Welcome Welcome

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Welcome! Welcome!
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Different Terms for the Same Language

• Guóyu?? the national language
• Putonghuà--??? the common language
• Hànyu--?? the Han language
• River Han originated in Shanxi Province
• Han Dynasty (206 BC220 AD)
• Han as an ethnic group (92 of the total
  population)
• Zhongwén--?? the Central Language derived from
  the Central Kingdom
• Huáyu--?? used in Singapore
• Guanhuà--?? Mandarin means the official
  language

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Defining Chinese

• Chinese belongs to the Sino-Tibetan Family
• Analytic Language vs. Synthetic Language
• Word Order vs. Conjugation
• A standard language based on the Beijing dialect
  in Pronunciation Vocabulary (for the most part)
  
• Grammar defined refined by modern literary
  works written in Vernacular Chinese since 1919
  
• One of the six official languages of UNEnglish,
  French, Russian, Chinese, Spanish, Arabic

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Two Writing Styles

• Simplified
• ? ?

• Traditional
• ? ?

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How Many Characters?

• ???? 47,035 in 1716 (like the King James Bible,
  stabilized the language)
• 214 radicals standardized
• ???? collected 87,019 in 1994
• Only a fraction of Chinese characters are
  simplified
• Chinese writing as Root connecting three
  branches/brothers regardless different dialects
  (See the CD-ROM)

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Romanizationhttp//www.gio.gov.tw/taiwan-website/
5-gp/yearbook/2001/appendix8.htm

• Wade-Giles--Thomas Francis Wade (1867) Herbert
  Allen Giles (1912)
• Yale--Mandarin, Cantonese, Korean, and Japanese
• (World War II)
• Taiwan Zhuyin--The Commission on the Unification
  of Pronunciation led by Woo Tsin-hang from 1912
  to 1913 officially proclaimed on November 23,
  1918
• Pinyin (Mainland)--1958

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Significance of Pinyin

• Adopted by the Library of Congress for its new
  catalogs
• Released Chinese from the old burden of
  recognizing character such as ? ? ? ?
• Like the ASCII code -- American Standard Code for
  Information Interchange-- or Unicode, Pinyin
  makes it possible to use computer technology for
  communication, printing, and handling data both
  at home and abroad

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Chinese Phonetics

• Chinese Alphabet V for ü in typing
• Initials (Consonants)
• Finals (Vowels)
• --Simple Finals
• --Compound Finals
• --Nasal Finals
• Tone Marks (Four Tones on the main vowel)
• Dividing Marks as in Xian or Haiou

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Musical Representation of Tones

• 1st 2nd 3rd 4th

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Tones Determine the MeaningA Classical Joke

• First tone ma mother (?)
• Second tone má hemp (?)
• Third tone ma horse (?)
• Fourth tone mà to curse (?)

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Make Up Your Mind!Chinese is a tonal language

• First tone wen warm (?)
• Second tone wén smell (?)
• Third tone wen kiss (?)
• Fourth tone wèn ask (?)

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Graphic Presentation of Pitch

• High-pitch
• Mid-high-pitch
• Mid-pitch
• Mid-low-pitch
• Low-pitch

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Chinese Radicals (Latin Radix for Root)

• ? Tree/Wood
• ? grove
• ? forest

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Categorical Connections--Similarities
Differences--

• Level 1 ? ? ? ?
• shan song feng xiàng
• Fir Pine Maple Oak
• Level 2 ? ? ? ?
• táo li lí
  xìng
• Peach Plum Pear Apricot
• Level 3--- ? ? ? ?
• chuáng zhuo yi guì
• Bed Table/Desk Chair Cabinet

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Similar But Not IdenticalFree Radicals vs. Bound
Radicals

• ? ?

• ?

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Can you handle this?Biáng Biáng Miàn

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Three Kinds of SignsCharles Sanders Peirce
(18391914)

• A sign contains patterned /relational
  information
• IconResemblance or Similarities
• IndexCorrelative in space time
• Smoke/fire dark clouds/rain
• SymbolRemovable from the original contexts
  associated with larger concept
• Chinese language--from iconic to symbolic

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Six Categories of Chinese Characters or Sinograms

• Xu Shen, 100 AD whose etymological dictionary
  Shuowen Jiezi (????/????) divides the script into
  six categories, the liùshu (??/??)

• Pictographic
• Self-explanatory
• Associative Compounds
• Pictophonetic
• Mutually Explanatory
• Phonetic Loans

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Phonetic Hints
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