Expand the list of the Key Concepts and Facts for Unit 3 (Anyone who finds errors or typos in
this list, please make your corrections by sending your email message to
csulbchn260@gmail.com)
9/24 version
1.
Mandarin is spoken by around 720 million people in China and 885 million people
worldwide.
2.
Mandarin, belongs to an independent branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family. This
includes several major subfamilies: Tibetan, spoken in Tibet; Lolo-Burmese, in Burma, and
in discontinuous parts of southern China.
3.
The major linguistic variants (dialects) within Chinese are Northen, Wu , Min (Southern and
Northern), Yue (Cantonese), Xiang (Hunan), Gan (Jiangxi) and and Hakka (Kejia). Dialects
are not mutually intelligible.
4.
Due to the existence of various dialects and the problems of communication, in the early
years of the twentieth century serious efforts were undertaken to provide the masses with a
form of the language that could be understood by all. In 1930’s Guoyu was standardized and
it has been used since then. It is still used in Taiwan now.
5.
In 1956 with the adoption of Modern Standard Chinese whose model for pronunciation is
the Beijing dialect of Mandarin, and for grammar the regional variant of Northern
Mandarin, and for its lexicon the modern vernacular literature. This is Putonghua in the
People’s Republic of China.
6.
In Singapore, it is called Huayu. Therefore, Putonghua, Guoyu and Huayu are three variants
of Mandarin Chinese.
7.
The classical Chinese was gradually replaced by vernacular language, an easy-to-understand
form.
8.
The number of syllables in mandarin is limited to 432. If all tonal variation is taken into
account the total number of tones is 1376.
9.
Mandarin is a tonal language in which each stressed syllable has a significant contrastive
pitch which is an integral part of the syllable.
10. Modern Chinese language is largely disyllabic in word structure in contrast to classical
Chinese (mono syllabic).
11. Chinese characters were developed around 4,000 years ago.
12. Because Chinese characters are ideographic, speakers of all Chinese languages/dialects can
read and understand Chinese writing and literature.
13. The earliest form of script was in the form of short oracle inscriptions. The writing system is
called oracle bone script.
14. Although there are tens of thousands of character in the Chinese language, you only have to
know around 3,000 to be able to read a newspaper.
15. There are currently two systems for Chinese characters. The traditional system, still used in
Hong Kong, Taiwan, Macau and Chinese speaking communities 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.
16. Part of the reform movement included the simplification of the traditional characters and the
formation and dissemination of a phonetic alphabet, known as Pinyin. Pinyin is an official
Romanization, which has become widespread throughout China, and which has received
official encouragement.
17. Wade-Gile Romanized spelling system was developed by Western missionaries.
18. Westerners sometimes have difficulty with some Pinyin letters. The actual pronunciation of
‘x’, ‘q’ and some other sounds often confuse learners.
19. When new words are introduced most are translated into Chinese and new words are coined
based on the meaning of each character.
20. 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.
21. Chinese has absorbed a sizable number of loanwords from other cultures. Direct phonetic
borrowing of foreign words has gone on since ancient times, such as hanbaobao for
"hamburger", saibaiwei for Subway restaurant.
22. China has a unique set of aspects which are features of grammar that gives information
about the temporal flow of language, such as 了（-le）,过( -guo) and 着（-zhe）.
23. Chinese is a topic-prominent language which focuses on topics rather than grammatical
subjects.