Chinese language(中国语言)

Chinese or the Sinitic language(s) (simplified Chinese: 汉语; traditional Chinese: 漢語; pinyin: Hànyǔ; simplified Chinese: 华语; traditional Chinese: 華語; pinyin: Huáyǔ; simplified Chinese: 中国话; traditional Chinese: 中國話; pinyin: Zhōngguóhuà; or Chinese: 中文; pinyin: Zhōngwén) is a language family consisting of languages mutually unintelligible to varying degrees.[3] Originally the indigenous languages spoken by the Han Chinese in China, it forms one of the two branches of Sino-Tibetan family of languages. About one-fifth of the world’s population, or over one billion people, speak some form of Chinese as their native language. The identification of the varieties of Chinese as "dialects" instead of "languages" is considered inappropriate by some linguists and Sinologists.[4]

Spoken Chinese is distinguished by its high level of internal diversity, although all spoken varieties of Chinese are tonal and analytic. There are between seven and thirteen main regional groups of Chinese (depending on classification scheme), of which the most spoken, by far, is Mandarin (about 850 million), followed by Wu (90 million), Cantonese (Yue) (70 million) and Min (70 million). Most of these groups are mutually unintelligible, although some, like Xiang and the Southwest Mandarin dialects, may share common terms and some degree of intelligibility. Chinese is classified as a macrolanguage with 13 sub-languages in ISO 639-3, though the identification of the varieties of Chinese as multiple "languages" or as "dialects" of a single language is a contentious issue.

The standardized form of spoken Chinese is Standard Mandarin (Putonghua / Guoyu / Huayu), based on the Beijing dialect, which is part of a larger group of North-Eastern and South-Western dialects, often taken as a separate language (see Mandarin Chinese for more), this language can be referred to as 官话 Guānhuà or 北方话 Běifānghuà in Chinese. Standard Mandarin is the official language of the People's Republic of China (PRC) and the Republic of China (ROC), as well as one of four official languages of Singapore. Chinese—de facto, Standard Mandarin—is one of the six official languages of the United Nations. Of the other varieties, Standard Cantonese is common and influential in Guangdong Province and Cantonese-speaking overseas communities, and remains one of the official languages of Hong Kong (together with English) and of Macau (together with Portuguese). Hokkien, part of the Min language group, is widely spoken in southern Fujian, in neighbouring Taiwan (where it is known as Taiwanese or Hoklo) and in Southeast Asia (where it dominates in Singapore and Malaysia).

China is a nation boasting diversified nationalities, languages, and characters. It has 56 ethnic groups, over 80 languages, and about 30 kinds of character. Chinese is the most widely used language in China and the world at large. It is designated as one of the six official languages by the United Nations. Chinese is the shared language of Han Nationality. Besides Han ethnic group which accounts 91.59% of China’s integral population, some ethnic minorities also speak Chinese or take Chinese as their second mother tongue.

Modern Chinese can be divided into standard Chinese (mandarin) and dialect. Mandarin takes Peking Dialect as its standard pronunciation, dialect of people in North China as its basis, and classic modern colloquial works as its linguistic regulations. On October 31st, 2000, Law of Universal Language and Character of People's Republic of China came into force and it stipulates mandarin as a universal national language. Han Dialect comprises of seven branches, namely, North China Dialect, Wu Dialect, Hunan Dialect, Jiangxi Dialect, Hakka Dialect, Guangdong Dialect, and Fujian Dialect. Each branch has its own sub-branches and jargons. For instance, the most popular North China Dialect can be further classified into North Mandarin, Northwest Mandarin, Southwest Mandarin, and Xiajiang Mandarin.

The 55 ethnic minorities account 8.41% of Chinese population. Among them, 53 have their own languages. But Hui and Manchu people have accepted mandarin as their first mother tongue for daily use. Some ethnic minorities take mandarin or the languages of other nationalities as their second mother tongue. Even different branches inside certain ethnic group are still using languages of their own.

Mandarin is not only the standard and shared language of Han Nationality, but the common language of the whole Chinese nation.

