A Brief Introduction to the

Chinese Language

Keqian Xu, Ph.D.

Professor of Chinese Literature and Culture,
Nanjing Normal University,
Visiting Professor and deputy director of
the Confucius Institute at NCSU
[email protected]
A very old yet still living language:
„ Several thousand years long history, ever
changing, but never interrupted.
„ Belong to the “Sino-Tibetan” language
system.
„ More people speak Chinese than any other
language in the world.
„ One of the five official languages of UN.
„ About 2 million American residents are
Chinese home speakers.
„ 60% of Korean vocabulary comes from
Chinese.
„ Written Japanese has several thousand
characters borrowed from Chinese.
„ It has been estimated that until the 18th
century more than half of the world's
printed books were in Chinese.
 Some confusing terms：

„ ChineseLanguage 中文
„ Hanyu 汉语
„ Mandarin 官话
„ Putonghua 普通话
 Is Cantonese Chinese?
„ Yes!
„ It’sonly one of the many dialects of
Chinese (Yue Dialect).
„ The difference is mainly in pronunciation,
slightly in vocabulary and grammar, but
not in writing system.
The Map of Chinese Dialects

„ Northern
„ Wu
„ Yue
„ Min
„ Xiang
„ Gan
„ Hakka
 What is “Pin Yin”?
„ The Romanized phonetic spelling system
created in 1950’s for Mandarin or standard
Chinese (Putonghua)
„ It is based on Beijing Dialects, a branch of
the Northern dialects of Chinese language
„ It uses 25 letters in English except “ V ”.
 Chinese (Mandarin) Phonetics
„ Initials (consonants)
„ Finals (a vowel, or a combination of vowels,
sometimes with a nasal at the end)
„ Tones (four distinct and one light tones)
„ Each Chinese character corresponds to one
syllable. A syllable is consist of an initial, a final
and a tone.
 21 initials (consonants)
Voiceless Voiced
Unaspirated Aspirated Nasal
fricative fricative

Labial b p m f
Alveolar d t n l
Velar g k h
Palatal j q x
Dental
sibilant z c s
Retroflex zh ch sh r

y w
 35 finals
6 simple
finals: a o e i u ü

13
ai ao ei ia iao ie iou (iu) ou ua
compound
finals: uai üe uei (ui) uo
8 front an en ian in uan üan
nasals: uen (un) ün
16 nasal
finals:
8 back ang eng iang ing iong
nasals: ong uang ueng
er
 4 tones，and a light tone

High Up Low Down light

mā má mǎ mà ma
Māma qí mǎ， mǎ màn， mā mà mǎ.

妈 妈 骑 马，马 慢， 妈 骂 马。

Mother is riding on a horse, the horse walks

too slow, so mother curses it.
„ Combinations of initials and finals, plus
several special cases, result in 411
possible combinations.
„ Applying the four tones, we get a total of
around 1,600 unique syllables.
Zhōng Guó Měi Guó
中 国 美 国
China USA
Běi Jīng 北京
Nán Jīng 南京
Dōng Jīng 东京

Běi kǎ luó lái nà 北卡罗来纳

Why not use “Pin Yin” to replace Chinese
characters as Chinese writing system?

„ Impossible! Because there are too many

homophonic characters.
„ Zhao Yuanren, a famous Chinese linguist,
wrote an article entitled 施氏食狮史( The
Story of Mr. Shi Ate a Lion), the whole
article only use one syllable “shi”.
When did the earliest Chinese
Characters appeared?
„ No later than 14 century B.C.
„ Oracle-bone inscriptions of the Shang
Dynasty (1600-1028 B.C.)
Inscription on tripod
vessels
Large seal script
(1100-256 BC)
Inscription on
stone stele,
Qin Dynasty
(221B.C.-206 B.C )
small seal
script
“Li shu” or Clerical
script:
Han Dynasty (220
B.C.-206 A.D.)
„ “KaiShu” , the
standard script
Tang Dynasty
(618-907)
 The evolution of Chinese Characters.

Oracle Large Small Clerical Standard Running Grass Simplified

bone seal seal script script script script script
script script script (207 BC-
BC- (Since (Since (Since (Since
(1400-
(1400- (1100-
(1100- (221-
(221- 220 AD) 207 BC) 207 BC) 207 BC) 1949)
1200 BC) 256 BC) 207 BC)

Human
rén
Mountain
shān
Sun rì
Horse Mǎ
Are all the Chinese characters
pictographs？

„ No! Only some basic words are.

