Chinese honorifics - For older people. 老朽 (lǎoxiǔ): I, who is old and unable 老夫 (lǎofū): I, who is old and respected 老汉 (lǎohàn): I, who is an old man 老拙 (lǎozhuó): I, who is old and clumsy 老衲 (lǎonà): I, the old monk Chinese honorifics - For kings. 孤 (gū): I, the ruler of a kingdom 寡 (guǎ): I, the ruler of a kingdom and with lesser virtue 不谷 (bù gǔ): I, the ruler ...

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Chinese honorifics, Chinese honorifics - Referring to oneself, Chinese honorifics - For older people, Chinese honorifics - For kings, Chinese honorifics - For government officials, Chinese honorifics - For scholars, Chinese honorifics - Addressing others, Chinese honorifics - Prefixes, Chinese honorifics - Suffixes

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Chinese language - Spoken Chinese
Chinese language - Language or language family?
Chinese language - Written Chinese
Chinese language - Chinese characters
Chinese language - History Chinese language - Influence on other languages Chinese language - Sounds Chinese language - Romanization Chinese language - Other Transcriptions Chinese language - Morphology
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The map on the right depicts the subdivisions ("languages" or "dialect groups") within Chinese. The traditionally recognized seven main groups, in order of population size are: Mandarin 北方话/北方話 or 官話/官话 (old name) Wu 吳/吴 Cantonese 粵/粤 Min 閩/闽 Xiang 湘 Hakka 客家 or 客 Gan 贛/赣 Chinese linguists have recently distinguished 3 more groups from the traditional seven: ...

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Chinese language, Chinese language - Spoken Chinese, Chinese language - Language or language family?, Chinese language - Written Chinese, Chinese language - Chinese characters, Chinese language - History, Chinese language - Influence on other languages, Chinese language - Sounds, Chinese language - Romanization, Chinese language - Other Transcriptions, Chinese language - Morphology, Chinese language - Loanwords, Chinese language - Grammar

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The map on the right depicts the subdivisions ("languages" or "dialect groups") within Chinese. The traditionally recognized seven main groups, in order of population size are: Mandarin 北方 or 官話/官话 (old name) Wu 吳/吴 Cantonese 粵/粤 Min 閩/闽 Xiang 湘 Hakka 客家 or 客 Gan 贛/赣 Chinese linguists have recently distinguished 3 more groups from the traditional seven: Jin 晉/晋 from Mandarin Hui 徽 from Wu ...

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Chinese language, Chinese language - Spoken Chinese, Chinese language - Language or language family?, Chinese language - Written Chinese, Chinese language - Chinese characters, Chinese language - History, Chinese language - Influence on other languages, Chinese language - Sounds, Chinese language - Romanization, Chinese language - Other Transcriptions, Chinese language - Morphology, Chinese language - Loanwords, Chinese language - Grammar

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The map on the right depicts the subdivisions ("languages" or "dialect groups") within Chinese. The traditionally recognized seven main groups, in order of population size are: Mandarin 官話/官话 or 北方方言(old name) Wu 吳/吴 Cantonese 粵/粤 Min 閩/闽 Xiang 湘 Hakka 客家 or 客 Gan 贛/赣 In parentheses above are the culturally dominant or representativ ...

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Chinese language, Chinese language - Spoken Chinese, Chinese language - Language or language family?, Chinese language - Written Chinese, Chinese language - Chinese characters, Chinese language - History, Chinese language - Influence on other languages, Chinese language - Sounds, Chinese language - Romanization, Chinese language - Other Transcriptions, Chinese language - Morphology, Chinese language - Loanwords, Chinese language - Grammar

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Throughout history Chinese culture and politics has had a great influence on unrelated languages such as Korean, Vietnamese, and Japanese. Korean and Japanese both have writing systems employing Chinese characters (Hanzi), which are called Hanja and Kanji, respectively. The Vietnamese term for Chinese writing is Han Tu. It was the only available form to write the Vietnamese until the 14th century, used almost exclusively by Chinese-educated Vietnamese elites. From the 14th till late 19th century, Vietnamese was written with Chu Nom, a ...

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Chinese language, Chinese language - Spoken Chinese, Chinese language - Language or language family?, Chinese language - Written Chinese, Chinese language - Chinese characters, Chinese language - History, Chinese language - Influence on other languages, Chinese language - Sounds, Chinese language - Romanization, Chinese language - Other Transcriptions, Chinese language - Morphology, Chinese language - Loanwords, Chinese language - Grammar

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In general, all spoken varieties of Chinese are isolating languages, in that they depend on syntax (word order and sentence structure) rather than morphology (changes in the form of the word through inflection). Because they are isolating languages, they make heavy use of grammatical particles to indicate aspect and mood. Chinese features Subject Verb Object word order, and like many other languages in East Asia, makes frequent use of the topic-comment construction to form sentences. Even though Chinese has no grammatical gender, it h ...

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Chinese language, Chinese language - Spoken Chinese, Chinese language - Language or language family?, Chinese language - Written Chinese, Chinese language - Chinese characters, Chinese language - History, Chinese language - Influence on other languages, Chinese language - Sounds, Chinese language - Romanization, Chinese language - Other Transcriptions, Chinese language - Morphology, Chinese language - Loanwords, Chinese language - Grammar

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Chinese morphology is strictly bound to a set number of syllables with a fairly rigid construction which are the morphemes, the smallest building blocks, of the language. Some of these single-syllable morphemes can stand alone as individual words, but contrary to what is often claimed, Chinese is not a monosyllabic language. Most words in the modern Chinese spoken varieties are in fact multisyllabic, consisting of more than one morphem ...

