Chinese Culture – spoken and written Chinese
The Chinese language, officially called Mandarin, is known as Putong Hua by the local Chinese. Until the mid 20th century most Chinese spoke the country dialects practised by regions. The most dominant language then was Nanjing Mandarin during the Qing Dynasty. During the last 50 years of the Qing Dynasty in the late 19th century, Beijing Mandarin replaced Nanjing Mandarin in the imperial court. Unfortunately the Beijing Mandarin had little influence and usage beyond the court. Everything changed with the introduction of an elementary school education system which was committed to teaching Standard Mandarin (Putong Hua). As a result Beijing Mandarin is spoken by everyone in China today.
Mandarin is a pictorial language. Chinese writing relies on symbols to represent individual words. These symbols or characters often are combined to make different words. Each symbol has both a concept and a sound. There are four sounds in total; each marked in Pin yin as different accents i.e. ‘-’, ‘/’, ‘v’ and ‘\’. The Chinese have traditionally read characters from right to left and up and down the page. These days they are gradually reading across the page.
Chinese words are usually made of combinations of TWO characters. Most simple Chinese characters were originally depictions of simple objects and actions. Educated Chinese can read about 5000 to 8000 characters. To understand the contents of a newspaper requires knowledge of about 1200 to 1500 characters.
Chinese writing and calligraphy have been linked to art in many ways. Written Chinese has remained fundamentally the same since it was conceived 4000 years ago. Chinese is unique in the history of human civilization. Written Chinese remains a great unifier in China. Even though Chinese from one region may not understand the dialects of another region, they all use the same written language.
