1.
Traditional Chinese characters
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Traditional Chinese characters are Chinese characters in any character set that does not contain newly created characters or character substitutions performed after 1946. They are most commonly the characters in the character sets of Taiwan, of Hong Kong. Currently, a number of overseas Chinese online newspapers allow users to switch between both sets. In contrast, simplified Chinese characters are used in mainland China, Singapore, the debate on traditional and simplified Chinese characters has been a long-running issue among Chinese communities. Although simplified characters are taught and endorsed by the government of Mainland China, Traditional characters are used informally in regions in China primarily in handwriting and also used for inscriptions and religious text. They are often retained in logos or graphics to evoke yesteryear, nonetheless, the vast majority of media and communications in China is dominated by simplified characters. Taiwan has never adopted Simplified Chinese characters since it is ruled by the Republic of China, the use of simplified characters in official documents is even prohibited by the government in Taiwan. Simplified characters are not well understood in general, although some stroke simplifications that have incorporated into Simplified Chinese are in common use in handwriting. For example, while the name of Taiwan is written as 臺灣, similarly, in Hong Kong and Macau, Traditional Chinese has been the legal written form since colonial times. In recent years, because of the influx of mainland Chinese tourists, today, even government websites use simplified Chinese, as they answer to the Beijing government. This has led to concerns by residents to protect their local heritage. In Southeast Asia, the Chinese Filipino community continues to be one of the most conservative regarding simplification, while major public universities are teaching simplified characters, many well-established Chinese schools still use traditional characters. Publications like the Chinese Commercial News, World News, and United Daily News still use traditional characters, on the other hand, the Philippine Chinese Daily uses simplified. Aside from local newspapers, magazines from Hong Kong, such as the Yazhou Zhoukan, are found in some bookstores. In case of film or television subtitles on DVD, the Chinese dub that is used in Philippines is the same as the one used in Taiwan and this is because the DVDs belongs to DVD Region Code 3. Hence, most of the subtitles are in Traditional Characters, overseas Chinese in the United States have long used traditional characters. A major influx of Chinese immigrants to the United States occurred during the half of the 19th century. Therefore, the majority of Chinese language signage in the United States, including street signs, Traditional Chinese characters are called several different names within the Chinese-speaking world
2.
Standard Chinese
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Its pronunciation is based on the Beijing dialect, its vocabulary on the Mandarin dialects, and its grammar is based on written vernacular Chinese. Like other varieties of Chinese, Standard Chinese is a language with topic-prominent organization. It has more initial consonants but fewer vowels, final consonants, Standard Chinese is an analytic language, though with many compound words. There exist two standardised forms of the language, namely Putonghua in Mainland China and Guoyu in Taiwan, aside from a number of differences in pronunciation and vocabulary, Putonghua is written using simplified Chinese characters, while Guoyu is written using traditional Chinese characters. There are many characters that are identical between the two systems, in English, the governments of China and Hong Kong use Putonghua, Putonghua Chinese, Mandarin Chinese, and Mandarin, while those of Taiwan, Singapore, and Malaysia, use Mandarin. The name Putonghua also has a long, albeit unofficial, history and it was used as early as 1906 in writings by Zhu Wenxiong to differentiate a modern, standard Chinese from classical Chinese and other varieties of Chinese. For some linguists of the early 20th century, the Putonghua, or common tongue/speech, was different from the Guoyu. The former was a prestige variety, while the latter was the legal standard. Based on common understandings of the time, the two were, in fact, different, Guoyu was understood as formal vernacular Chinese, which is close to classical Chinese. By contrast, Putonghua was called the speech of the modern man. The use of the term Putonghua by left-leaning intellectuals such as Qu Qiubai, prior to this, the government used both terms interchangeably. In Taiwan, Guoyu continues to be the term for Standard Chinese. The term Putonghua, on the contrary, implies nothing more than the notion of a lingua franca, Huayu, or language of the Chinese nation, originally simply meant Chinese language, and was used in overseas communities to contrast Chinese with foreign languages. Over time, the desire to standardise the variety of Chinese spoken in these communities led to the adoption of the name Huayu to refer to Mandarin and it also incorporates the notion that Mandarin is usually not the national or common language of the areas in which overseas Chinese live. The term Mandarin is a translation of Guānhuà, which referred to the lingua franca of the late Chinese empire, in English, Mandarin may refer to the standard language, the dialect group as a whole, or to historic forms such as the late Imperial lingua franca. The name Modern Standard Mandarin is sometimes used by linguists who wish to distinguish the current state of the language from other northern. Chinese has long had considerable variation, hence prestige dialects have always existed. Confucius, for example, used yǎyán rather than colloquial regional dialects, rime books, which were written since the Northern and Southern dynasties, may also have reflected one or more systems of standard pronunciation during those times
3.
