、程度等。
數詞：表示數目（包括確數、概數和序數）
量詞：表示事物或動作、行為的單位。
代詞：代替人和事物得分名稱，或起區別指示作用，或用來提問。
虚词，词汇中没有实际意义的词
介詞：用在名詞、代詞或名詞性短語前，同這些詞或短語一起表示時間、處所、方向、對象等。
連詞：用來連接詞、短語或句子，表示前後有並列、遞進、轉折、因果、假設等關係。
助詞：用來表示詞語之間的某種結構關係，或動作行為的狀態，或表示某種語氣。
嘆詞：表示感歎、呼喚、應答等聲音。
擬聲詞：模擬人或事物發出的聲音。
[编辑]短語結構類型表
並列短語：由兩個或兩個以上的名詞，動詞或形容片語合而成，詞與詞之間是並列關係，中間常用頓號或“和、及、又、與、並”等連詞。
報紙雜誌　老師和同學　改革開放　聽、說、讀、寫　雄偉壯麗　聰明、美麗又善良
偏正短語：由名詞、動詞或形容詞與它們前頭起修飾作用的片語合而成，其中名詞、動詞、形容詞是中心語，名詞前頭的修飾成分是定語，動詞、形容詞前頭的修飾成分是狀語。
我的老師　一位顧客　恭敬地鞠躬　完全相信　非常堅強　多麼可愛
動賓短語：由動詞與後面受動詞支配的成分組合而成，受動詞支配的成分是賓語。
敬畏生命　熱愛工作　上中學　登泰山　蓋房子　包餃子
動補短語：由動詞或形容詞與後面其補充作用的成分組合而成，常用“得”字表示，起補充作用的成分是補語。
洗得乾淨　打量一番　急得團團轉　休息一會兒　紅得發紫　好極了
主謂短語：由表示陳述和被陳述關係的兩個成分組合而成，表示被陳述物件的是主語，用來陳述的是謂語。
老師講課　精力充沛　露珠晶瑩　心情愉快　大家唱歌　我們回去
[编辑]句子成分見表
主語：句子中的陳述物件，說明是誰或什麼。
我們是一列數。
春天像剛落地的娃娃。
今年的春天來得太遲。
謂語：對句子的主語作陳述的成分，說明主語是說明或怎麼樣。
他是一個高而瘦的老人。
我們家的臺階低。
媽媽突然問我。
賓語：謂語動詞的支配成分，表示動作行為的物件，結果、處所、工具等。
敵人監視這葦塘。
我們家蓋了新房子。
妹妹正在上小學。
補語：謂語動詞的補充成分，補充說明動作行為的情況、結果、處所、數量、時間等。補語的標誌是“得”字。
水漲起來了。（補充漲的結果）
樹葉綠得發亮 （補充綠的程度）
我和母親走在前面 （補充走的處所）
她又在衣袋裡摸了半天。（補充摸的時間）
定語：句子中名詞中心語前頭的修飾成分，說明事物的性質、狀態、或限定事物的領屬、質料、數量等。定語的標誌是“的”字。
我們家的臺階有三級。
眼前的環境好像是一個夢。
年輕的信客也漸漸變老。
我國的石拱橋有悠久的歷史。
狀語：句子中動詞或形容詞中心語前頭的修飾成分，表示動作行為的方式、狀態、時間、處所或性狀的程度等。狀語的標誌是“地”字。
畫眉在樹林邊婉轉地歌唱。
天氣那麼暖和，那麼晴朗。
他們輕飄飄地浮在水上。
[编辑]漢語語言的各級單位
語素——詞——短語（片語）——句子（單句、複句）——句群——段——篇
語素是構成語言的最小單位，能獨立表達意義。分成單音節語素（例如：山、水、來、去等），和雙音節（如：蟋蟀、蚱蜢、沙發等不能分開的表達意義的詞），及多音節語素（如拖拉機等外來詞語）。
詞分成實詞（名詞、動詞、形容詞、代詞、數詞、量詞）和虛詞（副詞、介詞、助詞、擬聲詞、嘆詞、連詞）。
短語分成主謂短語、偏正短語、動宾短語、動補短語、並列短語。
句子分成單句（主謂句和非主謂句）和複句（單重複句和多重複句）。
主謂句是由主謂短語構成的。根據謂語的不同構成情況，主謂句分為：
動詞謂語句（由動詞和動詞性短語做謂語，如：“你改悔吧！”“我就往仙台的醫學專修學校去。”）
形容詞謂語句（由形容詞或形容詞性短語做謂語，如：“我母親的氣量大。”“我母親心裡又氣又急。”）
名詞謂語句（由名詞或名詞性短語做謂語，如：“每人一盞燈籠。”）
主謂謂語句（由主謂短語做謂語，如：“我的講義，你能抄下來麼？”）
非主謂句是由單個詞或主謂短語以外的短語構成的。非主謂句分為：
動詞非主謂句（由動詞或動詞性短語構成的，如：“站住！”。
形容詞非主謂句（由名詞或名詞性短語構成的，如：“好！”“實在標緻極了。”
名詞非主謂短語（由名詞或名詞性短語構成的，如：“飛機！”“多美的景色呀！”
複句是由兩個或兩個以上的單句構成的，根據分句之間的關係可分為：並列關係複句、遞進關係複句、選擇關係複句、轉折關係複句、假設關係複句和條件關係複句。
[编辑]汉语的地域分支