There are also some smaller groups that are not yet classified, such as: Danzhou dialect (儋州话), spoken in Danzhou, on Hainan Island; Xianghua (乡话), not to be confused with Xiang (湘), spoken in western Hunan; and Shaozhou Tuhua (韶州土话), spoken in northern Guangdong. The Dungan language, spoken in Central Asia, is very closely related to Mandarin. However, it is not generally considered "Chinese" since it is written in Cyrillic and spoken by Dungan people outside China who are not considered ethnic Chinese. See List of Chinese dialects for a comprehensive listing of individual dialects within these large, broad groupings.

In general, the above language-dialect groups do not have sharp boundaries, though Mandarin is the predominant Sinitic language in the North and the Southwest, and the rest are mostly spoken in Central or Southeastern China. Frequently, as in the case of the Guangdong province, native speakers of major variants overlapped. As with many areas that were linguistically diverse for a long time, it is not always clear how the speeches of various parts of China should be classified. The Ethnologue lists a total of 14, but the number varies between seven and seventeen depending on the classification scheme followed. For instance, the Min variety is often divided into Northern Min (Minbei, Fuchow) and Southern Min (Minnan, Amoy-Swatow); linguists have not determined whether their mutual intelligibility is small enough to sort them as separate languages.

In general, mountainous South China displays more linguistic diversity than the flat North China. In parts of South China, a major city's dialect may only be marginally intelligible to close neighbours. For instance, Wuzhou is about 120 miles upstream from Guangzhou, but its dialect is more like Standard Cantonese spoken in Guangzhou, than is that of Taishan, 60 miles southwest of Guangzhou and separated by several rivers from it (Ramsey, 1987).

Putonghua / Guoyu, often called "Mandarin", is the official standard language used by the People's Republic of China, the Republic of China, and Singapore (where it is called "Huayu"). It is based on the Beijing dialect, which is the dialect of Mandarin as spoken in Beijing. The governments intend for speakers of all Chinese speech varieties to use it as a common language of communication. Therefore it is used in government agencies, in the media, and as a language of instruction in schools.

In mainland China and Taiwan, diglossia has been a common feature: it is common for a Chinese to be able to speak two or even three varieties of the Sinitic languages (or “dialects”) together with Standard Mandarin. For example, in addition to putonghua a resident of Shanghai might speak Shanghainese and, if they did not grow up there, his or her local dialect as well. A native of Guangzhou may speak Standard Cantonese and putonghua, a resident of Taiwan, both Taiwanese and putonghua/guoyu. A person living in Taiwan may commonly mix pronunciations, phrases, and words from Standard Mandarin and Taiwanese, and this mixture is considered normal under many circumstances. In Hong Kong, Standard Mandarin is beginning to take its place beside English and Standard Cantonese, the official languages.

Linguists often view Chinese as a language family, though owing to China's socio-political and cultural situation, and the fact that all spoken varieties use one common written system, it is customary to refer to these generally mutually unintelligible variants as "the Chinese language". The diversity of Sinitic variants is comparable to the Romance languages.

From a purely descriptive point of view, "languages" and "dialects" are simply arbitrary groups of similar idiolects, and the distinction is irrelevant to linguists who are only concerned with describing regional speeches technically. However, the idea of a single language has major overtones in politics and cultural self-identity, and explains the amount of emotion over this issue. Most Chinese[citation needed] and Chinese linguists[citation needed] refer to Chinese as a single language and its subdivisions dialects, while others[weasel words] call Chinese a language family.[citation needed]

Chinese itself has a term for its unified writing system, Zhongwen (中文), while the closest equivalent used to describe its spoken variants would be Hanyu (汉语,“spoken language[s] of the Han Chinese)—this term could be translated to either “language” or “languages” since Chinese possesses no grammatical numbers. In the Chinese language, there is much less need for a uniform speech-and-writing continuum, as indicated by two separate character morphemes 语 yu and 文 wen. Ethnic Chinese often consider these spoken variations as one single language for reasons of nationality and as they inherit one common cultural and linguistic heritage in Classical Chinese. Han native speakers of Wu, Min, Hakka, and Cantonese, for instance, may consider their own linguistic varieties as separate spoken languages, but the Han Chinese race as one—albeit internally very diverse—ethnicity. To Chinese nationalists, the idea of Chinese as a language family may suggest that the Chinese identity is much more fragmentary and disunified than it actually is and as such is often looked upon as culturally and politically provocative. Additionally, in Taiwan, it is closely associated with Taiwanese independence, where some supporters of Taiwanese independence promote the local Taiwanese Minnan-based spoken language.