Pinyin
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Pinyin, or Hànyǔ Pīnyīn, is the official romanization system for Standard Chinese in mainland China, Malaysia, Singapore, and Taiwan. It is often used to teach Standard Chinese, which is written using Chinese characters. The system includes four diacritics denoting tones, Pinyin without tone marks is used to spell Chinese names and words in languages written with the Latin alphabet, and also in certain computer input methods to enter Chinese characters. The pinyin system was developed in the 1950s by many linguists, including Zhou Youguang and it was published by the Chinese government in 1958 and revised several times. The International Organization for Standardization adopted pinyin as a standard in 1982. The system was adopted as the standard in Taiwan in 2009. The word Hànyǔ means the language of the Han people. In 1605, the Jesuit missionary Matteo Ricci published Xizi Qiji in Beijing and this was the first book to use the Roman alphabet to write the Chinese language. Twenty years later, another Jesuit in China, Nicolas Trigault, neither book had much immediate impact on the way in which Chinese thought about their writing system, and the romanizations they described were intended more for Westerners than for the Chinese. One of the earliest Chinese thinkers to relate Western alphabets to Chinese was late Ming to early Qing Dynasty scholar-official, the first late Qing reformer to propose that China adopt a system of spelling was Song Shu. A student of the great scholars Yu Yue and Zhang Taiyan, Song had been to Japan and observed the effect of the kana syllabaries. This galvanized him into activity on a number of fronts, one of the most important being reform of the script, while Song did not himself actually create a system for spelling Sinitic languages, his discussion proved fertile and led to a proliferation of schemes for phonetic scripts. The Wade–Giles system was produced by Thomas Wade in 1859, and it was popular and used in English-language publications outside China until 1979. This Sin Wenz or New Writing was much more sophisticated than earlier alphabets. In 1940, several members attended a Border Region Sin Wenz Society convention. Mao Zedong and Zhu De, head of the army, both contributed their calligraphy for the masthead of the Sin Wenz Societys new journal. Outside the CCP, other prominent supporters included Sun Yat-sens son, Sun Fo, Cai Yuanpei, the countrys most prestigious educator, Tao Xingzhi, an educational reformer. Over thirty journals soon appeared written in Sin Wenz, plus large numbers of translations, biographies, some contemporary Chinese literature, and a spectrum of textbooks
4.
Southern Min
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Southern Min, or Minnan, is a branch of Min Chinese spoken in certain parts of China including southern Fujian, eastern Guangdong, Hainan, and southern Zhejiang, and in Taiwan. The Min Nan dialects are spoken by descendants of emigrants from these areas in diaspora, most notably the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia. In common parlance, Southern Min usually refers to Hokkien, including Amoy and Taiwanese Hokkien, the Southern Min dialect group also includes Teochew, though Teochew has limited mutual intelligibility with Hokkien. Hainanese is not mutually intellgible with other Southern Min and is considered a separate branch of Min. Southern Min is not mutually intelligible with Eastern Min, Pu-Xian Min, any other Min branch, Hakka, Cantonese, Shanghainese or Mandarin. Southern Min dialects are spoken in the part of Fujian. The variant spoken in Leizhou, Guangdong as well as Hainan is Hainanese and is not mutually intelligible with other Southern Min or Teochew, Hainanese is classified in some schemes as part of Southern Min and in other schemes as separate. Puxian Min was originally based on the Quanzhou dialect, but over time became heavily influenced by Eastern Min, eventually losing intellegility with Minnan. A forms of Southern Min spoken in Taiwan, collectively known as Taiwanese, Southern Min is a first language for most of the Hoklo people, the main ethnicity of Taiwan. The correspondence between language and ethnicity is not absolute, as some Hoklo have very limited proficiency in Southern Min while some non-Hoklo speak Southern Min fluently, there are many Southern Min speakers also among Overseas Chinese in Southeast Asia. Many ethnic Chinese immigrants to the region were Hoklo from southern Fujian and brought the language to what is now Burma, Indonesia and present-day Malaysia and Singapore. In general, Southern Min from southern Fujian is known as Hokkien, Hokkienese, many Southeast Asian ethnic Chinese also originated in the Chaoshan region of Guangdong and speak Teochew language, the variant of Southern Min from that region. Southern Min-speakers form the majority of Chinese in Singapore, with the largest group being Hokkien, despite the similarities the two groups are rarely seen as part of the same Minnan Chinese subgroups. The variants of Southern Min spoken in Zhejiang province are most akin to that spoken in Quanzhou, the variants spoken in Taiwan are similar to the three Fujian variants and are collectively known as Taiwanese. Those Southern Min variants that are known as Hokkien in Southeast Asia also originate from these variants. The variants of Southern Min in the Chaoshan region of eastern Guangdong province are known as Teochew or Chaozhou. Teochew is of importance in the Southeast Asian Chinese diaspora, particularly in Malaysia, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, Sumatra. The Philippines variant is mostly from the Quanzhou area as most of their forefathers are from the aforementioned area, the Southern Min language variant spoken around Shanwei and Haifeng differs markedly from Teochew and may represent a later migration from Zhangzhou
5.
