Learn four tones. Chinese is basically a tonal language. The peculiarity of tonal languages ​​is that, even with the same spelling and pronunciation, the tonality with which the word was pronounced changes its meaning. To speak Chinese correctly, you need to learn different tones. Actually, in Northern Chinese these are the following tones:

• First tone- tall, smooth. The voice remains level, without rising or falling. If we take the word “ma” as an example, the first tone is indicated by the symbol above the letter “a”: “mā”.
• Second tone- ascending. Your voice rises from low to medium, as if you were asking someone something like “huh?” or “what?” In writing, the second tone is indicated as follows: "má".
• Third tone- descending-ascending. The voice changes from medium to low to high, as when pronouncing the English letter “B”. When two syllables of a third tone are adjacent to each other, the first syllable remains in the third tone and the second moves into the fourth. In writing, the third tone is indicated as follows: "mǎ".
• Fourth tone- descending. The voice quickly changes from high to low, as if giving the command “stop”. Or, for example, as if, while reading a book, you came across an interesting fragment and said “aha.” The fourth tone is indicated as follows: "mà".
• Easy, right? Even if not, don’t give up. It is very desirable to hear the tones performed by a native speaker, because through the text it is very difficult to understand how everything should actually sound.

To find one's place in society, it is important for a person to maintain communication, exchange ideas, express his desires and leave feedback. To do this, we use our main tool - language. There are hundreds of different languages ​​in the world. Each of them has its own story, background, melody and rhythm. Many of us have ever wondered what are the most popular and widespread languages ​​in the world? This collection will help you learn about them.

Mandarin language

Mandarin is spoken by almost a billion people and is one of the 6 official languages ​​of the UN. There are 1200 million variants of this language. It is spoken in northern and southwestern China. Mandarin belongs to the Sino-Tibetan family. Despite its position at the top of the list, it is not an easy language at all. Mandarin has several dialects, and each has many tones, resulting in each region having its own distinct variant of the language.

English language

Believe it or not, English is at the top of the list of the most common and popular languages ​​in the world. It follows right behind Mandarin, occupying the 2nd position. English is spoken by more than 430 million people worldwide. It is also one of the six official languages ​​of the UN. Belonging to the Indo-European language family, this Germanic language is a global lingua franca. Unlike Mandarin, which is primarily spoken in a specific geographic region, English is the first language in many countries around the world. It is spread across all continents and is used as a second language by almost a billion people. One way or another, many people at least partially know this common language.

Spanish

Spanish is also on the list of official languages ​​of the UN. He dropped from 2nd position to 3rd only recently. More than 410 million people speak Spanish. This Romance language was born from the Indo-European family and is used as a mother tongue in Latin America and Equatorial Guinea, in addition to Spain. Spanish is so popular and widespread that many Spanish words are also used in English.

Hindi

Hindi is one of the official languages ​​of India. It is a Sanskritized branch of the Hindustani language with Indo-Aryan and Indo-European roots. It is spoken by millions of local people in India. Hindi is very similar to Urdu, the mother tongue of Pakistan. A large number of Hindi dialects are spread throughout India, with 180 million speakers of the language. The Hindi language is also spread through Bollywood films, which use it as a lingua franca.

Bengali

Bengali, or Bangla, is the native language of Bangladesh, as well as West Bengal, southern Assam and Tripura in India. The national anthems of Bangladesh, India and Sri Lanka, as well as the national songs of India, were all written in Bengali. This language has a long history of development from Indo-Aryan dialects and Sanskrit. While Bangla still retains its originality, it has also absorbed some words from foreign languages. Some outstanding literary works are written in Bengali, including the works of Rabindranath Tagore. Approximately 210 million speak it, making Bengali one of the most popular languages ​​in the world.

Portuguese

This Romance language with Indo-European roots is spoken by more than 220 million people. Portuguese is the official language in Brazil, Mozambique and several other places. Portuguese is spoken in many countries around the world.

Russian language

Russian is in 7th place in the list of the most popular and widespread languages ​​in the world. This Slavic language of Indo-European origin is one of the six official languages ​​of the UN. Russian is spoken by more than 150 million people not only in the Russian Federation, but also in other countries of the former USSR, the Baltic countries and even in the United States. A huge number of outstanding works of literature and films were created in Russian.

