Facts of Chinese Language
The Chinese writing system is one of the oldest known written languages, some ancient Chinese writing date back to over 4,000 years ago. The written Chinese writing systems uses a logographic system (a series of symbols that represent a complete word or a phrase). The system consists a large Chinese symbols known as chracters.
The Chinese writing system is unique in many respects. There are two main languages in China: Mandarin Chinese and Cantoese Chinese. From these two languages sprouted many different dalects. The Chinese writing system was the one unifying element that brought all these languages into one standard written language. Spoken Chinese has changed remarkbly over the centuries, while Chinese writing has changed little from the ancient Chinese.
There are four distinct periods of chinese writing.
Jia-gu wen (Oracle Bone) 1500-1000 B.C. It is the earliest Chinese symblos that were etched onto tuttle shells and animals bones.
Da zhuan (Greater Seal). 1100-700 B.C. This script appeared mostly on cast bronze vessels.
Xiao zhuan (Lesser Seal). This version of Chiese caligraphy was the predecessor for the more stremlined version of modern writing. The lesser seal script was originally found on bamboo scrollsm, but also you can find on silk writings and landscape paintings.
Lis shu (Clerkly Sript). This is the modern Chinese writing system. This set of symbols became popular in part for tis flowing script that was fast and efficent to write.
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1950, China established the new simplified writing system. However, traditional writing system is still being used in Hongkong, Taiwan, Macau.
The Chinese symbols are beautifully drawn using caligraphy. Traditionally, the Chinese characters are written in columns. They are read from top to bottom and from right to left. In fact, Hanzi (Chinese characters) numbers more than 50,000 symbols. The People's Republic of Chinea introduced a program to simplify the language into a set of commonly used characters. The current writing system uses approximately 6,000 of these characters. Current chinese writing includes two main methods of writing symbols. the Wenyan method which uses classical chinese symbols, and the Baihua method which includes vemacular chinese symbols.
Spoken chinese: All Varieties of Chinese belong to the Sino-Tibetan family of languages and each one has its own dialects and sub-dialects. In all over 1.3 billion people speak on or more varieties of Chinese. All Varieties of Chinese are tonal. This means that each syllable can have number of different meanings depending on the intonation with which it is pronouced. For example Madarin has 4 tones, Cantonese has between 6 and 9 (it depends who you ask) and Taiwanese has 7 tones.
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More Language Differences:English is almost always written from left to right. However, Chinese can be written from top to bottom, right to left, as well as left to right. English has a significant number of polysyllabic words, one Chinese character is never longer than one syllable. The majority of Chinese words are made up of two characters, but Chinese words are not commonly tri- or polysyllabic. Chinese and English differ in terms of dialects, orthography, phonetics, grammar, and in many other important ways.
Links:
http://www.languagehelpers.com/languagefacts/chinese.html
http://www.ancientscripts.com/chinese.html
