The document provides an introduction to the Chinese language. It discusses:
- Standard Chinese is based on Mandarin and is spoken by over 70% of China's population, though many dialects exist.
- Chinese grammar is relatively simple compared to other languages, relying on word order rather than conjugation. Subject-verb-object is the most common structure.
- Chinese characters represent meaningful syllables rather than individual sounds, and there are around 1300 commonly used characters.
Chinese, also known as "Han Yu" and "Zhong Wen", includes Mandarin, Cantonese, and other dialects. Mandarin, or "Putonghua", is the standard Chinese dialect. Cantonese is spoken in Guangdong province and Hong Kong. Chinese characters originated from pictures and directly convey concepts. While simplified characters are used in mainland China, traditional characters are used in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and overseas Chinese communities. One written system and measurement system were established over 2000 years ago helping the language and culture survive despite different spoken dialects. Pinyin is the system used to transcribe Chinese sounds, composed of initials, finals, and tones. Learning Chinese tones can be difficult while
The document discusses several aspects of the Chinese language, including differences between written and spoken Chinese, tonal languages, and the history and structure of Chinese characters. It notes that while written Chinese unifies many spoken dialects, Mandarin Chinese is the national spoken language. Around 54 spoken dialects exist in China, with major groups including Mandarin, Wu, Cantonese, and others. Chinese characters date back thousands of years and there are over 50,000 characters, with around 8,000 in common use today.
Introduction to chinese language and cultureImtiaz Arefin
This document provides an overview of some key features of the Chinese language. It notes that Chinese is the most widely spoken language in the world, with Mandarin and Cantonese being the most popular forms. It also discusses that Chinese is a tonal language written with characters rather than an alphabet, and that the pinyin system uses the Latin alphabet to represent the phonetic pronunciation of Mandarin Chinese.
The document provides an overview of the Chinese language, including its history, classification, and influence. It discusses how:
- Chinese is spoken by over 1 billion people in China and abroad and has influenced neighboring languages through trade and administration.
- The language has evolved over time from Old Chinese to Middle Chinese to Modern Standard Chinese and many regional dialects. Mandarin is now the most common dialect.
- Chinese dialects can be classified into 7 main groups based on phonological changes. Varieties within groups can be mutually unintelligible between regions.
- The Chinese writing system also evolved from early oracle bone script to seal script to clerical script used today.
1) The document provides an introduction to the Chinese language, including that it is spoken by over 1 billion people and consists of dialects that are mutually unintelligible.
2) Standard Chinese or Mandarin is the official language of China, Taiwan, and Singapore, and is based on the Beijing dialect.
3) The document includes common Chinese greetings translated to English.
The document summarizes key aspects of language geography and the classification of languages. It discusses how language is transmitted culturally and how there are thousands of languages worldwide. It then classifies languages by families, branches, and groups that derive from proto-languages and common ancestors. Major points include how Indo-European is the most widely spoken family and includes branches like Germanic, Romance, and Indo-Iranian. There are also discussions of the theories around the origins and diffusion of the Indo-European languages.
The document provides information about the Chinese language:
1) Chinese can be traced back over 3,000 years and is one of the oldest written languages still in use today. Each Chinese character represents a monosyllabic word or morpheme.
2) The relationship between spoken and written Chinese is complex as the spoken varieties evolved at different rates while written Chinese changed much less. Tones are used in all spoken varieties of Chinese to distinguish word meanings.
3) To demonstrate her country's cultural legacy, the applicant would include examples of Chinese characters, which evolved from pictographs and represent the long history and complexity of the written Chinese language.
Chinese, also known as "Han Yu" and "Zhong Wen", includes Mandarin, Cantonese, and other dialects. Mandarin, or "Putonghua", is the standard Chinese dialect. Cantonese is spoken in Guangdong province and Hong Kong. Chinese characters originated from pictures and directly convey concepts. While simplified characters are used in mainland China, traditional characters are used in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and overseas Chinese communities. One written system and measurement system were established over 2000 years ago helping the language and culture survive despite different spoken dialects. Pinyin is the system used to transcribe Chinese sounds, composed of initials, finals, and tones. Learning Chinese tones can be difficult while
The document discusses several aspects of the Chinese language, including differences between written and spoken Chinese, tonal languages, and the history and structure of Chinese characters. It notes that while written Chinese unifies many spoken dialects, Mandarin Chinese is the national spoken language. Around 54 spoken dialects exist in China, with major groups including Mandarin, Wu, Cantonese, and others. Chinese characters date back thousands of years and there are over 50,000 characters, with around 8,000 in common use today.
Introduction to chinese language and cultureImtiaz Arefin
This document provides an overview of some key features of the Chinese language. It notes that Chinese is the most widely spoken language in the world, with Mandarin and Cantonese being the most popular forms. It also discusses that Chinese is a tonal language written with characters rather than an alphabet, and that the pinyin system uses the Latin alphabet to represent the phonetic pronunciation of Mandarin Chinese.
The document provides an overview of the Chinese language, including its history, classification, and influence. It discusses how:
- Chinese is spoken by over 1 billion people in China and abroad and has influenced neighboring languages through trade and administration.
- The language has evolved over time from Old Chinese to Middle Chinese to Modern Standard Chinese and many regional dialects. Mandarin is now the most common dialect.
- Chinese dialects can be classified into 7 main groups based on phonological changes. Varieties within groups can be mutually unintelligible between regions.
- The Chinese writing system also evolved from early oracle bone script to seal script to clerical script used today.
1) The document provides an introduction to the Chinese language, including that it is spoken by over 1 billion people and consists of dialects that are mutually unintelligible.