Within the People’s Republic of China and Singapore, it is common for the government to refer to all divisions of the Sinitic language(s) beside Standard Mandarin as fangyan (“regional tongues”, often translated as “dialects”). Modern-day Chinese speakers of all kinds communicate using one formal standard written language, although this modern written standard is modeled after Mandarin, generally the modern Beijing dialect.

中国或Sinitic language(s)（simplified Chinese: 汉语; traditional Chinese: 漢語; pinyin: Hànyǔ; simplified Chinese: 华语; traditional Chinese: 華語; pinyin: Huáyǔ; simplified Chinese: 中国话; traditional Chinese: 中國話; pinyin: Zhōngguóhuà; or Chinese: 中文; pinyin: Zhōngwén）是一门语言的家庭组成的语言互不相通的程度不同。最初由在中国汉民族使用的土著语言，它和藏系语言是构成了中国语言的两个分支之一。约占世界人口的五分之一，甚至超过10亿人，讲某种形式的中文作为他们的母语。对中国的“方言的品种鉴定”而不是“语言”是一些人认为是不恰当的语言学家与汉学家。

口语中有其内部的多样性高的水平，尽管中国的所有发言品种色调和分析。有7至13的中国（对不同分级的主要区域集团），其中最讲，到目前为止，是普通话（约8.5亿美元），吴（90万），广东话（粤）（7千万）和闽（3500万）。这些团体大多是互不相通的，虽然有些像香和西南汉语方言，可以分享共同的术语和一些可理解的程度。中国被列为13分在ISO 639-3的语言macrolanguage，虽然我国作为多个“语文的品种鉴定”或“方言是一种语言”是一个有争议的问题。

中文口语的标准格式是标准国语（普通话/国语/华语）的基础上，北京方言，这是一部分北大组，东部和西南方言，往往作为一个单独的语言在内（见国语为更多），这种语言可以被称为官话或北方话Běifānghuà在中国。标准的普通话，是人民共和国的中国（中华人民共和国）的官方语言，中国共和国（中华民国），以及新加坡的四个官方语言之一，事实上，标准的普通话，是六种联合国正式语文之一。其他品种，标准的粤语共同在广东省和有影响的粤语讲海外社区，仍然是香港（连同英文）和澳门（连同葡萄牙语）官方语言之一。福建，在闽的语言集团的一部分，是广泛使用的闽南邻近的台湾，（如果它被称为台湾或福佬）和东南亚（如它在新加坡和马来西亚占主导地位）。

中国是一个多元化的特色民族，语言和文字。它有56个民族，80种语言，约30种性格。中国是在中国使用最广泛的语言和整个世界。被指定的六个联合国正式语文之一。中国是汉民族的共同语言。除汉族占91.59％，对中国的整体人口中，大约还讲中文或少数民族当作自己的第二母语的汉语。

现代汉语可分为标准汉语（普通话）和方言。普通话注意到北京作为其标准的发音，在北美中国人民方言为基础方言，和经典的现代规章作为其语言通俗作品。在2000年10月31日，通用语言和人民对中国共和国性质的法律开始生效，它规定为一项普遍的民族语言普通话。韩方言成员包括7处，即北中国方言，吴方言，湖南方言，赣方言，客家方言，广东方言，福建方言。每个分支都有自己的分支行和术语。例如，最流行的North中国方言，可进一步分为北普通话，普通话西北，西南国语，峡江县普通话。

55个少数民族占我国人口的8.41％。其中，53个有自己的语言。但是，回族，满族人接受了他们的日常使用的第一母语普通话。一些少数民族采取柑橘或作为第二母语其他民族的语言。某一种族群体内部各部门，即使仍然使用自己的语言。

