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The earliest historical linguistic evidence of the spoken Chinese language dates back approximately 4500 years, [1] while examples of the writing system that would become written Chinese are attested in a body of inscriptions made on bronze vessels and oracle bones during the Late Shang period (c. 1250 – 1050 BCE), [2] [3] with the very oldest dated to c. 1200 BCE.
The Language Atlas of China (simplified Chinese: 中国语言地图集; traditional Chinese: 中國語言地圖集; pinyin: Zhōngguó yǔyán dìtú jí), published by Hong Kong Longman Publishing Company in two parts in 1987 and 1989, maps the distribution of both the varieties of Chinese and minority languages of China.
The Linguistic Atlas of Chinese Dialects (Chinese: 汉语方言地图集; pinyin: Hànyǔ Fāngyán Dìtú Jí), edited by Cao Zhiyun and published in 2008 in three volumes, is a dialect atlas documenting the geography of varieties of Chinese. Unlike the Language Atlas of China (1987), which aims to map the boundaries of both minority languages ...
The Chinese territory that existed between the 1750's after the Qing Dynasty had completed its overall unification of China and 1840's before the aggression and encroachment on China by the imperialist powers is the territorial and geographical scope and range of China, a logical and natural formation from the historical process over thousands ...
English: Chinese linguistic groups, 1990. The map shows the distribution of linguistic groups in China according to the historical majority ethnic groups by region. Note this does not represent the current distribution due to age-long internal migration and assimilation.
There are several hundred languages in China.The predominant language is Standard Chinese, which is based on Beijingese, but there are hundreds of related Chinese languages, collectively known as Hanyu (simplified Chinese: 汉语; traditional Chinese: 漢語; pinyin: Hànyǔ, 'Han language'), that are spoken by 92% of the population.
The complex relationship between spoken and written Chinese is an example of diglossia: as spoken, Chinese varieties have evolved at different rates, while the written language used throughout China changed comparatively little, crystallizing into a prestige form known as Classical or Literary Chinese.
Kunyu Wanguo Quantu, printed in Ming China at the request of the Wanli Emperor in 1602 by the Italian Catholic missionary Matteo Ricci and Chinese collaborators, the mandarin Zhong Wentao, and the technical translator Li Zhizao, is the earliest known Chinese world map with the style of European maps. [1]