China, Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia, the Philippines and other regions
Official status:
China, Singapore, Taiwan
Total speakers:
1,2 billion speakers
Chinese language it forms one of the two branches of Sino-Tibetan family of languages. About one-fifth of the world’s population, or over 1 billion people, speak some form of Chinese as their native language.
Spoken Chinese is distinguished by its high level of internal diversity, though all spoken varieties of Chinese are tonal and analytic.
There are between six and twelve main regional groups of Chinese (depending on classification scheme), of which the most populous (by far) is Mandarin (c. 850 million), followed by Wu (c. 90 million), Min (c. 70 million) and Cantonese (c. 70 million).
There are currently two systems for Chinese characters. The traditional system, still used in Hong Kong, Taiwan, Macau and Chinese speaking communities (except Singapore and Malaysia) outside mainland China, takes its form from standardized character forms dating back to the late Han dynasty.
The Simplified Chinese character system, developed by the People's Republic of China in 1954 to promote mass literacy, simplifies most complex traditional glyphs to fewer strokes, many to common caoshu shorthand variants.
Chinese characters evolved over time from earliest forms of hieroglyphs. The idea that all Chinese characters are either pictographs or ideographs is an erroneous one: most characters contain phonetic parts, and are composites of phonetic components and semantic Radicals.
Some intresting facts:
You must know 1500 hieroglyphs for speaking.
You must know 3000 hieroglyphs for reading a newspapers and magazines.
Big dictionaries includes 6000-8000 hieroglyphs.
The biggest dictionary includes 87 019 hieroglyphs (1994).
CquickTrans dictionary — Chinese dictionary, Chinese translation aid, advanced hanzi lookup and radical breakdowns, study list building and flashcards.
Active Chinese — tool for learning traditional or simplified Chinese characters.
Clavis Sinica — software helps you learn Chinese (text reader + analytical dictionary + flashcards).
Learn Chinese — software to read Chinese texts and learn Chinese vocabulary.
Free online Mandarin audio courses — 40 online chinese lessons with audio, including reading, speaking, writing, modern vocabulary, grammar, calligraphy, examples and exercices. All texts and dialogs in mp3 format for download.
Information on this site, products, softwares, and services is provided by third parties and is for informational purposes only.
TransDict does not represent or warrant the accuracy or reliability of the information, and will not be liable for any errors, omissions, or delays in this information or any losses, injuries, or damages arising from its display or use.