2) Standard Chinese or Mandarin is the official language of China, Taiwan, and Singapore, and is based on the Beijing dialect.
3) The document includes common Chinese greetings translated to English.
The document summarizes key aspects of language geography and the classification of languages. It discusses how language is transmitted culturally and how there are thousands of languages worldwide. It then classifies languages by families, branches, and groups that derive from proto-languages and common ancestors. Major points include how Indo-European is the most widely spoken family and includes branches like Germanic, Romance, and Indo-Iranian. There are also discussions of the theories around the origins and diffusion of the Indo-European languages.
The document provides information about the Chinese language:
1) Chinese can be traced back over 3,000 years and is one of the oldest written languages still in use today. Each Chinese character represents a monosyllabic word or morpheme.
2) The relationship between spoken and written Chinese is complex as the spoken varieties evolved at different rates while written Chinese changed much less. Tones are used in all spoken varieties of Chinese to distinguish word meanings.
3) To demonstrate her country's cultural legacy, the applicant would include examples of Chinese characters, which evolved from pictographs and represent the long history and complexity of the written Chinese language.
This document introduces learning Chinese and provides tips for memorizing Chinese words. It notes that over 1 billion people speak Chinese and that knowing Chinese will help with international business. It explains that Chinese words have characters, pronunciation using pinyin, and tones. Different character types like pictographs and semantic-phonetic compounds are described. While Chinese has many characters, becoming literate requires learning about 3,000 characters which could be done in under a year by learning 10 characters daily. Pinyin is also introduced as a romanization system to help with pronunciation.
Presentation on World Language Regions Parves Khan
The document provides an overview of world language regions and the geography of languages. It discusses key topics such as the definition of language and how languages relate to regions. The origin of human language is explored through various theories. The relationship between language and geography is examined, how language families develop over time and space. Major language families around the world are identified and the geographic regions where they are spoken are outlined.
A power point presentation on Indo European family of languages by the students of English dept. at Metropolitan University, Sylhet.
Pulak Barua
Ex Lecturer
Dept. of English
Metropolitan University, Sylhet, Bangladesh
Chinese is spoken by one-fifth of the world and uses characters that have changed little in 5000 years. The writing system includes characters that provide meaning and pronunciation clues. Mandarin is tonal and has varieties of dialects. Grammar lacks conjugation but uses particles and word order. Chinese culture has been influenced by Confucianism and the Cultural Revolution disrupted traditional society.
The document discusses two main branches of linguistics:
1) Historical linguistics studies how languages change over time. It focuses on connections between languages and their historical development.
2) Descriptive linguistics investigates the structure of language at a single point in time without considering historical changes.
Historical linguistics and descriptive linguistics are interdependent, as the current state of a language is influenced by its history and synchronic variations can lead to diachronic changes.
The document discusses several of the most widely spoken languages in the world, including French, Malay-Indonesian, Mandarin, English, Hindustani, Spanish, and Russian. It provides brief descriptions of the origins and distributions of each language. While the world has many boundaries and languages, generating bonds with other countries through learning their languages and histories is an important way to appreciate other cultures and ways of life.
Languages are grouped into families based on descent from a common ancestral language. Membership within a family is established through comparative linguistics which looks for shared innovations not due to borrowing. For example, features shared between Germanic languages like vocabulary and grammar not found in their common ancestor Proto-Indo-European show their status as a distinct branch descended from Proto-Germanic. The major language families are identified by region and number of native speakers.
The document provides an overview of the history and development of historical linguistics and compares traditional and modern approaches. It discusses how early studies of language origin and relationships were limited but led to realizations of connections between languages like Latin, Greek and Sanskrit. Modern historical linguistics dates to the late 18th century and uses comparative methods to reconstruct proto-languages and establish language families. The history of the English language is explored as reflecting cultural influences over 1500 years through events like the Roman invasion and Norman Conquest, with English evolving differently in various global contexts today.
This document provides an overview of the key concepts in historical linguistics. It defines historical linguistics as the study of language change over time. The main concerns of historical linguistics are to describe and account for language changes, reconstruct pre-histories of languages, develop theories of language change, describe the history of speech communities, and study etymology. It also outlines tools for studying language change, specific areas of change, evidence of change, and dispels common myths about language.
English belongs to the Indo-European language family, which originated from a Proto-Indo-European language spoken over Europe and parts of Asia thousands of years ago. The Indo-European family is relatively small, containing about 140 languages grouped into different subfamilies like Germanic, Romance, Slavic, and others. English is classified as a Germanic language within the Indo-European family.
The document discusses how languages change over time through natural processes. It notes that after 1,000 years, languages diverge to the point of no longer being mutually intelligible, and after 10,000 years the relationship becomes indistinguishable from unrelated languages. The rate of change varies, but systematic sound changes and borrowing are the main drivers of divergence. The comparative method is used to reconstruct ancestral languages and classify languages into families based on regular sound correspondences.
This document discusses the history and evolution of the English language from Old English to Modern English. It describes how family trees were created to show how languages are related and how words in different languages with similar meanings, spellings and pronunciations (cognates) can indicate a shared ancestral language. The document also explains comparative reconstruction, which aims to reconstruct the original forms and sounds in ancestral languages, and divides the history of English into four periods: Old English before 1100, Middle English from 1100-1500, Early Modern English from 1500-1700, and Modern English after 1700.
The document discusses the Indo-European language family and its discovery. Key findings include:
1) Sanskrit, an ancient Indian language, was recognized as one of the earliest languages in the Indo-European family in the 18th century.
2) Comparison of verb forms across languages like English, Gothic, Latin, Greek and Sanskrit showed clear similarities confirming a common origin.
