The Chinese language serves as a means of communication for a huge mass of people. It is spoken by 95% of the Chinese population, as well as representatives of the Chinese people living in other Asian countries: Vietnam, Laos, Burma, Taiwan, Thailand, Singapore, Indonesia. According to the latest data, this language is considered native by more than a billion people on the planet (for English, this figure is half as much).

But if in Russia representatives of different regions of the country perfectly understand each other, in China everything is different. The Chinese language has a huge number of dialects that are so different that many linguists treat them as separate languages. Residents of different provinces often cannot even keep up a conversation on everyday topics.

To solve this situation, in 1955 the authorities introduced an official language, which was taken as the northern dialect of Putonghua (Beijing dialect). The choice was due to the fact that the speakers of the northern branch of the dialects accounted for 70% of the country's population, and they included residents of the capital. Putonghua was actively introduced into everyday life: it was taught in schools and universities, and television broadcast.

However, due to the fact that most of the country's population is made up of peasants, dialects continue to actively exist. A special mentality played a role here: the cult of ancestors and the cult of history have always flourished in China. Each dialect is part of a centuries-old culture, and to abandon it would be tantamount to death.

Reasons for the multi-dialect composition of the Chinese language

Linguists divide the territory of China into two large dialect zones: northern and southern. The north has always been a single whole and was the scene of historical events, while in the south everything was quiet, but at the same time it was a separate isolated area. This can explain the relative similarity of the dialects of the northern branch, whose speakers, at the very least, can explain themselves to each other, which cannot be said about the southern dialects.

The main reason for the formation of many dialects was the numerous migrations of the Chinese in search of a quiet life and their contacts with neighboring peoples. In the process of communication, there was an active exchange of vocabulary, elements of phonetics and writing. The speakers of ancient dialects communicated with each other and with representatives of other peoples, involuntarily forming new language systems.

Differences in the language systems of different dialects lie in the field of phonetics, vocabulary, and, to some extent, grammar. Therefore, when oral communication between residents of different parts of the country comes to a standstill, there is a way out - to explain in writing. Why did the speech features that formed different groups of dialects not be reflected in the written language of the Chinese?

Development of the written language

The writing of the Chinese language has about 4 thousand years. Its peculiarity lies in the fact that all the metamorphoses that it has undergone during its existence are in no way connected with oral speech. The pronunciation of hieroglyphs under the influence of various factors changed, but their outline remained unchanged. Due to this, numerous dialects of the territory of China have a single writing system.

The earliest source of ancient Chinese writing is inscriptions on fortune-telling stones, first discovered in the province of Henan in 1899. They were made with a cutter and were graphic elements representing objects, people, animals. The folding features characteristic of the modern writing of hieroglyphs were absent. The difficulty was that there were many variants of the outline of the same hieroglyph.

All subsequent periods in the development of the hieroglyphic system of the Chinese language pursued the goal of simplifying the inscription of characters, as well as introducing a single script throughout China. This task was successfully completed during the reign of the Qin Dynasty. In 221 BC Emperor Qin Shi Huang united the country after internecine wars and began work on the unification of writing. According to researchers, the brush was invented at the same time, which is used for writing to this day.

At the beginning of the 20th century, it was proposed to simplify the structure of hieroglyphs, arguing that overly complex writing is the reason for the weak development of the economy. In 1964, simplified hieroglyphs gained official status, and now they are the official script throughout China.

A unified writing system provided a common literary tradition, and that is why the Chinese dialects did not receive the status of separate languages.

How many dialects are in Chinese? Dialect groups

Most linguists recognize the traditional classification, according to which there are 7 dialect groups. These include:

• northern dialects (guanhua);
• Gan;
• Hakka (Kejia);
• Min;
• Yue (Cantonese).

In recent years, an increasing number of researchers in the world recognize 3 more groups: pinghua, jin and anhui. There are also dialects that are not included in any classification, they are mixed languages.

Northern dialects (Guanhua)

This is the largest group in terms of the number of speakers (about 800 million) and the territory covered. It includes the Beijing Putonghua dialect, adopted in the 50s-60s. 20th century for the official language of China, Taiwan and Singapore. Western scholars call it Mandarin: guanhua is translated from Chinese as "official letter", and mandarin officials are called guan. Many scholars refer this name to the entire group.

