Let's each of us pick one aspect about Chinese history to explore.
For example,
1. you can do a research on 'China': why people call 'zhongguo' China and where does the name come from,etc.
2. What China was called at different times in history?
3. How many ethnicities exist in China? In which region do they normally live? How they migrate?
...
You can go to google translate and type an d English word and then translate it to Chinese (simplified), then to go to this website http://www.words-chinese.com/pinyin-converter/ to convert it into Chinese pinyin
ReplyDeleteThe name zhōngguó" originated from the belief that the Zhou Dynasty is the "center of civilization" or "center of the world", much like the "Middle Earth" concept of Europeans.
ReplyDeleteIyIndica Powell
9-1-11
What is The Main Language of China?
ReplyDeleteThe official language of China is Mandarin. It is also known as Pǔ Tōng Huà. How that came to be was that in 1911, China had no way teach the proper sounds of the languages in China. So what they did was create a set of phonetic symbols. They also made a dictionary called Guoyin zidian (Dictionary of National Phonics). However, this dictionary did not resemble Mandarin as it was spoken because it retained pronunciations of the Ru-sheng characters, so it was a mix of northern pronunciation with the rhymes of the southern languages (Life of Guangzhou).
The dictionary was not used for learning because most people did not understand the language it was written in. A native Wu speaker was the only one who could read the language. Yuen Ren Chao (Zhao Yuanren) was a skilled linguist an phonetician. In 1932, a new dictionary came out that was base on the pronunciation and speech of Beijing.
Now, in addition to the term "Guoyu" (which is the term now used in Taiwan), Putonghua or "universal language" has become the national term for the official language (Life of Guangzhou). Mandarin speakers are thought to increase within the next 100 years. Because of the sheer size of China and the number of various languages spoken there, teaching everybody Mandarin and making it the national standard has been a very long journey, and even now with less than 30 years to go, most of the languages and dialects are thriving (Life of Guangzhou).
That was how the official language (Mandarin) of China came to be. It is also a future prediction of the language throughout the world.
The People's Republic of China (PRC) officially recognizes 55 ethnic minority groups within China in addition to the Han majority. As of 2010, the combined population of officially recognised minority groups comprised 8.49% of the population of mainland China.
ReplyDeletePaige Freudiger
9-1-11
Pǔ Tōng Huà 普通话
ReplyDeleteGuoyu 国语