Chinese is the most popular language in the world. More than one billion people in the People’s
Republic of China (PRC), Hong Kong, Taiwan, and other places in East Asia speak Chinese. Significant populations of people who speak Chinese also live in urban centers around the world. For example, San
Francisco has the largest Chinese-speaking population of any city outside of China.
Chinese actually consists of a large number of dialects which share a written
language but are mutually unintelligible when spoken. Because of this, some linguists
consider them separate languages instead of dialects. Mandarin Chinese is the official language of the People’s Republic of China and
Taiwan, and it is the most widely-spoken
form of Chinese. Other important linguistic groups include Cantonese, Wu, Xiang, Hakka, Min, and
Gan. Within each group, many variations in spoken language occur. It is said
that speakers from one area may not understand those who live only a few miles away. The
majority of Chinese speakers in the United States speak Cantonese.
Chinese belongs to the Sino-Tibetan language family, which also includes Tibetan,
Karen, and Lolo-Burmese. The Chinese language has influenced many of the other languages of East Asia.
Written Chinese originated more than 4,000 years ago and remained relatively stable until
the People’s Republic of China decided on a campaign to make it easier to read Chinese by simplifying the characters,
which can have as many as 30 strokes. To date, the simplified Chinese characters have been adopted
only in the PRC and Singapore, but Hong Kong may start to use them, following its 1997 reunification
with the mainland. Another change initiated in the PRC is the widespread use of Pinyin, a
system of transliteration, representing the sounds of the Chinese language using the Latin alphabet. The
Chinese government has expressed interest in eventually replacing the character system
with a phonetic alphabet, but to date Chinese characters remain the standard in
communication. The written Chinese language consists of about 40,000 characters.
Because Cantonese speakers were the first people to speak Chinese who came to the United States, many
English words of Chinese origin come from Cantonese. They include chop suey (from
the Cantonese tsap sui or mixed pieces), chop chop (from the Cantonese chop,
meaning quick), and dim sum (from the Cantonese for little hearts; the same
characters are pronounced "dian xin" in Mandarin Chinese). Other culinary terms
come from Mandarin Chinese, including chow mein (from chao mian, to stir fry
noodles), and tofu (do fu in Mandarin Chinese). Aside from food, Chinese martial arts
terms have come into English, including kung fu (gong fu in Chinese) and tai
chi (tai ji in Chinese). Recently, feng shui, the Chinese architectural
principle, has also been adopted into English.
Nobody who is learning Chinese would look at Chinese characters and mistake them for English words! However, as you learn to speak Chinese, some words may sound familiar. Generally, however, they are not what you might think. For example, depending on
its tone, the word shu can mean book, uncle, neglect, ransom,
ripe, and comb. However, it never means "shoe."
When speaking Chinese to an older person or someone in a formal setting, Chinese speakers
use the second person nín instead of the more general n
. In addition, Chinese uses a number of terms to
indicate their respect for the person to whom they are speaking including guì (honored or honorable). To show respect for an older
person, Chinese speakers often use the word 
o, meaning
venerable or old, after the person’s last name.
The Chinese language is a tonal language, which means that a given word can change meaning
depending on its tone. Mandarin Chinese has four tones: flat, rising, falling then rising, and
falling. Other dialects can have as many as nine tones. Careless use of tones with the
syllable
ma in Mandarin Chinese could cause one to call someone’s mother a horse! So be careful with your Chinese pronunciation.
Chinese does not have words as such. Each Chinese character represents a syllable. A
single character may represent an object or idea or it may combine with other characters
to produce a new meaning. In some cases, a character’s meaning changes completely in
combination. For example, 
sheng means
"teacher," "Mr." or "Sir." Taken individually, its
characters can mean "first" or "earlier," and "born" or
"student."
Learning to read Chinese and write Chinese takes commitment. If you want to learn to read Chinese, you must learn about 3,000
Chinese characters to become literate. Many Chinese characters give no indication of what they should sound like when said.
Therefore, learning Chinese vocabulary is a two-step process, where
one must learn sound and meaning separately. Some characters do indicate their sound, but students who are just beginning to speak Chinese may not recognize those indications.
Chinese verbs never change form. The speaker is indicated by a pronoun, while time or
aspect are marked by adverbs and a series of particles (suffix-like syllables) that
indicate completion, continuation, and emotion.
As you learn Chinese pronouns, you will notice that the words for "he" and
"she" share the sound 
, but are represented by two different Chinese characters. When you listen to people speak Chinese, you
must use the context to differentiate between the pronouns.
The Chinese language was traditionally written from right to left in vertical columns. Today, most
material published in the People’s Republic of China is printed in rows read from
left to right as in English, while Taiwan’s publishers continue to write Chinese using the
traditional method.
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