Guanhua dialects have several branches depending on geographic location. Due to historical factors, they have much in common and are mutually intelligible.

Gan dialects

Gan dialects are spoken by residents of the province of central and northern parts of Jiangxi, as well as inhabitants of some parts of other provinces: Fujian, Anhui, Hubei, Hunan. This group includes about 2% of the Chinese, which is more than 20 million people.

Hakka (Kejia) dialects

This branch also has distribution in Jiangxi province, but only in its southern part, as well as in the central and northwestern regions of Guangdong province and in the western part of Fujian. There are carriers of this group in Taiwan and Hainan. In the West, this branch is recognized as a separate language.

In terms of phonetic composition, Hakka dialects have much in common with Middle Chinese. The standard among them is the Meixian dialect, common in the province of Guangdong, whose authorities in 1960 proposed a system for transliterating it using the Latin alphabet. Native speakers of the Hakka branch make up 2.5% of the total number of Chinese speakers.

Min dialects

This group is considered one of the oldest among sinologists. Min is the second name of Fujian Province and is still used today. The Min languages ​​cover the southeast of China (mostly Fujian province, as well as the eastern regions of Guangdong province), including the islands of Hainan and Taiwan. Geographically, this group is divided into southern and northern. The Taiwanese dialect has the largest number of speakers.

U dialects

One of the largest groups in the Chinese language, in terms of the number of speakers second only to Putonghua (8% of the population), some researchers give it the status of a language. Sometimes this branch is called the Shanghai dialect. Distribution area: most of the territory of Zhejiang province, Shanghai city, southern regions of Jiangsu province. There are carriers of the Wu group in some areas of the provinces of Anhui, Jiangxi and Fujian.

The phonetics of this branch of dialects is characterized by softness and lightness. Of the dialects, Suzhou and Shanghai are considered the most popular.

Dialects of Xiang (Hunan)

The Xiang branch covers about 5% of the country's Chinese-speaking population. It is divided into Novosyansky and Starosyansky dialects. The latter is of great interest to sinologists. The Novosyansk language has undergone changes under the influence of Putonghua, whose speakers surround the area of ​​its distribution from three sides. Of the subdialects, the most typical is the dialect of the city of Changsha.

Yue (Cantonese) dialects

The group also bears the name of one of the dialects - Cantonese. The word "canton" comes from the French language, as the British called Guangzhou during the era of colonization. The distribution area of ​​the Yue languages ​​​​is the province of Guangdong and some regions adjacent to it. Guangzhou is the main dialect.

Pinghua, Anhui and Jin dialects

These branches do not receive a separate status for all researchers; they are usually included in the traditional classification groups. Pinghua dialects are part of Cantonese and are represented by the Nanning dialect.

As for the Anhui group, the opinions of researchers differ here. Some attribute it to the Gan group, others are of the opinion that it belongs to the northern dialects, others include it in Wu. Sometimes the Anhui dialects are combined with the Hakka group.

Jin or Shanxi are usually classified as northern dialects. In 1985, the researcher Li Rong proposed to single them out as a separate group, motivating this by the presence of features that are not characteristic of guanhua. This concept has found both supporters and opponents, there is no consensus on this issue yet.

The division of the Chinese language into dialect groups is mainly due to geographical or historical factors, the names for them were often chosen according to the same principle, which sometimes diverged from the classification of research scientists.

Dialect groups have all the criteria to have the status of separate languages, but a single script for all of China ensures the integrity of the Chinese language. With the introduction of Putonghua as an official means of communication, many began to consider it a real language, and all other groups - dialects, which, being a huge layer of historical and cultural heritage, are carefully preserved by their speakers.

When it comes to Chinese, most people usually remember that it is also considered the most widely spoken in the world. However, these are not the only features of this unusual and very interesting language, the significance of which in the world, as China develops and the influence of this country on the world economy grows.

1. Chinese is believed to be spoken by about 1.4 billion people. Most of them live in China, Taiwan and Singapore. Plus, quite a few Chinese communities can be found all over the world, they are on all continents. At the same time, most Chinese communities are in North America, Western Europe, Asia and Australia. There are very few of them in South America and practically none in Africa and Eastern Europe (except for Russia, where the number of Chinese has been increasing very rapidly in recent years).

