93-618: Andy Chan Ho-tin ( Chinese : 陳浩天 ; born 6 September 1990) is a Hong Kong pro-independence political activist. He is a founding member and the convenor of the Hong Kong National Party , the first party to advocate for Hong Kong independence . Chan attracted media attention when the Hong Kong government strongly criticised his activities after the establishment of the Hong Kong National Party. In
186-469: A nucleus that has a vowel (which can be a monophthong , diphthong , or even a triphthong in certain varieties), preceded by an onset (a single consonant , or consonant + glide ; a zero onset is also possible), and followed (optionally) by a coda consonant; a syllable also carries a tone . There are some instances where a vowel is not used as a nucleus. An example of this is in Cantonese, where
279-457: A subject–verb–object word order , and like many other languages of East Asia, makes frequent use of the topic–comment construction to form sentences. Chinese also has an extensive system of classifiers and measure words , another trait shared with neighboring languages such as Japanese and Korean. Other notable grammatical features common to all the spoken varieties of Chinese include the use of serial verb construction , pronoun dropping , and
372-510: A Chinese character is the morpheme, as characters represent the smallest grammatical units with individual meanings in the Chinese language. Estimates of the total number of Chinese words and lexicalized phrases vary greatly. The Hanyu Da Zidian , a compendium of Chinese characters, includes 54,678 head entries for characters, including oracle bone versions. The Zhonghua Zihai (1994) contains 85,568 head entries for character definitions and
465-599: A Shanghai resident may speak both Standard Chinese and Shanghainese ; if they grew up elsewhere, they are also likely fluent in the dialect of their home region. In addition to Standard Chinese, a majority of Taiwanese people also speak Taiwanese Hokkien (also called 台語 ; 'Taiwanese' ), Hakka , or an Austronesian language . A speaker in Taiwan may mix pronunciations and vocabulary from Standard Chinese and other languages of Taiwan in everyday speech. In part due to traditional cultural ties with Guangdong , Cantonese
558-580: A bedrock of Hong Kong's prosperity and stability. Equally, former Chief Secretary Anson Chan echoed the sentiment about the government's decision as a threat to business confidence. On the other hand, pro-Beijing lawmaker Starry Lee of the Democratic Alliance for the Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong said "For the FCC to ignore the warning from China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, that's
651-462: A central variety (i.e. prestige variety, such as Standard Mandarin), as the issue requires some careful handling when mutual intelligibility is inconsistent with language identity. The Chinese government's official Chinese designation for the major branches of Chinese is 方言 ; fāngyán ; 'regional speech', whereas the more closely related varieties within these are called 地点方言 ; 地點方言 ; dìdiǎn fāngyán ; 'local speech'. Because of
744-615: A compromise between the pronunciations of different regions. The royal courts of the Ming and early Qing dynasties operated using a koiné language known as Guanhua , based on the Nanjing dialect of Mandarin. Standard Chinese is an official language of both the People's Republic of China and the Republic of China (Taiwan), one of the four official languages of Singapore , and one of
837-714: A corresponding increase in the number of homophones . As an example, the small Langenscheidt Pocket Chinese Dictionary lists six words that are commonly pronounced as shí in Standard Chinese: In modern spoken Mandarin, however, tremendous ambiguity would result if all of these words could be used as-is. The 20th century Yuen Ren Chao poem Lion-Eating Poet in the Stone Den exploits this, consisting of 92 characters all pronounced shi . As such, most of these words have been replaced in speech, if not in writing, with less ambiguous disyllabic compounds. Only
930-576: A millennium. The Four Commanderies of Han were established in northern Korea in the 1st century BCE but disintegrated in the following centuries. Chinese Buddhism spread over East Asia between the 2nd and 5th centuries CE, and with it the study of scriptures and literature in Literary Chinese. Later, strong central governments modeled on Chinese institutions were established in Korea, Japan, and Vietnam, with Literary Chinese serving as
1023-452: A platform for the independence forces to spread their absurd ideas". On the other hand, the HK government expressed "deep regrets" over the FCC's decision to host the talk. Many leading pro-Beijing political figures, notably former chief executive CY Leung , vocally opposed and tried to pressure and intimidate the FCC to rescind the invitation in the days running up to the talk. Leung argued that