[编辑]方言与语言
在使用汉语的非语言学人士中，多数人都用“方言”来指称相互有差别的汉语。部分人主張將漢語視為一個包含一組親屬語言的語族。這種觀點也得到中國國内部分學者的支持[3]。
現在語言學上有兩種不同的觀點：一種認為漢語語族只有漢語一種語言；另一種認為漢語族包含閩語、粵語、客語、吳語、贛語、官話、湘語等七大語言（或者是閩語、粵語、客語、吳語、贛語、官話、湘語、晉語、徽語、平話），再加上閩語內部不能互通，所以閩語實際上是一類語言，而在語言學上的歸屬應該是閩語語群，其下的閩南語、閩東語、閩北語、閩中語和莆仙語則為單一語言。前一個觀點將閩語、粵語、客語、吳語、官話、晉語、贛語、湘語等列為漢語的方言；而後一種觀點認為漢語是一簇互相關聯的親屬語言。但即便按照后一種觀點，漢語依然是一門語言，即既是由一簇親屬語言組成的語族，綜合來看又是一門語言。還有說法主張白語（白族的語言）也屬於漢語族。
需要注意的是，西方學者之分析的普遍基準為拼音文字，故該觀點之於漢語（以及類似漢語的意音文字）的適用性尚可商榷。
瑞典著名汉学家高本汉在其著作《中国音韵学研究》中将朝鲜语、日本语、越南语等其他语言称作汉语的“域外方言”。这是作者在汉语研究的特殊条件下为贯彻历史比较语言学的方法而采用的比拟性质的简便说法。
[编辑]汉语的分支


汉民族各语言的分布
主条目：汉语方言
中國國内語言學家根據漢語分支的不同特點，把漢語劃分為傳統的七大方言[4]。在這七大方言內部，仍存在不同的次方言區。有時這些次方言區內的使用者也不能相互理解。在不同的方言區的人的語言意識也有一定的區別。例如，一個使用厦门话的厦门人可能會感到與操海南话的海口人有很多共同點，雖然他們可能在相互理解上存在些許的困难。
在華北官話、西北官話或者西南官話地區，各地区内相隔幾百公里的人一般也可以相互口頭交流；然而在中国南方的许多地区，尤其是山区，較小地理範圍内可能存在相互口語交流困難的方言。擧一個極端的例子，如福建闽东地区或温州瑞安、平阳、苍南等地，南吴方言、北吴方言、蛮话、闽语区交错，相隔只有十公里的當地居民也許已經不能自如地口頭交流了。
上古汉语
闽语


