DLI-Chinese/Introduction.xml

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    <title>Introduction</title>
    <subtitle>ABOUT CHINESE</subtitle>
    <formalpara>
        <title>The Chinese Languages</title>
        <para> We find it perfectly natural to talk about a language called 'Chinese.' We say, for
            example, that the people of China speak different dialects of Chinese, and that
            Confucius wrote in an ancient form of Chinese. On the other hand, we would never think
            of saying that the people of Italy, France, Spain, and Portugal speak dialects of one
            language, and that Julius Caesar wrote in an ancient form of that language, but the
            facts are almost exactly parallel. </para>
    </formalpara>
    <para>In terms, then, of what we think of as a language when closer to home, 'Chinese' is not
        one language, but a family of languages. The language of Confucius is part-way up the stem
        of the family tree. Like Latin, it is a language which lived on as a literary language long
        after its death as the language of the classics. The seven modern languages of China,
        traditionally the 'dialects,' are on the branches of the tree. They share as strong a family
        resemblance as do Italian, French, Spanish, and Portuguese, and are about as different from
        one another. </para>
    <para>The predominant language o£ China is now known as <foreignphrase
            xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin">pǔtōnghuà</foreignphrase>, or 'Standard Chinese' literally
        'the common speech.' The more traditional term, still used in Taiwan, is <foreignphrase
            xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin">Guóyǔ</foreignphrase>, or 'Mandarin', literally 'the national
        language.' Standard Chinese is spoken natively by almost two-thirds of the population and
        throughout :te greater part of the country.</para>
    <formalpara>
        <title>Standard Chinese</title>
        <para>Standard Chinese The term 'Standard Chinese' is often used more narrowly to refer to
            the true national language which is emerging. This national language, which is already
            the language of all national broadcasting, is based primarily on the Peking dialect but
            takes on elements from other dialects of Standard Chinese and even from other Chinese
            languages. Like many national languages, it is more widely understood than spoken, and
            often spoken with some concessions to local speech,particularly in pronunciation.
        </para>
    </formalpara>
    <para>The Chinese languages and their dialects differ far more in pronunciation than in grammar
        or vocabulary. What distinguishes Standard Chinese most from the other Chinese languages,
        for example, is that it has the fewest tones and the fewest final consonants.</para>
    <para> The remaining six Chinese languages, together spoken by approximately a quarter of the
        population, are tightly grouped in the southeast, below the Yangtze River. These are: the
            <foreignphrase xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin">wú</foreignphrase> language (<foreignphrase
            xml:lang="cmn-Hani">吴</foreignphrase>),including the ' Shanghai dialect.' Hunanese
            (<foreignphrase xml:lang="cmn-Hani">湘</foreignphrase>
        <foreignphrase xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin">xiāng</foreignphrase>)； the Gan language
            (<foreignphrase xml:lang="cmn-Hani">籍</foreignphrase>
        <foreignphrase xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin">gàn</foreignphrase>), spoken in Kangsi province;
        Cantonese (<foreignphrase xml:lang="cmn-Hani">粤</foreignphrase>
        <foreignphrase xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin">yuè</foreignphrase>), the language of Kuangtong
        province and widely spoken in Chinese communities in the United States; Fukienese
            (<foreignphrase xml:lang="cmn-Hani">闽</foreignphrase>
        <foreignphrase xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin">mǐn</foreignphrase>), a variant of which is spoken
        by the majority of Taiwan and hence called Taiwanese; and Hakka (<foreignphrase
            xml:lang="cmn-Hani">客家</foreignphrase>
        <foreignphrase xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin">kèjiā</foreignphrase>), spoken in a belt above the
        Cantonese area, as well as by a minority on Taiwan. Cantonese, Fukienese, and Hakka are also
        widely spoken throughout Southeast Asia.</para>
    <para>In addition to these Chinese languages, there are also non-Chinese languages spoken by
        minority ethnic groups. Some of these, such as Tibetan, are distantly related to the Chinese
        languages. Others, such as Mongolian, are entirely unrelated. </para>
    <formalpara>
        <title>Some characteristics of Chinese</title>
        <para>Some Characteristics of Chinese Perhaps the most striking feature of Chinese to us is
            the use of 'tones' to distinguish the meaning of individual syllables. All languages,
            and Chinese is no exception, make use of sentence intonation to indicate how whole
            sentences are to be understood. In English, for example, the rising pattern in 'He's
            gone?' tells us that it is meant as a question. The Chinese tones, however, are quite a
            different matter. They belong to individual syllables, not to the sentence as a whole.