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#17327800253081116-451: A public platform to espouse such views." In its own defence, the FCC said that it neither opposed nor endorsed the views of its guest speakers. It insisted that the public has a right to hear the views of different sides of any debate as Hong Kong is governed by the rule of law, and respect for freedom of speech was enshrined. When the government-owned broadcaster Radio Television Hong Kong (RTHK) and local stations all declined to broadcast
1209-495: A reason. Mallet had ostensibly hoped to resign vice-presidency of the FCC, a post he has held since 2017, and also to hand over his responsibilities at the Financial Times properly. A government source merely stated that border control cases of the territory were considered on a case-by-case basis. In the absence of an official explanation, Mallet's visa rejection was widely seen to be retribution for his role in chairing
1302-542: A secure reconstruction of Proto-Sino-Tibetan, the higher-level structure of the family remains unclear. A top-level branching into Chinese and Tibeto-Burman languages is often assumed, but has not been convincingly demonstrated. The first written records appeared over 3,000 years ago during the Shang dynasty . As the language evolved over this period, the various local varieties became mutually unintelligible. In reaction, central governments have repeatedly sought to promulgate
1395-508: A similar way to the use of Latin and Ancient Greek roots in European languages. Many new compounds, or new meanings for old phrases, were created in the late 19th and early 20th centuries to name Western concepts and artifacts. These coinages, written in shared Chinese characters, have then been borrowed freely between languages. They have even been accepted into Chinese, a language usually resistant to loanwords, because their foreign origin
1488-678: A single language. However, their lack of mutual intelligibility means they are sometimes considered to be separate languages in a family . Investigation of the historical relationships among the varieties of Chinese is ongoing. Currently, most classifications posit 7 to 13 main regional groups based on phonetic developments from Middle Chinese , of which the most spoken by far is Mandarin with 66%, or around 800 million speakers, followed by Min (75 million, e.g. Southern Min ), Wu (74 million, e.g. Shanghainese ), and Yue (68 million, e.g. Cantonese ). These branches are unintelligible to each other, and many of their subgroups are unintelligible with
1581-631: A unified standard. The earliest examples of Old Chinese are divinatory inscriptions on oracle bones dated to c. 1250 BCE , during the Late Shang . The next attested stage came from inscriptions on bronze artifacts dating to the Western Zhou period (1046–771 BCE), the Classic of Poetry and portions of the Book of Documents and I Ching . Scholars have attempted to reconstruct
1674-575: A variety of Yue from a small coastal area around Taishan, Guangdong . In parts of South China, the dialect of a major city may be only marginally intelligible to its neighbors. For example, Wuzhou and Taishan are located approximately 260 km (160 mi) and 190 km (120 mi) away from Guangzhou respectively, but the Yue variety spoken in Wuzhou is more similar to the Guangzhou dialect than
1767-550: A very serious provocation". Another legislator Priscilla Leung was quoted saying "There is no room for using journalism as a disguise for promoting independence or self-determination." Governments of the US and the European Union have all expressed concerns over Mallet's visa refusal and urged Hong Kong to explain the decision. US publications like The New York Times and The Washington Post expressed their concerns over
1860-408: A visit to Bangkok, Mallet found out that he had been denied a working visa by the Hong Kong government. He was subsequently allowed to return on a seven-day visit after being interrogated by Hong Kong immigration. As British citizens are normally allowed to visit without a visa for business and pleasure for up to 180 days, the government's decision was heavily criticised by opposition lawmakers. It
1953-423: Is "impossible to achieve" independence for Hong Kong and calling it "a practical joke" and "proliferation of extremism in Hong Kong". The State Council's Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office issued a statement through the official Xinhua News Agency on 30 March 2016, following the declaration of the formation of Hong Kong National Party, condemning the party "has harmed the country's sovereignty, security, endangered
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#17327800253082046-602: Is Taishanese. Wuzhou is located directly upstream from Guangzhou on the Pearl River , whereas Taishan is to Guangzhou's southwest, with the two cities separated by several river valleys. In parts of Fujian , the speech of some neighbouring counties or villages is mutually unintelligible. Local varieties of Chinese are conventionally classified into seven dialect groups, largely based on the different evolution of Middle Chinese voiced initials: Proportions of first-language speakers The classification of Li Rong , which
