Chinese Script and Language PDF

Origins of writing in China Most linguists believe that writing was invented in China during the latter half of the 2nd millenium BC and that there is no evidence to suggest the transmission of writing from elsewhere. The earliest recognisable examples of written Chinese date from 1500-950 BC (Shang...

Origins of writing in China Most linguists believe that writing was invented in China during the latter half of the 2nd millenium BC and that there is no evidence to suggest the transmission of writing from elsewhere. The earliest recognisable examples of written Chinese date from 1500-950 BC (Shang dynasty) and were inscribed on ox scapulae and turtle shells - "oracle bones". In 1899 a scholar from Beijing named Wang Yirong noticed symbols that looked like writing on some "dragon bones" which he had been prescribed by a pharmacy. At that time "dragon bones" were often used in Chinese medicine and were usually animal fossils. Many more "oracle bones" were found in the ruins of the Shang capital near Anyang in the north of Henan province. The script on these "oracle bones" is known as (jiăgŭwén) - literally "shell bone writing". They were used for divination, a process which involved heating them then inspecting the resulting cracks to determine to answers to one's questions. The bones were then inscribed with details of the questions and the answers. Most of the questions involved hunting, warfare, the weather and the selection of auspicious days for ceremonies. A collection of oracle bones in the National Palace Museum near Taipei. Recently archaeologists in China have unearthed many fragments of neolithic pottery, the oldest of which date from about 4800 BC, inscribed with symbols which could be a form of writing. None of these symbols resemble any of the Shang characters and the likelyhood of deciphering them is remote given the paucity of material. The Chinese writing system Chinese is written with characters which are known as 漢字 [汉字] (hànzi). The characters were originally pictures of people, animals or other things, but over the centuries they have become increasingly stylised and no longer resemble the things they represent. Many characters have been combined with others to create new ones. Until the early 20th century, Classical Chinese, 文言 (wényán), was the main form of writing in China. It was standardised during the late Han Dynasty (25-220 AD) and was also used in Korea, Japan and Vietnam before they developed their own writing systems. In spoken Chinese, words are made up of one, two or more syllables. Each of the syllables is written with a separate character. Each character has its own meaning, though many are used only in combination with other characters. Every character is given exactly the same amount of space, no matter how complex it is. There are no spaces between characters and the characters which make up multi-syllable words are not grouped together, so when reading Chinese, you not only have to work out what the characters mean and how to pronounce them, but also which characters belong together. How many characters? The Chinese writing system is an open-ended one, meaning that there is no upper limit to the number of characters. The largest Chinese dictionaries include about 56,000 characters, but most of them are archaic, obscure or rare variant forms. Knowledge of about 3,000 characters enables you to read about 99% of the characters used in Chinese newspapers and magazines. To read Chinese literature, technical writings or Classical Chinese though, you need to be familiar with at least 6,000 characters. A character may consist of between 1 and 64 stokes. The strokes are always written in the same direction and there is a set order to write the strokes of each character. In dictionaries, characters are ordered partly by the number of stokes they contain. Notes The 39-stroke character (3 x thunder) means "the sound of thunder" and is always written doubled (靐靐). The 48-stroke character (3 dragons) means "the appearance of a dragon walking". Use of Chinese characters for other languages Chinese characters are used to write Modern Standard Chinese, which is based largely on spoken Mandarin. Other varities of Chinese, especially Cantonese, are sometimes written with Chinese characters, or with a combination of characters and words in the Latin alphabet. Some of the characters used are archaic or invented specifically for these languages. Chinese characters have been used to write Japanese and Korean and Vietnamese. They are still used in written Japanese, in combination with hiragana and katakana, and to a much lesser in written Korean, while Vietnamese is now written with the Latin alphabet. Evolution of Chinese characters The images below illustrates how a number of Chinese characters have changed over time from their earliest known pictographic forms, to the versions used today. The Large Seal and Small Seal scripts are still used to write names on personal name chops, and are also occasionally used to write company names on buildings, stationery, namecards, etc. The Grass script (a.k.a. Cursive script) is used mainly for Chinese calligraphy. Each character is written with one continuous stroke, which enables very rapid writing, though characters written in this way are difficult to read. Legibility is not a primary concern for Chinese calligraphers, instead they aim to produce calligraphy that is aesthetically pleasing. The Simplified script (a.k.a. Simplified Chinese), was officially adopted in the People's Republic of China in 1949 in an effort to eradicate illiteracy. It is also used in Singapore. Small Seal Script (小篆) Clerical Script (隸書) Standard Script with zhùyīn fúhào (楷書) Running script (行書) Grass script Simplified characters (简体字) Hànyǔ pīnyīn (汉语拼音) Rénrén shēng ér zìyóu, zài zūnyán hé quánlì shàng yīlǜ píngdĕng. Tāmen fùyŏu lĭxìng hé liángxīn, bìng yīng yĭ xīongdì guānxì de jīngshén hùxiāng duìdài. Translation All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood. (Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights) Phonetic transcription of Chinese Many different