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.

1. AtheerChinese Analysis
Distribution
Mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, the overseas Chinese speaking
community
Introduction
Chinese language is the world’s oldest form of communication that is currently
spoken by one-fifth of the world’s population. The language originates from the Sino
Tibetan family and researchers are attempting to reconstruct the evolution of this Proto
Sino Tibetan language even though there are no written records of this primordial
language. The earliest evidence of Chinese script was discovered on an oracle bone
around 1200 B.C. and suggests a connection with language development and rituals and
religious practices, such as fortune telling.
While this language incorporates roughly 70, 000 sounds and characters, a main
set of 5000 characters are taught through the education system and only knowledge of
around 3000 characters is necessary to read a daily newspaper. Chinese script has
changed very little in past five thousand years. The same components of the visual script
remain basically the same. The “Archaic Chinese” (1122 BCE to 256 BCE) script
appears more spindling and more curving than the “Middle Chinese” script with sharper
angles. The “Modern Chinese” (from the 1900s to the present day) script was altered to
make several of the commonly used radicals to be simplified to have fewer brush strokes.
For example, the radical that represents gate used to have nine strokes, but the “Modern
Chinese” writing only has five strokes, which saves people a lot of cumulative time when
writing.

2. Chinese characters often appear completely confusing to non-Chinese speakers.
However, there is great logic and consistency within the writing system once one studies
the forms. Some of the characters are more pictographic in nature. For example, the
character for “snow” (xue) has two parts stacked one on top of the other. The top parts is
the character for rain, which looks like a window shape with short strokes that look like
rain, and the bottom radical is a hand symbol. Thus, the character for “snow” is a picture
of rain that you can hold in your hand. In most characters there are two main
components: one provides a meaning clue and one provides a pronunciation clue. For
instance, the word for “dumpling” (jiaozi) includes the meaning radical that relates to
food and restaurants and the pronunciation radical that relates to the “jiao” sound. This
pronunciation radical also provides a meaning hint because it relates to the visual for
linking things together, just like a dumpling is pinched together to form the envelope.
Then, the character for “to bite” (as in getting bitten by a dog) (yaohuai) includes the
meaning hint with the radical for mouth and the radical that relates to the “jiao” sound,
except here it is altered to the “yao” sound.
Phonology
• Standard Chinese Vowels
Front Central Back
Close i, y u
Close-mid
Open-mid
ə
Open a
• Consonant Inventory
Bilabial Labiodental Dental Alveolar Alveopalatal Retroflex Palatal Velar Uvular Pharyngeal Glottal

3. Stop p,b d,t g,k
Nasal
stop
m ,n ŋ
Trill
Flap
Affricate ts
Fricative f s
tʂ,tʂh
x
Lateral
fricative
Liquid l
Glide j
General
Mandarin is a tonal language using four tones and one non-tone sound. The four
tones include: flat, rising, dipping and rising, and falling. The same word sound will
have different meanings when pronounced with different tones. The most common
example deals with the sound for ma. When this sound is pronounced in each other four
tones and the non-tone sound, it has completely different meanings and functions. In the
four tones, ma means either: mother, hemp, horse, or scold. When used at the end of a
sentence in the non-tone sound, it functions as a marker for a question.
Chinese has a proliferation of dialects throughout the different nations and also in
Mainland China. Although the dialects use the same pictographic script, these dialects
are phonetically dissimilar, so much so that Chinese people can usually surmise the other
person’s region by their accent. The official dialect of Chinese is the Beijing dialect
called Beiijing hua or Putong hua, which means the “people’s dialect.” In China, almost
all the television shows are subtitled with the Beijing hua script so that people from
different dialects can all understand the spoken Beijing hua used in the program.

4. Consonant Clusters
In Chinese, words are nearly always formed by using either single consonants or
consonant clusters at the beginnings of words. There are very few words that end with
any type of a consonant, except for a special dialect of the Beijing hua when speakers
often add a retroflexive “-r” sound to the end of words. For example, the official phrase
for “Have fun!” is Hao Wan; however, most people say: Hao War. Because of this
phonetic structure, many Mandarin speakers struggle to pronounce the ends of words in
foreign languages that use consonants on the ends of words.
Grammar
Questions and negatives; auxiliaries
There are three forms of Yes-No question in the Mandarin Language.
1- Ma
Is the most common and natural form is the yes-no question. In order to form the
question we only add “ma” to the end of the sentence.
Ex-
• He is a student.
 Ta shi xusheng.
• Is he a student?
 Ta shi xusheng ma?
2-Shifou
Is to ask for a choice between two alternatives. It occurs immediately before the verb.
Ex-
• Are you going to china to attend a meeting?