2. Chinese is considered one of the most ancient languages. Samples of Chinese writing dating back to the 14th century BC have also come down to us. These inscriptions were made on the bones of animals and were most likely used for divination.

3. The Chinese language is distinguished by a large number of dialects, which are divided into 10 (according to other sources - 12) dialect groups. At the same time, the differences between dialects are sometimes so great that the inhabitants of one province of China are not able to understand the inhabitants of another. At the same time, the main differences between dialects are phonetic and lexical, while grammatical differences are not so noticeable. Interestingly, there is a theory according to which Chinese cannot be called a single language. According to some linguists, this is actually a family of languages ​​that are mistakenly classified as separate dialects.

4. The normative Chinese language used by speakers of different dialects when communicating with each other is "Putonghua" ( pǔtōnghuà), based on the norms of the Beijing dialect. In Western countries it is called "Mandarin" ( standard tangerine). Putonghua is the official language of the PRC and is used by the media. In Taiwan, the official language is Guoyu ( guóyǔ), and in Singapore - "huayu" ( huayǔ). At the same time, the difference between these three languages ​​is small, their speakers understand each other perfectly.

5. What else the Chinese language is famous for is its hieroglyphs. It is believed that there are about 100 thousand of them. However, many of them are hardly used today and are found exclusively in ancient literature. Knowledge of 8-10 thousand hieroglyphs is more than enough to read almost any modern texts, specialized newspapers and magazines. For everyday life, knowledge of 500-1000 high-frequency hieroglyphs is quite enough. It is believed that this number is quite enough to parse most everyday texts.

6. At the same time, many hieroglyphs are extremely similar to each other, sometimes differing only in one line. And all because the same bases, called radicals, are used in their formation. At the same time, it often happens that different words are denoted by the same hieroglyphs, the meaning of which in such cases must be understood from the context. And sometimes the absence of one line can change the meaning of the hieroglyph to the exact opposite.

7. One character always writes one syllable. At the same time, it almost always represents one morpheme. For example, for greetings, a two-character entry is used that reads “Ni hao” and literally means “You are good.” The vast majority of Chinese surnames are written in one character and consist of one syllable.

8. Chinese is a tonal language. For each of the vowels, there can be five pronunciations at once: neutral, high even, medium rising, outgoing rising and high falling ( a, ā, á, ǎ, à). An untrained ear is sometimes simply not able to catch the difference between them. But a slight change in tone can completely change the meaning of a word. Not surprisingly, among the speakers of Chinese there are many people with an excellent ear for music. After all, they unconsciously develop such a feature in themselves from childhood.

9. Since 1958, a syllabary alphabet has been used in China, written in the characters of the Latin alphabet - pinyin ( pinyin), literally "phonetic writing". Thanks to her, it became possible to write down Chinese characters in Latin transcription. In this case, the tonalities are transmitted by superscript characters. In some cases, pinyin entries look very original. For example, "mā mà mǎ ma", which translates as "mother scolds the horse?". This example, by the way, perfectly demonstrates the importance of tonality in Chinese. The hieroglyphic version of this entry looks like 妈骂马吗.

10. At the same time, Chinese has an exceptionally simple grammar. Verbs do not conjugate, there are no genders, even the notion of the plural that is familiar to us is not here. Punctuation is present only at the most primitive level, and phrases are built strictly according to certain constructions. If it were not for the crazy pronunciation and the huge number of hieroglyphs, then Chinese would be one of. But it didn't work out.

11. Those who study Chinese often have to deal with unusual constructions that are not found in other languages. For example, there are no words "yes" and "no". Answers to questions require the use of other grammatical structures. The need to use special signs denoting quantity is also unusual. For example, in order to say "six apples" you need to put the sign "个" between the number and the name of the item, which is used to indicate the quantity. There are about 240 such special characters in the language.

12. Chinese is well suited for all kinds of puns that are used willingly and very often by native speakers. And hieroglyphic records can look exceptionally beautiful. It is not surprising that Europeans often use them for interior decoration, usually not understanding the meaning of what is written at all.

