Chinese, the Han language (汉语), is the predominant language in China as a multi-ethnic society, spoken by more than 93% of the population. However, there are regional dialects: Northern Mandarin, Southwestern Mandarin, Eastern Mandarin, Xiang, Gan, Kejia, Wu, Northern Min, Southern Min, and Yue (Cantonese). The writing system is uniform. While People often retain their native dialects, a modern education has been promoting a unified, standard spoken language, “pǔ tōng huà” (普通话 commonly language), a.k.a. “guó yǔ” (国语 national language), based on the pronunciation of the Beijing dialect. Why privilege Beijing dialect?
- Historically, Beijing (Peking) has been the national capital for over one millennium from Liao, through the Jin, Yuan, Ming up to Qing dynasties. As Beijing has been the national center for political, commercial and academic activities, its dialect has become widely used and accepted as the official language for communication among state officials from different regions.
- The Beijing dialect is intelligible over a greater area than all the other dialects, spoken by 70% of the population from northeastern provinces.
- Many Chinese classical novels were written in either the Beijing dialect or in dialects linguistically close to the Beijing dialect, and the popularity of these novels contributed to the increasing use of this northern dialect.
- The Beijing dialect consists of clear and simple sounds; it has 21 initial sounds and 36 final sounds, and four tones (as opposed to, say, Cantonese that has nine tones).
Characteristics of the Chinese Language
Firstly, Chinese is a tonal language. Tone is a significant pitch: when the pitch of a syllable changes, its meaning also changes. For example, the Mandarin language uses four tones: high level [1], high rising [2], falling rising [3] and high falling [4]. These four tones are represented by tone marks placed on the main vowel of a syllable.
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- first ā
- second á
- third ǎ
- fourth à
The meaning of a syllable may change if and when the tone changes. For example, tāng 汤 = soup, táng 糖 = sugar, tǎng 躺 = lie down, and tàng 烫 ＝ hot; or mā 妈 = mother, má 麻 = hemp, mǎ 马 = horse, and mà 骂 = scold.
Secondly, there is a tendency toward monosyllabism in Chinese. A syllable in Chinese consists of three parts: tone, initial, and final. Initial is a consonant sound while final is a vowel. Almost every single syllable has its own meaning: mín(2) 民 = people; zhǔ(3) 主 ＝ master, but together they form a disyllabic compound word meaning “democracy”. Other disyllabic morphemes: luó-bo 萝卜 = turnip; pú-tao 葡萄 = grapes; pí-pā 琵琶 = loquat; xī-shuài 蟋蟀 = cricket. in these cases the disyllabic morphemes carry no meaning if they are separated into single syllables.
Thirdly, there is a lack of inflection in the indication of number, tense, case, and gender. For example, with regard to number: one book (yi ben shu, 一本书), two books (liang ben shu， 两本书) or three books (san ben shu， 三本书). With regard to time: “I love her” and “I loved her” can both be stated as “wo ai ta” (我爱她). No need to conjugate verbs. With regard to case: “I love her” = 我爱她； and “she loves me” (她爱我). With regard to gender: “He loves me” and “She loves me” are both stated as “ta ai wo.” (他爱我)
- Initials and finals; there are 23 consonants (initials) and 35 vowels (finals) in Mandarin Chinese.