普通话不仅是汉民族的标准和共同的语言，而是整个中华民族的共同语言。

还有一些较小的群体尚未归类，如：儋州方言（儋州话），在儋州在海南岛发言;向华（乡话），不要与项（湘）西部发言，混淆湖南和粤北土话（韶州土话），广东北部的发言。在东干语，在中亚发言，是很密切的关系普通话。然而，这不是一般被认为“中国”，因为它是用西里尔和中国以外谁不认为华人东干人发言。见个别方言全面上市在这些大集团的广泛汉语方言名单。

总的来说，上述语言，方言群体没有锋利的界限，虽然普通话是主要在北部和西南Sinitic语言，主要是在中环或东南中国讲的休息。通常，如广东省的情况下，主要变种母语重叠。与那些语言很长一段时间不同的许多领域，它并不总是很清楚如何在中国各地的发言，应归类。在民族学列出了14名，但这个数字与7个和17个不同的分类计划后，各不相同。例如，闵品种往往分为闽北（闽北，福州），闽南（闽南，厦门，汕头），语言学家还没有决定是否相互可理解足够小，作为单独的分类，他们的语言。

一般来说，山区South中国多语言显示比平面North中国的多样性。在南中国的一个主要城市的方言部分可能是边缘理解的近邻。例如，梧州是上游约120英里，从广州，但它的方言更象在广州发言的标准广东话，比的是，泰山，西南60英里广州和分离，由它（拉姆齐，1987年）若干河流。

普通话/玉，通常被称为“国语”，是官方标准语言的人民共和国的中国使用了中国共和国和新加坡（如果是所谓的“华宇”）。它是基于北京方言，这是汉语方言在北京发言。政府打算对所有中文语音品种发言者作为沟通的共同语言。因此，用于政府机构，媒体，并作为学校的教学语言。

中国大陆和台湾，双语制是一个共同的特点：它是一个中华儿女的共同能够讲两个甚至三个（或“方言”）与标准普通话的语言一起Sinitic品种。例如，除了上海普通话的上海居民也可以讲，如果他们不长大那里，他或她以及当地的方言。以广州市原可就标准广东话和普通话的台湾居民，台湾及普通话/玉。阿在台湾居住的人可以共同组合发音，短语，从标准普通话，闽南语，这被认为是混合在很多情况下正常。在香港，标准普通话正开始其旁边英语和标准的粤语，官方语言的地方。

语言学家常常将中国作为一个语系，但由于中国的社会，政治和文化状况，而事实上，所有发言的品种使用一个共同的书面制度，习惯上称之为“汉语的这些普遍互不相通的变种” 。变种的Sinitic多样性媲美的罗曼语。

从纯粹的描述来看，“语言”和“方言”是类似idiolects简单任意团体和区分是谁无关，只与技术上的发言描述区域有关语言学家。然而，一种语言的想法，具有重大的政治色彩和文化自我认同，并解释了在此问题上的情感金额。大多数中国[编辑]和中国语言学家[编辑]是指作为一个单一的语言和它的分支机构方言中，而其他[含糊的字眼]呼吁中国家庭的语言。[编辑]

中国本身有其统一的文字系统来说，波兰语（中文），而最接近的等效用来形容它的变种会讲汉语（汉语，“口语[虏]汉族），这个词可以转换为或者“语言”或自中国“语言”不拥有语法号码。在中文，但更需要一个统一的演讲和写作连续，由两个独立的性格词素语宇与文文表示。华人往往视为一个单一的民族语言的原因，这些变化和发言，因为他们继承一个共同的文化和语言文言遗产。韩母语吴，闽，客语，广东话，例如，可以考虑自己作为单独的口语语言的品种，但汉人的比赛之一，尽管国内非常不同的族裔。为了中国的民族主义者，对中文语言的家庭的想法可能会表明，中国的身份更加零碎，不统一比实际的，因此通常视为文化和政治上的挑衅行动。此外，在台湾，这是密切相关的台湾独立，台湾独立，在一些支持者促进本地台湾闽南的语言。

在人民中国和新加坡共和国，这是常见的政府提到的Sinitic语言（标准普通话旁）为方岩各司（“地区方言”，常被称为“方言”）翻译。各种认识现代中国的发言者之间使用标准的一个正式的书面语言，但这种现代的书面标准普通话模仿，通常是现代北京话。
 
Written Chinese

The relationship among the Chinese spoken and written languages is rather complex. Its spoken variations evolved at different rates, while written Chinese itself has changed much less. Classical Chinese literature began in the Spring and Autumn period, although written records have been discovered as far back as the 14th to 11th centuries BCE Shang dynasty oracle bones using the oracle bone scripts.