When it comes to Chinese, many people think that it is a monolithic, indivisible language that is spoken by every inhabitant of China. In fact, the Chinese language is a collection of a large number of dialects that differ in pronunciation, grammar and vocabulary.

There are seven main groups of Chinese: Putonghua, Wu, Cantonese or Yue, Min, Hakka, Gan, and Xiang. In addition to dialects, there are variations within each of them, they differ in accents or pronunciation of sounds. For example, the well-known Mandarin in different cities of China sounds differently.
The division of the Chinese language into dialect groups is due in most cases to geographical or historical factors. Each of the dialects of the Chinese language has all the criteria to have the status of a separate language, but a single script for all of China ensures the integrity of the Chinese language. After the establishment of Putonghua as the official language, many began to consider it the real language.

Main dialects:

1. Putonghua, 普通话(71.5% of speakers) - north and southwest China

The official language of China, the language of modern Chinese socio-political, scientific and fiction, it is used by the majority of the inhabitants of China and the island of Taiwan.

2. Wu, 吴语(8.5%) - Shanghai, Zhejiang

One of the largest groups in the Chinese language, some researchers give it the status of a language. Today, the Wu dialect leaves the walls of educational institutions, the media and government agencies. The younger generation does not use the Wu dialect, but some TV shows are still shown in this dialect.

3. Yue(5.0%) - Guangdong, Guangxi

The group also bears the name of one of the dialects - Cantonese. Yue is the de facto language of Hong Kong and Macau. Yue is the language of the Chinese diaspora in Australia, Southeast Asia, North America and Europe. There is a legend among Cantonese speakers that at one time in the course of voting for the standard of pronunciation of literary Chinese, Cantonese lacked only a few votes.

4. Xiang, 湘语(4.8%) - Hunan Province

The Xiang branch is divided into Novosyansky and Starosyansky dialects. The Novosyansk language has undergone changes under the influence of Putonghua. Like most dialects of Chinese, the Xiang language is used locally, but only in oral form.

5. Min, 闽方言(4.1%) - Fujian Province

This group is considered one of the oldest. The Min languages ​​cover southeast China, including the islands of Hainan and Taiwan. In Chinese linguistics, the Min languages ​​are considered one of the most ancient in the general language group.

6. Hakka, 客家话(3.7%) - from Sichuan to Taiwan

Literally translated, it means “people of guests”, because it was from the Hakka people that the name of the language came. In oral form, it is not recognized by people who speak Mandarin, does not have its own script. People who do not speak Hakka, even being descendants of Hakka, cannot be considered this nationality, since they do not know their native language.

7. Gan, 赣语(2.4%) - Jiangxi Province

Distributed mainly in the province of Jiangxi, as well as in some areas of the provinces of Hunan, Hubei, Anhui, Fujian. The dialect contains many archaic words that are no longer used in official Mandarin.

In fact, there are many more dialects in Chinese. Most Chinese native to one of the dialects also speak Mandarin, as it is the official language of the country. However, older generations, as well as those living in rural areas, may have little or no knowledge of Mandarin. In any case, the study of Chinese dialects in modern China is necessary only in exceptional cases, most often professional ones.

Anna Ivanova

The Chinese language is so rarely chosen for study, but it has long reached the level of world significance. More than 1.3 billion people, which is almost 1/5 of the world's population, speak Chinese.

This language is considered to be the oldest among the existing dialects. But that's not all the secrets and features of the language! This collection contains 30 cognitive facts about Chinese that may surprise you.

1. According to the latest data, this language is spoken by about 1.3 billion people worldwide. Basically, they live in China (or PRC), Singapore, Taiwan, the Philippines and other countries where Chinese communities are located. They are also in Russia, Australia and Asia. There are practically no Chinese in South America and Africa.
2. We call this language Chinese, but many linguists single out this group of dialects as a separate branch. At the moment, there are about 10 dialects, which differ mainly in vocabulary and phonetics. The differences are so significant that many Chinese do not understand each other.
3. The most common dialect of this language is Northern Chinese. It is spoken by about a billion Chinese around the world. The main population speaking Mandarin resides in the northern and western parts of China. It is in relation to this dialect among Western literature that one can hear "Mandarin", but the Chinese themselves call it "Putonghua".
4. So, where did the word "mandarin" come from in relation to Chinese? The fact is that this is the name of the common northern Chinese dialect in Europe. This name was attached to it many centuries ago, when merchants from Portugal began to build relationships with China. At first they called the officials Mantri, which later became Mandarin. And since in this country the official language is called the hieroglyph guanhua, or "language of officials", it soon began to be called "mandarin".
5. By the way, the name of the mandarin is directly related to the above fact. When it was first brought from China to Europe, the Europeans immediately began to call it, like all Chinese, tangerine!