            Each syllable of Standard Chinese has one of four distinctive tones as an inherent part.
            The tone does just as much to distinguish the syllable from other possible syllables as
            do the consonants and vowels. For example, the only difference between the verb 'to
            buy,' <foreignphrase xml:lang="cmn-Hani">买</foreignphrase>
            <foreignphrase xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin">mǎi</foreignphrase>, and the verb 'to sell,'
                <foreignphrase xml:lang="cmn-Hani">卖</foreignphrase>
            <foreignphrase xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin">mài</foreignphrase>, is the difference between
            the Low Tone and the Falling Tone, And yet these words are just as distinguishable as
            our words 'buy' and 'guy,' or 'buy' and 'boy.' Apart from the tones, the sound system of
            Standard Chinese is no more different from English than French is.</para>
    </formalpara>
    <para>The grammar of Standard Chinese is relatively simple. For one thing, it has no
        conjugations such as are found in many European languages. Chinese verbs have fewer forms
        than English verbs, and nowhere near as many irregularities. Chinese grammar relies heavily
        on word order, and often the word order is the same as in English: 'John loves Mary' versus
        'Mary loves John.' For these reasons Chinese is not as difficult for Americans to learn to
        speak as one might think. </para>
    <para> It is often said that Chinese is a monosyllabic language. This notion contains a good
        deal of truth. It has been found that, on the average, every other word in ordinary
        conversation is a single-syllable word. Moreover, although most words in the dictionary have
        two syllables, and some have more, these words can almost always be broken down into
        single-syllable units of meaning, many of which can stand alone as words themselves</para>
    <formalpara>
        <title>Written Chinese</title>
        <para>Written Chinese Most languages with which we are familiar are written with an
            alphabet. The letters may be different from ours, as in the Greek alphabet, but the
            principle is the same: One letter for each consonant or vowel sound, more or less.
            Chinese, however, is written with 'characters' which stand for whole syllables. In fact,
            for whole syllables with particular meanings. There are only about thirteen hundred
            phonetically distinct syllables in everyday use, essentially one for each
            single-syllable unit of meaning. Chinese characters are often referred to as
            'ideographs,' which suggests that they stand directly for ideas. But this is misleading;
            it is better to think of them as standing for the meaningful syllables of the spoken
            language.</para>
    </formalpara>
    <para>Minimal literacy in Chinese calls for knowing about a thousand characters. These thousand
        characters, in combination, give a reading vocabulary of several thousand words. Full
        literacy calls for knowing some three thousand characters. In order to reduce the amount of
        time needed to learn characters, there has been a vast extension in the People's Republic of
        China of the principle of character simplification, which has reduced the average number of
        strokes per character by half. </para>
    <para>One reason often given for the retention of characters is that they can be read, with the
        local pronunciation, by speakers of all the Chinese languages. Probably a stronger reason
        for their retention is that the characters help keep alive distinctions of meaning between
        words, which are fading in the spoken language. Against this, however, is the consideration
        that a Cantonese could learn to speak Standard Chinese, and read it alphabetically, at least
        as easily as he can learn several thousand characters. </para>
    <para><foreignphrase xml:lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin">pīnyīn</foreignphrase> is used throughout this
        course to provide a simple written representation of pronunciation.</para>
</chapter>