Urdu

Considered one of the most euphonious languages ​​in the world, Urdu shares common roots with the Hindi language, which is spoken by more than 100 million people, mainly in Pakistan and 6 states of India. The language has close similarities to Hindi and is associated with Muslims. Urdu also belongs to the Indo-European and Indo-Aryan family of languages. Poetry and songs in this language are revered in all corners of the world.

Indonesian

This Austronesian language, spoken in Malaysia and Indonesia, belongs to the Malayo-Polynesian family. It is spoken by more than 160 million people and is the official language of Indonesia.

Japanese

The list of the most popular languages ​​in the world ends with Japanese. Approximately 125 million people speak this language. It is used mainly in Japan, as well as some other parts of the world where Japanese immigrants live.

Languages ​​are constantly evolving, absorbing new words, phrases and styles from other languages, especially English. But in essence, every language has its own history, representing it in its own unique way.

The term "Chinese" has many meanings. The Chinese language (or Chinese languages) refers to one of the two main branches of the Sino-Tibetan language family. The ambiguity of the term is due to the fact that in a large area occupied by the so-called. "Sinitic" languages, a large group of diverse dialects of the Chinese language is used. These dialects vary quite widely even within short distances of each other; nevertheless, their genetic connection is clearly traced. Therefore, in linguistic science, the question of whether these varieties of Chinese are languages ​​or dialects remains open.

Scope of use

Early informal oral form of communication ( guanhua) on a North Chinese basis supposedly began to take shape with the transfer of the Chinese capital in 1266 to the site of modern Beijing (then called Zhongdu, then Dadu) before the start of the Yuan Dynasty. Since the beginning of the 20th century, the official standard, which in 1909 received the name “ goyu" (from the Japanese term " kokugo(国語)" - "state language") and in the PRC later renamed Putonghua, began to include not only written, but also oral norms.

To determine the level of proficiency in Putonghua, since 1994, the PRC has introduced the Exam for the level of proficiency in Putonghua (Chinese: 普通话水平测试, pinyin: pǔtōnghuà shuǐpíng cèshì (PSC)), which quickly gained popularity as China increasingly urbanized. There are several levels of proficiency in Mandarin, assigned after passing the exam:

However, many Chinese are able to understand Mandarin to varying degrees, even without being able to speak it.

Genealogical and areal information

Chinese (Mandarin) belongs to the Sino-Tibetan language family; in a broad sense, Chinese is one of its two main branches, which is sometimes called “Sinitic”. It is mainly widespread in the Beijing region, the capital of the People's Republic of China, but is also used throughout China as the official language. In addition, it is one of the 4 official languages ​​of Singapore.

Sociolinguistic information

The Chinese language in a broad sense holds the record for the most number of speakers in the world: 1,074,000,000 speakers in the PRC, of ​​which 896,000,000 speak it as a native language (70% of them speak a standard dialect) and 178,000,000 as a second language language. The total number of carriers in the world is 1,107,162,230 people.

With a large number of dialects that are difficult to understand, Standard Chinese is a supra-dialectal variant of the language, the official language of the People's Republic of China and the language of interethnic communication among the peoples of China. It is used in all spheres of life in China and is one of the official languages ​​of the UN.

Based on the Chinese language, there is a Russian-Chinese pidgin - the so-called. "Kyakhta language", which borrows Russian vocabulary, but uses the rules of Chinese grammar.

Typological parameters

Type (degree of freedom) of expression of grammatical meanings

For minor members of a sentence, the Chinese language has a strict word order:

It is worth noting that word order is tied not so much to the grammatical or syntactic characteristics of the minor members, but to their semantics:

Language features

Graphic

Speakers of all dialects of the Chinese language use hieroglyphic (ideographic) logosyllabic writing (a method of graphically representing spoken speech, in which each character conveys one syllable), developed from pictographic characters. There is a romanization system for Putonghua - Pinyin, as well as a system for transcribing Chinese into Russian - the Palladium system.

Phonological

In Mandarin, depending on the nature of the change in the frequency of the main vocal tone over time, 4 tones are distinguished: 1st ( smooth), 2nd ( ascending), 3rd ( descending-ascending) and 4th ( descending) tones (in the practice of teaching Chinese in Russian schools they are sometimes characterized as sing-song, asking, satisfied And abusive intonation). Tone acts as one of the main distinctive sound means that allows one to distinguish lexical meanings. Examples: 失 shī(“to lose”) - 十 shí(“ten”) - 史 shǐ(“history”) - 事 shì("case"); 媽 mā("mother") - 麻 ma(“hemp”) - 马 mǎ(“horse”) - 骂 ma("scold") .