闽北语


邵将语



闽东语


闽中语


莆仙语

闽南语

泉漳片

泉州话


漳州话


廈門話


台湾话



潮州话


琼文

雷州话


海南话




中古汉语


晋语

官话

东北官话


北京官话（包括現代標準漢語）


胶辽官话


冀鲁官话


中原官话（包括东干话）


兰银官话


江淮官话


西南官话



吴语

徽语



北部吴语


南部吴语



湘语

新湘语


老湘语


客赣

赣语


客语


粤语

广州话（標準粵語）


台山话


疍家话


勾漏粤语


高阳粤语


广西平话




上古汉语的分化及各支方言的关系
[编辑]官話
主条目：官话
官话，或称官话方言、北方話等：指华北、东北及西北地區、湖北大部、四川、重庆、雲南、貴州、湖南北部、江西沿江地區、安徽大部、江蘇大部所使用的母語方言。官話大致分為華北官話、西北官話、西南官話、江淮官話，华北官话分布在北方东部，以北京話為代表，西北官話分佈在北方西部，以西安話為代表，西南官話分佈在南方西部，以成都話為代表，江淮官話分佈在南方東部，以扬州話為江淮話的代表。類似上古时期的中原雅音在五胡亂華、衣冠南渡后，分化成為中古汉语等语音。而现代“官话方言”，主要形成于明清时期。清朝官话在形成之后，在南北方分别发展，由分化成了南方官話和北方官話，北京話至今為現代標準漢語的基礎（中國大陸稱為普通話，臺灣目前仍被定義稱為國語）。使用這一方言的人占中國人口的70%。
需要指出的是，“官话方言”，过去曾经称为“北方方言”，現今并不局限于中国北方。相反，中国西南地区和江淮地区的南方方言也属于官话方言，但相对其他地区的北方方言，西南官话与江淮官话在官话区的可通行度相对较低，很多北方地区的官话使用者较难理解南方官话地区的使用者的语言，而反之则较容易。
官话的明顯特點包括：失落了全部中古入聲（除江淮官话及西南官话中的少部分小片以外，如灌赤片），中古漢語中的“−p，−t，−k，−m，−n，−ng”韻尾現在只剩下“−n，−ng”，并出現了大量兒化韻“−r”韻尾。原本連接“i，ü”韻母的“g，k，h”聲母已被顎音化成“j，q，x”聲母。官话話在失去清濁對立的過程中，沒有經過劇烈的聲調分化，但出現了中古平上去入以外的輕聲。因此，官话方言包含了大量的同音字以及相應産生的複合詞。
[编辑]吳語
主条目：吳語、上海話和蘇州話