Hokkien
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Hokkien /hɒˈkiɛn/ is a group of Southern Min dialects spoken throughout Southeastern China, Taiwan, Southeast Asia and by other overseas Chinese. Hokkien originated in southern Fujian, the Min-speaking province and it is closely related to Teochew, though there is limited mutual intelligibility, and is somewhat more distantly related to Hainanese and Leizhou dialect. Besides Hokkien, there are also other Min and Hakka dialects in Fujian province, the term Hokkien is etymologically derived from the Southern Min pronunciation for Fujian, the province from which the language hails. The variety is known by other terms such as the more general Min Nan or Southern Min. Fujianese and Fukienese are also used, although they are somewhat imprecise, the term Hokkien is not usually used in Mainland China or Taiwan. Conversely Hokkien is the name in Southeast Asia in both English, Chinese or other languages. Speakers of Hokkien, particularly those in Southeast Asia, typically refer to Hokkien as a dialect, people in Taiwan most often refer to Hokkien as the Taiwanese language, with Minnan and Holo also being used and 福建話 is not as common. Hokkien originated in the area of Fujian province, an important center for trade and migration. The major pole of Hokkien varieties outside of Fujian is Taiwan, the Taiwanese version mostly have origins with the Quanzhou and Zhangzhou variants, but since then, the Amoy dialect is becoming the modern prestige standard for the language. There are many Hokkien speakers among overseas Chinese in Southeast Asia as well as in the United States, many ethnic Han Chinese emigrants to the region were Hoklo from southern Fujian, and brought the language to what is now Burma, Indonesia and present day Malaysia and Singapore. Many of the Hokkien dialects of this region are similar to Taiwanese and Amoynese. Hokkien is reportedly the native language of up to 80% of the Chinese people in the Philippines, Hokkien speakers form the largest group of overseas Chinese in Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia and Philippines. Southern and part of western Fujian is home to four principal Hokkien dialects, Chinchew, Amoy, Chiangchew and Longyan, originating from the cities of Quanzhou, Xiamen, Zhangzhou and Longyan. As Xiamen is the city of southern Fujian, Amoy is considered the most important, or even the prestige dialect. It is a hybrid of the Quanzhou and Zhangzhou dialects, same as Amoy dialect, the varieties of Hokkien spoken in Taiwan are hybrids of the Quanzhou and Zhangzhou dialects, and are collectively known as Taiwanese Hokkien or just Taiwanese. Used by a majority of the population, it bears much importance from a socio-political perspective, the varieties of Hokkien in Southeast Asia originate from these dialects. The Singaporeans, Southern Malaysians and people in Indonesias Riau and surrounding islands variant is from the Quanzhou area and they speak a distinct form of Quanzhou Hokkien called Southern Peninsular Malaysian Hokkien. Among ethnic Chinese inhabitants of Penang, and other states in Northern Malaysia and Medan, with areas in North Sumatra, Indonesia
6.