3) The Indo-European languages are now grouped into 11 principal branches based on similarities and geographic distributions.
1) In the late 18th century, Sir William Jones suggested that languages from different geographical areas may have a common ancestor, launching the field of linguistic investigation into language families.
2) The Proto-Indo-European language is reconstructed as the common ancestor of languages like Sanskrit, Latin, and Greek, based on comparative methods analyzing cognates across these languages.
3) English has undergone significant changes over time, from Old English (7th-11th century CE) to Middle English (1100-1500 CE) to Modern English (1500-present), with influences from Latin, French, and other languages introducing changes in vocabulary, sounds, syntax and other features.
English belongs to the Indo-European language family and is part of the Germanic branch which also includes German and Dutch. The Celtic branch developed in parts of Europe including Ireland, Scotland and Wales where languages like Irish, Scottish Gaelic and Welsh originated. Latin-based languages like Spanish, French, Italian and Portuguese descended from Latin after the Roman Empire expanded across Europe.
The document discusses English as a member of the Indo-European language family. It explains that English originated from a prehistoric ancestor language called Proto-Indo-European. Over thousands of years, Proto-Indo-European split into various dialects that evolved into the modern Indo-European languages. While English retains the basic structure of its Germanic origins, it has borrowed extensively from other Indo-European languages like Latin, Greek, and its Germanic neighbors. As a result, over half of the basic roots found in the reconstructed Proto-Indo-European language are now represented in Modern English vocabulary through borrowing.
Chinese characters are the oldest continuously used writing system in the world. They are logograms used in Chinese and other Asian languages. Chinese is now one of the six official languages of the United Nations and has earned greater status worldwide, despite not being the only language spoken in China. Learning Chinese provides opportunities for business, travel, and cultural enrichment as it allows you to communicate with many in China and Taiwan.
European Languages - history and evolutionEuroasia
The document discusses the different language families spoken in Europe. It describes the major families such as Indo-European, Finno-Ugric, Turkic, Semitic and others. Within the Indo-European family it outlines the different subgroups including Germanic, Romance, Slavic and others. It provides examples of major languages within each subgroup and notes their distributions and relationships.
The document discusses the Proto-Indo-European (PIE) language and its descendants. PIE was spoken by an important part of Europe and Asia over 5,000 years ago, and is the ancestor to many modern languages including English, Spanish, French, German and more. The document outlines some of the key features of PIE such as its phonology, morphology, and syntax. It also shows how reconstructed PIE vocabulary and grammar can be identified by comparing cognates across related Indo-European languages.
Free Chinese Level Assessment, Take more quiz and know your answer intantly! All the questions for the quiz are carefully designed and reviewed,
Each question is testing a knowledge point, grammar, pinyin, vocabulary....
We are not lenient to create more questions for improving your learning but don't want create rubbish to kill your time as well!
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Printable quiz gcse chinese 2008 reading 1666 03 1667_03LEGOO MANDARIN
Free Chinese Level Assessment, Take more quiz and know your answer intantly! All the questions for the quiz are carefully designed and reviewed,
Each question is testing a knowledge point, grammar, pinyin, vocabulary....
We are not lenient to create more questions for improving your learning but don't want create rubbish to kill your time as well!
login: www.legoomandarin.com .......More.....
This document introduces learning Chinese and provides tips for memorizing Chinese words. It notes that over 1 billion people speak Chinese and that knowing Chinese will help with international business. It explains that Chinese words have characters, pronunciation using pinyin, and tones. Different character types like pictographs and semantic-phonetic compounds are described. While Chinese has many characters, becoming literate requires learning about 3,000 characters which could be done in under a year by learning 10 characters daily. Pinyin is also introduced as a romanization system to help with pronunciation.
Presentation on World Language Regions Parves Khan
The document provides an overview of world language regions and the geography of languages. It discusses key topics such as the definition of language and how languages relate to regions. The origin of human language is explored through various theories. The relationship between language and geography is examined, how language families develop over time and space. Major language families around the world are identified and the geographic regions where they are spoken are outlined.
A power point presentation on Indo European family of languages by the students of English dept. at Metropolitan University, Sylhet.
Pulak Barua
Ex Lecturer
Dept. of English
Metropolitan University, Sylhet, Bangladesh
Chinese is spoken by one-fifth of the world and uses characters that have changed little in 5000 years. The writing system includes characters that provide meaning and pronunciation clues. Mandarin is tonal and has varieties of dialects. Grammar lacks conjugation but uses particles and word order. Chinese culture has been influenced by Confucianism and the Cultural Revolution disrupted traditional society.
The document discusses two main branches of linguistics:
1) Historical linguistics studies how languages change over time. It focuses on connections between languages and their historical development.
2) Descriptive linguistics investigates the structure of language at a single point in time without considering historical changes.
Historical linguistics and descriptive linguistics are interdependent, as the current state of a language is influenced by its history and synchronic variations can lead to diachronic changes.
The document discusses several of the most widely spoken languages in the world, including French, Malay-Indonesian, Mandarin, English, Hindustani, Spanish, and Russian. It provides brief descriptions of the origins and distributions of each language. While the world has many boundaries and languages, generating bonds with other countries through learning their languages and histories is an important way to appreciate other cultures and ways of life.
Languages are grouped into families based on descent from a common ancestral language. Membership within a family is established through comparative linguistics which looks for shared innovations not due to borrowing. For example, features shared between Germanic languages like vocabulary and grammar not found in their common ancestor Proto-Indo-European show their status as a distinct branch descended from Proto-Germanic. The major language families are identified by region and number of native speakers.