The Chinese orthography centers around Chinese characters, hanzi, which are written within imaginary rectangular blocks, traditionally arranged in vertical columns, read from top to bottom down a column, and right to left across columns. Chinese characters are morphemes independent of phonetic change. Thus the number "one", yi in Mandarin, yat in Cantonese and chi̍t and "yit = first" in Hokkien (form of Min), all share an identical character ("一"). Vocabularies from different major Chinese variants have diverged, and colloquial non-standard written Chinese often makes use of unique "dialectal characters", such as 冇 and 係 for Cantonese and Hakka, which are considered archaic or unused in standard written Chinese.

Written colloquial Cantonese has become quite popular in online chat rooms and instant messaging amongst Hong-Kongers and Cantonese-speakers elsewhere. Use of it is considered highly informal, and does not extend to many formal occasions.

Also, in Hunan, some women write their local language in Nü Shu, a syllabary derived from Chinese characters. The Dungan language, considered by some a dialect of Mandarin, is also nowadays written in Cyrillic, and was formerly written in the Arabic alphabet, although the Dungan people live outside China.

Chinese characters evolved over time from earlier forms of hieroglyphs. The idea that all Chinese characters are either pictographs or ideographs is an erroneous one: most characters contain phonetic parts, and are composites of phonetic components and semantic radicals. Only the simplest characters, such as ren 人 (human), ri 日 (sun), shan 山 (mountain), shui 水 (water), may be wholly pictorial in origin. In 100 CE, the famed scholar Xǚ Shèn in the Hàn Dynasty classified characters into six categories, namely pictographs, simple ideographs, compound ideographs, phonetic loans, phonetic compounds and derivative characters. Of these, only 4% were categorized as pictographs, and 80–90% as phonetic complexes consisting of a semantic element that indicates meaning, and a phonetic element that indicates the pronunciation. Generally, the phonetic element is more accurate and more important than the semantic one.[citation needed] There are about 214 radicals recognized in the Kangxi Dictionary.

Modern characters are styled after the standard script (楷书/楷書 kǎishū) (see styles, below). Various other written styles are also used in East Asian calligraphy, including seal script (篆书/篆書 zhuànshū), cursive script (草书/草書 cǎoshū) and clerical script (隶书/隸書 lìshū). Calligraphy artists can write in traditional and simplified characters, but tend to use traditional characters for traditional art.
There are currently two systems for Chinese characters. The traditional system, still used in Hong Kong, Taiwan, Macau and Chinese speaking communities (except Singapore and Malaysia) outside mainland China, takes its form from standardized character forms dating back to the late Han dynasty. The Simplified Chinese character system, developed by the People's Republic of China in 1954 to promote mass literacy, simplifies most complex traditional glyphs to fewer strokes, many to common caoshu shorthand variants.

Singapore, which has a large Chinese community, is the first—and at present the only—foreign nation to officially adopt simplified characters, although it has also become the de facto standard for younger ethnic Chinese in Malaysia. The Internet provides the platform to practice reading the alternative system, be it traditional or simplified.

A well-educated Chinese today recognizes approximately 6,000-7,000 characters; some 3,000 characters are required to read a Mainland newspaper. The PRC government defines literacy amongst workers as a knowledge of 2,000 characters, though this would be only functional literacy. A large unabridged dictionary, like the Kangxi Dictionary, contains over 40,000 characters, including obscure, variant, rare, and archaic characters; less than a quarter of these characters are now commonly used.

