A

Brief Introduction to the

Chinese

Language

• Several thousand years long history, ever changing, but never interrupted. • Belong to the “Sino-Tibetan” language system. • More people speak Chinese than any other language in the world. • One of the five official languages of UN. • About 2 million American residents are Chinese home speakers.

• 60% of Korean vocabulary comes from Chinese. • Written Japanese has several thousand characters borrowed from Chinese. • It has been estimated that until the 18th century more than half of the world's printed books were in Chinese.

• Yes! • It’s only one of the many dialects of Chinese (Yue Dialect). • The difference is mainly in pronunciation, slightly in vocabulary and grammar, but not in writing system.

• The Romanized phonetic spelling system created in 1950’s for Mandarin or standard Chinese (Putonghua) • It is based on Beijing Dialects, a branch of the Northern dialects of Chinese language • It uses 25 letters in English except “ V ”.

• Initials (consonants) 声母 • Finals (a vowel, or a combination of vowels, sometimes with a nasal at the end) 韵母

• Tones (four distinct and one light tones) 声调
• Each Chinese character corresponds to one syllable. A syllable is consist of an initial, a final and a tone.

b d g j z zh y w

p t k q c ch

m n h x s sh

f l

r

6 simple finals: 13 compound finals: 16 nasal finals:

a o e i u ü ai ao ei ia iao ie iou uai üe uei (ui) uo
8 front nasals: 8 back nasals:
(iu)

ou ua

an en ian in uan üan uen (un) ün ang eng iang ing iong ong uang ueng

er

High

Up

Low

Down

light

mā

má

mǎ

mà

ma

Mā ma qí mǎ， mǎ màn， mā mà mǎ.

妈妈骑马，马慢，妈骂马。
Mother is riding on a horse, the horse walks too slow, so mother curses it.

Zhōng Guó

Měi Guó 美国 USA

中国
China

Běi Jīng 北 京 Nán Jīng 南京 Dōng Jīng 东京
Běi kǎ luó lái nà 北卡罗莱纳