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Monday, 29 August 2016

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Communiqua is one of the leading center for learning language courses in Chennai. For more details please contact

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Classification of the Chinese language

The dialectologist Jerry Norman estimated that there are hundreds of mutually unintelligible varieties of Chinese. where to learn chinese language in chennai These varieties form a dialect continuum, in which differences in speech generally become more pronounced as distances increase, although there are also some sharp boundaries. However, the rate of change in mutual intelligibility varies immensely depending on region. For example, the varieties of Mandarin spoken in all three northeastern Chinese provinces are mutually intelligible, but in the province of Fujian, where Min varieties predominate, the speech of neighbouring counties or even villages may be mutually unintelligible.

Dialect groups

Classifications of Chinese varieties in the late 19th century and early 20th century were based on impressionistic criteria. where to learn chinese language in chennai They often followed river systems, which were historically the main routes of migration and communication in southern China. The first scientific classifications, based primarily on the evolution of Middle Chinese voiced initials, were produced by Wang Li in 1936 and Li Fang-Kuei in 1937, with minor modifications by other linguists since. The conventionally accepted set of seven dialect groups first appeared in the second edition of Yuan Jiahua's dialectology handbook (1961):

Mandarin

This is the group spoken in northern and southwestern China and has by far the most speakers. chinese language training in chennai This group includes the Beijing dialect, which forms the basis for Standard Chinese, called Putonghua or Guoyu in Chinese, and often also translated as "Mandarin" or simply "Chinese".

These varieties are spoken in Shanghai, most of Zhejiang and the southern parts of Jiangsu and Anhui. chinese language courses in chennai The group comprises hundreds of distinct spoken forms, many of which are not mutually intelligible. The Suzhou dialect is usually taken as representative, because the Shanghai dialect features several atypical innovations. Wu varieties are distinguished by their retention of voiced or murmured obstruent initials (stops, affricates and fricatives).

Gan

These varieties are spoken in Jiangxi and neighbouring areas. The Nanchang dialect is taken as representative. chinese language classes in chennai In the past, Gan was viewed as closely related to Hakka because of the way Middle Chinese voiced initials became voiceless aspirated initials as in Hakka, and were hence called by the umbrella term "Hakka–Gan dialects".

Xiang

The Xiang varieties are spoken in Hunan. chinese language training institute chennai The New Xiang varieties, represented by the Changsha dialect, have been significantly influenced by Southwest Mandarin, whereas Old Xiang varieties, represented by the Shuangfeng dialect retain features such as voiced initials.

Min

Spoken in Fujian, eastern Guangdong, Hainan, Taiwan, parts of Southeast Asia, and other parts of the world, Min is the only branch of Chinese that cannot be directly derived from Middle Chinese. best chinese language classes in chennai It is also the most diverse, with many of the varieties used in neighbouring counties—and, in the mountains of western Fujian, even in adjacent villages—being mutually unintelligible. chinese speaking classes in chennai The most widely spoken Min language is Hokkien, which includes the Amoy dialect of southern Fujian, Taiwanese in Taiwan, and is also spoken by many Chinese in Southeast Asia. Early classifications divided Min into Northern and Southern subgroups, but a survey in the early 1960s found that the primary split was between inland and coastal groups.

Hakka

The Hakka (literally "guest families") are group of Han Chinese living in the hills of northeast Guangdong and many other parts of southern China, as well as Taiwan and parts of Southeast Asia such as Malaysia and Singapore. chinese speaking courses in chennai The Meixian dialect is the prestige form. Most Hakka varieties retain the full complement of nasal endings, -m -n -? and stop endings -p -t -k, though there is a tendency for Middle Chinese velar codas -? and -k to yield dental codas -n and -t after front vowels.

Yue

These varieties are spoken in Guangdong, Guangxi, Hong Kong and Macau, and have been carried by immigrants to Southeast Asia and many other parts of the world. The prestige variety is Cantonese, from the city of Guangzhou, which is also the native language of the majority in Hong Kong and Macau. Taishanese, from a coastal area southwest of Guangzhou, is the most common Yue dialect among overseas communities. learn chinese language in chennai Not all Yue varieties are mutually intelligible. Most Yue varieties retain the full complement of Middle Chinese word-final consonants (p, t, k, m, n and ?) and have rich inventories of tones.

