Why is Chinese called Mandarin? The East is a dark matter or when the Chinese language was created. Part 2 (Mandarin) Mandarin Chinese

It's a dark matter in the East or when the Chinese language was created. Part 2 (Mandarin)

It is officially believed that China is home to 56 nationalities, each of which has its own language and culture. The overwhelming majority of the population, approximately 91 percent, belongs to the Han nation - the Chinese proper. The Han language is highly diverse. It consists of many hundreds of mutually incomprehensible dialects.

Han Chinese dialects differ from each other much more than, say, individual Romance languages. In general, the study of Chinese (Han) dialects began only in the 30s of the 20th century. And by the beginning of the 60s, with grief in half, they were somehow systematized and classified.

According to modern ideas, Han (Chinese proper) is divided into ten dialect groups: North Chinese dialects (in Western terminology “Mandarin dialects”), dialects: Wu, Gan, Xiang, Ming, Hakka, Yue, Jin, Huizhou, Pinghua.

The Ming dialect group is considered the most diverse. Unlike other dialect groups, which consist of many mutually incomprehensible dialects functioning in each region, within a given group, many hundreds of mutually incomprehensible dialects function in each village.

However, the work is far from complete. Some so-called “areas of great linguistic diversity” have not yet been studied, and the dialects existing there have not been described. Well, some dialects, such as Danzhou and Shaoju Tuhua, defy classification.

In general, China is a country of enormous linguistic diversity. As mentioned in the first part, until 1909, the Manchu language was formally the official language of the Qin Empire. At first, after the conquest of China by the Manchus, all official documents of the empire were written in this language. However, gradually its use decreased and already in the 18th and 19th centuries few people understood the Manchu language even among the courtiers.

So, with the help of what language was the control of a huge empire carried out? Using the so-called “Mandarin” language. The name comes from the Portuguese word "mandarin", referring to officials of the Chinese empire. The Chinese themselves used the term “guhua”, literally “the language of officials,” to refer to this language.

(Mandarin Official)

The “official language” did not have any official status in the Chinese Empire. However, his knowledge was necessary for the advancement of officials along the career ladder. The language did not have firm rules. According to legend, in 1728, Emperor Yongzhen, due to his specific pronunciation, did not understand anything from the reports of officials from the provinces of Guangdong and Fujian, and issued a decree on the creation of “correct pronunciation academies.” However, these academies did not last long.

Traditionally, "Mandarin" was based on the dialect of the city of Nanjing. However, in the 19th century, elements from the capital's Beijing dialect penetrated into it, gradually reaching the forefront. However, according to some data, at the beginning of the 20th century, the status of “Nanjing Mandarin” was higher than that of “Beijing Mandarin”. Office work was carried out using the “Mandarin language,” and officials from different provinces of the country communicated in it. It was impossible for ordinary people, even from neighboring Chinese provinces, to communicate with each other.

In 1909, the waning Qing dynasty declared Guoyu, literally the national language, a language yet to be created, as the official language. The creation of a “national language” will be discussed in the next part.

(to be continued)

大家好 everyone! What is the connection between linguists and mandarins? What is the connection between Chinese officials and these little citrus fruits? What is the connection between Chinese and Mandarin? For an unprepared person this is not an easy puzzle, but in fact there is a connection, huge and very logical.

Let's start in order. Why are many linguists interested in Mandarin? Because in the West our favorite Chinese language is called Mandarin, namely 普通话 (Putonghua). Agree, it’s quite a beautiful name, it immediately makes you think about the sea breeze, the aroma of citrus fruits... But certainly not about the one and a half billion people of China and the incredibly complex Chinese language.

It all started many hundreds of years ago. At that time, it was mainly the Portuguese who developed historical business with China and maintained economic relations. Portuguese merchants called Chinese officials "Mantri", a word which in turn came from the Sanskrit language and meant "official" or "minister". Over time, Europeans transformed this word into the consonant with the Roman verb “mandar” (to give orders) “mandrim”, and later into “mandarin”. Until now, in Europe, a Chinese official is often called a mandarin. I don’t know how Chinese dignitaries feel about this, because in the Chinese language officials have nothing to do with Mandarin at all.