Statistical studies have shown that the functional “load” of tones in Mandarin is approximately as high as that of vowels.

Putonghua is characterized by combinatorial transformations of tones that occur during word formation when syllables are combined with a certain tone: tones can change or be neutralized. Such transformations can be either regular or irregular. So, the syllable 一 yī"one" in an isolated position is pronounced under the 1st tone, but in a phrase before syllables of the 1st, 2nd or 3rd tone it is pronounced under the 4th tone (for example, 一 yī + 年 nián goes into yìnián), and before the syllable of the 4th tone - under the 2nd (for example, 一 yī + 定 dìng goes into yídìng) .

Morphological

Syntactic

Counting words

A peculiarity of the structure of a noun phrase in Putonghua is the presence of counting words, which necessarily appear before a noun when it is combined with a numeral, demonstrative pronoun or quantifier (except for cases where the noun denotes a measure of something; such a noun may well act as a classifier itself). The choice of classifier is determined by the noun itself; there are several dozen classifiers in the language.

Types of classifiers:

• counting words (measures of length, weight, etc.; collective words ( aggregate) - stack, herd; “containers” - box, bottle);
• abstract (“several”);
• body parts (with a meaning like “___, full of something”), etc.

Classifier ge refers to noun phrases denoting people, but in modern Mandarin ge is moving toward universal classifier status, and many speakers use it for other non-human noun phrases.

Topic-commentary structure

One of the characteristic features of the syntax of the Chinese language is that, in addition to a number of traditional syntactic roles (subject, direct object, etc.), communicative units are distinguished in the structure of the sentence - topic and comment.

Phrase particles

In Chinese, as an analytical language, particles are widely used to express morphological (for example, verb aspect), syntactic (for example, belonging - see the section “Locus of marking in the possessive noun phrase”), discourse and other meanings.

Among the particles, the so-called “sentence-ending” ones are interesting.

Notes

1. The BBC Russian service will transfer broadcasting to the Internet
2. Zavyalova O. I. Chinese language // Great Russian Encyclopedia. T. 14. - M.: Publishing house "BRE", 2009.

It's a dark matter in the East or when the Chinese language was created. Part 2 (Mandarin language)

It is officially believed that China is home to 56 nationalities, each of which has its own language and culture. The overwhelming majority of the population, approximately 91 percent, belongs to the Han nation - the Chinese proper. The Han language is highly diverse. It consists of many hundreds of mutually incomprehensible dialects.

Han Chinese dialects differ from each other much more than, say, individual Romance languages. In general, the study of Chinese (Han) dialects began only in the 30s of the 20th century. And by the beginning of the 60s, they were somehow systematized and classified with grief.

According to modern ideas, Han (Chinese proper) is divided into ten dialect groups: North Chinese dialects (in Western terminology “Mandarin dialects”), dialects: Wu, Gan, Xiang, Ming, Hakka, Yue, Jin, Huizhou, Pinghua.

The Ming dialect group is considered the most diverse. Unlike other dialect groups, which consist of many mutually incomprehensible dialects functioning in each region, within a given group, many hundreds of mutually incomprehensible dialects function in each village.

However, the work is far from complete. Some so-called “areas of great linguistic diversity” have not yet been studied, and the dialects existing there have not been described. Well, some dialects, such as Danzhou and Shaoju Tuhua, defy classification.

In general, China is a country of enormous linguistic diversity. As mentioned in the first part, until 1909, the Manchu language was formally the official language of the Qin Empire. At first, after the conquest of China by the Manchus, all official documents of the empire were written in this language. However, gradually its use decreased and already in the 18th-19th centuries, few people understood the Manchu language even among the courtiers.

So, with the help of what language was the control of a huge empire carried out? Using the so-called “Mandarin” language. The name comes from the Portuguese word "mandarin", referring to officials of the Chinese empire. The Chinese themselves used the term “guhua”, literally “the language of officials,” to refer to this language.

(Mandarin Official)

The “official language” did not have any official status in the Chinese Empire. However, his knowledge was necessary for the advancement of officials along the career ladder. The language did not have firm rules. According to legend, in 1728, Emperor Yongzhen, due to his specific pronunciation, did not understand anything from the reports of officials from the provinces of Guangdong and Fujian, and issued a decree on the creation of “correct pronunciation academies.” However, these academies did not last long.