The Language Atlas of China (1987) follows a classification of Li Rong, distinguishing three further groups:

Jin

These varieties, spoken in Shanxi and adjacent areas, were formerly included in Mandarin. They are distinguished by their retention of the Middle Chinese entering tone category.

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Standard Chinese

Standard Chinese, also known as Modern Standard Mandarin or Standard Mandarin, also often referred to as Putonghua or simply Mandarin, is a standard language that is the sole official language of both China and Taiwan, and also one of the four official languages of Singapore. learn chinese language in chennai The pronunciation of the standard is based on the Beijing dialect, its vocabulary is drawn from Mandarin dialects, and the grammar is based on literature in the modern written vernacular.

Like other varieties of Chinese, Standard Chinese is a tonal language. learn chinese language in chennai It has more initial consonants but fewer vowels, final consonants and tones than southern varieties. Standard Chinese is an analytic language, though with many compound words. Like other varieties of Chinese language it is a topic-prominent language and has subject–verb–object word order.

The language is written using either traditional or simplified Chinese characters, augmented by Hanyu Pinyin romanization or Bopomofo for pedagogical purposes.

Names

In Chinese, the standard variety is known as:

Putonghuà ("common speech") in the People's Republic of China, Hong Kong, and Macau;

Guóyu ("national language") in Taiwan;

Huáyu ("Chinese language") in the Philippines, Singapore, Malaysia, and the rest of Southeast Asia; and

Hànyu (the language of the Han tribe) in the United States and elsewhere in the Chinese diaspora.

Putonghua and Guoyu

In English, the governments of China and Hong Kong use Putonghua, Putonghua Chinese, and Mandarin, while those of Taiwan, Singapore, and Malaysia, use Mandarin.

The term Guoyu had previously been used by non-Han rulers of China to refer to their languages, but in 1909 the Qing education ministry officially applied it to Mandarin, a lingua franca based on northern Chinese varieties, proclaiming it as the new "national language". chinese language training in chennai The name Putonghua also has a long, albeit unofficial, history. It was used as early as 1906 in writings by Zhu Wenxiong to differentiate a modern, standard Chinese from classical Chinese and other varieties of Chinese.

Mandarin

The term "Mandarin" is a translation of Guanhuà ("official's speech"), which referred to the lingua franca of the late Chinese empire. chinese language courses in chennai The Chinese term is obsolete as a name for the standard language, but is used by linguists to refer to the major group of Mandarin dialects spoken natively across most of northern and southwestern China.

In English, "Mandarin" may refer to the standard language, the dialect group as a whole, or to historic forms such as the late Imperial lingua franca.

History

The Chinese have different languages in different provinces, to such an extent that they cannot understand each other also have another language which is like a universal and common language. chinese language classes in chennai this is the official language of the mandarins and of the court; it is among them like Latin among ourselves.

Late empire

The Ming Dynasty (1368–1644) and the Qing Dynasty (1644–1912) began to use the term guanhuà , or "official speech", to refer to the speech used at the courts. chinese language training institute chennai The term "Mandarin" is borrowed directly from Portuguese. The Portuguese word mandarim, derived from the Sanskrit word mantrin "counselor or minister", was first used to refer to the Chinese bureaucratic officials. The Portuguese then translated guanhuà as "the language of the mandarins" or "the mandarin language".

Modern China

After the Republic of China was established in 1912, there was more success in promoting a common national language. best chinese language classes in chennai A Commission on the Unification of Pronunciation was convened with delegates from the entire country. A Dictionary of National Pronunciation was published in 1919, defining a hybrid pronunciation that did not match any existing speech. Meanwhile, despite the lack of a workable standardized pronunciation, colloquial literature in written vernacular Chinese continued to develop apace.

