Number 1:
How to say "Chinese Language" in Chinese?
When you are talking about Chinese language, it might be a little confusing because there are so many names for the Chinese language, such as hànyǔ 汉语, zhōngwén 中文, pǔtōnghuà 普通话, guóyǔ 国语, huáwén 华文 and huáyǔ 华语.
simplified Chinese: 汉语; traditional Chinese: Hànyǔ 漢語
Number 2:
How many people speak Chinese worldwide?
About one in five of the world’s population speaks a form of Chinese. Mandarin is the official language of the People’s Republic of China and by far the most widely used version, with over 800 million speakers.
Chinese is also spoken by large communities around the world, from Singapore to London to Vancouver.
Number 3:
How hard is it to learn?
Actually, it’s not as hard as you might think.
Chinese grammar is surprisingly straightforward, with none of the tenses, plurals, cases or genders that can make learning European languages difficult.
The hard bit is mastering the tones. Mandarin is a tonal language, which means the pitch or intonation in which a sound is spoken affects the meaning.
Number 4:
If I learn Chinese, will it help me with any other languages?
The answer is Yes.
Knowing how to read and write Chinese characters will help you pick up written Japanese more quickly, since Japanese uses a large number of characters with exactly the same meaning, although the pronunciation and grammar is completely different.
Number 5:
First publication
Chinese is an ancient language. Archaeologists have discovered early forms of Chinese writing on animal bones and tortoise shells which date back to the Shang dynasty over 3,000 years ago.
Classics included the Book of Songs, which is the earliest surviving collection of Chinese poetry and was written some time around 1000 BC. The works of China’s moral philosopher, Confucius, are collected together in a work called The Analects, dating from around 400 BC.
Because Chinese has a continuous writing tradition, students today can still read and understand these ancient works.
Comments