中文

The Chinese language (汉语/漢語 Hànyǔ, 华语/華語 Huáyǔ, or 中文 Zhōngwén) is a language or language family consisting of varieties which are mutually intelligible to varying degrees, with most of the varieties not being mutually intelligible. Originally the indigenous languages spoken by the Han Chinese in China, it forms one of the branches of Sino-Tibetan family of languages. About one-fifth of the world's population, or over one billion people, speaks some variety of Chinese as their native language. Internal divisions of Chinese are usually perceived by their native speakers as dialects of a single Chinese language, rather than separate languages, although this identification is considered inappropriate by some linguists and sinologists. (Wikipedia)

Chinese is distinguished by its high level of internal diversity, although all varieties of Chinese are tonal and analytic. There are between 7 and 13 main regional groups of Chinese (depending on classification scheme), of which the most spoken, by far, is Mandarin (about 850 million), followed by Wu (90 million), Cantonese (Yue) (70 million) and Min (50 million). Most of these groups are mutually unintelligible, although some, like Xiang and the Southwest Mandarin dialects, may share common terms and some degree of intelligibility.

Standard Chinese (Putonghua / Guoyu / Huayu) is a standardized form of spoken Chinese based on the Beijing dialect of Mandarin Chinese, referred to as 官话/官話 Guānhuà or 北方话/北方話 Běifānghuà in Chinese. Mandarin Chinese history can be dated back to the 19th century, particularly by the upper classes and ministers in Beijing.[6] Standard Chinese is the official language of the People's Republic of China (PRC) and the Republic of China (ROC, also known as Taiwan), as well as one of four official languages of Singapore. It is one of the six official languages of the United Nations.

Of the other varieties of Chinese, Cantonese is influential in Guangdong Province and Cantonese-speaking overseas communities, and remains one of the official languages of Hong Kong (together with English) and of Macau (together with Portuguese). Min Nan, part of the Min language group, is widely spoken in southern Fujian, in neighbouring Taiwan (where it is known as Taiwanese or Hoklo) and in Southeast Asia (known as Hokkien in Philippines, Singapore and Malaysia). There are also sizeable Hakka and Shanghainese diasporas, for example in Taiwan, where most Hakka communities maintain diglossia by being conversant in Taiwanese and Standard Chinese.

(Wikipedia)

Chinese Characters : Why so many?

There are over 80,000 Chinese characters, but most of them are seldom used today. So how many Chinese characters do you need to know? For basic reading and writing of modern Chinese, you only need a few thousands. Here are the coverage rates of the most frequently used Chinese characters:

Most frequently used 1,000 characters: ~90% (Coverage rate)

Most frequently used 2,500 characters: 98.0% (Coverage rate)

Most frequently used 3,500 characters: 99.5% (Coverage rate)

For an English word, the Chinese translation (or the Chinese 'word') often consists of two or more Chinese characters. You should use them together and read them from left to right. If you want to arrange them vertically, the one on the leftmost should go to the top.

What is 'Pinyin'?

Pinyin is the international standard romanization scheme for Chinese characters, which is useful for learning the phonetics of Mandarin. There are four tones in Pinyin and we use the numbers here, i.e., 1, 2, 3, and 4, to depict the four tones. If you want to learn Mandarin, you have to master the four tones of the language. However, one pinyin usually represents many Chinese characters. Thus you have to learn the Chinese characters to master the language.

Chinese is not alphabetic so the writing is not related to its phonetics. We don't translate the Western alphabet since the letters have no meaning, and we do use the letters in writings, especially in scientific writings.

There are many styles of Chinese writing. Some of the styles are more ancient than others. In general, there are large differences among the styles, even though some of the styles are quite close. Different styles of Chinese characters are naturally used according to the purposes of the writing, such as Xiaozhuan mainly used for seal carving now. Besides the different styles, there are also two forms of Chinese characters, the simplified and the traditional. The simplified is the standard writing form employed in the mainland of China and the traditional form is mainly used in Taiwan and Hong Kong. There are total 2,235 simplified characters contained in the 'Simplified Character Table' published in 1964 by the Chinese government, so the majority of the Chinese characters are the same in the two forms, though the count of commonly-used Chinese characters is only about 3,500.

From about.com [30 May 2013]