@scmp.com

1. Chinese writing was used as early as 4,000 years ago. The oldest "document" with hieroglyphs dates back to the 17th century BC. e. Already in the state of Shang-Yin, "jiaguwen" - divinatory writings - were made on the shells of turtles. The first hieroglyphs on the bones of animals in this area were discovered only in the 20th century, so scientists are still studying this stage in the development of writing in the Shang era.
2. Chinese writing is fundamentally different from all other languages ​​and does not consist of letters, but of hieroglyphs. Each hieroglyph is designed to represent a single syllable, sound or whole word. Also, writing is different in that it does not go from left to right, but from top to bottom and from right to left. However, in recent years, the Chinese prefer to use the traditional European script. The classic arrangement can only be found in publications with cultural value - books on art.
3. In total, at the moment there are about 80 thousand different hieroglyphs, but most of them are no longer used. To live and understand 80% of the text, it is enough to learn only 500 characters. For a comfortable understanding of 99% of the text, it is enough to know 2400 characters.
4. Chinese is a tonal language. It has four basic tones: high flat, rising (medium to high), falling to medium and then rising, falling and one additional neutral. Tone can completely change the meaning of a word, for example, tāng in a flat tone means "soup", and táng with a rising tone means "sugar".
5. The main difficulty in learning this language is to pronounce the tones correctly. You can make a big mistake by choosing the wrong tone. A good example is the phrase "wo xiang wen ni" with different tonalities can mean "I want to ask you" and "I want to kiss you."

1. At the beginning of learning Chinese, students do nothing but pronounce syllables in different tones. It is very difficult for foreigners to learn how to express tonality correctly, which is curious, the Chinese themselves easily switch from tone to tone. It is worth noting that the inhabitants of the Middle Kingdom themselves are sympathetic to the mistakes of foreigners, because it is a great joy for them that someone is learning their language. Usually there are very few daredevils!
2. But the Chinese themselves from different parts of the country may well not understand each other. Their spoken dialect is so different from each other, but share a common grammar. Thus, linguists often argue whether these dialects are different languages, because they are completely different from each other. Disputes by disputes, but so far Chinese is one language with different dialects.
3. Since Chinese has been a rapidly developing language in recent years, famous people are increasingly choosing to study it. For example, Mark Zuckerberg gave a speech in Chinese during his speech at Peking University. And even Prince William wished a New Year in an interview in Chinese!
4. Studies have shown that Chinese speakers use both temporal lobes of their brains. But English speakers use only the left side. It just has to do with tone.
5. Chinese writing has a very strange, incomprehensible to a foreigner, logic. Linguists advise studying the language along with the culture of the country, since they have been practically inseparable since ancient times.
6. In 1958, the official standard for romanization of Chinese, pinyin, was introduced. With the help of a special system, it can be represented as a Latin transcription. Pinyin was created by the Chinese linguist Zhou Yuguang. By the way, he is also known for his long life expectancy - 111 years.