5.  Ni shifou qou Zhongguo kai hui?
3-(bù) or (méi)
In this format, a verb is followed by (bù) or (méi) which mean no, not, or don't--and then
the verb is repeated.
Ex-“bu”
• You want not want watch a movie?
 Nǐ yao bù yau kàn diàn yǐng?
Ex- mei
• School have/ not have library?
 Xuéxiào yǒu méi yǒu kù?
Time, Tense, Aspect
Mandarin is a highly inflectional language such as English though it does not have any
verb conjugations. All verbs have a single form.
Ex-The past tense marker Le
• I bought three books yesterday.
 Zuótiān wǒ mǎi-le sān běn shū.
Word Order
Mandarin is an SVO language, which means that the word order is subject · verb · object.
• I eat food.
 Wo chi fan.

6. • I love you.
 Wǒ ài nǐ
Gender, Number
Mandarin has no gender and number agreements. Unlike English, a verb may take on
different inflectional endings depending on the person and the number of the subject.
Ex- Gender agreement:
• I eat
• He/she eat
 W ch .ǒ ī
 T /t ch .ā ā ī
Ex- Number
• Book
• Two books
 Shū.
 Liǎng běn shū.
Adjectives and Adverbs (Ch. 4)
Adverbs occur at the beginning of the VP, before the verb and any prepositional phrase.
Ex-
• I am definitely going.
 Wo yiding qu.
Adjective
Mandarin adjectives are located directly after the noun they describe

7. Ex-
• White House
 Bai Gong
• He is tall = he tall
 Tā gèzi gāo
Vocabulary
Mandarin vocabulary has two parts – the sounds of the words and the proper tones.
Learning how to use the correct tone is essential in order to master the language
Ex- Ma
Tone Number Tone Symbol English Translation
ma1 mā mom
ma2 má hemp
ma3 mă horse
ma4 mà o scold
Culture
China is an ancient nation that emphasizes the continuity of their culture over the
past five thousand years. They have fortunately protected many of the ancient structures
and artifacts, such as The Great Wall, The Forbidden Palace, and The Terra Cotta
Warriors. Up until the 1960s Cultural Revolution, they were generally a feudal,
patriarchic nation that used a combined religious tradition incorporating ideas from
Buddhism, Daoism, and Confucianism. Confucianism plays a deep psychological role in
the social organization that values education and emphasizes the importance of filial piety

8. to one’s family and the nation. Confucian expressions abound in Chinese language. For
example, “If there is righteousness in the heart, there will be beauty in the character. If
there is beauty in the character, there will be harmony in the home. If there is harmony in
the home, there will be order in the nation. If there is order in the nation, there will be
peace in the world.” This expression embodies the Confucian hierarchical worldview of
peace within the home being the building blocks for peace within the nation.
Confucianism is also unfortunately noted as being quite sexist as many parables clearly
degrade women’s intellectual capacity and emphasize their duty to produce male
offsprings, for example: “There are three unfilial acts and the worst is to not bear sons.”
During the tumultuous Cultural Revolution, Chinese society was virtually turned
upside down as the youth organized as the “Red Guard” took over the nation under the
leadership of the Dictator Mao Zedong. From this era, a special type of revolutionary
language took over the nation as people divided themselves into “Reds” who were strong
communists and “Blacks,” people who were labeled as traitors who did not support the
state and were clinging to the unfair benefits of the feudal era. There are many special
phrases from the Cultural Revolution, including “verbal struggles,” which referred to the
intensive public and private interrogations of persons (such as teachers and other
intellectuals) who were accused of not being pro-Communist. While these situations
were very difficult, during this time women were released from the passive world of
feudal sexism and were expected to actively help the nation modernize. From this era,
the very famous proverb: “Women hold up half the sky” was begun to reinforce the idea
of gender equality in Chinese society.

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language-history/
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2014.
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"The Four Tones of Spoken Mandarin - Learning the Four Tones of Spoken
Mandarin." About.com Mandarin Language. N.p., n.d. Web. 01 May 2014.

10. http://www.chineselanguageguide.com/facts/history/
"Ancient Chinese Language." S History,Ancient China Sinitic Language. Ancient
China Life, 2009. Web. 01 May 2014.
http://ancientchinalife.com/ancient-chinese-language.html
http://www.foreigntranslations.com/languages/chinese-translation/chinese-
language-history/
"Chinese Language History." Foreign Translations, Inc. N.p., 2014. Web. 01 May
2014.
http://www.special-dictionary.com/proverbs/source/c/confucian_proverb/
http://depts.washington.edu/chinaciv/graph/9wenge.htm
"Cultural Revolution." Washington University, n.d. Web. 01 May 2014.
http://mandarin.about.com/od/pronunciation/a/tones.htm
"The Four Tones of Spoken Mandarin - Learning the Four Tones of Spoken
Mandarin." About.com Mandarin Language. N.p., n.d. Web. 01 May 2014.