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Chinese Language: Please ExplainChin Communications is a specialist Chinese translation business; we often get asked to provide a translation (written) in 'Mandarin', or in 'Chinese' - we say "please explain". The reason is that there are two ways of writing Chinese, and one of them is not Mandarin. We hope that this brief introduction to Chinese Languages unlocks some of the mysteries. The language spoken by more people than any other - by about one-fifth of the world's population - is generally described as 'Chinese'. But Chinese, in fact, is not a single language and not all Chinese nationals speak 'Mandarin' (about two-thirds of the population has Mandarin as its native language). There are more than fifty different languages spoken in China. Despite this, we still refer to 'Chinese language' because Chinese people are part of the same cultural heritage. It is normal, therefore, to think of them speaking one language. MandarinThe Mandarin spoken in China since the 20th Century has been classified as based on the Beijing dialect, but it wasn't always the case. During the Ming Dynasty (1368 - 1644) when China's capital was Nanjing (1368 - 1420), 'Mandarin' was spoken but it was based on the Nanjing dialect and was the language spoken by the rulers - the language of the mandarins. The language, therefore, has evolved and changed through China's history and changes in rulers and place of government. Still, if you ask someone in Beijing if they can speak Mandarin, they will probably not understand you, as in China, the language is called 'putonghua' (the common language); if you are in Taipei they refer to Mandarin as 'guo yu' (national language); if you are overseas - 'hua yu' (Chinese language). Mandarin has served as a lingua franca in China since the fifteenth century. In 1956 the government issued a directive that all school instruction from primary to university be conducted in putonghua. Mandarin is the official language of the People's Republic of China and spoken throughout the country - it is the medium of education, and television and radio. Mandarin is also the official language of Taiwan, one of Singapore's and increasingly being spoken and studied in Hong Kong. In Australia (1996 census) Mandarin was 7th top language with Cantonese 3rd. In the 2001 Census Mandarin had made up ground and 'Chinese Languages' were the most spoken after English. See Chinese Languages Now Most Spoken in Australia for some of the 2001 Census findings. Varieties of Chinese language spoken are often referred to as dialects, eg Cantonese. This is not strictly true as Cantonese speakers cannot be understood by Mandarin speakers - they are separate languages, but unified by a common way of writing. The famous Chinese linguist, Yuan Ren Chao, classified eight major 'dialects' of Chinese. Some of these include:
It is difficult for most of us - monolingual Australians - to appreciate that many Chinese speak 2 or 3 Chinese languages - their mother tongue/s and then Mandarin. These languages are all written using the same Chinese characters - many spoken 'languages', one written. However, in addition to the character-based Chinese, some other languages in China have their own written scripts including Tibetan, Korean, Mongolian, Uyghur and Miao. 53 out of 55 ethnic minorities have their own spoken languages, and 21 have their own written languages. Of course, most of the members of these ethnic minorities also speak Mandarin and write Chinese characters. WritingCalligraphy, the elegant rendering of characters, is a highly cultivated art form, long prized in Chinese culture. Chinese characters evolved from simple drawings. It has been established that Chinese writing dates back to around 2000 B.C. to inscriptions on animal bones and tortoise shells - and to the birth of Chinese civilization in the Yellow River Valley. These 'oracle bone inscriptions' were used mainly for divination. A question was inscribed on the bone - say a scapula of a cow - and a prayer offered and heat applied to its back. The cracks that emerged were interpreted as divine messages and predictions. You can find examples in museums that date from 1700 BC. The first emperor of China, Qin Shihuang (221 - 207 BC), standardised the writing of Chinese characters by simplifying their shapes. At his time there were around 3,000 characters recorded which expanded to about 40,000 by the middle of the next millennium; most of these have been relegated to uncommon use in the 20th century. Read more about the first emperor: Chin Communications logo. Frequently during last century various movements in China advocated abolishing Chinese characters and introducing some form of alphabetic system. Reform of Chinese script has been practised since the People's Republic of China was established in 1949. Many Chinese characters have been simplified since 1949. The PRC's first official list of simplified characters was published in 1956 by the Committee on Language Reform, with a further edition in 1964 which contained 2238 simplified characters - about one-third of the seven or eight thousand characters one needs to write modern Chinese. Hence two ways of writing Chinese characters came about: the old or traditional and the new or simplified. A standard way of Romanising Chinese characters (i.e. using our alphabet) was also established - this is called Pinyin and it is visible in signs throughout China and in the English spelling of places and people's names. For educated mainlanders, one must still master both simplified and complex characters in order to be completely literate, for less educated and younger Chinese though, the ability to read the old complex characters is reducing. Other countries that used to write Chinese characters have also undergone reforms. Vietnam stopped using characters early in the 20th century; in North Korea they also disappeared while South Korea still uses some; Japan mixes characters with a phonetic system (they are usually simplified characters too). Taiwan and Hong Kong remain the only areas that use the old, complex characters. Since the Mainland Government simplified the writing of Chinese, through massive efforts to promote literacy, China's literacy rate has increased from 20-30% to 80-90% of the population. Who Speaks / Writes What Where?
#One of Singapore's official languages *Considered the lowest common denominator for published information, newspapers, etc, unless the audience is purely Mainland Chinese. Figures of Speech!
There is a lot of information on our web site about translation and interpreting: To see what happens when a translation does not go according to plan, see translation bloopers. Chin Communications is a specialist Chinese interpreting and translating company. Chin Communications provides interpreters and translators for work at senior levels including as Conference Interpreters and Translators for government and business in Australia and China. For more information email us: info@chincommunications.com.au [back to top] |
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