@blog.oxforddictionaries.com

1. In this regard, the Chinese keyboard simply does not exist in nature. Still, who will place more than 5 thousand hieroglyphs on the keyboard! The Chinese communicate using pinyin - a group of hieroglyphs is attached to each letter of the Latin alphabet. You need to select the desired option with the number.
2. Most hieroglyphs differ in only one dash, so it will also be difficult to understand them. All of them are from radicals, or, in a simple way, keys. If you parse words by hieroglyphs, you can break the brain, for example, "good" is "woman" 女 plus "child" 子. Why the sum of a woman and a child gives the word "good" - this is a mystery.
3. Although sometimes some logic can be traced. For example, a character consisting of two 女 (woman) means ... "difficulties, troubles, dispute." Well, it happens!
4. In 1946, Chinese became one of the official languages ​​of the United Nations. However, until 1974, it was practically not used as a worker.
5. At the same time, Chinese has an incredibly simple grammar. It does not even have genders and plurals, there are no conjugations of verbs. It could be the simplest language in the world, if not for the huge number of hieroglyphs and the division into tones.
6. For this, Chinese officially got into the Guinness Book of Records as one of the most difficult in the world. So those who complain about the difficulty of learning can reassure themselves with this fact - this is not fiction!
7. The Chinese language is very loved in Europe, and the rest of the world, but only because of the hieroglyphs. Chinese icons can be found anywhere, from wallpapers to cups. Of course, no one thinks about the meaning, the main thing is that it should be beautiful!
8. But for the Chinese, calligraphy of Chinese characters is a real art form. There are five known writing styles. In Chinese history, there were many masters of calligraphy who became famous thanks to the art of writing.

@whatson.cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au

1. Other languages ​​are not widely spoken in China, even in public places. For example, it is rare to find an English speaker among airport employees. Tourists have to deal with the intricacies of Chinese!
2. The peculiarities of the keys of Chinese make the Chinese the owners of the most absolute pitch in the world. No wonder, because from birth they are forced to listen to the tones of their native language and determine the meaning of a word by five tones!
3. By the way, Chinese has little in common. The Japanese took many characters from Chinese characters, but these languages ​​are completely different in pronunciation. However, the Chinese themselves sometimes do not understand each other, what can we say about the Japanese!
4. There are no words for "yes" or "no" in Chinese. It is customary for them to answer with the verb from the question. Moreover, the particle "not" is present in this language. It looks like this: to the question "Do you like fish?", the Chinese will answer "I love it" or "I don't like it."
5. Chinese youth in Internet communication uses digital codes. With the help of a set of numbers, a special system of communication with frequently used phrases was developed. For example, 520 is "I love you" and 065 is "I'm sorry."
6. Chinese has a couple of words in common with Russian. These include "tea" (chá), "mother" (māma), and "father" (bàba).

Learning the language of the Celestial Empire is not an easy task. However, with due effort, it can be dealt with. This collection of facts helped you to imagine at least a little what a miracle the Chinese language is!

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Almost three hundred languages ​​and dialects are listed in circulation in the People's Republic of China, but only one is officially recognized as a state language. The language of China, in which it is customary to sign documents, conduct business negotiations and go on the air on federal channels, is called Putonghua.

Some statistics and facts

• According to accurate data, 56 recognized ethnic groups in China speak 292 languages.
• The standard state language of the People's Republic of China is the official spoken language only on the mainland.
• The official status in the Tibet Autonomous Region is the Tibetan language, and in the territories of Inner Mongolia - Mongolian.
• Spoken languages ​​in the republic belong to at least 9 families.
• Not all Chinese languages ​​use the Chinese script.
• On banknotes of the People's Republic of China, in addition to Chinese writing, Arabic, Latin, Mongolian and Tibetan letters are used. This is done for those groups of the country's population that do not use hieroglyphs when writing.

Chinese Mandarin

Western people call Mandarin Chinese, which is officially adopted as the state language in the PRC. The vocabulary and phonetics of Putonghua is based on the norms of the Beijing dialect, which belongs to the northern group of numerous dialects in the Celestial Empire. His written standard is called "baihua".
However, the island territories of the PRC have completely different official languages ​​and in Taiwan, for example, it is called "goyu".

Exam in the Middle Kingdom

In 1994, the PRC authorities introduced an examination for the level of Putonghua proficiency, according to the results of which only native Beijingers make less than 3% of errors in writing and in speech. To work as a correspondent on the radio, for example, no more than 8% of errors are permissible, for teaching Chinese at school - no more than 13%. The level of Mandarin proficiency with the number of errors less than 40% was able to pass only a little more than half of the inhabitants of the Celestial Empire.

Note to the tourist

Going on a trip to China, remember that you will not have problems communicating only in the territories bordering Russia, in the capital, Shanghai, Hong Kong and a couple of other large cities. The whole province does not even speak English at all, and only in large hotels can you find a porter or waiter who can help solve a foreigner's problems.
Have a business card with the name of the hotel in Chinese with you to show it to the taxi driver. They do not differ in knowledge of English even in the capital.