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• Some features of Chinese Language
• History of Chinese Language
• Dialects of Chinese
• Standard Chinese Mandarin
• Useful Words and Expressions

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Some features of Chinese Language

• Sino-Tibetan Family of Language
• About 1.3 billion speakers
• Mainly used in China
• One of the oldest languages

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History of Chinese Language

• Old Chinese 11th BC- 7th BC
• Middle Chinese 6th 10th
• Modern Chinese 14th 20th
• Contemporary Chinese// Modern Chinese after 1949

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Dialects of Chinese

• Seven regional groups of Chinese dialects
• Communication barrier caused by dialects
• Solution Mandarin-the Tower of Babel

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Mandarin

• Official language of the PRC
• Beijing dialect and Mandarin
• For Chinese language learner

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Mandarin- Grammar

• SVO basic sentence structure
• ? ? ???
• I eat an apple.
• Few inflection

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Mandarin- Writing System

• Four ways to create Chinese Character
• Evolution of the writing style
• Two forms of Characters
• Characters and literacy

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Mandarin- Writing System

• Four ways to create Chinese Character
• Pictograph

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Mandarin- Writing System

• Four ways to create Chinese Character
• (2)simple ideograph
• ? - middle

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Mandarin- Writing System

• Four ways to create Chinese Character
• (3) compound ideograph
• ? - rest

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Mandarin- Writing System

• Four ways to create Chinese Character
• (4) phonetic compound
• usually have two parts, one indicates the
  meaning of the character and the other indicates
  the sound.
• ? ma ?(nu female)?(ma horse)

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Mandarin- Writing System

• Evolution of the writing style
• Oracles- Jinwen- Zhuanshu-Lishu-Kaishu

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Mandarin- Writing System

• Two forms of Characters
• (1)the Traditional System
• (2)the Simplified System

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Mandarin- Writing System

• Characters and literacy
• How many characters in total
• Kangxi Zidian 40,000 characters
• Xiandai Hanyu Cidian 11,000 characters
• 6000-7000 characters
• 3000 characters

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Mandarin- Phonetics

• Phonetic transcription
• Chinese Syllable
• Initials
• Finals
• Tones

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Mandarin- Phonetics

• Phonetic transcription
• Romanization and Hanyu Pinyin
• Other transcripitons

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Mandarin- Phonetics

• 21 initial consonants
• 36 final vowels
• 4 basic tones
• (See Table 1-3)
• Syllable ? ma

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Mandarin- Phonetics

• How tones change the meanings?
• tea
• ti ? tí ?
• ti ? tì ?

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Mandarin- Phonetics

• Lots of Homophones
• Lì ? beautiful
• ? strength
• ? calendar
• ? strict
• ? profit
• ? stand
• ? example

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• Thank You