The document provides an overview of the history and development of historical linguistics and compares traditional and modern approaches. It discusses how early studies of language origin and relationships were limited but led to realizations of connections between languages like Latin, Greek and Sanskrit. Modern historical linguistics dates to the late 18th century and uses comparative methods to reconstruct proto-languages and establish language families. The history of the English language is explored as reflecting cultural influences over 1500 years through events like the Roman invasion and Norman Conquest, with English evolving differently in various global contexts today.
This document provides an overview of the key concepts in historical linguistics. It defines historical linguistics as the study of language change over time. The main concerns of historical linguistics are to describe and account for language changes, reconstruct pre-histories of languages, develop theories of language change, describe the history of speech communities, and study etymology. It also outlines tools for studying language change, specific areas of change, evidence of change, and dispels common myths about language.
English belongs to the Indo-European language family, which originated from a Proto-Indo-European language spoken over Europe and parts of Asia thousands of years ago. The Indo-European family is relatively small, containing about 140 languages grouped into different subfamilies like Germanic, Romance, Slavic, and others. English is classified as a Germanic language within the Indo-European family.
The document discusses how languages change over time through natural processes. It notes that after 1,000 years, languages diverge to the point of no longer being mutually intelligible, and after 10,000 years the relationship becomes indistinguishable from unrelated languages. The rate of change varies, but systematic sound changes and borrowing are the main drivers of divergence. The comparative method is used to reconstruct ancestral languages and classify languages into families based on regular sound correspondences.
This document discusses the history and evolution of the English language from Old English to Modern English. It describes how family trees were created to show how languages are related and how words in different languages with similar meanings, spellings and pronunciations (cognates) can indicate a shared ancestral language. The document also explains comparative reconstruction, which aims to reconstruct the original forms and sounds in ancestral languages, and divides the history of English into four periods: Old English before 1100, Middle English from 1100-1500, Early Modern English from 1500-1700, and Modern English after 1700.
The document discusses the Indo-European language family and its discovery. Key findings include:
1) Sanskrit, an ancient Indian language, was recognized as one of the earliest languages in the Indo-European family in the 18th century.
2) Comparison of verb forms across languages like English, Gothic, Latin, Greek and Sanskrit showed clear similarities confirming a common origin.
3) The Indo-European languages are now grouped into 11 principal branches based on similarities and geographic distributions.
1) In the late 18th century, Sir William Jones suggested that languages from different geographical areas may have a common ancestor, launching the field of linguistic investigation into language families.
2) The Proto-Indo-European language is reconstructed as the common ancestor of languages like Sanskrit, Latin, and Greek, based on comparative methods analyzing cognates across these languages.
3) English has undergone significant changes over time, from Old English (7th-11th century CE) to Middle English (1100-1500 CE) to Modern English (1500-present), with influences from Latin, French, and other languages introducing changes in vocabulary, sounds, syntax and other features.
English belongs to the Indo-European language family and is part of the Germanic branch which also includes German and Dutch. The Celtic branch developed in parts of Europe including Ireland, Scotland and Wales where languages like Irish, Scottish Gaelic and Welsh originated. Latin-based languages like Spanish, French, Italian and Portuguese descended from Latin after the Roman Empire expanded across Europe.
The document discusses English as a member of the Indo-European language family. It explains that English originated from a prehistoric ancestor language called Proto-Indo-European. Over thousands of years, Proto-Indo-European split into various dialects that evolved into the modern Indo-European languages. While English retains the basic structure of its Germanic origins, it has borrowed extensively from other Indo-European languages like Latin, Greek, and its Germanic neighbors. As a result, over half of the basic roots found in the reconstructed Proto-Indo-European language are now represented in Modern English vocabulary through borrowing.
Chinese characters are the oldest continuously used writing system in the world. They are logograms used in Chinese and other Asian languages. Chinese is now one of the six official languages of the United Nations and has earned greater status worldwide, despite not being the only language spoken in China. Learning Chinese provides opportunities for business, travel, and cultural enrichment as it allows you to communicate with many in China and Taiwan.
European Languages - history and evolutionEuroasia
The document discusses the different language families spoken in Europe. It describes the major families such as Indo-European, Finno-Ugric, Turkic, Semitic and others. Within the Indo-European family it outlines the different subgroups including Germanic, Romance, Slavic and others. It provides examples of major languages within each subgroup and notes their distributions and relationships.
The document discusses the Proto-Indo-European (PIE) language and its descendants. PIE was spoken by an important part of Europe and Asia over 5,000 years ago, and is the ancestor to many modern languages including English, Spanish, French, German and more. The document outlines some of the key features of PIE such as its phonology, morphology, and syntax. It also shows how reconstructed PIE vocabulary and grammar can be identified by comparing cognates across related Indo-European languages.
Free Chinese Level Assessment, Take more quiz and know your answer intantly! All the questions for the quiz are carefully designed and reviewed,
Each question is testing a knowledge point, grammar, pinyin, vocabulary....
We are not lenient to create more questions for improving your learning but don't want create rubbish to kill your time as well!
login: www.legoomandarin.com .......More.....
Printable quiz gcse chinese 2008 reading 1666 03 1667_03LEGOO MANDARIN
Free Chinese Level Assessment, Take more quiz and know your answer intantly! All the questions for the quiz are carefully designed and reviewed,
Each question is testing a knowledge point, grammar, pinyin, vocabulary....
We are not lenient to create more questions for improving your learning but don't want create rubbish to kill your time as well!
login: www.legoomandarin.com .......More.....
Free Chinese Level Assessment, Take more quiz and know your answer intantly! All the questions for the quiz are carefully designed and reviewed,
Each question is testing a knowledge point, grammar, pinyin, vocabulary....
