Varieties of Chinese

8/3/2019 Varieties of Chinese

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Edgar Tobias C

4970H268


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Language is not static. It is under constantchange.


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The language changes when the society hassome changes

Emergence of new concepts and disappearance

of old things


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Pronunciation and grammar change slowerthan vocabulary

New words emerge

kleenex, xerox New meaning is added to the old words

The meaning changes (shrinks)

Foreign words


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Variables:

age

sex

profession

social economical status


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Mandarin - Guanhua, an official languageused in the court, the language of officials

Guoyu - National language.

Putonghua - Common Speech, CommonLanguage

Huayu or Huawen Singapore or overseas

Hanwen used in Korea and Japan

Zhongguohua Languages in China Zhongwen alternative to Hanyu, focusing

on written language


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Hanyu is used by 720 million people

70% of the population of China speak Hanyu

One fifth of world population speak Hanyu (885

million ) 12.18.1973, U.N. General Assembly, 28th Session

resolution: Chinese is one of the workinglanguages of U.N.

Mandarin belongs to the Sino-Tibetan languagefamily

Mandarin will become the major language in Asiain the 21 century.


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Northern (Mandarin)-Beijing

Wu-Shanghai

Min Southern - Fuzhou

Min Northen - Xiamen

Yue (Cantonese)- Guangzhou

Kejia (Hakka)

Xiang - Changsha

Gan - Nanchang


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The number of syllables are limited: 432. Thereare 1376 syllables if all tonal variation is takeninto account. (Liu, 1957)

Vowels are predominant. There are four tones in Mandarin.


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The total number of syllables is 432 if tones arenot taken into consideration.

There are 1376 syllables if all tonal variation is

taken into account Examples:

a, ma, ba, ren, nong, ti, shang

(See Xiandai Hanyu Cidan, the syllable table, pp. 7-12)


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Vowels are predominant lo, mio, li

One syllable has at most two consonants

nng consonants: [n] and [ng] There are no consonant clusters

[sp] speak

[st] steak

[kst] text


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m m m m

mother hemp horse to scold


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There are five tones in Shanghai dialect.

There are nine tones in Cantonese dialect.


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(1980. p.149)

Sh sh shsh shsh, sh sh, sh sh sh sh. Shsh sh sh sh sh sh. Sh sh, sh sh shsh sh.

Sh sh, sh Shsh sh sh. Sh sh sh sh sh, shsh sh, shsh sh shsh sh. Sh sh sh sh shsh, sh sh sh. Sh sh sh, sh shsh sh sh sh.Sh sh sh, sh shsh sh sh sh sh. Sh sh, shsh sh sh shsh, sh sh sh. Sh sh sh sh.


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The poet Mr. Shi who lived in a stone house likedto eat lions. He swore that he would eat ten lions.He went to the market often to look for lions. Atten oclock, it happened that ten lions were in the

market. At that time, Mr. Shi happened to arrive inthe market too. Mr. Shi looked at the ten lions andhe shoot the ten lions with arrows. He picked thedead bodies of the ten lions and returned to hisstone house. The stone house was wet. He madethe servant to clean the room. After the room wascleaned, he began to try to eat these ten lions. Onlyby the time of eating, he found that these deadbodies of lions were actually stone lions. Try toexplain this story.


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losh xux xuxio yyun bozh

teacher to study school hospital newspaper


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y, clothing, to dress ch, vehicle rn, person r, sun jin, to see zh, er zhof


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bn


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When new words were introduced to Chinese,most words were translated into Chinese andthe new words were coined based on themeaning of each character.

telephone dinhu electric speech television dinsh electric vision computer dinno electric brain laser jgungactivated beam railway til iron road


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radar lid

model mtr

pound bng

shock xik

humor yum

cola kl

sofa shf


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Varieties of Chinese