Gradually, the members of the National Language Commission came to settle upon the Beijing dialect, which became the major source of standard national pronunciation due to its prestigious status. chinese speaking classes in chennai In 1932, the commission published the Vocabulary of National Pronunciation for Everyday Use, with little fanfare or official announcement. This dictionary was similar to the previous published one except that it normalized the pronunciations for all characters into the pronunciation of the Beijing dialect. Elements from other dialects continue to exist in the standard language, but as exceptions rather than the rule.

In 1956, the standard language of the People's Republic of China was officially defined as: "Putonghuà is the standard form of Modern Chinese with the Beijing phonological system as its norm of pronunciation, and Northern dialects as its base dialect, and looking to exemplary modern works in báihuà 'vernacular literary language' for its grammatical norms."

Current role

From an official point of view, Standard Chinese language serves the purpose of a lingua franca — a way for speakers of the several mutually unintelligible varieties of Chinese, as well as the Chinese minorities, to communicate with each other. chinese speaking courses in chennai The very name Putonghua, or "common speech," reinforces this idea. In practice, however, due to Standard Chinese being a "public" lingua franca, other Chinese varieties and even non-Sinitic languages, have shown signs of losing ground to the standard.

In both China and Taiwan, the use of Mandarin as the medium of instruction in the educational system and in the media has contributed to the spread of Mandarin. As a result, Mandarin is now spoken fluently, though often with some regional or personal variation from the standard in terms of pronunciation or lexicon, by most people in mainland China and Taiwan. In 2014, the Ministry of Education estimated that about 70% of the population of China spoke Standard Mandarin to some degree, but only one tenth of those could speak it "fluently and articulately".

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Wu Chinese

Wu is a group of linguistically similar and historically related varieties of Chinese language primarily spoken in Zhejiang province, the municipality of Shanghai, and southern Jiangsu province.

Major Wu dialects include those of Shanghai, Suzhou, Wuxi, Wenzhou, Ningbo, Hangzhou, Shaoxing, Jinhua, and Yongkang. chinese speaking courses in chennai Wu speakers, such as Chiang Kai-shek, Lu Xun, and Cai Yuanpei, occupied positions of great importance in modern Chinese language culture and politics. Wu can also be found being used in Shaoxing opera, which is second only in national popularity to Peking opera; as well as in the performances of the popular entertainer and comedian Zhou Libo. Wu is also spoken in a large number of diaspora communities, with significant centers of immigration originating from Qingtian and Wenzhou.

Wu dialects have the largest vowel quality inventories in the world. chinese speaking courses in chennai The Jinhui dialect spoken in Shanghai's Fengxian District has 20 vowel qualities, the most among all world languages.

Wu Chinese, along with Min, is also of great significance to historical linguists due their retention of many ancient features. These two languages have proven pivotal in determining the phonetic history of the Sinitic languages.

Geographic distribution

Wu varieties are spoken in most of Zhejiang province, the municipality of Shanghai, southern Jiangsu province, as well as smaller parts of Anhui, Jiangxi, and Fujian provinces. chinese language training in chennai Many are located in the lower Yangzi valley.

Names

Speakers of Wu dialects are mostly unaware of this term for their speech since the term "Wu" is a relatively recent classificatory imposition on what are less clearly defined and highly heterogeneous natural forms. chinese language courses in chennai Saying one speaks Wu is akin to saying one speaks a Germanic language. It is not a particularly defined entity like Standard Mandarin or Hochdeutsch.

History

Modern Wu can be traced back to the ancient Wu and Yue centered around what is now southern Jiangsu and northern Zhejiang. chinese language classes in chennai The Japanese Go-on readings of Chinese characters (obtained from the Eastern Wu during the Three Kingdoms period) are from the same region of China where Wu is spoken today, however the readings do not necessarily reflect the pronunciation of Wu Chinese. Wu Chinese itself has a history of more than 2,500 years, dating back to the Chinese settlement of the region in the Spring and Autumn Period, however there are only very minor traces from these earlier periods. The language of today is wholly descendant from the Middle Chinese of the Sui–Tang era (6–8th centuries), as is true of all contemporary Chinese dialects except Min Chinese.