History of the Chinese language
Most linguists classify all varieties of modern spoken Chinese as part of the Sino-Tibetan language family and believe that there was an original language, termed Proto-Sino-Tibetan, from which the Sinitic and Tibeto-Burman languages descended. The relation between Chinese and other Sino-Tibetan languages is an area of active research, as is the attempt to reconstruct Proto-Sino-Tibetan. The main difficulty in this effort is that, while there is enough documentation to allow one to reconstruct the ancient Chinese sounds, there is no written documentation that records the division between proto-Sino-Tibetan and ancient Chinese. In addition, many of the older languages that would allow us to reconstruct Proto-Sino-Tibetan are very poorly understood and many of the techniques developed for analysis of the descent of the Indo-European languages from PIE don't apply to Chinese because of "morphological paucity" especially after Old Chinese.[5]

Categorization of the development of Chinese is a subject of scholarly debate. One of the first systems was devised by the Swedish linguist Bernhard Karlgren in the early 1900s; most present systems rely heavily on Karlgren's insights and methods.

Old Chinese (simplified Chinese: 上古汉语; traditional Chinese: 上古漢語; pinyin: Shànggǔ Hànyǔ), sometimes known as "Archaic Chinese", was the language common during the early and middle Zhou Dynasty (1122 BCE–256 BCE), texts of which include inscriptions on bronze artifacts, the poetry of the Shījīng, the history of the Shūjīng, and portions of the Yìjīng (I Ching). The phonetic elements found in the majority of Chinese characters provide hints to their Old Chinese pronunciations. The pronunciation of the borrowed Chinese characters in Japanese, Vietnamese and Korean also provide valuable insights. Old Chinese was not wholly uninflected. It possessed a rich sound system in which aspiration or rough breathing differentiated the consonants, but probably was still without tones. Work on reconstructing Old Chinese started with Qīng dynasty philologists. Some early Indo-European loan-words in Chinese have been proposed, notably 蜜 mì "honey", 獅 shī "lion," and perhaps also 馬 mǎ "horse", 犬 quǎn "dog", and 鵝 é "goose". The source says the reconstructions of old Chinese are tentative, and not definitive so no conclusions should be drawn. The reconstruction of Old Chinese can not be perfect so this hypothesis may be called into question.[6] The source also notes that southern dialects of Chinese have more monosyllabic words than the Mandarin Chinese dialects.

Middle Chinese (simplified Chinese: 中古汉语; traditional Chinese: 中古漢語; pinyin: Zhōnggǔ Hànyǔ) was the language used during Southern and Northern Dynasties and the Suí, Táng, and Sòng dynasties (6th through 10th centuries CE). It can be divided into an early period, reflected by the 切韻 "Qièyùn" rime book (601 CE), and a late period in the 10th century, reflected by the 廣韻 "Guǎngyùn" rime book. Linguists are more confident of having reconstructed how Middle Chinese sounded. The evidence for the pronunciation of Middle Chinese comes from several sources: modern dialect variations, rhyming dictionaries, foreign transliterations, "rhyming tables" constructed by ancient Chinese philologists to summarize the phonetic system, and Chinese phonetic translations of foreign words. However, all reconstructions are tentative; some scholars have argued that trying to reconstruct, say, modern Cantonese from modern Cantopop rhymes would give a fairly inaccurate picture of the present-day spoken language.

The development of the spoken Chinese languages from early historical times to the present has been complex. Most Chinese people, in Sìchuān and in a broad arc from the northeast (Manchuria) to the southwest (Yunnan), use various Mandarin dialects as their home language. The prevalence of Mandarin throughout northern China is largely due to north China's plains. By contrast, the mountains and rivers of middle and southern China promoted linguistic diversity.

Until the mid-20th century, most southern Chinese only spoke their native local variety of Chinese. As Nanjing was the capital during the early Ming Dynasty, Nanjing Mandarin became dominant at least until the later years of the Qing Dynasty. Since the 17th century, the Qing Dynasty had set up orthoepy academies (simplified Chinese: 正音书院; traditional Chinese: 正音書院; pinyin: Zhèngyīn Shūyuàn) to make pronunciation conform to the standard of the capital Beijing. For the general population, however, this had limited effect. The non-Mandarin speakers in southern China also continued to use their various languages for every aspect of life. The Beijing Mandarin court standard was used solely by officials and civil servants and was thus fairly limited.