„ Chinese works pictographically as well as
phonetically.
How do Chinese characters
constructed?
„ Xu Shen，a scholar lived in Han Dynasty,
summarized “Six Ways” :指事、象形、形声、
会意、转注、假借
„ Later scholars pointed out that only the
first 4 are the principle of constructing
Chinese characters, the rest two are ways
of using them.
The Main 4 Principles for Character
Construction:

„ Pictographs (≈4%)
„ Ideographs (≈1%)
„ Logical Aggregates (≈13%)
„ Phonetic Complexes (≈82%)
 Pictographs:
Represent real-life objects by drawings (≈4%)
– Animal, plants, parts of the body etc.
– Example (Scripts from oracle bone)

zHorse 马 zBig，great大
zHuman 人 zHand 手
zSun 日 zKnife 刀
zMountain 山 zTree，wood 木
Ideographs：
Represent positional and numeral
concepts by indication (≈1%)
Example:

z一 二 三 zHeaven 天
z 上 下
z 本 末 z Separate 分
Logical Aggregates:
Form a new meaning by combining the meanings of two
or more characters (≈13%)
Example
„ Wood 木 Small Forest 林 Big Forest 森
„ Person 人 Small Group 从 Large Group 众

„ Person 人＋Ground 土＝ Sit 坐

„ 手 + 分 + 手 ＝ 掰 Hand + To separate +
Hand ＝ To separate sth with two hands
 Phonetic Complexes
Form a character by combining the meaning of one
character and the pronunciation of another character
(≈82%)

Example：

„江 河 湖 海 流 沐 潮
„椅 杆 杨 桐 案 架 梨
„妈 码 玛 骂 蚂 吗 犸
„驴 骡 骆 驾 驶 骑 驻
9 basic
stokes 书
How many Chinese characters in all ?
„ 9,353 in 1st century C.E. （《说文解字》）
„ 47,043 in 1716（《康熙字典》）
„ ~60,000 in 1990
„ Occurrence
ƒ 1,000 characters 90%
ƒ 2,400 characters 99%
ƒ 3,800 characters 99.9%
ƒ 6,600 characters 99.999%
300 of the most common characters will help you
survive in Chinese daily life.
Chinese word building：
„ Some words are single syllable (one
character)
„ Majority words in modern Chinese are
double syllable (two characters)
„ Some words are multi-syllable (three or
more characters)
学（xué）：learn，study
„ 学校 school „ 学者 scholar
„ 小学 primary school „ 奖学金 scholarship
„ 中学 secondary school „ 哲学 philosophy
„ 大学 university „ 科学 science
„ 学院 college „ 物理学 physics
„ 学生 student „ 形而上学 metaphysics
„ 学分 credit „ 人类学 anthropology
„ 学费 tuition „ 医学 medicine
„ 学期 semester „ 汉学 sinology
Strong capability in make new words:

电（diàn）：thunder flash，electricity
„ 电力 electricity power „ 电池 battery
„ 发电站 power plant „ 电视 TV
„ 电灯 electric light „ 彩电 color TV
„ 电车 trolley bus „ 电脑 computer
„ 电话 telephone „ 电子邮件 E-mail
„ 电影 movie
 Is Chinese grammar complex ?
„ Not any more complex in general compare
with other languages. Some aspects are
even much simpler.
„ Main features:
– No inflection of nouns, verbs，etc.
– The order of words is more important.
– Functional empty words.
– Many measure words.
 English: Chinese:
to be ----- am, is, are, always “ 是” （shì）.
was, were, been, being,
have been,

study，studied, always “ 学习 ” （xué

studying xí）.
„ 我在姑妈家。 I am in auntie's home.
„ 姑妈在我家。Auntie is in my home.
„ 我姑妈在家。My auntie is at home.
„ 我家姑妈在。My auntie is right here.
Learning Chinese：A rewardable
long-term investment
„ If my kids were of very young ages
today, I would be asking them, and
encouraging them, to learn Chinese.
(Howard Schultz，Chairman, Starbucks - Seattle Times,
12/25/2005)

„ If you want to get ahead, learn

Mandarin…learning Chinese will
provide an edge in the 21st.
(Time magazine, June 19, 2006).
Some useful internet resource
index web pages:
„ Ocrat.com http://www.ocrat.com/
„ Leaning Chinese Online
http://www.csulb.edu/~txie/online.htm
„ MERLOT (Multimedia Educational
Resource for Learning and Online Teaching)
http://www.merlot.org
Thank you!