2139-709: Is a group of languages spoken natively by the ethnic Han Chinese majority and many minority ethnic groups in China , as well as by various communities of the Chinese diaspora . Approximately 1.35 billion people, or 17% of the global population, speak a variety of Chinese as their first language . Chinese languages form the Sinitic branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family. The spoken varieties of Chinese are usually considered by native speakers to be dialects of
2232-676: Is a local political group that advocates the independence of Hong Kong , and the government of the People's Republic of China in Beijing considers it to be a separatist organisation. In September 2018, in an unprecedented step for the city, it became the first ever political party to be proscribed by the Hong Kong government. As part of its regular lunchtime talk series, the Foreign Correspondents' Club of Hong Kong (FCC) hosted an event to take place on 14 August 2018. The invitee
2325-408: Is an incident in Hong Kong in 2018 that many pundits consider as having major implications for freedom of speech in Hong Kong. The Foreign Correspondents' Club (FCC) scheduled a lunchtime talk for 14 August. The invitee was Andy Chan , convenor of the Hong Kong National Party (HKNP); Victor Mallet, vice-president of the press organisation, chaired the session. The government of China had called for
2418-435: Is called either 华语 ; 華語 ; Huáyǔ or 汉语 ; 漢語 ; Hànyǔ ). Standard Chinese is based on the Beijing dialect of Mandarin. The governments of both China and Taiwan 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. Diglossia is common among Chinese speakers. For example,
2511-603: Is often described as a 'monosyllabic' language. However, this is only partially correct. It is largely accurate when describing Old and Middle Chinese; in Classical Chinese, around 90% of words consist of a single character that corresponds one-to-one with a morpheme , the smallest unit of meaning in a language. In modern varieties, it usually remains the case that morphemes are monosyllabic—in contrast, English has many multi-syllable morphemes, both bound and free , such as 'seven', 'elephant', 'para-' and '-able'. Some of
2604-445: Is only about an eighth as many as English. All varieties of spoken Chinese use tones to distinguish words. A few dialects of north China may have as few as three tones, while some dialects in south China have up to 6 or 12 tones, depending on how one counts. One exception from this is Shanghainese which has reduced the set of tones to a two-toned pitch accent system much like modern Japanese. A very common example used to illustrate
2697-668: Is specifically meant. However, when one of the above words forms part of a compound, the disambiguating syllable is generally dropped and the resulting word is still disyllabic. For example, 石 ; shí alone, and not 石头 ; 石頭 ; shítou , appears in compounds as meaning 'stone' such as 石膏 ; shígāo ; 'plaster', 石灰 ; shíhuī ; 'lime', 石窟 ; shíkū ; 'grotto', 石英 ; 'quartz', and 石油 ; shíyóu ; 'petroleum'. Although many single-syllable morphemes ( 字 ; zì ) can stand alone as individual words, they more often than not form multi-syllable compounds known as 词 ; 詞 ; cí , which more closely resembles
2790-489: Is the largest reference work based purely on character and its literary variants. The CC-CEDICT project (2010) contains 97,404 contemporary entries including idioms, technology terms, and names of political figures, businesses, and products. The 2009 version of the Webster's Digital Chinese Dictionary (WDCD), based on CC-CEDICT, contains over 84,000 entries. The most comprehensive pure linguistic Chinese-language dictionary,
2883-501: Is used as an everyday language in Hong Kong and Macau . The designation of various Chinese branches remains controversial. Some linguists and most ordinary Chinese people consider all the spoken varieties as one single language, as speakers share a common national identity and a common written form. Others instead argue that it is inappropriate to refer to major branches of Chinese such as Mandarin, Wu, and so on as "dialects" because
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2976-500: Is used in education, media, formal speech, and everyday life—though Mandarin is increasingly taught in schools due to the mainland's growing influence. Historically, the Chinese language has spread to its neighbors through a variety of means. Northern Vietnam was incorporated into the Han dynasty (202 BCE – 220 CE) in 111 BCE, marking the beginning of a period of Chinese control that ran almost continuously for
3069-552: Is used in the Language Atlas of China (1987), distinguishes three further groups: Some varieties remain unclassified, including the Danzhou dialect on Hainan , Waxianghua spoken in western Hunan , and Shaozhou Tuhua spoken in northern Guangdong . Standard Chinese is the standard language of China (where it is called 普通话 ; pǔtōnghuà ) and Taiwan, and one of the four official languages of Singapore (where it