Post-1949

After the founding of the People's Republic of China, the strong promotion of Mandarin in the Wu-speaking region yet again influenced the development of Wu Chinese. Wu was gradually excluded from most modern media and schools. chinese language training institute chennai Public organizations were required to use Mandarin.

More TV programs are appearing in Wu varieties and nearly every town has at least one show in their dialect.

Number of speakers

Wu Chinese was once historically dominant north of the Yangtze River and most of what is now Anhui province during the Sui dynasty. Its strength in areas north of the Yangtze vastly declined from the late Tang dynasty until the late Ming dynasty, when the first characteristics of Early Modern Wu were formed. During the early Qing period, Wu speakers represented about 20% of the whole Chinese population. best chinese language classes in chennai This percentage drastically declined after the Taiping Rebellion devastated the Wu-speaking region, and it was reduced to about 8% by 1984, when the total number of speakers was estimated to be 77 million.

Origins

Wu is sometimes considered to be one of the first or most ancient dialects, since the region was the first one settled that was non-contiguous with the other Chinese states. chinese speaking classes in chennai Proto-Wu or Old Wu–Min is also the language from which the Min dialects evolved as the populace migrated farther south, so some knowledge of this language would not only offer insight into the development of these dialects and Sino-Tibetan but also into the indigenous languages of the region, knowledge of which would also be invaluable towards establishing the phylogeny of related Asian languages and towards reconstructing them.

Classification

Wu's place within the greater scope of Sinitic varieties is less easily typified than protoypically northern Chinese such as Mandarin or prototypically southern Chinese such as Cantonese, the two main subgroups of Chinese. Its original classification, along with the other Sinitic varieties, was established in 1937 by Li Fang-Kuei, whose boundaries more or less have remained the same and were adopted by Yuan Jiahua in his influential 1961 dialect primer.

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Min Chinese

Min or Miin is a broad group of Chinese varieties spoken by over 70 million people in the southeastern Chinese province of Fujian as well as by migrants from this province in Guangdong, Hainan, three counties in southern Zhejiang, Zhoushan archipelago off Ningbo, some towns in Liyang, Jiangyin City in Jiangsu province, and Taiwan. chinese speaking classes in chennai The name is derived from the Min River in Fujian. Min varieties are not mutually intelligible with any other varieties of Chinese.

There are many Min speakers among overseas Chinese in Southeast Asia. The most widely spoken variety of Min outside Fujian is Hokkien (which includes Taiwanese and Amoy).

History

The Min homeland of Fujian was opened to Chinese settlement by the defeat of the Minyue state by the armies of Emperor Wu of Han in 110 BC. chinese speaking classes in chennai The area features rugged mountainous terrain, with short rivers that flow into the South China Sea. Most subsequent migration from north to south China passed through the valleys of the Xiang and Gan rivers to the west, so that Min varieties have experienced less northern influence than other southern groups. As a result, whereas most varieties of Chinese can be treated as derived from Middle Chinese, the language described by rhyme dictionaries such as the Qieyun (601 AD), Min varieties contain traces of older distinctions. Linguists estimate that the oldest layers of Min dialects diverged from the rest of Chinese around the time of the Han dynasty. However, significant waves of migration from the North China Plain occurred.

The Uprising of the Five Barbarians during the Jin dynasty, particularly the Disaster of Yongjia in 311 AD, caused a tide of immigration to the south. chinese language training in chennai A layer from the Northern and Southern Dynasties period, which is largely consistent with the phonology of the Qieyun dictionary.

A literary layer based on the koiné of Chang'an, the capital of the Tang dynasty.

Subgrouping

Min is usually described as one of seven or ten groups of varieties of Chinese but has greater dialectal diversity than any of the other groups. The varieties used in neighbouring counties, and in the mountains of western Fujian even in adjacent villages, are often mutually unintelligible.

Early classifications, such as those of Li Fang-Kuei in 1937 and Yuan Jiahua in 1960, divided Min into Northern and Southern subgroups. chinese language courses in chennai However, in a 1963 report on a survey of Fujian, Pan Maoding and colleagues argued that the primary split was between inland and coastal groups. A key discriminator between the two groups is the evolution of the voiced and unvoiced lateral consonants reconstructed in the ancestral form of Min.