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Chinese language, Chinese language - Spoken Chinese, Chinese language - Language or language family?, Chinese language - Written Chinese, Chinese language - Chinese characters, Chinese language - History, Chinese language - Influence on other languages, Chinese language - Sounds, Chinese language - Romanization, Chinese language - Other Transcriptions, Chinese language - Morphology, Chinese language - Loanwords, Chinese language - Grammar

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The relationship among the Chinese spoken and written languages is complex. It is compounded by the fact that spoken variations evolved for centuries, since at least the late Han Dynasty, while written Chinese changed much less. Until the 20th century, most formal Chinese writing was done in wényán (文言), translated as Classical Chinese or Literary Chinese, which was very different from any spoken variety of Chinese, much as Classical Latin differs from modern Romance languages. Since the May Fourth Movement of 1919, the f ...

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Chinese language, Chinese language - Spoken Chinese, Chinese language - Language or language family?, Chinese language - Written Chinese, Chinese language - Chinese characters, Chinese language - History, Chinese language - Influence on other languages, Chinese language - Sounds, Chinese language - Romanization, Chinese language - Other Transcriptions, Chinese language - Morphology, Chinese language - Loanwords, Chinese language - Grammar

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Chinese languages have been phonetically transcribed into many other writing systems over the centuries. The phagsba script, for example, has been very helpful in reconstructing the pronunciation of pre-modern forms of Chinese. Zhuyin is still widely used in Taiwan's elementary schools. A comparison table of Zhuyin to Pinyin exists in the Zhuyin page. Syllables based on Pinyin and Zhuyin can also be compared by looking at the following pages: Pinyin table Zhuyin table There are also at least two systems of cyrillization ...

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Chinese language, Chinese language - Spoken Chinese, Chinese language - Language or language family?, Chinese language - Written Chinese, Chinese language - Chinese characters, Chinese language - History, Chinese language - Influence on other languages, Chinese language - Sounds, Chinese language - Romanization, Chinese language - Other Transcriptions, Chinese language - Morphology, Chinese language - Loanwords, Chinese language - Grammar

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Most linguists classify all of the variations of Chinese as part of the Sino-Tibetan language family and believe that there was an original language, called Proto-Sino-Tibetan, similar to Proto-Indo-European, from which the Sinitic and Tibeto-Burman languages descended. The relations between Chinese and other Sino-Tibetan languages are an area of active research, as is the attempt to reconstruct Proto-Sino-Tibetan. The main difficulty in this effort is that, while there is very good documentation that allows us to reconstruct the ancient sou ...

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Chinese language, Chinese language - Spoken Chinese, Chinese language - Language or language family?, Chinese language - Written Chinese, Chinese language - Chinese characters, Chinese language - History, Chinese language - Influence on other languages, Chinese language - Sounds, Chinese language - Romanization, Chinese language - Other Transcriptions, Chinese language - Morphology, Chinese language - Loanwords, Chinese language - Grammar

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The phonological structure of each syllable consists of a nucleus consisting of a vowel (which can be a monophthong, diphthong, or even a triphthong in certain varieties) with an optional onset or coda consonant as well as a tone. There are some instances where a vowel is not used as a nucleus. An example of this is in Cantonese, where the nasal sonorant consonants /m/ and /ŋ/ can stand alone as their own syllable. Across all t ...

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Chinese language, Chinese language - Spoken Chinese, Chinese language - Language or language family?, Chinese language - Written Chinese, Chinese language - Chinese characters, Chinese language - History, Chinese language - Influence on other languages, Chinese language - Sounds, Chinese language - Romanization, Chinese language - Other Transcriptions, Chinese language - Morphology, Chinese language - Loanwords, Chinese language - Grammar

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Romanization is the process of transcribing a language in the Latin alphabet. There are many systems of romanization for the Chinese languages; this is due to the complex history of interaction between China and the West, and to the Chinese languages' lack of phonetic transcription until modern times. Chinese is first known to have been written in Latin characters by Western Christian missionaries of the 16th century, but may be written down by West ...

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Chinese language, Chinese language - Spoken Chinese, Chinese language - Language or language family?, Chinese language - Written Chinese, Chinese language - Chinese characters, Chinese language - History, Chinese language - Influence on other languages, Chinese language - Sounds, Chinese language - Romanization, Chinese language - Other Transcriptions, Chinese language - Morphology, Chinese language - Loanwords, Chinese language - Grammar

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In imperial times, the pronoun for "I" is commonly omitted when speaking politely or to someone with higher social status. "I" is usually replaced with special pronouns to address specific situations. Examples include 寡人 guǎrén during early Chinese history and 朕 zhèn after the Qin dynasty when the Emperor is speaking to his subjects. When the subjects speak to the Emperor, they address th ...

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Chinese pronouns, Chinese pronouns - The possessive pronoun, Chinese pronouns - The reflexive pronoun, Chinese pronouns - Pronouns in imperial times and self-deprecatory, Chinese pronouns - Inclusive and exclusive first-person plural

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In Chinese, for the first-person plural there are usually two forms: 咱们 / 咱們 zánmen — the inclusive (i.e. "you and I", "we, including you") 我们 / 我們 wǒmen — the exclusive (i.e. "we, without you"). This distinction is not rigorously maintained by many speakers outside of the Beijing region, the tendency being to generalize the use of 我们 / 我們. ...

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Chinese pronouns, Chinese pronouns - The possessive pronoun, Chinese pronouns - The reflexive pronoun, Chinese pronouns - Pronouns in imperial times and self-deprecatory, Chinese pronouns - Inclusive and exclusive first-person plural

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