3162-428: Is very complex, with a large number of consonants and vowels, but they are probably not all distinguished in any single dialect. Most linguists now believe it represents a diasystem encompassing 6th-century northern and southern standards for reading the classics. The complex relationship between spoken and written Chinese is an example of diglossia : as spoken, Chinese varieties have evolved at different rates, while
3255-753: The Qieyun rime dictionary (601 CE), and a late period in the 10th century, reflected by rhyme tables such as the Yunjing constructed by ancient Chinese philologists as a guide to the Qieyun system. These works define phonological categories but with little hint of what sounds they represent. Linguists have identified these sounds by comparing the categories with pronunciations in modern varieties of Chinese , borrowed Chinese words in Japanese, Vietnamese, and Korean, and transcription evidence. The resulting system
3348-419: The 2014 Hong Kong protests (dubbed the "Umbrella Revolution") against the Chinese government's decision to set restrictions on the nominating method of the candidates for the 2017 Hong Kong Chief Executive election . He was one of the protesters who went to the scene after the police's clearance of the "civic square" occupied by the protesters on 27 September. Chan was dissatisfied with the student leaders in
3441-620: The 2016 Hong Kong Legislative Council election , Chan's candidacy in the New Territories West was questioned by the returning officer of the Electoral Affairs Commission (EAC). The EAC required Chan and all other candidates to sign an additional confirm form to declare their understanding of Hong Kong being an inalienable part of China as stipulated in the Basic Law of Hong Kong . Chan refused to sign
3534-517: The 2016 Hong Kong Legislative Council election , his candidature was disqualified by the returning officer for New Territories East, due to his political stance on secession and independence of Hong Kong from the People's Republic of China. Chan was born in Hong Kong in 1990 and studied engineering and business administration at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University (HKPU). He first participated in politics when he joined
3627-533: The Korean , Japanese and Vietnamese languages, and today comprise over half of their vocabularies. This massive influx led to changes in the phonological structure of the languages, contributing to the development of moraic structure in Japanese and the disruption of vowel harmony in Korean. Borrowed Chinese morphemes have been used extensively in all these languages to coin compound words for new concepts, in
3720-710: The May Fourth Movement beginning in 1919. After the fall of the Northern Song dynasty and subsequent reign of the Jurchen Jin and Mongol Yuan dynasties in northern China, a common speech (now called Old Mandarin ) developed based on the dialects of the North China Plain around the capital. The 1324 Zhongyuan Yinyun was a dictionary that codified the rhyming conventions of new sanqu verse form in this language. Together with
3813-595: The National Language Unification Commission finally settled on the Beijing dialect in 1932. The People's Republic founded in 1949 retained this standard but renamed it 普通话 ; 普通話 ; pǔtōnghuà ; 'common speech'. The national language is now used in education, the media, and formal situations in both mainland China and Taiwan. In Hong Kong and Macau , Cantonese is the dominant spoken language due to cultural influence from Guangdong immigrants and colonial-era policies, and
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3906-478: The oracle bone inscriptions created during the Shang dynasty c. 1250 BCE . The phonetic categories of Old Chinese can be reconstructed from the rhymes of ancient poetry. During the Northern and Southern period , Middle Chinese went through several sound changes and split into several varieties following prolonged geographic and political separation. The Qieyun , a rime dictionary , recorded
3999-596: The phonology of Old Chinese by comparing later varieties of Chinese with the rhyming practice of the Classic of Poetry and the phonetic elements found in the majority of Chinese characters. Although many of the finer details remain unclear, most scholars agree that Old Chinese differs from Middle Chinese in lacking retroflex and palatal obstruents but having initial consonant clusters of some sort, and in having voiceless nasals and liquids. Most recent reconstructions also describe an atonal language with consonant clusters at