Taiwan
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Taiwan, officially the Republic of China, is a state in East Asia. Neighbours include China to the west, Japan to the northeast, Taiwan is the most populous state that is not a member of the United Nations, and the one with the largest economy. The island of Taiwan, also known as Formosa, was inhabited by Taiwanese aborigines before the 17th century. After a brief rule by the Kingdom of Tungning, the island was annexed by the Qing dynasty, the Qing ceded Taiwan to Japan in 1895 after the Sino-Japanese War. While Taiwan was under Japanese rule, the Republic of China was established on the mainland in 1912 after the fall of the Qing dynasty, following the Japanese surrender to the Allies in 1945, the ROC took control of Taiwan. However, the resumption of the Chinese Civil War led to the ROCs loss of the mainland to the Communists, and the flight of the ROC government to Taiwan in 1949. As a founding member of the United Nations, the ROC continued to represent China at the United Nations until 1971, in the early 1960s, Taiwan entered a period of rapid economic growth and industrialization, creating a stable industrial economy. In the 1980s and early 1990s, it changed from a one-party military dictatorship dominated by the Kuomintang to a multi-party democracy with universal suffrage, Taiwan is the 22nd-largest economy in the world, and its high-tech industry plays a key role in the global economy. It is ranked highly in terms of freedom of the press, health care, public education, economic freedom, the PRC has consistently claimed sovereignty over Taiwan and asserted the ROC is no longer in legitimate existence. Under its One-China Policy the PRC refused diplomatic relations with any country that recognizes the ROC, the PRC has threatened the use of military force in response to any formal declaration of independence by Taiwan or if PRC leaders decide that peaceful unification is no longer possible. There are various names for the island of Taiwan in use today, the former name Formosa dates from 1542, when Portuguese sailors sighted the main island of Taiwan and named it Ilha Formosa, which means beautiful island. The name Formosa eventually replaced all others in European literature and was in use in English in the early 20th century. This name was adopted into the Chinese vernacular as the name of the sandbar. The modern word Taiwan is derived from this usage, which is seen in forms in Chinese historical records. Use of the current Chinese name was formalized as early as 1684 with the establishment of Taiwan Prefecture, through its rapid development, the entire Formosan mainland eventually became known as Taiwan. The official name of the state is the Republic of China and it was a member of the United Nations representing China until 1971, when it lost its seat to the Peoples Republic of China. Over subsequent decades, the Republic of China has become known as Taiwan. In some contexts, especially ones from the ROC government
7.
Book of Rites
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As a core text of the Confucian canon, it is also known as the Classic of Rites, which some scholars believe was the original title before it was changed by Dai Sheng. The Book of Rites is a collection of texts of varied but uncertain origin and date. Some sections consist of definitions of terms, particularly those found in the Etiquette and Ceremonial, while others contain details of the life. Parts of the text have been traced to such works as the Xunzi and Lüshi Chunqiu. During the reign of Qin Shihuang, many of the Confucian classics were destroyed during the 213 BC Burning of the Books. The Book of Rites was said to have been fully reconstructed, since then, other scholars have attempted to redact these first drafts. According to the Book of Sui, Dai De reworked the text in the 1st century BC, reducing the original 214 books to 85, to this three were added towards the end of the Han dynasty, bringing the total to 49. In 1993, a copy of the Black Robes chapter was found in Tomb 1 of the Guodian Tombs in Jingmen, since the tomb was sealed around 300 BCE, the find reactivated academic arguments about the possible dating of the other Liji chapters by the Warring States period. Confucius described Li as all forms that provided a standard of conduct. Li literally means rites but it can also be used to refer to ceremonial or rules of conduct, the term has come to generally be associated with good form, decorum or politeness. Confucius felt that li should emphasize the spirit of piety and respect for others through rules of conduct, as outlined in the Book of Rites, li is meant to restore the significance of traditional forms by looking at the simplicity of the past. Confucius insisted that a standard of conduct that focused on traditional forms would be a way to ease the turmoil of collapsing Zhou state. The absolute power of li is displayed in the Book of Rites, the ideas of li were thought to become closely associated with human nature, ethics, and social order as the population integrated li into their lives. Li is beneficial to society because it guides people to recognize, as a result of the Book of Rites chapters, using a syncretic system and combining Daoist and Mohist beliefs, later scholars formed both the Great Learning and the Doctrine of the Mean. These two books were believed to be written by two of Confucius disciples one specifically being his grandson. Consequently, the Book of Rites and two of its by-products were large parts of the Chinese beliefs and industry for many centuries. Sacred Books of the East, volumes 27 and 28, Li Ki, ou Mémoires sur les bienséances, texte Chinois avec une double traduction en Francais et en Latin, volumes 1 and 2. Confucianism and the Family Rituals in Imperial China, New Jersey, Princeton University Press,1991, ISBN 978-0-691-03150-7 Confucius, James Legge, Chʻu Chai, Winberg Chai
8.