This situation did not change until the mid-20th century with the creation (in both the PRC and the ROC, but not in Hong Kong) of a compulsory educational system committed to teaching Standard Mandarin. As a result, Mandarin is now spoken by virtually all young and middle-aged citizens of mainland China and on Taiwan. Standard Cantonese, not Mandarin, was used in Hong Kong during the time of its British colonial period (owing to its large Cantonese native and migrant populace) and remains today its official language of education, formal speech, and daily life, but Mandarin is becoming increasingly influential after the 1997 handover.

Classical Chinese was once the lingua franca in neighbouring East Asian countries such as Japan, Korea and Vietnam for centuries, before the rise of European influences in 19th century.
中文的书写

在相互关系中语言文字是相当复杂。其发言的变化在不同的发展水平，而中文写作本身发生了变化少得多。古典文学开始于春秋时期，虽然已发现的书面记录，早在公元前14至商代甲骨文甲骨文使用脚本11世纪。

围绕汉字，汉字，这是虚构的矩形块内，传统的垂直排列在顶端的列读出自下而上一列，从右到左跨列，书写中文拼写中心。汉字是语素的语音变化无关。因此，数字“1”，普通话，广东话及筹“YIT公司=首次在福建”（闵形式逸毅），都有相同的字符（“一”）。从不同的主要中文变种词汇分道扬镳，和口语非中文写作水准，往往使独特的“方言用字”，如系冇和广东话和客家话，那些被认为在标准书写中文陈旧或闲置。

书面粤方言已颇为普遍，在网上聊天室和即时信息之间红不可少，广东话为母语的地方。使用它被认为非常正规，不扩大到许多正式场合。

此外，在湖南，一些妇女在写"女书"的，由汉字派生的音节当地语言。在东干语，被一些普通话方言认为，现在还写在Cyrillic和以前的阿拉伯字母写的，虽然中国以外的东干人居住。

在从早期的象形文字汉字演变的时间。所有的思想，不是汉字象形或汉字是一个错误之一：最字符包含语音部分，并且是语音和语义成分自由基复合材料。只有最简单的字符，如仁人（人类），里日（周日），（山）山山，水水（水），可以完全起源于图画。在100个行政长官，著名学者Xǚ沉分为六个类别，即象形，简单的汉字，复合汉字，拼音贷款，语音及衍生化合物中的字符汉代分类字符。其中，只有4％被归类为象形文字，和80-90作为一个语义元素组成的语音指示意义复合％，而语音元素，指示发音。一般来说，语音元素更加准确，比语义一个重要的。[编辑]有在康熙字典承认大约214激进分子。

现代汉字是经过标准的脚本（楷书/楷书kǎishū）样式（样式见下文）。各种其他书面方式也用在东亚书法，包括小篆（篆书/篆书篆书），草书（草书/草书cǎoshū）和隶书（隶书/隶书梨树）。书法艺术家可以写在传统和简体字，而倾向于使用传统艺术的传统角色。
目前有两个汉字系统。传统的制度，还是在香港，台湾，澳门和说话社区（除新加坡和马来西亚）中国大陆以外，华人使用的需要，从规范的性质可以追溯到西汉后期形式的形式。简体中文字符系统，由人民共和国发展的中国在1954年，以促进群众扫盲，简化最复杂的传统字形笔画较少，许多人共同的caoshu速记变种。

新加坡，它有一个大华人社区，是第一个和目前唯一中外国家正式采用简体字，但也成为事实上的马来西亚华裔年轻一代的标准。互联网提供了平台，练习阅读的替代制度，无论是传统或简化。

受过良好教育的中国今天承认约6000-7000字;约3000字需要内地读报纸。中华人民共和国政府之间的定义作为一个知识工作者2000字识字，尽管这只是功能性扫盲。大型足本词典，康熙字典一样，包含了超过40,000个字符，包括模糊，变型，稀有和古老的文字，比这些字符的不到四分之一，现在普遍使用。

