Chinese language explained

[L, Simon]

Greetings.

I am starting this log for those who learn or study the Chinese language. For years, I have wanted to share my knowledge about my language to anyone who would listen, but few people I have met, either from or outside my homeland, care much about the topic. It has been heartbreaking to see and hear false misinformation and deliberately malicious remarks on my native tongue spreading and circulating all over the places; misleading assumptions out of pure conjecture have hidden people from what the language truly is like. Therefore, as a native Chinese speaker, I feel obligated that I make something, such as this log, for people who care, that helps to clarify the common misunderstanding and lack of information about the Chinese language.

A few clarifications have be made first, as to the terminology I am to apply in this post.

1. No political comments made or wanted

Any topic even remotely related to China could easily derail into political statements, which is unwanted in this forum as made clear in the Forum Rules. The Taiwan Issue has been the most sensible subject for citizens from both sides, and it is a subject far more complicated than what anyone can learn from textbooks and media, even citizens from both side can barely understand, which is why professional experts (the academic kind) on this issue exist. I for myself, being a layman on this issue, am certainly not going to make any related political comments in this log. (By comment, I mean for attitudes, judges and remarks; historical facts, which will only be used to explain some linguist phenomena, are NOT considered "comment" per se.) I understand that people from different places are brought up in their unique pedagogical environments, and what one may consider natural can be uncomfortable to the other. Therefore, extra attention are called for to mutual respect, only then can productive conversations spring.

2. When I say "language"

When I say "language", I NEVER mean to include its writing system. In Chinese, we make clear distinction between language and script with the character 語/语 and 文, such as 漢語/汉语 (lit. "Chinese language") and 漢文/汉文 (lit. "Chinese script", which usage is archaic; not to be confused with Japanese or Korean 漢文, lit. "Chinese literature", where 文 means "articles, literatures"). In a more complete term, we formally refer to a language and its script with 語文/语文, such as 漢語文/汉语文.

3. Chinese language or languages?

It is common in the Western academia to refer to Chinese as a language family instead of a single language, hence the term Chinese "languages". The core to this problem is the boundary between language and dialect, which is more of a political issue rather than a scientific one, which brings us back to Point 1. As the academic tradition where I am from, I prefer "language", the singular form. The principle "mutual intelligibility" is often applied to make the distinction, but the concept is actually very ambiguous and always fail eventually. Scholars who defend for the concept would say that, two men speaking phonologically unintelligible dialects of the same language will naturally grow to understand each other, should they live or contact among the other's community for long enough, hence linguistically intelligible, while two men speaking different languages will never do no matter much time is taken. (This is the actual statement from Dennis Freeborn's From Old English to Standard English, but I didn't quote directly bc I don't have the book at hand, so I roughly paraphrased it). In my view, this is simply not true, because if so, people from different tribes with different languages in the ancient times would never be able to communicate with each other, and dictionaries would be some natural-born objects to magically aid peoples' trade between different countries, which is absurd. Therefore, I do prefer the term "dialect continuum" more, despite that it may also fail sometimes when it comes the ambiguity of boundary and change of boundary over time.

4. Chinese writing system

Maybe to many people's surprise, that the term "traditional Chinese character" and "simplified Chinese character" are actually more accurate than the common Chinese terms 繁體字/繁体字 and 簡體字/简体字. Academically, formally and officially, in Mainland China, we refer to simplified Chinese character as 現代通用規範漢字/现代通用规范汉字 (Xiàn-dài Tōng-yòng Guī-fàn Hàn-zì, lit. "modern general standard Chinese characters"), or simply 通用字 (lit. "general characters") or 規範字/规范字 (lit. "standard characters"), and traditional Chinese characters as 古籍印刷通用字 (lit. "general characters for ancient book printing"). There are also official character lists for the two. In this post, for simplicity, I will stick to "traditional Chinese character" and "simplified Chinese character", but not translating them as 繁體字/繁体字 and 簡體字/简体字. Whenever a character occurred in this post comes in traditional-simplified pair, both forms are shown with a dividing slash and the traditional form comes first. However, by traditional forms, I follow those from ancient literatures (which are basically included in the character list of 古籍印刷通用字), therefore not all traditional Chinese character in this post are the same as those used in Taiwan or Hong Kong AR or Macau AR. One should be aware that the most conservative form of Chinese characters that is still in use today is that of Korea, even though Korean has mostly stopped using Chinese characters in writing today.

