In the beginning there was........Chinese!
Chinese, Mandarin or Mandarin Chinese?
Is it a picture or what???
 

In the beginning there was.........Chinese!

The Chinese language has a long history, with written records going back as far as 3000 years ago. Surprisingly enough, the grammar, vocabulary and written system have not changed dramaticly over those years. What we now call "Chinese" is the language of the largest minority (90 %) in China, the Han. There are another seven languages in China, of which Cantonese, spoken in the south-eastern province of Guangdong and restaurants all over the world, is the best known. Lesser known are Minnanyu, a.k.a. Amoy and Kejiahua, a.k.a. Hakka. It's not surprising that there are numerous dialects among Putonghua, which can differ from village to village. The dialect spoken in Beijing is regarded as the one which resembles standard Chinese the best, although some say it's the Taipei dialect.
 

Chinese, Mandarin or Mandarin Chinese?

That is an excellent question. In English a person with a Chinese background will always say that he speaks Chinese, even though that may mean he speaks Cantonese, Taiwanese, Hakka, Shanghainese or the Beijing accented Mandarin.

According to Webster's dictionary Chinese is defined as "the standard language of the Chinese, based on Beijing speech," while Mandarin is defined as "the most widely spoken language of China, comprising a northern, an eastern, and a southwestern variety." Does that make things clearer? Not really.

And if you think that the Chinese themselves are very clear about the matter, then think again. At least four phrases are used to describe their language:

• Guo-yu = national language, written and spoken
• Hua-yu = Chinese language
• Pu-tong-hua = common language
• Zhong-wen = Chinese written language

I will stick with "Chinese" for these web pages, although it might be handy to remember that when you want to be really in the clear you better use "Mandarin Chinese" next time you ask a Chinese if he speaks "Chinese."

To give you an idea what some different kinds of Chinese sound like, here some examples......

Mandarin Chinese
Taiwanese
Cantonese
Hakka
 

Is it a picture or what???

One of the characteristics of Chinese, that makes it so different from other languages, is the fact that the written system is build up of characters, instead of the letters in the alphabet we know. There are, in total, some 50,000 different characters, of which only 5,000 are in daily use. Of course, many characters share the same meaning, or are used only in specific cases. Characters originate from pictographs, which are pictures resembling an object or idea. These pictures date back to the stone age, where men drew pictures of other men, water, fire, animals, etc., on cave walls. Most characters are build up of several components (radicals), who together express the meaning. For example: in the following character.... ......the left component resembles a woman, while the right resembles a child. A woman and a child together is regarded as good, hence the meaning of the character.

As you can see, you have to be quite inventive to see the meaning of a character from it's looks. Most characters have changed considerably in shape over the centuries and have been simplified too. In the People's Republic of China this simplification was done very drastically in the 1950s. As a result many characters were easier to remember and illiteracy dropped. However, many countries using the Chinese script haven't accepted this "communist simplification", so in Singapore, Hong Kong and Taiwan you will still find the traditional characters.

Another characteristic of Chinese is the limitation of syllables. In total there are only some 400 different syllable sounds to differenciate those 50,000 characters. This means that many characters share the same sound and, as a result, a lot of confusion can occure. For the foreign learner of Chinese this will probably be the greatest obstacle in his effort to understand the language. Chinese is also one of the few tonal languages in the world and this means that a sound can have different meanings, according to the tone in which it is pronounced. To prevent you from going crazy, words are usually build up of two or more characters. So different tones and character combinations give enough differenciation to avoid too much confusion.

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