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How did China develop their language?
Chinese is part of the Sino-Tibetan language family, a group of languages that all descend from Proto-Sino-Tibetan. Categorization of the development of Chinese is a subject of scholarly debate. One of the first systems was devised by the Swedish linguist Bernhard Karlgren in the early 1900s.
When did the Chinese develop their language in written form?
Written Language. The Chinese language is the oldest written language in the world with at least six thousand years of history. Chinese character inscriptions have been found in turtle shells dating back to the Shang dynasty1 (1766-1123 BC) proving the written language has existed for more than 3,000 years.
How was Chinese writing invented?
Ancient Chinese writing evolved from the practice of divination during the Shang Dynasty (1600-1046 BCE). Some theories suggest that images and markings on pottery shards found at Ban Po Village are evidence of an early writing system but this claim has been challenged repeatedly.
How did Cantonese develop?
Cantonese is believed to have originated after the fall of the Han Dynasty in 220AD, when long periods of war caused northern Chinese to flee south, taking their ancient language with them. Mandarin was documented much later in the Yuan Dynasty in 14th century China.
Which dynasty created Chinese language?
Shang Dynasty
From the late Shang Dynasty, Chinese writing evolved into the form found in cast inscriptions on Chinese ritual bronzes made during the Western Zhou Dynasty (c 1046–771 BC) and the Spring and Autumn period (770–476 BC), a kind of writing called 金文 jīnwén “metal script”.
What makes Chinese written language unique?
In Chinese many different words are expressed by the identical sound pattern—188 different words are expressed by the syllable /yi/—while each of those words is expressed by a distinctive visual pattern. To make the script easier to read, a system of transcribing Chinese into the Roman alphabet was adopted in 1958.
What is the official written language of China called?
The Chinese that is written today, and that is taught in schools, is the modern common language, Standard Chinese or Putonghua (also called Mandarin). There are no official written counterparts to other Chinese languages, for example Wu (Shanghainese), or Yue (Cantonese).
What is the difference between spoken and written Chinese?
As with any language, spoken and written Chinese play under different rules. Spoken language is what most linguists would call language proper, and the written forms are usually regarded as a sort of appendix to what is spoken.
What is the origin of the Chinese language?
Most linguists classify all of the variations of spoken Chinese as part of the Sino-Tibetan family and believe that there was an original language, called Proto-Sino-Tibetan, similar to Proto Indo-European, from which the Sinitic and Tibeto-Burman languages descended.
How did the Chinese language spread to neighbouring countries?
The Chinese language has spread to neighbouring countries through a variety of means. Northern Vietnam was incorporated into the Han empire in 111 BCE, marking the beginning of a period of Chinese control that ran almost continuously for a millennium.