The Chinese language

http://www.paulnoll.com/China/Culture/language-dialects.jpg

- two main dialects: Mandarin and Cantonese- spoken by about 1.3 billion people mainly in the People's Republic of

China, the Republic of China (a.k.a. Taiwan), Singapore and other parts of Southeast Asia.

- distinction is made in Chinese between spoken and written language.- The written form of chinese is considered to be uniform- Chinese is written with characters (hànzì) which represent both sound

and meaning

Mandarin Chinese is known as (hàny ) = "Han language" -> goes back to ǔHan Dynasty (206 BC - 220 AD).

- Chinese belongs to the Sinitic or Chinese branch of Sino-Tibetan language family

- All current varieties descended from middle Chinese

(Mandarin)

There are two characteristics, which lend the Chinese language its individuality.1. Words consists, not unexceptional but mainly, of only one syllable2. Words do not have inflections and are therefore unrelated. Word

order and auxiliaries manage the relationship within the sentence. (no exceptions)

Comparable with ambiguity in EnglishThe car is blue / I feel blue

- Meaning of the word blue depends on the word order.- What seems to be an exception in English is the norm in

Chinese

Rules of Chinese word-order:

- If a ‘thing or term, in the broadest sense, gets an ability like:o “The house is red” / “This is Tim”

This ability has, in terms of word-order, to succeed the term.o t’ā xāo -> „he good“ means „he is good“ o t’ā śi cuŋ kou ĭ n -> „er dies-ist Mitte Reich Mensch“ ɒ

means „Er ist Chinese

- If a sentence describes a process like:o “I am not scared of him” / “He is going home”

- The origin of the process has to precede the objective o wōo. pū p’ā t’ā -> “I not fear him” means “I am not

scared of him”o t’ā pū p’ ā wōo. -> “He not fear me” means “he is not

scared of me- Therefore it only depends on the word-order within the

sentence what is subject or object. - There is no marking like the English I/me or he/him

- The only exception is, when the context can not be misunderstood because of logical reasons. In this case the objective can precede the origin to lay emphasis on the process itself.

o cao. xųa wōo. pū çin -> “This talk I not belive” means “I do not belive that”

- or as long the objective or the origin is already known or mentioned before.

o cū la yű la -> “stop done rain done” means “It stopped raining.”

o yű cū la -> “rain stop done” means “The rain (we already talked about) stopped.”

- Any term which refines subject or object in a sentences directly precedes it.

o /fū c’in šuo /-> “father use say” means “father says/said”

- If we add the known ‘tā’ -> “he” it works as an attribute to ‘fū’ c’in’. ‘fū’ c’in’ builds a unity which signals the attributive function of ‘tā’.

o /tā fū c’in šuo/ is not “he tells his father” but “his father sais”

- There are no cases in the chinese language so the word /t’ā/ could mean either “he”, “him”, “his”, or sometimes “she” and “her” in german even “Sie” depending on word order and context.

Suffixe

- there are no relevant suffixes in the Chinese language. Most of the the words with suffixes become compound words like in child language

o /xā-xā/ -> “haha”o /kōo-kaŋ/ -> “ticktack”

- except the suffix /–r/ o n-/r/ -> “child”o /lū-r/ -> “doney” “Eselchen”o makes it more cute for children

Soundquality

- If two mainly similar syllables, one of it a thing and the other a process, they differ in vocalism.

o /xāo/ -> “good” /pē-į/ -> “(someones) back” o /xāų/ -> “to love” /pe-į/ -> “to carry on so. back”

- Two related words also differ in little changes of the consonant.o c’aŋ -> “long” /śāo./ -> “a few”o caŋ -> “to gorw” /šau/ -> “young”

- even if one can distinguish between noun and verb it is not relevant for syntax.

Auxiliarys

- succeeding /la/ -> “to complete” when talking about a completed process

o /laį la/ -> “I/you came”- succeeding /pā/ -> “to stop” to signalise the imperative

o /laį pā/ -> “come to me”- preceding /yāo/ -> “to whish” for future- preceding /pū/ for negation in the present /mē-į/ for negation

in the past and /pēį/ for a prohibition- succeeding /ši/ -> “is” - Succeeding /mo/ signals a questions - There are a lot more and more complex ones to determine

sense in a sentence

Sound System of spoken Mandarin:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bh2Gt4HzAw8

- five different tones:

http://www.livethelanguage.cn/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/4tones-300x180.gif

- four basic sounds plus one ‘staccato’ sound (short sound)

Sound system of Cantonese:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kDVN7CV3g2I

http://cantonese.ca/tonechart.gif

- six basic sounds plus three ‘staccato’ sounds (short sounds)

Characteristics of Chinese sounds

- - linguistic tones are not set at specific, absolute pitches like do or C flat.

- Tones can be rising, falling or level. In level tones, your voice stays flat at a certain level and maintains the same pitch throughout.

Cantonese:

- spoken by about 100 million people- Cantonese is the dominant form of Chinese spoken in the

Chinatowns of many major cities in the United States, Canada, Australia and elsewhere, due to a huge number of immigrants from the Hong Kong area.

- mainly an oral language used for colloquial conversations- As a result: Cantonese is full of slang and non-standard

usage

Differences:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IfCqUx-c-ig

1. Very different pronunciation.e.g. 你好（hello)Mandarin：ní h o Cantonese: nei5 hou2ǎe.g. 火車(train)Mandarin: huo3 che1 Cantonese: fo2 ce12. Mandarin 4 tones vs Cantonese 6 tonese.g.Mandarin 師時史是 tāngshī shí shĭ shìCantonese 師史試時市是 si1 si2 si3 si4 si5 si6Mandarin 湯糖躺燙 tāng táng tăng tàngCantonese 湯躺燙糖 tong1 tong2 tong3 tong43. different characters or words are usede.g. Engligh: I like himMandarin 我喜歡他Cantonese 我中意佢4. different word ordere.g. Engligh: I need to go first.Mandarin 我要先走了。Cantonese 我要走先了。

Here are some English words whose intonations resemble Cantonese tones.na tionyou ?! (surprised emotion)in ter na tion alking domcon di tionyes ... (asking the speaker to carry on)

Bibliography:

http://cantonesepod.com/pods/2012/03/12/diffference-mandarin-cantonese/http://cantonese.ca/http://www.omniglot.com/chinese/index.htm