5. Names of Chinese dialects

Contrary to what people are more familiar with, I refer to the dialects of Chinese by somehow different names, namely Mandarin dialects (官話方言/官话方言, Guān-huà Fāng-yán), Jin dialects (晉方言/晋方言, Jìn Fāng-yán), Wu dialects (吳方言/吴方言Wú Fāng-yán), Min dialects (閩方言/闽方言, Mǐn Fāng-yán), Hakka dialects (客家方言Kè-jiā Fāng-yán), Yue dialects (粤方言, Yuè Fāng-yán), Xiang dialects (湘方言, Xiāng Fāng-yán), Gan dialects (贛方言/赣方言, Gàn Fāng-yán), Hui dialects (徽方言, Huī Fāng-yán) and vernacular dialects (平話土話/平话土话, Píng-huà Tǔ-huà), last one being an uncategorised group. Notice that I have used "dialects", the plural form. Terms like Cantonese and Taiwanese is extremely inaccurate if they are used to refer to Yue dialects and South Min (閩南/闽南, Mǐn-nán) dialects respectively, because each dialect group covers much more regions other than Guangdong or Taiwan. In Chinese and other sino-xenic vocabularies, another common inaccurate way of referring to a dialect is by naming it with the character 語/语 (lit. "language"), since it is usually used with a language name, such as 英語/英语 (lit. "English language"). In Chinese, the better way to refer to a dialect of Chinese is with the character 話/话 (lit. "speech"), such as 廣東話/广东话 (lit. "Cantonese speech"), just as Japanese dialects are refer to with not 語 but 弁 (a simpler homophonic substitution of 辨, which lit. means "to distinct").

[L, Simon]

GLOSSARY

This is the collection of Chinese vocabularies that have occurred up to the latest update of the log.

Entry format

Chinese text

• Pinyin

• Character by character

• Full translation

• (optional) Complementary note

"Chinese text" section

1. If not a single character in the entry is in traditional/simplified pair, the entry is not divided into pair.

characterString

Example:

通用字

2. Whenever a character in traditional/simplified pair occurs in the entry, all characters are shown in pair divided by one slash.

tradionalCharacters/simplifiedCharacters

Example:

規範字/规范字

3. Inseparable characters (called 聯綿詞/联绵词) are link with a equal mark.

4. Single characters that is not commonly used as an independent word in Modern Chinese are not listed as entries.

"Pinyin" section

1. Pinyin of each character between words is separated by a space bar, within a word (i.e. between morphemes) by a hyphen.

2. First letter of a proper names (e.g. place names, dynasty names, personal names, specialised terms, etc.) is capitalised.

3. Vowel letters with diacritical mark are used to mark tones, therefore be cautious if you encounter rendering issues.

• Hàn-yǔ pīn-yīn

Example:

• Wú fāng-yán

"Character by character" section

1. Because each character may contain multiple senses, only the sense in the context of its belonging entry is given.

2. If more than one English word is needed for translating a single character, the English words are separated with dots.

3. Separation rule in "Pinyin" section is also valid.

4. Word-initial capitalisation is not applied to non-English proper names.

• English-language multi.word.translation.for.one.character

Example:

• Han.ethnic.group language-script

"Full translation" section

Given in common English word or phrase. Word-initial letter(s) is capitalised for Chinese proper names.

"Complementary note"

Other information I feel necessary to add goes here.

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漢語/汉语

• Hàn-yǔ

• Han.ethnic.group-language

• Chinese languege

漢文/汉文

• Hàn-wén

• Han.ethnic.group-script

• Chinese script

• Archaic term in Chinese. Today people usually refer to it by 漢字/汉字 or 中文

語文/语文

• yǔ-wén

• language-script

• oral language and its writing system(s)

• Commonly used in Mainland China as the subject name in primary, secondary and high schools, while few people know its literal meaning, thinking it be the proper name of the subject, thus usually wrongly translate it into English as "Chinese".

漢語文/汉语文

• Hàn yǔ-wén

• Han.ethnic.group language-script

• Chinese language and script

• Commonly used in related major names in university in Mainland China, but with 文 usually mistaken for meaning "literature".

繁體字/繁体字

• fán-tǐ zì

• complicated-form character

• *traditional Chinese character

• Inaccurate term commonly used in "Sinosphere".

簡體字/简体字

• jiǎn-tǐ zì

• simple-form character

• *simplified Chinese character

• Even more inaccurate term commonly used in "Sinosphere". Notice how the term means "simple" rather than "simplified"?

現代通用規範漢字/现代通用规范汉字

• xiàn-dài tōng-yòng guī-fàn Hàn-zì

• present-period general-to.use rule-paradigm Han.ethnic.group character

• modern general standard Chinese characters

• Specialised terms that is rarely mentioned in daily life.

