The little language lexicon: the Chinese languages

The Chinese languages are a primary branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family, yet they are so different that speakers can hardly understand one another in spoken form. Besides Standard Chinese, which derives from Mandarin, the largest Sinitic (Chinese) language, there are nine other Chinese languages referred to as "dialects" (Mandarin, Jin, Wu, Hui, Xiang, Gan, Hakka, Yue (Cantonese), Pinghua and Min). Some of the differences between these "dialects" are so great, however, that they could also be called languages in their own right.

For communication across regions, China mostly uses Standard Chinese (Mandarin), and regionally also Cantonese. These are also the two languages that can be found (somewhat inaccurately in this case) as varieties under "Chinese" in our voice database.

But even though speakers of the various Chinese languages largely can't understand each other when speaking, they can understand each other in writing: even if a term is pronounced completely differently, the same character usually exists for it in all dialects. For example, the word "hand" is pronounced "shǒu" in Standard Chinese and "sa:u˧˥" in Cantonese, but is written as 手 in both languages. Without this so-called logographic script (put simply, each character stands for a concept), the words in the different Chinese languages would be written differently according to their sounds, as they are in languages using the Latin alphabet, for example.  On the other hand, this system of course also means that readers of the Chinese languages have to learn at least 4,000 to 5,000 characters to be able to read texts on various subjects. Around 2,000 characters are enough for a newspaper. In total, however, there are more than 100,000 characters.

The Chinese languages are so-called tonal languages. The number of tones has changed over history and still varies today. Standard Chinese, for example, has four tones. The first tone is spoken level and high, the second rising, the third first falling then rising, and the fourth sharply falling. So, depending on the tone, the morpheme "ma" can mean "mother", "hemp", "horse" or "to scold". These terms have four different characters, but they all represent the morpheme "ma". Since the meaning can vary greatly depending on the tone, mastering these tones is very important. After all, who wants to see the reaction when you call your mother a horse?

Historically, the original spread of the Chinese language is difficult to research. The languages of ancient China's neighbouring states are almost unknown. But as early as several centuries BC there is evidence of the Chinese language being divided into dialects.

Since the script reform of 1958, simplified characters have been used in the People's Republic of China, while traditional characters are still used in Hong Kong and Taiwan. Other languages such as Japanese originally used Chinese characters too. In Japan, however, separate simplified character forms were introduced as early as 1946.

In general, it can be said that the concept of the Chinese languages differs greatly from other languages. Linguistics generally doesn't recognise any relationship with languages outside the  Tibeto-Burman language family. Our article can therefore only give a linguistically simplified, brief insight into these fascinating languages.

Facts about the Chinese languages:

• Spoken in: People's Republic of China, Taiwan (Republic of China),  Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam, Philippines, USA
• Official language in: Singapore, Taiwan and the People's Republic of China
• One of the six official languages of the United Nations (UN)
• Speakers: approx. 1.3 billion (most widely spoken mother tongue)
• Language codes: zh (ISO 639-1), chi (ISO 639-2, B), zho (ISO 639-2, T), zho(ISO 639-3)
• Linguistic classification: Sino-Tibetan languages - Sinitic (Chinese) languages

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