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Chinese as a foreign or second language is when non-native speakers study Chinese varieties.The increased interest in China from those outside has led to a corresponding interest in the study of Standard Chinese (a type of Mandarin Chinese) as a foreign language, the official language of mainland China, Taiwan and Singapore.
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.
Writing systems are used to record human language, and may be classified according to certain common features. The usual name of the script is given first; the name of the languages in which the script is written follows (in brackets), particularly in the case where the language name differs from the script name. Other informative or qualifying ...
Sinophone, which means "Chinese-speaking", typically refers to an individual who speaks at least one variety of Chinese (that is, one of the Sinitic languages).Academic writers often use the term Sinophone in two definitions: either specifically "Chinese-speaking populations where it is a minority language, excluding mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan" or generally "Chinese-speaking ...
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.
In the early 20th century, a standard form based on the Beijing dialect, with elements from other Mandarin varieties, was adopted as the national language. Standard Chinese is the official language of China [4] and Taiwan, [5] one of four official languages of Singapore and one of six official languages of the United Nations. [6]
Qin, 57, became one of the country's youngest foreign ministers on his appointment in December 2022 after a brief stint as U.S. ambassador, enjoying a meteoric rise to the top that analysts partly ...
Chinese words with these pronunciations were also borrowed extensively into the local vernaculars and today comprise over half their vocabularies. [47] Vernacular or standard Chinese encompassing varieties of Chinese also developed in contrast to the use of Literary Chinese. Books in Literary Chinese were widely distributed.