古籍印刷通用字

• gǔ-jí yìn-shuā tōng-yòng zì

• ancient-book to.press.and.leave.a.mark-to.brush general-to.use character

• general characters for ancient book printing

• Specialised terms that is never mentioned in daily life.

官話方言/官话方言

• guān-huà fāng-yán

• official-speech region-speech

• Mandarin dialects

• Official term, and not equivalent to Modern Standard Chinese, which only one branch of the former in its modern form. Not to be confused with what is commonly implied by "Mandarin Chinese" in modern English.

晉方言/晋方言

• Jìn fāng-yán

• historical.Jin.area region-speech

• Jin dialects

• Official term. 晉/晋 is now limited to Shanxi when used as a shortened provincial name.

吳方言/吴方言

• Wú fāng-yán

• historical.Wu.Yue(越).area region-speech

• Wu dialects

• Official term. 吳/吴 refers to 吳越/吴越 area or people, 越 being a historical larger ethnic family.

閩方言/闽方言

• Mǐn fāng-yán

• historical.Min.Yue(越).area region-speech

• Wu dialects

• Official term. 閩/闽 refers to 閩越/闽越 area or people, 越 being a historical larger ethnic family.

客家方言

• Kè-jiā fāng-yán

• guest-people region-speech

• Hakka dialects

• Official term. 客家 refers to people migrated to the south, as distinguished from indigenous people.

粤方言

• Yuè fāng-yán

• historical.Southern.Yue(越).area region-speech

• Yue dialects

• Official term. 粤 refers to 南越 (not to be confused with Vietnam) area or people, 粤 being a homophonic substitution for 越, 越 being a historical larger ethnic family.

湘方言

• Xiāng fāng-yán

• historical.Xiang.or.Chu(楚).area region-speech

• Xiang dialects

• Official term.

贛方言/赣方言

• Gàn fāng-yán

• Gan.river.area region-speech

• Gan dialects

• Official term.

徽方言

• Huī fāng-yán

• Anhui region-speech

• Hui dialects

• Official term. It cover only areas around Southern Anhui instead of the whole Anhui.

平話土話/平话土话

• Píng-huà Tǔ-huà

• plain-speech rural-speech

• vernacular dialects

• Official term. Word compound.

英語/英语

• Yīng-yǔ

• English-language

• English language

• 英 here is the abbreviation of 英吉利, an out-dated Chinese phonetic transliteration of the word "English".

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[L, Simon]

RESOURCES

This is the collection of Chinese resources which I believe to be rarely seen or heard of by those outside of Mainland China.

List of General Standard Characters

[lingohot]

Hello L, Simon

What kind of notation method is this? Is is something like a word-for-word translation of Chinese for linguistic purposes?

"Character by character" section

1. Because each character may contain multiple senses, only the sense in the context of its belonging entry is given.

2. If more than one English word is needed for translating a single character, the English words are separated with dots.

3. Separation rule in "Pinyin" section is also valid.

4. Word-initial capitalisation is not applied to non-English proper names.

• English-language translation.translation

Example:

• Han.ethnic.group language-script

[L, Simon]

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[Resource] List of General Standard Character

Hi!

Checkout this Git (in Chinese) if your are interested to characters we use every day in Mainland China.
https://github.com/cdtym/digital-table-of-general-standard-chinese-characters

Since the Git is in Chinese, allow me to interest you with some facts about the list:

1. The list divides 8105 characters in to 3 "levels". Level 1 consists of 3500 characters, level 2 of 3000, level 3 of 1605.

2. A high school graduate recognise nearly all of level 1 characters, since they are the mostly use ones in everyday life.

3. Level 2 characters are less common, and often occur in specialised terms. To my personal estimation, A high school graduate will recogise about a half or less.

4. Oddly seen characters in place names or personal names usually fall in level 3. Ancient and technical rare characters also belong to this category.

5. There's also a comparison table for simplified characters and its various forms.

By the way, there's also an official copy of the list cited and linked by the Git above. However, it should be reminded that it is an unsearchable PDF file. Now you understand why the above Git exist in the first place.

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[L, Simon]

What kind of notation method is this? Is is something like a word-for-word translation of Chinese for linguistic purposes?

Hi, lingohot.

Yes, you're right. I try to follow the linguistic tradition I've mostly seen, hoping it may help anyone to understand the meaning better.

I'm sure you're familiar that modern Chinese multi-syllabic (mostly 2 or 4) words consists of individual mono-syllabic character that contribute to the word's meaning, thus I feel like it's necessary to understand the meaning at both word- and character-level. However, I don't like explaining the meaning of a single character without it being in a word, because it feels context-less, so this is my work-around.

I hope you may find it helpful.

