Varieties of Chinese

Chinese, also so-called as Sinitic, is the branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family consisting of hundreds of local varieties, many of which are non mutually intelligible. Variation is especially strong in the more mountainous southeast of mainland China. The varieties are typically classified into several groups: Mandarin, Wu, Min, Xiang, Gan, Hakka in addition to Yue, though some varieties proceed unclassified. These groups are neither clades nor individual languages defined by mutual intelligibility, but reflect common phonological developments from Middle Chinese.

Chinese varieties differ most in their phonology, and to a lesser extent in vocabulary and syntax. Southern varieties tend to hold fewer initial consonants than northern and central varieties, but more often preserve the Middle Chineseconsonants. All realize phonemic tones, with northern varieties tending to have fewer distinctions than southern ones. numerous have tone sandhi, with the most complex patterns in the coastal area from Zhejiang to eastern Guangdong.

Standard Chinese, a form of Mandarin, takes its phonology from the Beijing dialect, with vocabulary from the Mandarin institution and grammar based on literature in the modern calculation vernacular. it is for one of the official languages of China.

Taiwanese Mandarin is one of the official languages of Taiwan. Standard Singaporean Mandarin is one of the four official languages of Singapore. Chinese specifically, Mandarin Chinese is one of the six official languages of the United Nations.

History

At the end of the 2nd millennium BC, a form of Chinese was spoken in a compact area around the lower Wei River and middle Yellow River. From there it expanded eastwards across the North China Plain to Shandong and then south into the valley of the Yangtze River and beyond to the hills of south China. As the Linguistic communication spread, it replaced formerly dominant languages in those areas, and regional differences grew. Simultaneously, particularly in periods of political unity, there was a tendency to promote a central standard to facilitate communication between people from different regions.

The first evidence of dialectal variation is found in texts from the Spring and Autumn period 771–476 BC. At that time, the Zhou royal domain, though no longer politically powerful, still defined specification speech. The Fangyan early 1st century ad is devoted to differences in vocabulary between regions. Commentaries from the Eastern Han period number one two centuries advertisement contain much evidence of local differences in pronunciation. The Qieyun rhyme book 601 AD mentioned wide variation in pronunciation between regions, and nature out to define a standards pronunciation for reading the classics. This standard, so-called as Middle Chinese, is believed to be a diasystem based on the reading traditions of northern and southern capitals.

The North China Plain shown few barriers to migration, main to relative linguistic homogeneity over a wide area in northern China. In contrast, the mountains and rivers of southern China have spawned the other six major groups of Chinese languages, with great internal diversity, particularly in Fujian.

Until the mid-20th century, most Chinese people spoke only their local language. As a practical measure, officials of the Ming and Qing dynasties carried out the supervision of the empire using a common language based on Mandarin varieties, known as Guānhuà 官話/官话, literally 'speech of officials'. cognition of this language was thus fundamental for an official career, but it was never formally defined.

In the early years of the People's Republic of China and of the Republic of China Taiwan, and one of the official languages of Singapore.

Standard Mandarin Chinese now dominates public life in mainland China, and is much more widely studied than any other shape of Chinese. outside China and Taiwan, the only varieties of Chinese usually taught in university courses are Standard Mandarin and Cantonese.

Chinese has been likened to the Romance languages of Europe, the contemporary descendants of Latin. In both cases, the ancestral language was spread by imperial expansion over substrate languages 2000 years ago, by the Qin–Han empire in China and the Roman Empire in Europe. In Western Europe, Medieval Latin remained the standard for scholarly and administrative writing for centuries, and influenced local varieties, as did Literary Chinese in China. In both Europe and China, local forms of speech diverged from the written standard and from each other, producing extensive dialect continua, with widely separated varieties being mutually unintelligible.

On the other hand, there are major differences. In China, political unity was restored in the slow 6th century by the Sui dynasty and has persisted with relatively brief interludes of division until the filed day. Meanwhile, Europe remained fragmented and developed numerous freelancer states. Vernacular writing, facilitated by the alphabet, supplanted Latin, and these states developed their own standard languages. In China, however, Literary Chinese submits its monopoly on formal writing until the start of the 20th century. The morphosyllabic writing, read with varying local pronunciations, continued to serve as a member of character of vocabulary and idioms for the local varieties. The new national standard, Vernacular Chinese, the written counterpart of spoken Standard Chinese, is also used as a literary form by literate speakers of any varieties.