4092-676: The 12-volume Hanyu Da Cidian , records more than 23,000 head Chinese characters and gives over 370,000 definitions. The 1999 revised Cihai , a multi-volume encyclopedic dictionary reference work, gives 122,836 vocabulary entry definitions under 19,485 Chinese characters, including proper names, phrases, and common zoological, geographical, sociological, scientific, and technical terms. The 2016 edition of Xiandai Hanyu Cidian , an authoritative one-volume dictionary on modern standard Chinese language as used in mainland China, has 13,000 head characters and defines 70,000 words. Victor Mallet visa controversy The Victor Mallet visa controversy
4185-495: The British foreign secretary from 1995 to 1997, criticised the visa ruling as a "bizarre decision". He said that Hong Kong's core values, including free expression and the rule of law, were under pressure. Saying that "‘national security’ was increasingly being used to justify disproportionate constrictions on fundamental rights", Rifkind urged Hong Kong to retract their decision, saying that the rule of law and basic freedoms had been
4278-469: The Chan talk which the FCC refused to call off. The FCC, the organisation at the centre of the controversy, does not support independence for Hong Kong. It said that the incident: “highlight[s] Beijing's tightening grip on the territory and the steady erosion of basic rights that are guaranteed in Hong Kong's laws and international agreements". On demanding a full explanation from the Hong Kong authorities for
4371-480: The FCC was leasing its premises, the Old Dairy Farm Depot , from the government, and said that it was paying "token rent" when it was in fact paying market rent. The HK government said: "It is totally inappropriate and unacceptable for any person to openly promote and advocate the independence of Hong Kong, [and] as such, it is also totally inappropriate and unacceptable for any organisation to provide
4464-565: The Latin-based Vietnamese alphabet . English words of Chinese origin include tea from Hokkien 茶 ( tê ), dim sum from Cantonese 點心 ( dim2 sam1 ), and kumquat from Cantonese 金橘 ( gam1 gwat1 ). The sinologist Jerry Norman has estimated that there are hundreds of mutually unintelligible varieties of Chinese. These varieties form a dialect continuum , in which differences in speech generally become more pronounced as distances increase, though
4557-403: The absence of an official explanation, Mallet's visa rejection was widely seen to be retribution for his role in chairing the Chan talk, which the FCC refused to cancel. The Hong Kong Journalists Association , which has for years lived under the pressure of self-censorship, immediately warned of the "death knell of freedom of speech". Secretary for Security John Lee insisted the ban on Mallet
4650-436: The cancellation of the talk, and Hong Kong government expressed its regret because the issue of independence was said to cross the red lines on national sovereignty. After a visit to Bangkok, Mallet was denied a working visa by the Hong Kong government. Mallet was subjected to a four-hour interrogation by immigration officers on his return from Thailand on Sunday, 7 October before he was finally allowed to enter Hong Kong. In
4743-474: The case in the US in editorials respectively entitled "China's Media Crackdown Spreads to Hong Kong" and "China's Authoritarian Export". Marco Rubio, co-chairman of US Congressional Executive Commission on China, asserted that Beijing's tactics used in the past to pressurise foreign news agencies in China were now being "extended to Hong Kong". The Hong Kong Journalists Association expressed its shock and anger at
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#17327800253084836-564: The decision, citing "data privacy considerations". Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam said that the Immigration Department was not obliged to explain individual cases. The Legislative Council of Hong Kong rejected a motion to summon immigration officials to the legislature to answer for the Victor Mallet case. The motion failed when 36 pro-establishment lawmakers out-voted 24 pan-democrat lawmakers. Passage of
4929-399: The different spoken dialects varies, but in general, there has been a tendency to a reduction in sounds from Middle Chinese. The Mandarin dialects in particular have experienced a dramatic decrease in sounds and so have far more polysyllabic words than most other spoken varieties. The total number of syllables in some varieties is therefore only about a thousand, including tonal variation, which
5022-484: The difficulties involved in determining the difference between language and dialect, other terms have been proposed. These include topolect , lect , vernacular , regional , and variety . Syllables in the Chinese languages have some unique characteristics. They are tightly related to the morphology and also to the characters of the writing system, and phonologically they are structured according to fixed rules. The structure of each syllable consists of
5115-576: The end of the syllable, developing into tone distinctions in Middle Chinese. Several derivational affixes have also been identified, but the language lacks inflection , and indicated grammatical relationships using word order and grammatical particles . Middle Chinese was the language used during Northern and Southern dynasties and the Sui , Tang , and Song dynasties (6th–10th centuries CE). It can be divided into an early period, reflected by
