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A Brief Introduction of Chinese Language

This document provides an overview of the Chinese language. It discusses that Chinese has a long history of several thousand years. It is one of the major languages in the world with the largest number of speakers. The document explains some key terms related to Chinese dialects and the writing system. It describes the evolution of Chinese characters from oracle bone script to modern simplified characters. It also summarizes the main principles of how Chinese characters are constructed and discusses Chinese phonetics, grammar, and word formation. Overall, the document gives a brief introduction to the fundamental aspects of the Chinese language.

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Luiselza Pinto
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388 views

A Brief Introduction of Chinese Language

This document provides an overview of the Chinese language. It discusses that Chinese has a long history of several thousand years. It is one of the major languages in the world with the largest number of speakers. The document explains some key terms related to Chinese dialects and the writing system. It describes the evolution of Chinese characters from oracle bone script to modern simplified characters. It also summarizes the main principles of how Chinese characters are constructed and discusses Chinese phonetics, grammar, and word formation. Overall, the document gives a brief introduction to the fundamental aspects of the Chinese language.

Uploaded by

Luiselza Pinto
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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A Brief Introduction to the

Chinese Language

Keqian Xu, Ph.D.


Professor of Chinese Literature and Culture,
Nanjing Normal University,
Visiting Professor and deputy director of
the Confucius Institute at NCSU
[email protected]
A very old yet still living language:
„ Several thousand years long history, ever
changing, but never interrupted.
„ Belong to the “Sino-Tibetan” language
system.
„ More people speak Chinese than any other
language in the world.
„ One of the five official languages of UN.
„ About 2 million American residents are
Chinese home speakers.
„ 60% of Korean vocabulary comes from
Chinese.
„ Written Japanese has several thousand
characters borrowed from Chinese.
„ It has been estimated that until the 18th
century more than half of the world's
printed books were in Chinese.
Some confusing terms：

„ ChineseLanguage 中文
„ Hanyu 汉语
„ Mandarin 官话
„ Putonghua 普通话
Is Cantonese Chinese?
„ Yes!
„ It’sonly one of the many dialects of
Chinese (Yue Dialect).
„ The difference is mainly in pronunciation,
slightly in vocabulary and grammar, but
not in writing system.
The Map of Chinese Dialects

„ Northern
„ Wu
„ Yue
„ Min
„ Xiang
„ Gan
„ Hakka
What is “Pin Yin”?
„ The Romanized phonetic spelling system
created in 1950’s for Mandarin or standard
Chinese (Putonghua)
„ It is based on Beijing Dialects, a branch of
the Northern dialects of Chinese language
„ It uses 25 letters in English except “ V ”.
Chinese (Mandarin) Phonetics
„ Initials (consonants)
„ Finals (a vowel, or a combination of vowels,
sometimes with a nasal at the end)
„ Tones (four distinct and one light tones)
„ Each Chinese character corresponds to one
syllable. A syllable is consist of an initial, a final
and a tone.
21 initials (consonants)
Voiceless Voiced
Unaspirated Aspirated Nasal
fricative fricative

Labial b p m f
Alveolar d t n l
Velar g k h
Palatal j q x
Dental
sibilant z c s
Retroflex zh ch sh r

y w
35 finals
6 simple
finals: a o e i u ü

13
ai ao ei ia iao ie iou (iu) ou ua
compound
finals: uai üe uei (ui) uo
8 front an en ian in uan üan
nasals: uen (un) ün
16 nasal
finals:
8 back ang eng iang ing iong
nasals: ong uang ueng
er
4 tones，and a light tone

High Up Low Down light

mā má mǎ mà ma
Māma qí mǎ， mǎ màn， mā mà mǎ.

妈 妈 骑 马，马 慢， 妈 骂 马。

Mother is riding on a horse, the horse walks


too slow, so mother curses it.
„ Combinations of initials and finals, plus
several special cases, result in 411
possible combinations.
„ Applying the four tones, we get a total of
around 1,600 unique syllables.
Zhōng Guó Měi Guó
中 国 美 国
China USA
Běi Jīng 北京
Nán Jīng 南京
Dōng Jīng 东京

Běi kǎ luó lái nà 北卡罗来纳


Why not use “Pin Yin” to replace Chinese
characters as Chinese writing system?

„ Impossible! Because there are too many


homophonic characters.
„ Zhao Yuanren, a famous Chinese linguist,
wrote an article entitled 施氏食狮史( The
Story of Mr. Shi Ate a Lion), the whole
article only use one syllable “shi”.
When did the earliest Chinese
Characters appeared?
„ No later than 14 century B.C.
„ Oracle-bone inscriptions of the Shang
Dynasty (1600-1028 B.C.)
Inscription on tripod
vessels
Large seal script
(1100-256 BC)
Inscription on
stone stele,
Qin Dynasty
(221B.C.-206 B.C )
small seal
script
“Li shu” or Clerical
script:
Han Dynasty (220
B.C.-206 A.D.)
„ “KaiShu” , the
standard script
Tang Dynasty
(618-907)
The evolution of Chinese Characters.

