Languages of China

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For information on various forms of spoken Han Chinese languages variants, see Chinese spoken languages.
Languages of China

Map of Linguistic Groups showing areas claimed by the People's Republic of China (including areas governed by the Republic of China)
Official language(s) Chinese
Sign language(s) Chinese Sign Language

China's many different ethnic groups speak many different languages, collectively called Zhōngguó Yǔwén (中国语文), literally "speech and writing of China" which mainly span six linguistic families. Most of them are dissimilar morphologically and phonetically and are mutually unintelligible. Zhongguo Yuwen includes the many different Han Chinese language variants (commonly simply called Chinese) as well as non-Han minority languages such as Mongolian and Tibetan.

Chinese language policy in mainland China is heavily influenced by Soviet nationalities policy and officially encourages the development of standard spoken and written languages for each of the nationalities of China. However, in this schema, Han Chinese are considered a single nationality, and official policy of the People's Republic of China (PRC) treats the different varieties of the Chinese spoken language differently from the different national languages. For example, while official policies in mainland China encourage the development and use of different orthographies for the national languages and their use in educational and academic settings, the same is not true for the different Chinese spoken languages, despite the fact that they are more different from each other than, for example, the Romance languages of Europe.

Putonghua or Standard Mandarin is the official national spoken language, although autonomous regions and special administrative regions have additional official languages. For example, Tibetan has official status within the Tibet Autonomous Region and Mongolian has official status within the Inner Mongolian Autonomous Region. Hong Kong and Macau not only have English and Portuguese as official languages respectively, Cantonese is a de facto official spoken Chinese variant.

Unofficially, there are large economic, social and practical incentives to be functional in Putonghua, a standardised form of the Mandarin group of dialects spoken in northern and southwestern China, which serves as a lingua franca among the different groups within mainland China. In addition, it is also considered increasingly prestigious and useful to have some ability in English, which is a required subject for persons attending university. During the 1950s and 1960s, Russian had some social status among elites in mainland China as the international language of socialism.

The Economist, issue April 12, 2006 reported that up to one fifth of the population is learning English. Gordon Brown, the British Prime Minister, estimated that the total English-speaking population in China will outnumber the native speakers in the rest of the world in two decades. [1]


Contents

[edit] Spoken

The spoken languages of nationalities that are a part of the People's Republic of China belong to at least seven families:

[edit] Written

Main article: Written Chinese
A sign in Mongol, Tibetan, Chinese, and Manchurian at the Yonghe monastery in Peking
A sign in Mongol, Tibetan, Chinese, and Manchurian at the Yonghe monastery in Peking

The following languages have traditionally had written forms that do not involve Chinese characters (hanzi):

Chinese palaces, temples, and coins have traditionally been inscribed in four scripts:

The reverse of a one jiao note with Chinese (Pinyin) at the top and Mongol, Tibetan, Uyghur, and Zhuang along the bottom.
The reverse of a one jiao note with Chinese (Pinyin) at the top and Mongol, Tibetan, Uyghur, and Zhuang along the bottom.

Chinese banknotes contain several scripts in addition to Chinese script. These are:

Ten nationalities who never had a written system have, under the PRC's encouragement, developed phonetic alphabets. According to a government white paper published in early 2005, "by the end of 2003, 22 ethnic minorities in China used 28 written languages."

[edit] Political controversies

Language policy within China is the subject of a number of political controversies mostly having to do with the political status of minority nationalities in China. Some critics of the Beijing government, such as the Tibetan Government-in-Exile argue that China's official multilingualism is a sham and that social pressures and political efforts result in a policy of sinicization and often term PRC policies cultural genocide. Supporters of Chinese policies argue that both in theory and in practice that Chinese policies are rather supportive of multilingualism and the development of minority languages, and that China has a far better track record in these issues than some other countries, namely the United States.

[edit] Further reading

  • Kane, D. (2006). The Chinese language: its history and current usage. North Clarendon, VT: Tuttle. ISBN 0804838534
  • Halliday, M. A. K., & Webster, J. (2005). Studies in Chinese language. London: Continuum. ISBN 0826458742
  • Ramsey, S. R. (1987). The languages of China. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. ISBN 0691066949
  • Hong, B. (1978). Chinese language use. Canberra: Contemporary China Centre, Research School of Pacific Studies, Australian National University. ISBN 0909596298
  • Cheng, C.-c., & Lehmann, W. P. (1975). Language & linguistics in the People's Republic of China. Austin: University of Texas Press. ISBN 0292746156

[edit] See also

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Please categorize this article to list it with similar articles. (June 2008)
Languages