吴语，或称吴方言：主要通行於中國江蘇南部、安徽南部、上海、浙江大部分地區、江西東北部和福建西北角，以及香港、日本九州島、美國三藩市等地說吳語的部分移民中間。典型的吳語以苏州话為代表。其中安徽东南部受贛語、江淮官话影响，浙江南部保留了较多古代百越語（百越族語言）特征，以至不能和作为典型吴语太湖片通话，使用人數大約為總人口的8.4%。最重要的特徵是中古全濁聲母仍保留濁音音位，比如「凍」、「痛」、「洞」的聲母分別[t]、[tʰ]、[d]（普通話「痛」的聲母清化為[t]），北部吳語儘管全濁聲母在起首或單唸時通常清化，即清音濁流，只在詞或語句中維持濁音，在南部吳語中濁音的表現形式一般為濁音濁流。吳語中的濁音聲母基本保留了中古漢語的特點，個數為8到11個，但受到北方官話的影響，吳語的聲母個數是漢語方言中最多的，一般為30個左右，而聲母最少的閩南話僅為16 個，粵語17個；吳語是以單元音為主體的方言。普通話中，ai，ei，ao，ou等都是雙元音韻母，發音的時候聲音拖得很長，而且口部很鬆，而吳語恰好相反，一般來說，對應普通話ai，ei，ao，ou的音，在吳語中分別是ɛ/ø,e,ɔ,o，都是單元音，並且發音的時候口形是比較緊的。絕大多數地區保留入聲韻（除東甌片、金衢片金華地區外，均收喉塞音[ʔ]）。
[编辑]客家話
主条目：客家话
客家话，或稱客語：在臺灣、東南亞、中國南方的客家人和絕大多數畲族廣泛使用，臺灣的新竹、苗栗及高雄、屏東一帶，東南亞包含馬來西亞等國的部分華人移民、中國南方則包括廣東東部（粵東）、北部（粵北）、福建西部（閩西）、江西南部、廣西東南部等地，以廣東梅縣話為代表。 雖然是一種南方漢語族方言，但客家話是在中國北方移民南下影響中形成的。客家話因而保留了一些中古中原話的特點。客家方言的特點是上聲，去聲不分陰陽，但平聲，入聲分陰陽。
[编辑]閩語
主条目：闽语
由於閩語的內部分歧比較大，通常分為闽南语（或称闽南方言，以廈門話為代表）、閩北話（以建瓯话为代表）、閩東話（以福州話為代表）、莆仙方言和閩中方言。其中以閩南語最具影响，闽南语在福建、海南、廣東東部、泰國、菲律賓、臺湾、新加坡、印尼、马来西亚、还有其他海外的華人中使用，分布泛圍甚廣。
閩南語是所有閩語方言中，唯一完全與中古漢語韻書存在直接對應的方言，但是，根据现有的语音学研究，闽南语的音系相当接近上古漢语的音系。
閩南語（狭义的，即閩台片闽南话）共有“−m，−n，−ng，−p，−t，−k，−ʔ”七種輔音韻尾。在入聲 [−p/−t/−k] 消失之前，先發生“入声弱化”，[−p/−t/−k] 全部變成 ʔ（山西方言仍保有這種弱化入聲）。閩南語是漢語中聲調较複雜的方言之一，泉州音有8個聲調（不含轻声），漳州音、厦门音、同安音、臺湾音通常有七個声调（不含轻声調、高聲調）。同時，閩南語也是保留中古漢語最完整的方言之一。泉州音和漳州音是其它支系的母语，閩（南）台片的閩南语内部较为一致。广义的闽南方言还包括海南话、潮州话、浙南闽语等。
[编辑]粵語
主条目：粵語、广州话和粵語白話文