5208-534: The event, the FCC arranged for the speech to be live-streamed on Facebook. As the controversy blew up, Victor Mallet was Asia news editor of the Financial Times based in Hong Kong where he lived with his family. He was vice-president of the FCC. Mallet and his employer attempted to renew his working visa in the normal way but were notified late on 2 October that his visa, which expired on 3 October, would not be renewed. No reasons were given. Returning from
5301-614: The extraordinary, extremely rare, if not unprecedented move, the FCC initiated a petition in October asking the government to provide a full explanation for the visa refusal. Furthermore, 19 former FCC presidents signed a letter to the Chief Executive in early November, urging the government to explain Mallet's case. Secretary for Security John Lee insisted the ban on Mallet was unrelated to press freedom, but declined to explain
5394-413: The first one, 十 , normally appears in monosyllabic form in spoken Mandarin; the rest are normally used in the polysyllabic forms of respectively. In each, the homophone was disambiguated by the addition of another morpheme, typically either a near-synonym or some sort of generic word (e.g. 'head', 'thing'), the purpose of which is to indicate which of the possible meanings of the other, homophonic syllable
5487-491: The flat, as well as a suspected petrol bomb, materials for petrol bombs and oils containing cannabis-derived substances. Chan was arrested again on 30 August for rioting and assaulting a police officer at the 2019 Sheung Shui protest as he tried to make his way to Japan. Chinese language Chinese ( simplified Chinese : 汉语 ; traditional Chinese : 漢語 ; pinyin : Hànyǔ ; lit. ' Han language' or 中文 ; Zhōngwén ; 'Chinese writing')
5580-485: The form and his candidacy was "invalidated" along with five other pro-independence activists after the end of the nomination period. The Hong Kong National Party launched a rally on 5 August which was dubbed the "first pro-independence rally in Hong Kong" against the EAC's disqualifications. In a speech at the Foreign Correspondents' Club, Hong Kong on 14 August 2018, Chan called for Hong Kong's independence from China, calling
5673-491: The form of a word), to indicate a word's function within a sentence. In other words, Chinese has very few grammatical inflections —it possesses no tenses , no voices , no grammatical number , and only a few articles . They make heavy use of grammatical particles to indicate aspect and mood . In Mandarin, this involves the use of particles such as 了 ; le ; ' PFV ', 还 ; 還 ; hái ; 'still', and 已经 ; 已經 ; yǐjīng ; 'already'. Chinese has
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#17327800253085766-565: The government of the People's Republic of China, with Singapore officially adopting them in 1976. Traditional characters are used in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau, and among Chinese-speaking communities overseas . Linguists classify all varieties of Chinese as part of the Sino-Tibetan language family , together with Burmese , Tibetan and many other languages spoken in the Himalayas and the Southeast Asian Massif . Although
5859-411: The government's decision to refuse a work visa for Mallet. Lam refused to comment except to cite the fact that "so many overseas media, including Japanese media, have been using Hong Kong as a base for reporting is by itself a very good indication of the freedom of reporting, of journalism, in Hong Kong". The state-run China Daily responded to the criticisms saying that visa renewal of the territory
5952-533: The government, saying: "Freedom of speech and press freedom are the foundations of Hong Kong’s success. The denial of [Mallet’s] visa will further harm press freedom and freedom of speech, and it will severely harm Hong Kong's status as an international city." Reporters Without Borders and the Hong Kong Bar Association also criticised the apparent ban of Mallet. On Carrie Lam's maiden visit to Japan, local journalists questioned her intensely over
6045-505: The journalist who presided over the talk. In the absence of an official explanation, Victor Mallet's visa rejection was widely seen to be retribution for his role in chairing the talk, which the FCC refused to cancel. On 27 June 2019, Chan arrived in Osaka, Japan to join separatists from China for a demonstration against the CPC . Prior to his arrival in Osaka, Chan was detained at the airport by
6138-586: The language of administration and scholarship, a position it would retain until the late 19th century in Korea and (to a lesser extent) Japan, and the early 20th century in Vietnam. Scholars from different lands could communicate, albeit only in writing, using Literary Chinese. Although they used Chinese solely for written communication, each country had its own tradition of reading texts aloud using what are known as Sino-Xenic pronunciations . Chinese words with these pronunciations were also extensively imported into