Water Margin
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Water Margin is a novel attributed to Shi Naian. Considered one of the Four Great Classical Novels of Chinese literature and it has introduced to readers many of the best-known characters in Chinese literature, such as Wu Song, Lin Chong and Lu Zhishen. Water Margin was based on the exploits of the outlaw Song Jiang, the group was active in the Huainan region and surrendered to the Song government in 1121. They were recorded in the historical text History of Song, infringed on east of the capital, Hebei, and entered the boundaries of Chu and Haizhou. The prefect Zhang Shuye was ordered to pacify them, Zhang Shuyes biography further described Song Jiang and the outlaws activities and how they were eventually defeated by Zhang. Folk stories of Song Jiang circulated during the Southern Song, the first source to name Song Jiangs 36 companions was Miscellaneous observations from the year of Guixin by Zhou Mi, written in the 13th century. Among the 36 were Lu Junyi, Guan Sheng, Ruan Xiaoer, Ruan Xiaowu, Ruan Xiaoqi, Liu Tang, Hua Rong, some of the characters who later became associated with Song Jiang also appeared around this time. They include Sun Li, Yang Zhi, Lin Chong, Lu Zhishen, a direct precursor of Water Margin was the Old incidents in the Xuanhe period of the great Song dynasty, which appeared around the mid 13th century. The text is a version of storytellers tales, based on supposed historical events. It is divided into ten chapters, roughly covering the history of the Song dynasty from the early 11th century to the establishment of the Southern Song regime in 1127. The fourth chapter covers the adventures of Song Jiang and his 36 companions, Song Jiang and his outlaws were said to operate in the Taihang Mountains. Stories about the outlaws became a subject for Yuan dynasty drama. During this time, the material on which Water Margin was based evolved into what it is in the present, the number of outlaws increased to 108. Even though they came from different backgrounds, all of them came to occupy Mount Liang. There is a theory that Water Margin became popular during the Yuan era as the people resented the Mongol rulers. The outlaws rebellion was deemed safe to promote as it was supposedly a reflection of the fallen Song dynasty. Concurrently, the rebellion was also a call for the people to rise up against corruption in the government. The Chongzhen Emperor of the Ming dynasty, acting on the advice of his ministers, the novel, praised as an early masterpiece of vernacular fiction, is renowned for the mastery and control of its mood and tone
9.
Shuowen Jiezi
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Shuowen Jiezi, often shortened to Shuowen, was an early 2nd-century Chinese dictionary from the Han Dynasty. Xu Shen, a Han Dynasty scholar of the Five Classics, according to Boltz, Xus compilation of the Shuowen cannot be held to have arisen from a purely linguistic or lexicographical drive. His motives were more pragmatic and political, during the Han era, the prevalent theory of language was Confucianist Rectification of Names, the belief that using the correct names for things was essential for proper government. The postface to the Shuowen Jiezi explains, Now the written language is the foundation of classical learning, pre-Shuowen Chinese dictionaries like the Erya and the Fangyan were limited lists of synonyms loosely organized by semantic categories, which made it difficult to look up characters. Thus, Needham et al. describe the Shuowen jiezi as a paleographic handbook as well as a dictionary, the dictionary includes a preface and 15 chapters. The first 14 chapters are character entries, the 15th and final chapter is divided into two parts, a postface and an index of section headers. Xǔ Shèn states in his postface that the dictionary has 9,353 character entries, plus 1,163 graphic variants, with a total length of 133,441 characters. The transmitted texts vary slightly in content, owing to omissions and emendations by commentators, the number of section headers,540, numerologically equals 6 ×9 ×10, the product of the symbolic numbers of Yin and Yang and the number of the Heavenly Stems. The first section header was 一 and the last was 亥, in the process, he included many section headers that are not considered ones today, such as 炎 and 熊, which modern dictionaries list under the 火 or 灬 heading. He also included as section headers all the sexagenary cycle characters, that is, as a result, unlike modern dictionaries which attempt to maximize the number of characters under each section header,34 Shuowen headers have no characters under them, while 159 have only one each. From a modern perspective, Xus system of 540 headings can seem enigmatic. For instance, he included the singular section header 409 惢, with one rare character. In addition to the graph, Xu included two kinds of variant graphs when they differed from the standard seal, called ancient script. The Zhòu characters were taken from the no-longer extant Shizhoupian, an early copybook traditionally attributed to a Shĭ Zhòu, or Historian Zhou, in the court of King Xuan of Zhou. Wang Guowei and Tang Lan argued that the structure and style of these suggested a later date. Xu believed that these were the most ancient characters available, since Confucius would have used the oldest characters to best convey the meaning of the texts. However, Wang Guowei and other scholars have shown that they were regional variant forms in the areas during the Warring States period. Note that the character 文 itself exemplifies the category wén 文, thus, Shuōwén Jiězì means commenting on the wén, which cannot be deconstructed, and analyzing the zì
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