Well, we sorted things out with the Chinese officials. What about the connection to language? And here again everything turns out simple and logical! Let's look at the hieroglyph "official" - 管 (guan), it already seems vaguely familiar, doesn’t it? This is exactly the hieroglyph that can be found in pairs 官话 (guanhua), which literally translates as “the language of officials,” essentially means “official Chinese language” or “literary Chinese.” The same hieroglyph, when translated into Portuguese, meant “official,” that is, a Mandarin. When translating the phrase guanhua 官 The Europeans just produced “Mandarin Chinese”. But only Europeans call the Chinese language Mandarin; in Russia, for example, this practice is not at all widespread.

Since then, Europeans often began to call everything Chinese Mandarin. Once, on one of these trips, merchants brought the fruits of a small orange to Europe. Oranges in Europe had already been known and loved for a very long time, but they saw such tiny fruits for the first time, and naturally, out of habit, they called it “Chinese orange” (“naranja mandarina”). Later, the fruit began to be called simply “mandarina”. That’s how he came to us, under the name Mandarin.

In Russia, this practice is not widespread; we call the Chinese language the Chinese language, although Chinese officials are often called mandarins behind their backs. This is understandable; the Russian language has little in common with any Portuguese or French. Europeans only call the Chinese language that way, or rather its Putonghua dialect 普通话.

Mandarin is spoken in Taiwan, Singapore and some other countries. And, for example, in Malaysia, Mandarin is not an official language, but due to the large number of Chinese emigrating, all advertising and signs on the streets are written in Mandarin. So, thanks to the emigration of the Chinese, the tangerine is still a “fruit”.

In any case, tangerine is useful, both in the form of citrus fruit and in the form of ten or two thousand Putonghua characters 普通话. But, unfortunately, eating and learning Mandarin are not the same thing. If with the fruit everything is more or less tasty and understandable, then with the tangerine language there are many secrets, puzzles and rebuses. This is the special beauty of Mandarin as a language. All over the world it is recognized as one of the most mysterious, complex and at the same time beautiful and surprisingly melodic languages. For me personally, the similarity between the tangerine-fruit and the tangerine-tongue is obvious. Both of them are a real pleasure to eat and to explore, so let's go!

The term "Chinese" has many meanings. The Chinese language (or Chinese languages) refers to one of the two main branches of the Sino-Tibetan language family. The ambiguity of the term is caused by the fact that in a large area occupied by the so-called. "Sinitic" languages, a large group of diverse dialects of the Chinese language is used. These dialects vary quite widely even within short distances of each other; nevertheless, their genetic connection is clearly traced. Therefore, in linguistic science, the question of whether these varieties of Chinese are languages or dialects remains open.

Scope of use

Early informal oral form of communication ( guanhua) on a North Chinese basis supposedly began to take shape with the transfer in 1266 of the Chinese capital to the site of modern Beijing (then called Zhongdu, then Dadu) before the start of the Yuan Dynasty. Since the beginning of the 20th century, the official standard, which in 1909 received the name “ goyu" (from the Japanese term " kokugo(国語)" - "state language") and in the PRC later renamed Putonghua, began to include not only written, but also oral norms.

To determine the level of proficiency in Putonghua, since 1994, the PRC has introduced the Exam for the level of proficiency in Putonghua (Chinese: 普通话水平测试, pinyin: pǔtōnghuà shuǐpíng cèshì (PSC)), which quickly gained popularity as China increasingly urbanized. There are several levels of proficiency in Mandarin, assigned after passing the exam:

However, many Chinese are able to understand Mandarin to some extent even without being able to speak it.

Genealogical and areal information

Chinese (Mandarin) belongs to the Sino-Tibetan language family; in a broad sense, Chinese is one of its two main branches, which is sometimes called “Sinitic”. It is mainly widespread in the Beijing region, the capital of the People's Republic of China, but is also used throughout China as the official language. In addition, it is one of the 4 official languages of Singapore.