We are not lenient to create more questions for improving your learning but don't want create rubbish to kill your time as well!
login: www.legoomandarin.com .......More.....
This document is a conversation in Mandarin Chinese between two people discussing travel plans to China. John, an American who works with Chinese businesses, has been studying Mandarin for over a year. He plans to travel to Beijing next year to continue studying the language. He has a friend who lives in Beijing who works for an import/export company who can help him when he visits.
This document provides an introduction and table of contents to a Wikibook on learning Mandarin Chinese. It discusses key aspects of the Chinese language such as dialects, character sets, pronunciation system (Hanyu Pinyin), and an overview of the textbook's lesson structure and content. The textbook assumes no prior knowledge and teaches Chinese gradually through dialogues, grammar explanations, vocabulary, examples, and exercises. It emphasizes pronunciation, character writing practice, and recommends additional reading materials to supplement the lessons.
This document provides an introduction and table of contents to a Wikibook on learning Mandarin Chinese. It discusses key aspects of the Chinese language such as:
- Chinese has different writing systems in mainland China (Simplified) and other areas (Traditional)
- Pinyin Romanization is used to represent pronunciation
- Chinese is a tonal language with 4 tones that distinguish word meanings
- Lessons will cover basic vocabulary, grammar structures and dialogues to teach conversational skills
- Emphasis is placed on proper pronunciation, character writing practice, and understanding radicals to aid vocabulary learning.
The document provides an overview of the field of linguistics, including what linguistics is, the branches of linguistics, the types of jobs available to linguists, and how to become a linguist. It explains that linguistics is the study of human language, including its structure, sounds, meaning, and acquisition. It notes that linguists work in many settings, such as translation, interpretation, education, and government. It encourages becoming a linguist by taking linguistics and foreign language classes, and contacting counselors and programs to learn more.
The document provides an overview of the Japanese language, including its origins and influences, phonology, grammar, writing system, loanwords, honorific language, names, and typing in Japanese. It notes that while Japanese syntax comes from Altaic languages, its vocabulary was influenced by Chinese and other languages, and it uses Chinese characters (kanji) along with two phonetic scripts (hiragana and katakana). Key aspects of Japanese include its subject-object-verb structure, use of particles instead of inflections, complex honorific language system, and vertical writing direction.
This document provides an overview of an introductory linguistics course being offered at Boğaziçi University in summer 2019. It introduces the instructor, Dr. Konstantinos Sampanis, and provides information about grading, required readings, and an outline of course topics. The course will cover the main subfields of linguistics including morphology, syntax, semantics, phonetics, phonology, and linguistic typology. Students will be evaluated based on class participation, assignments, a midterm exam, and a final exam. Readings will be taken from the textbook "An Introduction to Language" and additional materials will be made available online.
1. All languages are equally complex and capable of expressing ideas. There are no primitive languages - the vocabulary of any language can expand.
2. Descriptive linguistics focuses on objectively describing how a given language is actually used by its native speakers, rather than judging what is correct or incorrect.
3. Black English, also known as African American Vernacular English, is a systematic dialect with its own rules rather than just random errors. It is as complex and logical as Standard English.
This document provides an introduction to linguistics. It discusses several key topics:
- What is known when someone knows a language, including knowledge of a language's sound system, words, sentences, and creativity.
- The difference between competence (linguistic knowledge) and performance (language use).
- What grammar is and the difference between descriptive and prescriptive grammars.
- Dialects, standards, and differences between dialects.
- Language universals and the development of grammar in children.
All languages share some common features at their core, but they also differ in things like pronunciation and word order. The document discusses three hypotheses for why languages share universals: that all languages descended from a single protolanguage (monogenesis), that they influence each other through language contact, and that linguistic abilities are innate to humans (innateness). It provides examples of both absolute universals found in all languages, like the distinction between vowels and consonants, as well as statistical universals that are predominant but not universal, like subjects tending to precede objects.
Demystifying Mandarin - Learn Chinese by Hutong SchoolHutong School
Jan Wostyn, Director International Relations of Hutong School, will give you a bird's eye view of the fascinating Chinese language, zooming in on different aspects of a language which many Westerners believe to be the hardest language in the world, until they actually get started, and discover the surprisingly simplicity of Chinese compared to most European languages.
www.hutong-school.com
The document discusses grammatical tense, specifically:
- Tense locates a situation in time by indicating when it takes place (e.g. past, present, future).
- Languages make finer distinctions like immediate vs. distant past. These distinctions are not always precise.
- Tense indicates when the time of assertion, completion or evaluation occurs relative to the utterance (absolute tense) or some other event (relative tense).
- The number of tenses in a language may be disputed, as tense is often used to represent combinations of tense, aspect and mood.
PPT PHONETICS(Place of Articulation).pptxLenlyPMoya
Phonetics is the study of the sounds of language, including how sounds are produced and perceived. It describes all the sounds of the world's languages using the International Phonetic Alphabet. The place of articulation refers to where in the vocal tract airflow is restricted when producing consonant sounds, such as at the lips, teeth, alveolar ridge, palate, velum, uvula, or glottis.
This document provides an introduction to Mandarin Chinese pronunciation using the Hanyu Pinyin romanization system. It discusses the basic syllabic structure of initials, finals, and tones. It then gives the pronunciation of each initial and final in Pinyin, using the International Phonetic Alphabet for reference. Exceptions to typical initial-final combinations are also noted. The goal is to teach learners the fundamentals of pronouncing Mandarin Chinese syllables before introducing vocabulary.