中文的历史
大多数语言学家把所有的现代汉语口语作为中部分品种藏语系，并认为有一种原始的语言，被称为原始汉藏，从中Sinitic和藏缅语族的后裔。中美两国关系和其他中，藏语文是一个活跃的研究领域，是试图重建原始汉藏。在这种努力的主要困难是，虽然有足够的文件，以允许一个重建古人的声音，没有任何书面文件，它记录了原部门之间，汉藏语系和古中国。此外，许多旧的语言，使我们能够重建原始汉藏了解甚少，并为对印度血统分析，研制的技术，从PIE公司欧洲语言很多并不适用于中国，因为“形态太少”，尤其是在旧中国[5]。

对中国发展的分类是学术辩论的主题。第一个系统，设计了一个由瑞典语言学家在20世纪初高本汉，大部分与会的系统依赖于高本汉的见解和方法严重。

古汉语（简体中文：上古汉语，传统的中国：上古汉语，拼音：Shànggǔ Hànyǔ），有时被称为“古汉语知道”，是在早期和中期周朝（公元前1122 -公元前256），共同的语言文字其中包括青铜器铭文的诗经，该婧的历史，以及易经（易经）部分诗歌。在大多数发现汉字拼音元素提供线索，以古汉语发音的。在借用的汉字读音日本，越南和韩国也提供了宝贵的见解。旧中国没有完全未发生屈折变化。它拥有丰富的音响系统中，愿望或粗糙呼吸不同的辅音，但可能仍然没有铃声。在改造旧中国的工作始于清朝的语言学家。一些早期的印欧语贷款字中已提出，特别是蜜秘“蜜”，狮石“狮子”的，也许还马mǎ“马”，犬quǎn“狗”，和鹅é“鹅”。消息人士说，旧中国的重建是临时性的，不能因此没有明确的结论，应当制定。旧中国的重建不能完美的，所以这个假设可能会受到质疑。[6]来源还指出，中国南部方言有比普通话方言更单音字。

中古汉语（简体中文：中古汉语;传统中：中古汉语，拼音：Zhōnggǔ Hànyǔ）期间南北朝和隋，唐所使用的语言，宋（第6次通过CE 10世纪）。它可分为初期，由切韵“切韵”雾淞书（601长官）反映，并在10世纪后期，由广韵“Guǎngyùn”雾淞书反映。语言学家更加有信心重建如何中古汉语响起。为中古汉语发音的证据来自几个来源：现代方言的变化，押韵字典，外国译音，“韵表”的古代语言学家建造总结语音系统，和外来语中语音翻译。但是，所有重建是暂定的，有些学者认为，试图重建，说，从现代现代粤语流行曲粤语谐音会给出了现在的口语天相当不准确的印象。

在口语中的语言从早期的历史时代发展到现在已经复杂。一般人，在四川，从东北（满洲）广泛弧，西南（云南），为自己的家不同的语言使用普通话的方言。在中国北部全境国语流行的主要原因是中国北方的平原。相比之下，山区和河流中，南中国推广语言多样性。

直到20世纪中叶，中国南方大部分只说他们的母语的中国地方品种。由于南京是在明朝初年的首都，南京普通话成为主流，至少直到清朝晚年。自17世纪，清朝设立了正音院校（简体中文：正音书院，传统中文：正音书院，拼音：郑引书院），使发音符合首都北京的标准。对于普通人群，但是，这种影响有限。非南中国普通话发言者还继续使用生活的各个方面的各种语言。北京普通话法院采用的标准完全由官员和公务员，因此相当有限。

这种情况并没有改变中期之前，与创造（无论是中华人民共和国和中华民国20世纪，但不是在香港）的义务教育致力于标准汉语教学系统。因此，现在讲普通话几乎所有中青年中国大陆和台湾的公民。标准的粤语，不是普通话，用其在英国殖民统治时期的时间（由于其庞大粤语本地和移民民众）和今天仍然是其官方语言的教育，正式的讲话，贴近生活，但汉语正在成为香港越来越有影响的97年回归后。

古代中国文字曾经是邻近地区，如日本，韩国，越南世纪东亚国家通用语言，在之前的19世纪欧洲的影响上升。