粵语：以廣州話為標準，在廣東、香港、澳門、廣西的東部和海外華人中使用，中國的一些少數民族如京族、部分壯族也使用粵語。粵語是漢語眾多分支中聲調最複雜的一種。標準粵語有九個声调，某些方言如勾漏方言、桂南平話方言具有十个声调。粵語完整保留了中古漢語的 −p、−t、−k、−m、−n、−ng 六種輔音韻尾。[來源請求] 粤语没有混合入声，可以认为粤语中保留的古汉语成分要早于吴语，但晚于闽语，大約對應隋唐時期的中古漢語。[來源請求]，絕大部分漢字都有對應的粵語發音。粵語的口語和社會上普遍使用的現代漢語白話文在詞彙、語法上差別非常大，嚴重地存在文、言脫離現象。粵語有一套自己的書面的白話文表示方式，參見粵語白話文。然而在东南三音（吴、闽、粤）中，粤语相对受官话影响较大，是三音中唯一一个几乎可以和官话对字（即每個官话单字都可對應一個粵語单字）的一个。粵语內部具有多種方言，詳細請參看粵語方言。使用粵语的漢族人口大約為漢族人口總數的5%。海外華人特別是美洲、澳洲華人有相当一部分都是粵語區移民，普遍使用粵語。
[编辑]湘语
主条目：湘语
湘语，或称湘方言：使用者主要分布在湖南湘水及支系流域。湘语内部又可以按是否保留中浊声母分类，可分为老湘和新湘兩類，其中新湘語的全浊声母已基本清化。新湘语形成的时间不太长，其中受到过赣语以及北方移民的影响，在语音体系上体现出明显靠近官话的特征[5]。新湘语只有少数一些地方保留了全浊声母，而老湘语全浊声母保留相对完整，比如邵阳(蔡桥)方言共有33个声母，包括完整的浊擦音，浊塞音，浊塞擦音[6]。娄底方言:波[p],坡[pʰ],婆[b] 不同音。湘语分别以長沙話（新）及雙峰話（老）為代表，使用者約占總人口的5%。根据湘语主要城市人口统计湘语使用人口3596万，湖南总人口6440万，约占该省人口的56%[7]。
[编辑]赣语
主条目：贛語
赣语，或称赣方言：以南昌話為代表，主要用於江西大部、湖南東南部。使用人數約為2.4%。赣方言在音系上与客家方言十分接近，因此学术界有将赣客方言统一归类的提议。
[编辑]其他方言
下面的幾種方言是否構成獨立的大方言區，現在尚有爭議：
晋语：在山西绝大部分以及陕西北部、河北西部、河南西北部、内蒙古河套地区等地使用，以太原话为代表，有入声韵—— [−ʔ]（在入聲 [−p/−t/−k] 消失之前，先發生‘入声弱化’，[−p/−t/−k] 全部變成 [−ʔ]）。其白读系统与官话截然不同。以前（及现在的不少语言学学者）将其归于官话。
平话：在广西的部分地区使用。傳統上將桂南平话归于粤语，近年來有人主張將桂北平话当成孤立的土语存在。
徽語：在安徽南部及赣浙部分毗邻地区使用。以前（及现在的部分语言学学者）将其归于吳語。
[编辑]东干语
主条目：东干语
东干语为近代汉语中原官话和兰银官话在中国境外的特殊变体。融合了俄语、阿拉伯语、波斯语和突厥语等语言的部分词汇。
[编辑]影响