Sociolinguistic information

The Chinese language in a broad sense holds the record for the most number of speakers in the world: 1,074,000,000 speakers in the PRC, of which 896,000,000 speak it as a native language (70% of them speak a standard dialect) and 178,000,000 as a second language language. The total number of carriers in the world is 1,107,162,230 people.

With a large number of dialects that are difficult to understand, Standard Chinese is a supra-dialectal variant of the language, the official language of the People's Republic of China and the language of interethnic communication among the peoples of China. It is used in all spheres of life in China and is one of the official languages of the UN.

Based on the Chinese language, there is a Russian-Chinese pidgin - the so-called. "Kyakhta language", which borrows Russian vocabulary, but uses the rules of Chinese grammar.

Typological parameters

Type (degree of freedom) of expression of grammatical meanings

For minor members of a sentence, the Chinese language has a strict word order:

It is worth noting that word order is tied not so much to the grammatical or syntactic characteristics of the minor members, but to their semantics:

Language features

Graphic

Speakers of all dialects of the Chinese language use hieroglyphic (ideographic) logosyllabic writing (a method of graphically representing spoken speech, in which each character conveys one syllable), developed from pictographic characters. There is a romanization system for Putonghua - Pinyin, as well as a system for transcribing Chinese into Russian - the Palladium system.

Phonological

In Mandarin, depending on the nature of the change in the frequency of the main vocal tone over time, 4 tones are distinguished: 1st ( smooth), 2nd ( ascending), 3rd ( descending-ascending) and 4th ( descending) tones (in the practice of teaching Chinese in Russian schools they are sometimes characterized as sing-song, asking, satisfied And abusive intonation). Tone acts as one of the main distinctive sound means that allows one to distinguish lexical meanings. Examples: 失 shī(“to lose”) - 十 shí(“ten”) - 史 shǐ(“history”) - 事 shì("case"); 媽 mā("mother") - 麻 má(“hemp”) - 马 mǎ(“horse”) - 骂 ma("scold") .

Statistical studies have shown that the functional “load” of tones in Mandarin is approximately as high as that of vowels.

Putonghua is characterized by combinatorial transformations of tones that occur during word formation when syllables are combined with a certain tone: tones can change or be neutralized. Such transformations can be either regular or irregular. So, the syllable 一 yī"one" in an isolated position is pronounced under the 1st tone, but in a phrase before syllables of the 1st, 2nd or 3rd tone it is pronounced under the 4th tone (for example, 一 yī + 年 nián goes into yanián), and before the syllable of the 4th tone - under the 2nd (for example, 一 yī + 定 dìng goes into yídìng) .

Morphological

Syntactic

Counting words

A peculiarity of the structure of a noun phrase in Putonghua is the presence of counting words, which necessarily appear before a noun when it is combined with a numeral, demonstrative pronoun or quantifier (except for cases where the noun denotes a measure of something; such a noun may well act as a classifier itself). The choice of classifier is determined by the noun itself; there are several dozen classifiers in the language.

Types of classifiers:

counting words (measures of length, weight, etc.; collective words ( aggregate) - stack, herd; “containers” - box, bottle);
abstract (“several”);
body parts (with a meaning like “___, full of something”), etc.

Classifier ge refers to noun phrases denoting people, but in modern Mandarin ge is moving toward universal classifier status, and many speakers use it for other non-human noun phrases.

Topic-commentary structure

One of the characteristic features of the syntax of the Chinese language is that, in addition to a number of traditional syntactic roles (subject, direct object, etc.), communicative units are distinguished in the structure of the sentence - topic and comment.

Phrase particles

In Chinese, as an analytical language, particles are widely used to express morphological (for example, verb aspect), syntactic (for example, belonging - see the section “Locus of marking in the possessive noun phrase”), discourse and other meanings.

Among the particles, the so-called “sentence-ending” ones are interesting.

Notes

The BBC Russian service will transfer broadcasting to the Internet
Zavyalova O. I. Chinese language // Great Russian Encyclopedia. T. 14. - M.: Publishing house "BRE", 2009.