Oracle Large Small Clerical Standard Running Grass Simplified


bone seal seal script script script script script
script script script (207 BC-
BC- (Since (Since (Since (Since
(1400-
(1400- (1100-
(1100- (221-
(221- 220 AD) 207 BC) 207 BC) 207 BC) 1949)
1200 BC) 256 BC) 207 BC)

Human
rén
Mountain
shān
Sun rì
Horse Mǎ
Are all the Chinese characters
pictographs？

„ No! Only some basic words are.


„ Chinese works pictographically as well as
phonetically.
How do Chinese characters
constructed?
„ Xu Shen，a scholar lived in Han Dynasty,
summarized “Six Ways” :指事、象形、形声、
会意、转注、假借
„ Later scholars pointed out that only the
first 4 are the principle of constructing
Chinese characters, the rest two are ways
of using them.
The Main 4 Principles for Character
Construction:

„ Pictographs (≈4%)
„ Ideographs (≈1%)
„ Logical Aggregates (≈13%)
„ Phonetic Complexes (≈82%)
Pictographs:
Represent real-life objects by drawings (≈4%)
– Animal, plants, parts of the body etc.
– Example (Scripts from oracle bone)

zHorse 马 zBig，great大
zHuman 人 zHand 手
zSun 日 zKnife 刀
zMountain 山 zTree，wood 木
Ideographs：
Represent positional and numeral
concepts by indication (≈1%)
Example:

z一 二 三 zHeaven 天
z 上 下
z 本 末 z Separate 分
Logical Aggregates:
Form a new meaning by combining the meanings of two
or more characters (≈13%)
Example
„ Wood 木 Small Forest 林 Big Forest 森
„ Person 人 Small Group 从 Large Group 众

„ Person 人＋Ground 土＝ Sit 坐

„ 手 + 分 + 手 ＝ 掰 Hand + To separate +
Hand ＝ To separate sth with two hands
Phonetic Complexes
Form a character by combining the meaning of one
character and the pronunciation of another character
(≈82%)

Example：

„江 河 湖 海 流 沐 潮
„椅 杆 杨 桐 案 架 梨
„妈 码 玛 骂 蚂 吗 犸
„驴 骡 骆 驾 驶 骑 驻
9 basic
stokes 书
How many Chinese characters in all ?
„ 9,353 in 1st century C.E. （《说文解字》）
„ 47,043 in 1716（《康熙字典》）
„ ~60,000 in 1990
„ Occurrence
ƒ 1,000 characters 90%
ƒ 2,400 characters 99%
ƒ 3,800 characters 99.9%
ƒ 6,600 characters 99.999%
300 of the most common characters will help you
survive in Chinese daily life.
Chinese word building：
„ Some words are single syllable (one
character)
„ Majority words in modern Chinese are
double syllable (two characters)
„ Some words are multi-syllable (three or
more characters)
学（xué）：learn，study
„ 学校 school „ 学者 scholar
„ 小学 primary school „ 奖学金 scholarship
„ 中学 secondary school „ 哲学 philosophy
„ 大学 university „ 科学 science
„ 学院 college „ 物理学 physics
„ 学生 student „ 形而上学 metaphysics
„ 学分 credit „ 人类学 anthropology
„ 学费 tuition „ 医学 medicine
„ 学期 semester „ 汉学 sinology
Strong capability in make new words:

电（diàn）：thunder flash，electricity
„ 电力 electricity power „ 电池 battery
„ 发电站 power plant „ 电视 TV
„ 电灯 electric light „ 彩电 color TV
„ 电车 trolley bus „ 电脑 computer
„ 电话 telephone „ 电子邮件 E-mail
„ 电影 movie
Is Chinese grammar complex ?
„ Not any more complex in general compare
with other languages. Some aspects are
even much simpler.
„ Main features:
– No inflection of nouns, verbs，etc.
– The order of words is more important.
– Functional empty words.
– Many measure words.
English: Chinese:
to be ----- am, is, are, always “ 是” （shì）.
was, were, been, being,
have been,

study，studied, always “ 学习 ” （xué


studying xí）.
„ 我在姑妈家。 I am in auntie's home.
„ 姑妈在我家。Auntie is in my home.
„ 我姑妈在家。My auntie is at home.
„ 我家姑妈在。My auntie is right here.
Learning Chinese：A rewardable
long-term investment
„ If my kids were of very young ages
today, I would be asking them, and
encouraging them, to learn Chinese.
(Howard Schultz，Chairman, Starbucks - Seattle Times,
12/25/2005)

„ If you want to get ahead, learn


Mandarin…learning Chinese will
provide an edge in the 21st.
(Time magazine, June 19, 2006).
Some useful internet resource
index web pages:
„ Ocrat.com http://www.ocrat.com/
„ Leaning Chinese Online
http://www.csulb.edu/~txie/online.htm
„ MERLOT (Multimedia Educational
Resource for Learning and Online Teaching)
http://www.merlot.org
Thank you!

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