[33], Although they used Chinese solely for written communication, each country had its own tradition of reading texts aloud, the so-called Sino-Xenic pronunciations. Chinese translation: 我不知道 (wǒ bù zhīdào) This phrase is fairly universal, and you can use it just like the way you use it in English or your native language. Chinese translation: 叫警察! Initials and finals, of course, combine to create the basic sounds of Chinese. Reflections on Some Key Sino-English Linguistic terms". For example, consider Beijing: "electric brain") for computer; 手机/手機 shǒujī (lit. (nǐ cháng lái zhè’er ma?). Sample Sentences 我 喜欢 吃 鱼 。 wǒ xǐhuan chī yú。 I like to eat fish. There are, however, transitional areas where varieties from different branches share enough features for some limited intelligibility, including New Xiang with Southwest Mandarin, Xuanzhou Wu with Lower Yangtze Mandarin, Jin with Central Plains Mandarin and certain divergent dialects of Hakka with Gan (though these are unintelligible with mainstream Hakka). It is an obstacle for education and literacy and has nevertheless been used for a vast treasury of literature. The difference in tonal systems is another reason why the different forms of Chinese are mutually unintelligible and are considered by many as separate languages. It can be divided into an early period, reflected by the Qieyun rime book (601 CE), and a late period in the 10th century, reflected by rhyme tables such as the Yunjing constructed by ancient Chinese philologists as a guide to the Qieyun system. [24] Sound change over time has steadily reduced the number of possible syllables. Make someone’s heart melt by telling them you love them in their native language. The entire Chinese character corpus since antiquity comprises well over 20,000 characters, of which only roughly 10,000 are now commonly in use. [7] A top-level branching into Chinese and Tibeto-Burman languages is often assumed, but has not been convincingly demonstrated. "blue tooth") for Bluetooth, and 网志/網誌 wǎngzhì (lit. [41] These varieties form a dialect continuum, in which differences in speech generally become more pronounced as distances increase, though the rate of change varies immensely. [43] In parts of Fujian the speech of neighboring counties or even villages may be mutually unintelligible. [76] However, vocabularies from different Chinese-speaking area have diverged, and the divergence can be observed in written Chinese. Chinese character inscriptions have been found in turtle shells dating back to the Shang dynasty 1 (1766-1123 BC) proving the written language has existed for more than 3,000 years. (nǐ yào bú yào gēn wǒ tiàowǔ). Some of these Latin character based systems are still being used to write various Chinese variants in the modern era.[79]. "electric speech"), built out of native Chinese morphemes, became prevalent (電話 is in fact from the Japanese 電話 denwa; see below for more Japanese loans). The Mandarin dialects in particular have experienced a dramatic decrease in sounds and so have far more multisyllabic words than most other spoken varieties. Most linguists now believe it represents a diasystem encompassing 6th-century northern and southern standards for reading the classics.[19]. This is how you can start answering that question. 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. Chinese translation: Duōshao qián? They are still pronounced differently in today's Cantonese; in Jyutping they are sap9, sat9, sik7, sek9, si4, sik9. Southern Min). (sshyeah-sshyeah) 谢 谢. … 在哪里. The culture in Asia takes great pride in showing politeness and courtesy wherever they go. [37] Many new compounds, or new meanings for old phrases, were created in the late 19th and early 20th centuries to name Western concepts and artifacts. Chinese translation: 請問 [请问] qǐngwén – to attract attention (“may I ask”). Feel free to save this so you can go over it once more when you have the time. Some words were borrowed from Buddhist scriptures, including 佛 Fó "Buddha" and 菩萨/菩薩 Púsà "bodhisattva." After the fall of the Northern Song dynasty and subsequent reign of the Jin (Jurchen) and Yuan (Mongol) dynasties in northern China, a common speech (now called Old Mandarin) developed based on