参见：外來詞#中文外來語
[编辑]对其它语言的影响
漢語也曾对其周边的国家的語言文字产生过重要影响，如日語、朝鲜語、越南語中都保留有大量的漢語借词以及漢語书写体系。在新词汇的产生过程中，亦对少数民族语言产生影响。如手机、信号等词被维吾尔语、苗语等少数民族语言借用。
[编辑]受其他語言的影響
在古代，随着佛教的传入，梵文对汉语的词汇产生过较小影响；近代特别是五四运动以后，和製漢語、俄語、英語詞彙大量傳入，語法也日漸受到英語等歐洲語言影響，形成了所谓歐化中文现象，这既部分适应了当代语言使用的需要，同时历来也招致民间和学术界不少尖锐的批评。目前汉语仍不断受到全球各种语言的复杂影响。汉语一脉相承，汉字汉化了所有的外来族群，超方言的汉字统一了中国，拼音字则不然。[8][9][10][11]
[编辑]参见

汉语族
[编辑]註解

^ 傳統華人社會習慣稱之為「漢語」，本文一律以漢族慣稱「漢語」來表示，國際間常稱中文。其他稱呼僅限特定人群使用，請另見相關條目。
^ 由於澳門長期受到香港文化影響，而且香港與澳門關係及交流密切，而且兩地文化相近，所以香港的用語絕大部份都通用於澳門
^ 参见李敬忠《语言演变论》，广州出版社，1994。ISBN 7-80592-204-7
^ 我国汉语七大方言区. 江山文艺广场. 2007-10-3 [2010-10-9] （简体中文）.
^ 湖南移民史
^ 张玉国：邵阳(蔡桥)方言研究
^ 《湖南省的汉语方言》
^ 语言定理：1786年威廉·琼斯爵士于提出，某些语言有着词汇、语法、构词法和语音使用上的相似性，因此它们必定是来自一个共同的祖语。现在流行的学术观念认为，…中国人也由非洲经中东印度越南经海上二三万年前到达，一二万年前已经遍布大陆，并越过白令海峡进入美洲。所以印度语言数量比中国的丰富，中国南方语言数量比北方的丰富。…这可以解释汉藏语系同源，汉语方言同源。语言进化论用树状图来理解、定位各语言的关系。
^ 隔离下：语言进化论又告诉我们，随着时间的流逝，那些成为分隔的词形就会越来越彼此趋异，从而在词汇中出现新词。如果从未发生过语言替换，则趋异就是语言变化的主要原因，而语言地图就会呈现出语言小单元的镶嵌图的形式。这种镶嵌形式在澳大利亚北部的士著语言中很显著（Colin Renfrew《世界的语言多样性》）。…这可以解释中国南方山区方言的格局，也可解释华夏文明初期，中华大地方国部落有如群星灿烂。
^ 交流下：会产生所谓语言联盟，即同一地区或毗邻地区通行的数种没有亲属关系的语言，由于长期接触，互相影响而获得语法、语音等方面的许多相似或共同特征。甚至音位和形态系统的相互渗透并无界限可言。如不同语系的数种巴尔干国家的语言，由于拜占庭文化在这个地区显示出的较强凝聚力和各语言间的相互影响、渗透，在长达几个世纪的接触中，不仅表现在词汇平面上，也表现在音位和形态、句法平面上，获得了被世人称为 "巴尔干语言特点" 的许多共同特征。…这可以解释汉字汉文化同质化了中国语言，同类化了日韩越语言。即使假定一些方言原本不是汉语也会汉化，如一种观念认为，客家话是选择了汉字才成为汉语的。
^ 语言替换：例如，奥塔戈大学的 C．F．W．Higham提出，（1）农业扩展带来语言替换的原因，…汉藏语系诸语言的扩展看来最初也是同黄河流域的粟和其它谷类植物的驯化有关，只是在更晚的时候才同稻的驯化有关。（2）在高度等级化的社会中，入侵的少数民族控制了权力杠杆并且以贵族自居，它赋予了它的语言以显赫的威望，以致诱导本地人宁愿采用征服者的语言而不愿使用其母语。在华南，…汉语仅仅在历史时期由于秦帝国的军事扩展才开始使用。阿尔泰语言，特别是突厥诸语言，是在更晚的时候由骑在马背上的游牧部族的精英统治带到遥远的地方的（Colin Renfrew《世界的语言多样性》）。…这可以解释今天多数中国人都觉得北京话好听，其实汉唐却是西京话、宋代是东京话、明代是南京话，因为它们相差很远，所以并非存在“好听”，只是“感觉”。[來源請求]
[编辑]參考資料

[编辑]參考字典、词典
新華字典
現代漢語詞典
國語大字典
BitEx中文（在线汉语词典）
汉典（在线汉语字典）
[编辑]英文資料
Hannas, William. C. 1997. Asia's Orthographic Dilemma. University of Hawaii Press. ISBN 0-8248-1892-X (paperback); ISBN 0-8248-1842-3 (hardcover)
DeFrancis, John. 1990. The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. ISBN 0-8248-1068-6
[编辑]外部链接

Cantonese Help Sheets 粤语教程
Chinese Characters Dictionary 支持日语、韩语、粤语等。
Online College of Chinese Language汉语远程学院教学网（中国国家汉办、华东师大合办）
Chinoesfera: learn chinese online（美洲与西班牙国际网站）
Online Chinese-Bulgarian & Bulgarian Chinese dictionay (中保-保中在线词典 - Българо-китайски & Китайско-български онлайн речник)
[编辑]汉语百科
汉典
龙维基

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