MY COMMENT : accordingly, in principle there can be no gunpowder, no fleet, no astronomy and no science. Moreover, China, under the leadership of European specialists in the second half of the 19th century, was just conquering its future eastern provinces.

Original taken from apxiv to the East

Original taken from statin to the East

(to be continued)

To find one's place in society, it is important for a person to maintain communication, exchange ideas, express his desires and leave feedback. To do this, we use our main tool - language. There are hundreds of different languages in the world. Each of them has its own story, background, melody and rhythm. Many of us have ever wondered what are the most popular and widespread languages in the world? This collection will help you learn about them.

Mandarin language

Mandarin is spoken by almost a billion people and is one of the 6 official languages of the UN. There are 1200 million variants of this language. It is spoken in northern and southwestern China. Mandarin belongs to the Sino-Tibetan family. Despite its position at the top of the list, it is not an easy language at all. Mandarin has several dialects, and each has many tones, resulting in each region having its own distinct variant of the language.

English language

Believe it or not, English is at the top of the list of the most common and popular languages in the world. It follows right behind Mandarin, occupying the 2nd position. English is spoken by more than 430 million people worldwide. It is also one of the six official languages of the UN. Belonging to the Indo-European language family, this Germanic language is a global lingua franca. Unlike Mandarin, which is primarily spoken in a specific geographic region, English is the first language in many countries around the world. It is spread across all continents and is used by almost a billion people as a second language. One way or another, many people at least partially know this common language.

Spanish

Spanish is also on the list of official languages of the UN. He dropped from 2nd position to 3rd only recently. More than 410 million people speak Spanish. This Romance language was born from the Indo-European family and is used as a mother tongue in Latin America and Equatorial Guinea, in addition to Spain. Spanish is so popular and widespread that many Spanish words are also used in English.

Hindi

Hindi is one of the official languages of India. It is a Sanskritized branch of the Hindustani language with Indo-Aryan and Indo-European roots. It is spoken by millions of local people in India. Hindi is very similar to Urdu, the mother tongue of Pakistan. A large number of Hindi dialects are spread throughout India, with 180 million speakers of the language. The Hindi language is also spread through Bollywood films, which use it as a lingua franca.

Bengali

Bengali, or Bangla, is the native language of Bangladesh, as well as West Bengal, southern Assam and Tripura in India. The national anthems of Bangladesh, India and Sri Lanka, as well as the national songs of India, were all written in Bengali. This language has a long history of development from Indo-Aryan dialects and Sanskrit. While Bangla still retains its originality, it has also absorbed some words from foreign languages. Some outstanding literary works are written in Bengali, including the works of Rabindranath Tagore. Approximately 210 million speak it, making Bengali one of the most popular languages in the world.

Portuguese

This Romance language with Indo-European roots is spoken by more than 220 million people. Portuguese is the official language in Brazil, Mozambique and several other places. Portuguese is spoken in many countries around the world.

Russian language

Russian is in 7th place in the list of the most popular and widespread languages in the world. This Slavic language of Indo-European origin is one of the six official languages of the UN. Russian is spoken by more than 150 million people not only in the Russian Federation, but also in other countries of the former USSR, the Baltic countries and even in the United States. A huge number of outstanding works of literature and films were created in Russian.

Urdu

Considered one of the most euphonious languages in the world, Urdu shares common roots with the Hindi language, which is spoken by more than 100 million people, mainly in Pakistan and 6 states of India. The language has close similarities to Hindi and is associated with Muslims. Urdu also belongs to the Indo-European and Indo-Aryan family of languages. Poetry and songs in this language are revered in all corners of the world.

Indonesian

This Austronesian language, spoken in Malaysia and Indonesia, belongs to the Malayo-Polynesian family. It is spoken by more than 160 million people and is the official language of Indonesia.

Japanese

The list of the most popular languages in the world ends with Japanese. Approximately 125 million people speak this language. It is used mainly in Japan, as well as some other parts of the world where Japanese immigrants live.

Languages are constantly evolving, absorbing new words, phrases and styles from other languages, especially English. But in essence, every language has its own history, representing it in its own unique way.