---

Oh, I think I find the format line of what you quote a bit weird, so I twisted it a little.

[L, Simon]

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[Information] Post-Liù-shū theories

In one of the three subjects of traditional Chinese philology, 文字學/文字学 (wén-zì xué, lit. "study of script"), 六書/六书 (liù-shū, lit. "six ways of writing") has been the essential theory to explain and analyse the construction of a character. It distinguishes 6 different categories of characters, explaining how the characters, units of Chinese writing system, have been and should be created. If you haven't heard of 六書/六书, I recommend you to read this Wikipedia page.

I would remind though, that liù-shū, as a paradigm established by Xǔ Shèn, is best suited for analysing charaters in their 秦篆 (Qín-zhuàn, lit. "seal script of Qin Dynasty") form, complying with Xǔ Shèn's 《説文解字/说文解字》(Shuō Wén Jiě Zì, lit. "discussing writing and explaining characters").

The Wikipedia page on 六書/六书 mentioned modern post-liù-shū theories of 唐蘭/唐兰 and 裘錫圭/裘锡圭 in the end, and I would like to add another theory here, which in Mainland China is even rarely known outside the 文字學/文字学 academia: 漢字構形理論/汉字构形理论 (lit. "theory of Chinese character formation") of 王寧/王宁 (Wáng Níng).

The concept 構件/构件 (gòu-jiàn, lit. "component, assembly unit"), also referred to as 部件(bù-jiàn), makes further reduction of a character beyond that with 部首 (bù-shǒu) and 偏㫄/偏旁 (piān-páng) in traditional 六書/六书 theory. 構件/构件 comes in different levels during character reduction analysis, and are functionally divided into four categories: 表形构件/表形構件 (biǎo-xíng gòu-jiàn, lit. "picto-component"), 表义构件/表義構件 (biǎo-yì gòu-jiàn, lit. "ideo-component"), 表音构件/表音構件 (biǎo-yīn gòu-jiàn, lit. "phono-component") and 記號構件/记号构件 (jì-hào gòu-jiàn, lit. "symbolic component"). Two processes of Chinese character formation are also distinguished, namely 構形/构形 ("morphological formation") and 構意/构意 ("semantic formation"). Thus, further more, over 10 different formation patterns are proposed, enabling the theory to analyse characters beyond 秦篆. The theory also repeatedly emphasise non-negligible effects that the Chinese language and Chinese script have on each other, in contrast to the modern linguistics after de Saussure, which takes the writing system of a language for only an accessory tool of recording.

If you are interested in 漢字構形理論/汉字构形理论, the book 《汉字构形学导论》by 王寧/王宁 is a good reference to start with.

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[L, Simon]

GLOSSARY

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《説文解字/说文解字》

• Shuō Wén Jiě Zì

• to.talk script to.solve character

• discussing writing and explaining characters

• Usually simply referred to as 《説文/说文》. Notice that there are more editions other than that of 許慎 (Xǔ Shèn).

文字學/文字学

• wén-zì xué

• script-character study

• study of writing system

六書/六书

• liù-shū

• six-to.write

• six ways of writing

秦篆

• Qín-zhuàn

• Qin.Dynasty-seal.script

• *seal script of Qin Dynasty

• Also referred to as 小篆 (lit. "small seal script") or 秦小篆. "Seal script" is not a literal translation of the character 篆, which itself is a proper name that is sometimes defined as "to write down" (《説文》: 引書也). 篆 was also defined homophonically as 傳 (lit. "to pass down; biography of a notable") in 《法書攷》. 篆 in a broad sense is used to name the character form 秦篆 and all its predecessors.

漢字構形理論/汉字构形理论

• Hàn-zì gòu-xíng lǐ-lùn

• Han.ethnic.group-character to.construct-shape theory-thesis

• theory of Chinese character formation

構件/构件

• gòu-jiàn

• to.construct-component

• component element, assembly unit

部首

• bù-shǒu

• division-head

• radical (of Chinese character)

• 《説文/说文》divides characters in 540 部 ("parts, divisions"), the first character of each called 部首. All characters in the rest of the same 部 use the 部首 as a semantic component, much like the determinatives in Egyptian hieroglyphs and Sumerian cuneiforms.

偏㫄/偏旁

• piān-páng

• to.lean-beside

• radical component (of Chinese character)

• Also known as 偏旁冠脚, an out-dated term, with the four characters referring to the left, right, upper and lower lateral component of a character respectively. Now, 偏旁 refers to both the 部首 and the rest part of a character.

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[Saim]

Therefore, I do prefer the term "dialect continuum" more, despite that it may also fail sometimes when it comes the ambiguity of boundary and change of boundary over time.