6231-528: The late 19th century. Today Japanese is written with a composite script using both Chinese characters called kanji , and kana. Korean is written exclusively with hangul in North Korea, although knowledge of the supplementary Chinese characters called hanja is still required, and hanja are increasingly rarely used in South Korea. As a result of its historical colonization by France, Vietnamese now uses
6324-677: The latter "a threat to all free peoples in the world" and "our colonial master". In response, the Office of the Commissioner of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People's Republic of China in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region castigated the FCC for allowing Chan to speak, as did the Hong Kong government. The event gave rise to a controversy involving the de facto banning from Hong Kong of
6417-463: The local authorities for three hours. On 2 August 2019, Chan, along with a group of seven others, were arrested during a police raid on a flat in an Industrial Building on Au Pui Wan Street in Sha Tin . The group were detained for offences including possession of explosives without licence, possession of offensive weapons, and selling poisons without licence. Police found two bows and six arrows inside
6510-455: The more conservative modern varieties, usually found in the south, have largely monosyllabic words , especially with basic vocabulary. However, most nouns, adjectives, and verbs in modern Mandarin are disyllabic. A significant cause of this is phonetic erosion : sound changes over time have steadily reduced the number of possible syllables in the language's inventory. In modern Mandarin, there are only around 1,200 possible syllables, including
6603-419: The motion would have forced Security Minister John Lee Ka-chiu to explain the decision not to renew Mallet's visa. Lee argued that disclosure of individual cases would undermine immigration controls and security, and that not disclosing reasons for visa refusals is also common practice overseas, and that only 1.3 percent of applications had been refused so far in 2018. He added that compliance with Hong Kong laws
6696-425: The mutual unintelligibility between them is too great. However, calling major Chinese branches "languages" would also be wrong under the same criterion, since a branch such as Wu, itself contains many mutually unintelligible varieties, and could not be properly called a single language. There are also viewpoints pointing out that linguists often ignore mutual intelligibility when varieties share intelligibility with
6789-583: The nasal sonorant consonants /m/ and /ŋ/ can stand alone as their own syllable. In Mandarin much more than in other spoken varieties, most syllables tend to be open syllables, meaning they have no coda (assuming that a final glide is not analyzed as a coda), but syllables that do have codas are restricted to nasals /m/ , /n/ , /ŋ/ , the retroflex approximant /ɻ/ , and voiceless stops /p/ , /t/ , /k/ , or /ʔ/ . Some varieties allow most of these codas, whereas others, such as Standard Chinese, are limited to only /n/ , /ŋ/ , and /ɻ/ . The number of sounds in
6882-538: The other varieties within the same branch (e.g. Southern Min). There are, however, transitional areas where varieties from different branches share enough features for some limited intelligibility, including New Xiang with Southwestern Mandarin , Xuanzhou Wu Chinese with Lower Yangtze Mandarin , Jin with Central Plains Mandarin and certain divergent dialects of Hakka with Gan . All varieties of Chinese are tonal at least to some degree, and are largely analytic . The earliest attested written Chinese consists of
6975-471: The prosperity and stability of Hong Kong, and the core interests of Hong Kong..." The Hong Kong government issued a statement after the formation of the party, stating that "any suggestion that Hong Kong should be independent or any movement to advocate such 'independence' is against the Basic Law, and will undermine the stability and prosperity of Hong Kong and impair the interest of the general public…" In
7068-739: The protests and called for more radical and militant approaches. He blamed the leaders of the Hong Kong Federation of Students (HKFS) for the failure of the movement, and launched the disaffiliation campaign to separate the Hong Kong Polytechnic University Students' Union (HKPUSU) from the HKFS membership as the convenor of the HKPU Disaffiliation Concern Group. The HKPUSU eventually passed the threshold of 1,700 votes in
7161-404: The rate of change varies immensely. Generally, mountainous South China exhibits more linguistic diversity than the North China Plain . Until the late 20th century, Chinese emigrants to Southeast Asia and North America came from southeast coastal areas, where Min, Hakka, and Yue dialects were spoken. Specifically, most Chinese immigrants to North America until the mid-20th century spoke Taishanese ,