the dialects of the North China Plain around the capital. Mandarin Chinese has four tones, but other Chinese languages have more. Since the 1950s, simplified Chinese characters have been promoted for use by the government of the People's Republic of China, while traditional characters remain in use in Taiwan and elsewhere. Today Japanese is written with a composite script using both Chinese characters (Kanji) and kana. As this system approximates the phonology of Mandarin Chinese into English consonants and vowels, i.e. Some early Indo-European loanwords in Chinese have been proposed, notably 蜜 mì "honey", 狮/獅 shī "lion," and perhaps also 马/馬 mǎ "horse", 猪/豬 zhū "pig", 犬 quǎn "dog", and 鹅/鵝 é "goose". Chinese is not a phonetic language and the characters do not bear any resemblance to actual pronunciation. Here are a few examples of Hanyu Pinyin and Wade–Giles, for comparison: Other systems of romanization for Chinese include Gwoyeu Romatzyh, the French EFEO, the Yale system (invented during WWII for U.S. troops), as well as separate systems for Cantonese, Min Nan, Hakka, and other Chinese varieties. Occasionally half-transliteration, half-translation compromises are accepted, such as 汉堡包/漢堡包 hànbǎobāo (漢堡 hànbǎo "Hamburg" + 包 bāo "bun") for "hamburger". 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. [18] The resulting system is very complex, with a large number of consonants and vowels, but they are probably not all distinguished in any single dialect. As an example, the small Langenscheidt Pocket Chinese Dictionary[71] lists six words that are commonly pronounced as shí (tone 2): 十 "ten"; 实/實 "real, actual"; 识/識 "know (a person), recognize"; 石 "stone"; 时/時 "time"; 食 "food, eat". Learning the Chinese alphabet is very important because its structure is used in every day conversation. "stone flower"), shíyóu 石油 "petroleum" (lit. In 100 CE, the famed Han dynasty scholar Xu Shen classified characters into six categories, namely pictographs, simple ideographs, compound ideographs, phonetic loans, phonetic compounds and derivative characters. 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. Chinese translation: Zhè shì shénme? The 'Phags-pa script, for example, has been very helpful in reconstructing the pronunciations of premodern forms of Chinese. Intro to Chinese Language 介绍中文 Sarah Kowalski 2. "food-thing"). The most comprehensive pure linguistic Chinese-language dictionary, the 12-volume Hanyu Da Cidian, records more than 23,000 head Chinese characters and gives over 370,000 definitions. After the 15th century, the efforts of Jesuits and Western court missionaries resulted in some Latin character transcription/writing systems, based on various variants of Chinese languages. Start learning Chinese. Chinese translation: 我愛你 [我爱你] (wǒ ài nǐ). Same goes for this. 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. Cantonese differs from Mandarin with some transliterations, such as 梳化 so1 faa3*2 "sofa" and 摩打 mo1 daa2 "motor". Qieyun, a rime dictionary, recorded a compromise between the pronunciations of different regions. Various other written styles are also used in Chinese calligraphy, including seal script, cursive script and clerical script. 你好吗. Contemporary colloquial Cantonese has distinct loanwords from English, such as 卡通 kaa1 tung1 "cartoon", 基佬 gei1 lou2 "gay people", 的士 dik1 si6*2 "taxi", and 巴士 baa1 si6*2 "bus". Another result of the English influence on Chinese is the appearance in Modern Chinese texts of so-called 字母词/字母詞 zìmǔcí (lit. Later, the United States soft influences gave rise to 迪斯科 dísikē/dísīkē "disco", 可乐/可樂 kělè "cola", and 迷你 mínǐ "mini [skirt]". Therefore, it is used in government agencies, in the media, and as a language of instruction in schools. This simplification presents syllables as homophones which really are none, and therefore exaggerates the number of homophones almost by a factor of four. Sign up to join this community. Most written Chinese documents in the modern time, especially the more formal ones, are created using the grammar and syntax of the Standard Mandarin Chinese variants, regardless of dialectical background of the author or targeted audience. 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