Traditionally, "Mandarin" was based on the dialect of the city of Nanjing. However, in the 19th century, elements from the capital's Beijing dialect penetrated into it, gradually moving to the forefront. However, according to some data, at the beginning of the 20th century, the status of “Nanjing Mandarin” was higher than that of “Beijing Mandarin”. Office work was carried out using the “Mandarin language”; officials from different provinces of the country communicated in it. It was impossible for ordinary people, even from neighboring Chinese provinces, to communicate with each other.

In 1909, the waning Qing dynasty declared Guoyu, literally the national language, a language yet to be created, as the official language. The creation of a “national language” will be discussed in the next part.

(to be continued)

Northern Chinese (northern dialects of Chinese, also Beifanghua (北方話, 北方话, Běifānghuà , literally "northern dialects"), or guanhua (官話, 官话, Guānhuà , literally "formal speech") is the largest Chinese language or the main dialect group of the Chinese language (depending on the definition of the status of Chinese idioms), uniting closely related Chinese dialects distributed in most of northern and southwestern China. Based on the Beijing dialect, this group was created in the 50-60s. XX century Putonghua dialect, which became the official spoken language of the country.

In Western literature, Northern Chinese is usually called Mandarin, or Mandarin Chinese (Mandarin Chinese). The name originated as a tracing paper from Chinese guanhua(literally - official speech), from the Western name for senior Chinese officials ( guan) - tangerines.

The main dialect groups of Northern Chinese are:

东北 - northeast

北京 - Beijing

冀鲁 - Hebei-Shandong (Ji-Lu)

胶辽 - Shandong and Liaodong Peninsulas (Jiao-Liao)

中原 - Zhongyuan Plains

兰银 - Lanzhou-Yinchuan (Lan-Yin) district

江准 - between the Yangtze and Huaihe (Jiang-Huai) rivers

Putonghua

Putonghua (Chinese: 普通話, Chinese: 普通话, pinyin) Pǔtōnghuà listen)) is the official language of the People's Republic of China, Taiwan and Singapore.

The phonetics and vocabulary of Putonghua are based on the pronunciation norm of the Beijing dialect, which belongs to the northern group of dialects of the Chinese language. The grammar of Putonghua corresponds to the norms enshrined in literary works of modern Chinese (Baihua), which are also closest to the northern dialects. In the popular literature of Western countries, Putonghua is usually called Mandarin(“Mandarin”), however, in the Western scientific community, this term is usually used to designate the entire northern dialect group.

In Taiwan, the official language is called Guoyu (Chinese: 國語, exemplar: 国语, literally "official language"; the same name is used for Putonghua colloquially in Hong Kong and Macau), in Singapore and Malaysia - Huayu (Chinese trad. 華語, ex. 华语, literally "Chinese language, language of the Chinese"). There are very minor phonetic and lexical differences between these variants, they are all almost completely mutually intelligible, and their names are often used interchangeably.

For greater accuracy in the West they use Standard Mandarin, which meets all the above norms - Putonghua, Guoyu and Huayu. The name “Mandarin” (in the meaning of all these varieties of literary Chinese) can often be found in Russian texts recently, although this term is considered as an unjustified anglicism or jargon.

Yue (Cantonese)

Yue is one of the languages ​​of the Chinese language group, or one of the main dialect groups of the Chinese language, depending on the point of view. Yue, like Iputonghua, is an isolating, tonal language.

Name

The name "Cantonese" comes from the word "Canton" - a French transcription used during the colonial era by the British to refer to Guangzhou, the capital of Guangdong province. In the narrow sense, "Cantonese" refers only to the dialect of Guangzhou and the surrounding area, including Hong Kong's Chinese, which may also be called Yuehai and Guangzhouese. The term "Yue" is a transcription of the literary Chinese (Putonghua) name for the entire linguistic area - Yue Yǔ / Yue-yu.

The Yue speakers themselves in China simply call their language Baak Waa/pakva(白話, ex.白话, Baihuà) “simple language” or 粵語, ex.粤语, Yue yutphin Jyut 6 jyu 5 , YouTube, lit. "Yue language". It should be noted that Baak Waa/pakva(白話) "plain language", or, with Beijing pronunciation, "baihua", is used to describe all modern spoken forms of Chinese, and is contrasted with classical Chinese.

Residents of Hong Kong, Macau and many immigrants in other countries usually call their language 廣東話, 广东话, YueGwong²dung¹waa 6 , kuontunwa, lit. "Guangdong language".