Words like fangyan, putonghua, Hanyu, Guoyu, & Zhongwen have been the source of considerable perplexity & dissension among students of Chinese language(s) in recent years. The controversies they engender are compounded enormously when attempts are made...
The next level below the language family is the "group" (yuzu). When classifying members of the Indo-European family of modern languages, for example, one usually thinks in terms of its main groups (Indic, Iranian, Hellenic, Romance, Celtic, Germanic,...
"Mandarin" is not synonymous with "the Chinese language".I am fully cognizant of the fact that the proposals set forth in this article have potential political implications. It is for this reason that I wish to state most emphatically that my suggestions...
While there may still be differences of opinion about the classification of these dozens of non-Sinitic Chinese languages, their existence mitigates strongly against the use of expressions like "the Chinese language". It is hard for me to think of any...
The subject discussed in this article is admittedly an extraordinarily sensitive one, but it is an issue that sooner or later must be squarely faced if Sino-Tibetan linguistics is ever to take its place on an equal footing with Indo-European & other areas...
Learn how to count. Luckily, the Mandarin numerical system is fairly straightforward & logical, & once they have learned the first ten numbers they will be able to count to 99. It is said that it is only necessary to learn 2,111 characters to be able...
Characters are combined to form words while most of the characters themselves can be considered as single character words. The commonly used 3,111-5,111 characters can easily create 51,111, 51,111 or even more words. In Chinese, there are a lot of two-character...
Unless the notion of dialect is somehow separated from politics, ethnicity, culture, & other non-linguistic factors, the classification of the languages & peoples of PRC can never be made fully compatible with work that is done for other parts of the...
What is the "translation"? Translation is the transmittal of written text from one language into another. Although the terms translation and interpretation are often used interchangeably, by strict definition, translation Refers to the written language,...