Is it really accurate to refer to Sinitic in its entirety as a dialect continuum? I'm no expert, but I had the sense that there are fairly hard borders between the major blocs (i.e. there is no real continuum between Mandarin dialects and Wu dialects, or between Hakka dialects and Yue dialects), since Han people settled what is now the south of China in separate waves. There may be fuzzy borders and transitional zones within each major bloc, though, and perhaps there are also transitions between some of the more "debatable" first-level divisions, like between Jin and Mandarin or between Yue and Ping. Feel free to correct me, it's clear you know much more about this than I do.

[L, Simon]

Is it ... than I do

Hi, Saim.

Thanks for your reply. I appreciate your interest in this topic. Although I am not familiar with all dialect groups that you and I have mentioned, I will try to explain my perspectives to you with what I do know.

Is it really accurate to refer to Sinitic in its entirety as a dialect continuum?

I will skip this one for the moment, and look at the next more specific question.

... there is no real continuum between Mandarin dialects and Wu dialects ...

As a matter of fact, my mother tongue is a living example of a dialect continuum between Mandarin and Wu. The first thing to be clarified though is that the Mandarin group can be divided into 8 subgroups, and the Mandarin as most commonly known belongs to Beijing (北京) Mandarin subgroup, while my mother tongue is closer to Jianghuai (江淮, between downstream of Yangtze River and Huai River) Mandarin. I have been born and raised in Nanjing. The urban tongue of the city is one of Jianghuai Mandarin, while the tongues of peripheral rural areas belong to Wu. I grew up in the central rural area, where we speech with a tongue with features of both Jianghuai Mandarin and Wu. Usually, my mother tongue is considered a Jianghuai Mandarin, but we do have, for instance, most of the voiced onset consonants from Late Middle Chinese (although they are gradually lost among young speakers), preservation of many velar onset consonants which are now alveolo-palatal affricates in Jianghuai Mandarin, and complete reduction of the rime structures (in Pinyin) "<ian>" , "<uan>" and "<üan>" into "/iː /", "/uː /" and "/yː /", which are clearly features of Wu. This is due to the fact that Nanjing shifted from Wu-speaking area to contemporary Mandarin-speaking area during Ming Dynasty, being Ming's capital.

... there is no real continuum ... between Hakka dialects and Yue dialects ...

Gan, Yue, Min, Hakka and to some extend, even Wu, are closely related dialect groups, belonging to a historical ethnic family known as 越 (or 百越) lived in what is now South of China. I do not have much knowledge about these dialect groups though, but I vaguely remember having read somewhere that there are arguments that these dialect groups, at least Gan, Yue and Hakka all have derived from a common ancestor. I will work on this subject and look into dedicated literatures when I have time.

... since Han people settled what is now the south of China in separate waves.

I am not sure if I understand this one correctly, but I gather that you have implied that different waves of migration has led to cultural diversity in the same region, bringing in different languages and creating language barrier (thus clear boundaries) between the old and new settlers. I would argue that migration merely brings different dialects rather than languages into contact, since you said migration of Han people (not other nationality), and by the time of first contact there surely were boundaries (until they began to merge with each other and the boundaries blurred), but it does not disprove the fact that those dialects derive from the same ancestor thus forming a continuum. To think pro forma: consider Language A which had spread out and formed dialect continua B and C, and later a grand migration of B-speakers brought them in contact with C-speakers. Differences between B and C can be bigger than those between A and B or A and C, but still, B and C are dialect continuum to the same language, though maybe not to each other on the surface.

There are also arguments claiming that southern dialects such as Yue and Min are too distinct from Mandarin to be considered the same language with it. This view is actually quite popular among Min and Yue speakers. It is true that southern dialects have preserved more features from Middle Chinese, but it does not make them different languages, just like any other languages' dialects that have preserved archaic features. Neither do dialectal lexons from possible "substratum" suffice as supporting arguments.

There may be fuzzy borders and transitional zones ...

It is true that borders can be debatable, and the standards are not always fixed. Therefore, I usually refer to official materials like 《中国语言地图集》, for the ease of avoiding debates outside serious dialectological context.

Is it really accurate to refer to Sinitic in its entirety as a dialect continuum?

Now I shall go back to the first question. I do deem Chinese as a whole continuum, but there are also contacts of different continua due to distant migrations and dys-synchrony of language development that make the dialect continua appear to be discontinuous and isolated from each other.

---

That was a lot of words ((wiping sweat)). I hope I have made my points clear and responded to your doubts in your reply. I, too, not so much as an expert, am but studying, so I am glad that we can share our different thoughts here.