Pan and colleagues divided the coastal varieties into three groups:

Southern Min (Min Nan) originates from the south of Fujian and the eastern corner of Guangdong. In common parlance, Southern Min usually refers to Hokkien, of which the two major poles are the Amoy dialect of Xiamen and Taiwanese Hokkien of Taiwan. chinese language classes in chennai Zhenan Min of Cangnan County in southern Zhejiang is also of this type. Related Hokkien varieties are spoken in Chinese communities spread across Southeast Asia. The Teochew and Shantou dialects of the Chaoshan region of eastern Guangdong have difficult mutual intelligibility with the Amoy dialect. Chaoshan varieties are also spoken by most Thai Chinese.

Pu-Xian Min is spoken in the city of Putian and the county of Xianyou County. chinese language training institute chennai Li Rulong and Chen Zhangtai examined 214 words, finding 62% shared with Quanzhou dialect (Southern Min) and 39% shared with Fuzhou dialect (Eastern Min), and concluded that Pu-Xian was more closely related to Southern Min.

Eastern Min (Min Dong), centered around the city of Fuzhou, the capital of Fujian province, with Fuzhou dialect as the prestige form.

Pan and colleagues divided the inland varieties into two groups:

Northern Min (Min Bei) is spoken in Nanping prefecture in Fujian, with Jian'ou dialect taken as typical.

Central Min (Min Zhong), spoken in Sanming prefecture.

The Language Atlas of China (1987) includes three additional groups besides the five identified by Pan et al.

Shaojiang Min, spoken in the northwestern Fujian counties of Shaowu and Jiangle, were classified as Hakka by Pan and his associates. best chinese language classes in chennai However, Jerry Norman suggested that they were inland varieties of Min that had been subject to heavy Gan or Hakka influence.

Leizhou Min, spoken on the Leizhou Peninsula in southern Guangdong, had previously been included in Southern Min.

Hainanese, spoken on the island of Hainan, had also previously been included in Southern Min.

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Varieties of Chinese

Jerry Norman estimated that there are hundreds of mutually unintelligible varieties of Chinese. These varieties form a dialect continuum, in which differences in speech generally become more pronounced as distances increase, though the rate of change varies immensely. best chinese language classes in chennai Generally, mountainous South China exhibits more linguistic diversity than the North China Plain. In parts of South China, a major city's dialect may only be marginally intelligible to close neighbors. For instance, Wuzhou is about 120 miles (190 km) upstream from Guangzhou, but the Yue variety spoken there is more like that of Guangzhou than is that of Taishan, 60 miles (95 km) southwest of Guangzhou and separated from it by several rivers. In parts of Fujian the speech of neighboring counties or even villages may be mutually unintelligible.

Until the late 20th century, Chinese emigrants to Southeast Asia and North America came from southeast coastal areas, where Min, Hakka, and Yue dialects are spoken. The vast majority of Chinese immigrants to North America spoke the Taishan dialect, from a small coastal area southwest of Guangzhou.

Classification

Local varieties of Chinese are conventionally classified into seven dialect groups, largely on the basis of the different evolution of Middle Chinese voiced initials:

Mandarin, including Standard Chinese, Pekinese, Sichuanese, and also the Dungan language spoken in Central Asia

Wu, including Shanghainese, Suzhounese, and Wenzhounese

Gan

Xiang

Min, including Fuzhounese, Hainanese, Hokkien, Taiwanese and Teochew

Hakka

Yue, including Cantonese and Taishanese

The classification of Li Rong, which is used in the Language Atlas of China (1987), distinguishes three further groups:

Jin, previously included in Mandarin.

Huizhou, previously included in Wu.

Pinghua, previously included in Yue.