Linguistics is the scientific study of language and how humans acquire, use, and understand it. Linguists investigate topics like language structure, sound systems, grammar rules, how language varies between groups and regions, and how people unconsciously learn the rules of their native language from a young age. As a linguistics major, students study subfields like phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, and how language changes over time or is used in social contexts. This allows them to gain skills in analytical reasoning and problem solving that can be applied in careers like teaching, speech therapy, publishing, translating, language documentation, computer programming, and more. Many linguistics majors also pursue graduate degrees in fields like lingu
This document discusses articulatory settings (AS) in English and how they develop in children. It proposes that English children acquire an AS with a raised tongue tip and retracted tongue due to their pulsatile speech breathing as young speakers. When producing stops, passive airflow through consonant closures in stressed syllables leads to long-lag VOT in /t, d/ and connection to stress. Over time, with experimentation and reinforcement from others, children adopt the English AS and stop production. This provides a non-imitative account of how phonetic aspects like VOT develop and explains why the English AS departs from a neutral setting.
Sociophonetics & Translation: the social meaning of loanword pronunciatiguest3e66256
This document discusses how the pronunciation of loanwords and foreign names can carry social meaning when translated between languages. It focuses on the pronunciation of the vowel sound in the word "Iraq" as either /æ/ or /ɑ/ by US politicians. Research has shown that pronouncing it with /ɑ/ is perceived as more educated, while /æ/ seems less nativized. An analysis of Congressional speeches found Democrats were more likely to use /ɑ/ while Republicans used /æ/, showing pronunciation can be used strategically and index political affiliations. In general, how loanwords and names are pronounced during translation impacts the social meanings and identities that are communicated.
The document discusses bilingualism and the cognitive advantages it provides children. It describes that bilingual children can acquire two languages simultaneously or sequentially. Simultaneous bilingualism involves acquiring two languages from birth, while sequential involves learning a second language after the first. Early exposure to two languages positively impacts children's linguistic, cognitive, and reading development. Bilingual children have been shown to have better metalinguistic awareness, classification skills, concept formation, analogical reasoning, visual-spatial skills, storytelling skills and semantic development compared to monolingual children.
This document discusses measuring the pronunciation of the English stops /p/ and /b/ by Saudi English language learners. It notes that learners may pronounce sounds from their second language like the closest sounds in their first language if a sound is not present. For Saudi learners of English, the voiceless bilabial stop /p/ does not exist in Saudi Arabic, so learners have two ways to pronounce it - without regard for voicing distinction, or like the closest Arabic sound /b/. The document proposes measuring the voice onset time (VOT) of learners' productions of /p/ and /b/ to analyze how closely they match English sounds. VOT is defined as the time between a
1) There are three main types of Mandarin spoken - Mainland Mandarin, Taiwanese Mandarin, and Singaporean-Malaysian Mandarin. Mainland Mandarin and Taiwanese Mandarin differ by about 15%.
2) There are also two types of Cantonese spoken - Guangzhou Cantonese and Hong Kong Cantonese, which are very similar differing by less than 10%.
3) While Chinese is considered one of the most difficult languages to learn due to its writing system and tones, Mandarin may be easier for some like Japanese speakers who already use many Chinese characters in their own writing system.
This document discusses theories of language acquisition in children. It covers:
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- The logical problem of how children acquire language from incomplete input.
- The innateness hypothesis that children have an innate blueprint or Universal Grammar that aids language acquisition.
- Development of grammar includes acquisition of phonology, word meanings, morphology and syntax. Children intuitively learn language rules from contextual cues in the environment.
The document discusses weak and strong syllables in English. It defines a syllable and describes their structure, including onset, nucleus, coda, and rime. It states that strong syllables contain full vowels while weak syllables often contain reduced vowels like schwa. Examples are provided to demonstrate how vowels are shortened, lower in intensity, and changed in quality in weak syllables compared to strong ones. The document also notes that some weak syllables contain only consonants. It examines spelling patterns that can indicate the vowel sound in a strong pronunciation of a weak syllable. Finally, it discusses the close front and back vowels that may occur in weak syllables and problems transcribing them phonemically.
SATTA MATKA DPBOSS KALYAN MATKA RESULTS KALYAN CHART KALYAN MATKA MATKA RESULT KALYAN MATKA TIPS SATTA MATKA MATKA COM MATKA PANA JODI TODAY BATTA SATKA MATKA PATTI JODI NUMBER MATKA RESULTS MATKA CHART MATKA JODI SATTA COM INDIA SATTA MATKA MATKA TIPS MATKA WAPKA ALL MATKA RESULT LIVE ONLINE MATKA RESULT KALYAN MATKA RESULT DPBOSS MATKA 143 MAIN MATKA KALYAN MATKA RESULTS KALYAN CHART INDIA MATKA KALYAN SATTA MATKA 420 INDIAN MATKA SATTA KING MATKA FIX JODI FIX FIX FIX SATTA NAMBAR MATKA INDIA SATTA BATTA
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LESSON 1
INTRODUCTION ABOUT CHINESE LANGUAGE
About the Standard Chinese Language
The Chinese language (Zhōngwén, Huáyǔ or Pǔtōnghuà) is the
chief language of China, and also one of the most popular and
developed languages in the world.
China is a country consisting of 56 nationalities, and has a
population of 1.3 billion. Before China opened its door to the outside
world in the late 1970s, many people in the West believed (some still
believe today) that Chinese is one language or Chinese language is
Cantonese. In fact, Chinese is not just one language, but a family of
languages and Cantonese is just one of the seven major dialects of the
Chinese language. Although different dialects differ immensely in
pronunciation, they share the same written form. The seven modern
languages of China known as dialects are growing on the branches of
the Chinese family cultural tree deeply rooted in the land of Confucius.