ways have been devised to represent the sounds of spoken Chinese phonetically. Most use a version of the Latin/Roman alphabet and are known as 'romanization' or 'latinization'. The first people to attempt the romanization of Chinese were Jesuit missionaries mainly from Spain and Portugal who began to arrive in China during the early 16th century towards the end of the Ming dynasty. The first romanization systems were created by Matteo Ricci, in 1605, and Nicolas Trigault, in 1625, who used them only as an aid to study Mandarin. When Protestant missionaries were permitted to work in China after the Opium War of 1839-1842, at first they had to confine their activities to the coastal provinces of the southeast, where people didn't speak Mandarin and were mainly illiterate. The missionaries created romanization systems for many varieties of Chinese spoken in those areas, taught their converts to read and published millions of copies of religious works and other materials. At the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, there was a general discontent with the policies of the Manchu Qing dynasty which lead to calls for reform in many areas, including language. Many phonetic scripts were devised by Chinese patriots who saw them as a way of making China "wealthy and strong" again. There was also much debate about whether the transcription systems should be used in conjunction with Chinese characters to show their pronunciation, or whether they should replace the characters altogether. Another issue was which variety of Chinese should be represented by the transcription systems: some favoured Mandarin only, others argued that separate systems would need to be devised for other varieties of Chinese. Eventually it was decided that a northern dialect of Mandarin, as spoken by educated people in northern China, would be used as the basis for a new form of written Chinese. It also became the standard spoken language for the whole country. The new written form of Chinese was known as báihùa (plain language) and writers were encouraged to use it rather than Classical Chinese. Not all writers were keen to adopt the new style and to this day, a classical or semi-classical style is still used by some. Examples of Chinese phonetic transcription systems Hànyŭ Pīnyīn (Mandarin) Rénrén shēng ér zìyóu, zài zūnyán hé quánlì shàng yīlù píngděng. Tāmen fùyǒu lǐxìng hé liángxīn, bìng yīng yǐ xiōngdì guānxì de jīngshén hùxiāng duìdài. Wades-Giles (Mandarin) Jen2-jen2 sheng1 erh2 tzu4-yu2, tsai4 tsun1-yen2 he2 ch'üan2-li4 shang4 i1-lü4 p'ing2-teng3. T'a1-men fu4-yu3 li3- hsing4 he2 liang2-hsin1, ping4 ying1 i3 hsiung1-ti4 kuan1-hsi4 te ching1-shen2 hu4hsiang1 tui4-tai4 Yale (Cantonese) Yàhnyàhn sàangchēutlàih jauhhaih jihyàuh ge, hái jyùnyìhm tùhng kyùhnléih seuhng yātleuht pìhngdáng. Kéuihdeih geuihyáuh léihsing tùhng lèuhngsàm, yìhche yìnggòi yuhng hìngdaih ge gwàanhaih laih wuhsēung deuidoih. Zhuyin fuhao / Bopomofo (注音符號／ㄅㄆㄇㄈ) Zhuyin fuhao is a phonetic script used in dictionaries, children's books, text books for people learning Chinese and in some newspapers and magazines to show the pronunciation of the characters. It is also used to show the Taiwanese pronunciation of characters and to write Taiwanese words for which no characters exist. It was created in China between 1912 and 1913 by the Commission on the Unification of Pronunciation (讀音統一會), but was abandoned in favour of Hanyu Pinyin after 1949, and has been used in Taiwan since then. Major varieties of Chinese include: Pŭtōnghuà (Mandarin) Mandarin is spoken by possibly more people than any other language: over 1 billion. It is the main language of government, the media and education in China and Taiwan, and one of the four official languages in Singapore. Wú Wú is spoken in Zhejiang and Jiangsu provinces and in Shanghai and Hong Kong by about 77 million people. Major dialects of Wu include Shanghainese and Suzhou. Yuè (Cantonese) Cantonese is spoken by about 66 million people in Guangdong and Guangxi provinces and Hainan island in China, and also in Hong Kong, Macau, Singapore, Malaysia and many other countries Mĭn Nán (Southern Min) Mĭn Nán is in the south of Fujian province, Guangdong province, southern Hainan Island, in the south of Zhejiang and Jiangxi provinces, and also in Taiwan, Singapore and many other countries. Jìnyŭ Jinyu is spoken mainly in Shanxi province and also in Shanxi and Henan provinces by about 45 million people. It used to be considered as a dialect of Mandarin, but is now thought to be a separate variety of Chinese. Hakka Hakka is spoken in south eastern China, parts of Taiwan and in the New Territories of Hong Kong. There are also significant communities of Hakka speakers in such countries as the USA, French Guiana, Xiāng (Hunanese) Xiang (Hunanese) is spoken by about 25 million people in China, mainly in Hunan province, and also in Sichuan, Guangxi and Guangdong provinces. Gàn Gan is spoken by about 20.5 million people in Jiangxi province and in parts of Hubei, Anhui, Hunan and Fujian provinces. Mín Bĕi (Northern Min) Mín Bĕi has about 10,3 million speakers mainly in Northern Fujian Province and Singapore.Mín is the Classical Chinese name for Fujian province and Bĕi means 'north' or 'northern'. Mín Dōng (Eastern Min) Mín Dōng is spoken mainly in east central Fujian Province and also in Brunei, Indonesia (Java and Bali), Malaysia (Peninsular), Singapore, Thailand. The approximate number of native speakers is 250,000. Mín Zhōng (Central Min) Mín Zhōng is spoken mainly in central Fujian Province. Dungan (хуэйзў йүян) Dungan is spoken by the Muslim Hui people in China, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan. There are approximately 50,000 speakers. Dungan is the only variety of Chinese not with Chinese characters. Instead it is written with the Cyrillic alphabet. Pŭ-Xián Pŭ-Xián is spoken by about 6,000 people mainly in east central Fujian Province and in Malaysia and Singapore. Huīzhōu Huīzhōu is spoken in southern Anhui and northern Zhejiang provinces. It used to be considered as a dialect of Mandarin, but is now thought to be a separate variety of Chinese.