Standard Chinese and diglossia

Standard Chinese, often called "Mandarin", is the official standard language of China and Taiwan, and one of the four official languages of Singapore (where it is called "Huayu" or simply Chinese). Standard Chinese is based on the Beijing dialect, the dialect of Mandarin as spoken in Beijing. best chinese language classes in chennai The governments of both China and Taiwan intend for speakers of all Chinese speech varieties to use it as a common language of communication. Therefore, it is used in government agencies, in the media, and as a language of instruction in schools.

In mainland China and Taiwan, diglossia has been a common feature:

it is common for a person to be able to speak two or even three varieties of Chinese together with Standard Chinese. For example, in addition to Standard Chinese, a resident of Shanghai might speak Shanghainese; and, if he or she grew up elsewhere, then he or she may also be likely to be fluent in the particular dialect of that local area. chinese language training in chennai A native of Guangzhou may speak both Cantonese and Standard Chinese. In addition to Mandarin, most Taiwanese also speak Minnan, Hakka, or an Austronesian language. A Taiwanese may commonly mix pronunciations, phrases, and words from Mandarin and other Taiwanese languages, and this mixture is considered normal in daily or informal speech.

Nomenclature

The official Chinese designation for the major branches of Chinese is fāngyán , whereas the more closely related varieties within these are called dìdiǎn fāngyán . Conventional English-language usage in Chinese linguistics is to use dialect for the speech of a particular place (regardless of status) while regional groupings like Mandarin and Wu are called dialect groups. chinese language courses in chennai Because varieties from different groups are not mutually intelligible, some scholars prefer to describe Wu and so on as languages. Jerry Norman called this practice misleading, pointing out that Wu, which itself contains many mutually unintelligible varieties, could not be properly called a single language under the same criterion, and that the same is true for each of the other groups.

Mutual intelligibility is considered by some linguists to be the main criterion for determining whether varieties are separate languages or dialects of a single language, although others do not regard it as decisive, particularly when cultural factors interfere as they do with Chinese. chinese language classes in chennai As Campbell (2008) explains, linguists often ignore mutual intelligibility when varieties share intelligibility with a central variety (i.e. prestige variety, such as Standard Mandarin), as the issue requires some careful handling when mutual intelligibility is inconsistent with language identity. John DeFrancis considers the mutual unintelligibility too great for the term "dialects" to be used to refer to the different varieties, but also objects to considering them as separate languages, as it incorrectly implies a set of disruptive "religious, economic, political, and other differences" between speakers that exist, for example, between French Catholics and English Protestants in Canada, but not between speakers of Cantonese and Mandarin in China, owing to China's near-uninterrupted history of centralized government.

Because of the difficulties involved in determining the difference between language and dialect, other terms have been proposed: ISO 639-3 follows Ethnologue in assigning individual language codes to the 13 main subdivisions, while Chinese as whole is classified as a 'macrolanguage'. Other options include vernacular, lect regionalect, topolect, and variety.

Chinese itself has a term for its unified writing system, Zhōngwén, while the closest equivalent used to describe its spoken variants would be Hànyǔ —this term could be translated to either "language" or "languages" since Chinese lacks grammatical number. For centuries in China, owing to the widespread use of a written standard in Classical Chinese, there was no uniform speech-and-writing continuum, as indicated by the employment of two separate morphemes yǔ and wén . chinese language training institute chennai The characters used in written Chinese are logographs that denote morphemes as a whole rather than their phonemes, although most logographs are compounds of similar-sounding characters and semantic disambiguation (the "radical"). Modern-day Chinese speakers of all kinds communicate using the modern standard written language, the written form of Standard Chinese.

Most Chinese people consider the spoken varieties as one single language because speakers share a common culture and history, as well a shared national identity and a common written form. Han native speakers of Wu, Min, Hakka, and Cantonese, for instance, may consider their own linguistic varieties as distinct spoken varieties, but the Han Chinese as one—albeit internally very diverse—ethnicity. To Chinese nationalists, the idea of Chinese as a language family may suggest that the Chinese identity is much more fragmented and disunified than it actually is and as such is often looked upon as culturally and politically provocative. Additionally, in Taiwan it is closely associated with Taiwanese independence, some of whose supporters promote the local Taiwanese Hokkien variety.