Introduction
to the Chinese Language
Facts
Area:
9.600.000 km2
Population: 1.300 millones
Capital
:
Mandarin and Chinese dialects
Mandarin is the
only official language of the Popular Chinese Republic where putonghua
dominates
"the common
language". Mandarin has the most speakers in the world, approximately
1.500 million. It is spoken in China, Southeast Asia (Thailand, Malasia,
Singapore y Philippines).
Cantonese is a dialect
of the south of China. It is mainly spoken in the province of Guangdong,
Hong Kong, Macao and in the Chinese communities of foreign countries.
Writing
Here is an example:
Graphic
Evolution of the word (mountain) shan
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The Chinese language
uses ideograms. The oldest texts are recorded in the Jiaguwen
Chinese writing is
composed of around 6000 characters called hanzi
of
which only 3500 are used daily. Every character has one syllable.
In 1949 the government
of the Popular Republic of China adopted simplified Chinese characters
as an official writting
system. This system replaced the complex characters with simpler ones.
Therefore, writing with non simplified characters is called Traditional
Chinese
and is used in Taiwán,
Hong Kong, Macao and Malasia, and in other Chinese communities througout
the world.
Grammar
Chinese grammar is a lot
easier than English or Spanish. Chinese doesn't have a gender or a number.
The verbs are unchageable with all subjects and all tenses. For example
¨shi¨ the verb 'to be' - does not
change no matter what the subject, past of present.
This gives Chinese an
important advantage over other languages. As you can construct many
expression as soon as you know a certain number of word and manage some
grammatical rules which are really very simple.
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