They share as strong a family resemblance as do English, German,
French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, and are about as different from
one another.
The Standard Chinese spoken nationally is based on the
pronunciation of the Northern dialect which is spoken by over 70
percent of the population. It is known as Pǔtōnghuà (普通话), which
literally means Common Speech in the People’s Republic of China;
Guóyǔ ( 国 语 ) or Huáyǔ ( 华 语 ), which literally means National
Language in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore and other overseas
Chinese communities, and Mandarin Chinese in English speaking
countries. Many Chinese use the term to describe the Chinese
language as Zhōngwén (Chinese 中文) or Hànyǔ (Hàn language 汉语
-Han is the largest of the 56 nationalities in China consisting of more
than 90 percent of the population). Both Zhōngwén and Hànyǔ are
literarily interchangeable and are more often used by native Chinese
speakers than Pǔtōnghuà or Mandarin when they ask non-native
speakers if they speak Chinese. Pǔtōnghuà, based primarily on the
Beijing dialect but takes elements from other Chinese languages, is
taught in schools and spoken by television and radio broadcasters
throughout China, and it is the spoken language which is most
understood by Chinese speakers. However, it is often spoken with
some concessions to local speech and accent, particularly in
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pronunciation.
Compared to the other six Chinese languages, Pǔtōnghuà has
fewer tones and fewer final consonants (Cantonese has 8 tones
compared to only 4 in Standard Chinese Pǔtōnghuà ). These six
Chinese languages, known as six major Chinese dialects, are mainly
used in regions south of the Yangtze River valley. They are, the Wú
language (吴语) which includes the Shanghai dialect; Hunanese which
is officially known as Xiāng language(湘语); the Gàn language (赣语)
which is mainly spoken in Jiangxi Province; Cantonese/Guǎngdōng
language (粤语) which is the language of Guangdong Province, Hong
Kong, Macau and also is widely spoken in Chinese communities in the
United States, Europe and other Asian and Southeast Asian countries;
Fujianese, which is officially known as Mǐn language (闽语) and is
spoken by people of Fujian Province and Taiwan (in Fujian it is called
Fujian dialect, in Taiwan, it is called Taiwan dialect, both from the
same Mǐn dialect); and Hakka/Kèjiā, which is officially known as Kèjiā
dialect and is spoken by people living in a region north and northwest
of Guangdong Province as well as by a minority in Taiwan. The last
three mentioned dialects, Cantonese, Mǐnnán and Kèjiā, are all widely
spoken throughout Southeast Asia.
Apart from these seven major Chinese languages, there are also
some non-Chinese languages spoken by Chinese ethnic minorities,
e.g. Tibetan, Mongolian, which do not belong to the Chinese language
family and are not related to the seven Chinese languages discussed
above.
Chinese Grammar and Word Order
The Standard Chinese grammar is relatively simple compared to
the grammar of Germanic and Romance languages. Learners will
find it much easier to learn Chinese upon knowing that there are no
conjugations in Chinese such as are found in other languages.
Chinese verbs have fewer forms than English verbs, and nowhere
near as many irregularities. A simple verb form applies to anybody,
singular or plural; and also applies to any time range: past, present or
future. Chinese grammar relies heavily on word order which is quite
fixed. The word order of a statement sentence is mostly the same as
word order in English. The common patterns are
Subject+Verb+Object, e.g. “I speak Chinese”, “Wǒ (I) shuō (speak)
Zhōngwén (Chinese) 我说中文”. In English, when asking a question,
the question word is always placed in the beginning of the question
sentence and reverses the order of the predicate verb and the subject
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noun, e.g. “What do you speak ?” Whereas in Chinese, both a
statement sentence and a question sentence keep the same word
order. In Chinese, “What do you speak” is structured as “You speak
what ?” / “Nǐ (you) shuō (speak) shénme (what)你说什么?”
In English, the most important information or the topic or theme
of a sentence is usually placed at the end of a sentence e.g. “It is
very important to master Chinese tones.” In Chinese, however, the
most important information or the topic of a sentence usually comes
first, e.g. “To master Chinese tones is very important Jīngtōng
Zhōngwén de shēngdiào hěn zhòngyào 精通中文的声调很重要。”
In English, all adverbial phrases such as time, place, manner and
purpose of doing things, with whom one does something, etc. are
mostly placed at the end of a sentence, e.g. “I’ll come tomorrow”;
“I’m going to study Chinese in Beijing”; “I like to speak Chinese with
Chinese people”. In Chinese, these adverbial phrases are always
placed after the subject and before the verb, with time phrases as an
exception, which can occur either at the beginning of a sentence or
after the subject and before the verb, depending on the degree of
emphasis of the time phrase in the sentence, e.g. “I tomorrow come”
or “Tomorrow I come”; “I in Beijing study Chinese”; “I with Chinese
people speak Chinese”. These are just a few examples of differences
between English and Chinese word order. In spite of these
differences, many learners of Standard Chinese find that Chinese,
especially standard spoken Chinese, is not as hard for a non-native
speaker to learn as one might imagined.
Although many people believe that Standard Chinese grammar is
relatively simple compared to grammars of other languages, it is still
in the process of being perfected and learners need be payig special
attention to some rules that are different from English and other
Germanic and Romance Families of languages.
The following are a few things that learners of Standard Chinese
need toknow before they start learning the language:
(1) Chinese nouns always keep one form and there are
neither singular nor plural forms.
(2) Chinese verbs, likewise, have only one form, which is just
as you say “I be Chinese”, “You be American”, “He be
French”, “I speak Chinese”, “He speak Chinese”, etc.
(3) Standard Chinese is not a tense language and thus
Chinese verbs do not indicate past, present or future.
Tenses are expressed by using additional grammar words
that are called particles, time adverbial phrases or simply
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the context. The grammar word indicating a completion
of an action or past event can be placed at the end of a
sentence if the object in the sentence is a simple or single
one without any modifiers. However, the grammar
particle has to be placed right after the verb in a sentence
if the object in the sentence is no long simple or single
where there are one or more modifiers before it. (The
grammar word le also has other functions, such as
indicating a change of situation, status or condition, etc.)
(4) Prepositions such as “at”, “in”, “on” are normally not used
before Chinese time adverbial phrases, e.g. “My friend
this weekend arrive”; “They morning 10:00 o’clock have
Chinese class.”
(5) The largest time or place unit always precedes the smaller
one, e.g. “He 2004 March 25, Thursday afternoon 5:00
o’clock arrive”; “He in USA, Oregon, Portland, PSU, MIM
study Chinese”, etc.
(6) There must always be a measure word or classifier between a
number and a noun (two+běn 本+dictionary; two+ge 个+student;
this+ běn 本+dictionary), between a demonstrative pronoun and
a noun (that+ ge 个+student; which+ běn 本+dictionary; which+
ge 个+student, etc.)
Chinese Written Characters
Chinese written characters are symbols which stand for the
meaningful syllables of the spoken language. Most languages in the
world are written with an alphabet. Although the letters can be
different from those of English or Pinyin, yet the principle is all the
same: one letter stands more or less for each consonant or vowel
sound. Chinese, however, is written with characters (Hànzì 汉
字 )which stand for the whole syllable. There are about thirteen
hundred phonetically distinct syllables in everyday use. Chinese
characters are often referred to as “ideographs,” which suggests that
they stand directly for ideas. This is misleading. It is better to think
of the characters as standing for the meaningful syllables of the
spoken language.
It is widely believed that Chinese written characters, which are
now in current use, are the world’s oldest written language with a
history of 3,500 years. They began as pictures carved in oracle
bones, widely known as pictographs. They are also known as
“square characters” because they are square-formed characters
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consisting of strokes, with their structures becoming systemized and
simpler.
Different from the alphabetic script which is spelled out in letters,
Chinese characters are written in various strokes. Out of the thirty
odd strokes, only eight are basic ones and all the others are their
variants. The strokes in a character are written according to some
fixed rules. Once the basic strokes and the rules of stroke-order are
grasped, the writing of characters will become easy. Structurally,
Chinese characters consist mostly of two or more basic structural
components while some other character components stand by
themselves. In the single-component characters, the strokes are
written or arranged as a compact integral, but most of the characters
are compound ones which are composed of two or more components.
Some of the components are used as RADICALS in Chinese
dictionaries. So it is of key importance to know the components or
RADICALS before you learn how to use a Chinese dictionary. These
character components, just like the 26 English letters, are limited in
number and the basic strokes that form these components are
relatively even more limited. A stroke can be defined as one single
unbroken line drawn by the writer from the time the pen touches the
paper until the pen lifts off the paper. Writing characters in the
correct order is essential for the character to look correct.
Minimal literacy in Chinese calls for knowing about one thousand
characters. These thousand characters, in combination of phrased
and grouping words, 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
Chinese characters, a group of Chinese linguists started reforming
Chinese language by 1) changing the phonetic symbols into Pīnyīn
Romanization; 2) reducing the average number of strokes per
character by half-simplifying Chinese characters. According to a
statistics, the language reform in the People’s Republic of China in late
1950s resulted in simplifying altogether 515 characters along with
around 1,500 characters that share certain simplified radicals. Today,
simplified Chinese characters (also known as short-formed characters)
are used in the People’s Republic of China whereas the traditional
characters (also known as traditional or long-formed characters) are
used in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau and by some overseas
Chinese.
One reason often provided for the retention of Chinese characters
is that they can be read, with the local pronunciation, by speakers of
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all the seven Chinese languages. This is because the Chinese
characters help to keep alive distinctions of meaning between words,
which are fading in the spoken language.
Pronunciation and Pinyin Romanization
Ever since China adopted its official Pīnyīn Romanization system-
a standard form of pronouncing Chinese written characters and a tool
to reach the correct pronunciation of speaking the standard
Pǔtōnghuà – it has become one of the most popular spoken languages
in the world. It is often said that Chinese language is a monosyllabic
language, the notion of which contains a great deal of truth in it. On
average, every other word in ordinary conversation is a single-syllable
word. Although most words in dictionaries have two or even more
syllables, one can almost always break them down into single-syllable
units in meaning, and many can stand alone as words themselves.
Standard Pǔtōnghuà is a vowel-dominated language. A syllable
can be a single vowel, a compound vowel or a vowel preceded by a
consonant. A traditional syllable is divided into two parts: the initial
called shēngmǔ is the beginning consonant, and the final called yùnmǔ
follows the initial or stands by itself. Every syllable is represented by
a Chinese character. For example, in shān(山/mountain) sh is the
initial and an is the final, whereas in ān (安/peace), there is no initial
and the final stands by itself to constitute a single vowel syllable.
The initial consists of only one consonant and the final may consist of
one, two or three single vowels and a consonant (-n or –ng).
Most, if not all, business Chinese learners are adults. One of the
advantages an adult has over a child in learning Chinese is the ability
to make good use of a written representation of it. In this textbook
the students will learn the Pīnyīn Romanization system at the same
time they are learning the sound system of Standard Chinese while
the non-alphabetic system of written characters is provided as a
separate component of the textbook.
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