7254-433: The referendum, with approval for disaffiliation winning with 1,190 votes. After the disaffiliation campaign, Chan began to strive for Hong Kong independence . On 28 March 2016, Chan established the Hong Kong National Party . Chan's move drew attacks from the Chinese state media and Hong Kong government. An editorial piece in the Chinese government-owned Global Times slammed the Hong Kong National Party by stating that it
7347-552: The related subject dropping . Although the grammars of the spoken varieties share many traits, they do possess differences. The entire Chinese character corpus since antiquity comprises well over 50,000 characters, of which only roughly 10,000 are in use and only about 3,000 are frequently used in Chinese media and newspapers. However, Chinese characters should not be confused with Chinese words. Because most Chinese words are made up of two or more characters, there are many more Chinese words than characters. A more accurate equivalent for
7440-509: The relationship was first proposed in the early 19th century and is now broadly accepted, reconstruction of Sino-Tibetan is much less developed than that of families such as Indo-European or Austroasiatic . Difficulties have included the great diversity of the languages, the lack of inflection in many of them, and the effects of language contact. In addition, many of the smaller languages are spoken in mountainous areas that are difficult to reach and are often also sensitive border zones. Without
7533-517: The six official languages of the United Nations . Standard Chinese is based on the Beijing dialect of Mandarin and was first officially adopted in the 1930s. The language is written primarily using a logography of Chinese characters , largely shared by readers who may otherwise speak mutually unintelligible varieties. Since the 1950s, the use of simplified characters has been promoted by
7626-561: The slightly later Menggu Ziyun , this dictionary describes a language with many of the features characteristic of modern Mandarin dialects. Up to the early 20th century, most Chinese people only spoke their local variety. Thus, as a practical measure, officials of the Ming and Qing dynasties carried out the administration of the empire using a common language based on Mandarin varieties , known as 官话 ; 官話 ; Guānhuà ; 'language of officials'. For most of this period, this language
7719-623: The tonal distinctions, compared with about 5,000 in Vietnamese (still a largely monosyllabic language), and over 8,000 in English. Most modern varieties tend to form new words through polysyllabic compounds . In some cases, monosyllabic words have become disyllabic formed from different characters without the use of compounding, as in 窟窿 ; kūlong from 孔 ; kǒng ; this is especially common in Jin varieties. This phonological collapse has led to
7812-547: The traditional Western notion of a word. A Chinese cí can consist of more than one character–morpheme, usually two, but there can be three or more. Examples of Chinese words of more than two syllables include 汉堡包 ; 漢堡包 ; hànbǎobāo ; 'hamburger', 守门员 ; 守門員 ; shǒuményuán ; 'goalkeeper', and 电子邮件 ; 電子郵件 ; diànzǐyóujiàn ; 'e-mail'. All varieties of modern Chinese are analytic languages : they depend on syntax (word order and sentence structure), rather than inflectional morphology (changes in
7905-512: The use of tones in Chinese is the application of the four tones of Standard Chinese, along with the neutral tone, to the syllable ma . The tones are exemplified by the following five Chinese words: In contrast, Standard Cantonese has six tones. Historically, finals that end in a stop consonant were considered to be " checked tones " and thus counted separately for a total of nine tones. However, they are considered to be duplicates in modern linguistics and are no longer counted as such: Chinese
7998-452: The words in newspapers, and 60% of the words in science magazines. Vietnam, Korea, and Japan each developed writing systems for their own languages, initially based on Chinese characters , but later replaced with the hangul alphabet for Korean and supplemented with kana syllabaries for Japanese, while Vietnamese continued to be written with the complex chữ Nôm script. However, these were limited to popular literature until
8091-517: The written language used throughout China changed comparatively little, crystallizing into a prestige form known as Classical or Literary Chinese . Literature written distinctly in the Classical form began to emerge during the Spring and Autumn period . Its use in writing remained nearly universal until the late 19th century, culminating with the widespread adoption of written vernacular Chinese with
8184-405: Was Andy Chan , convenor of the Hong Kong National Party (HKNP), a political party that was facing a ban by the government of Hong Kong. Victor Mallet was to chair the session. The Beijing government wanted the FCC to cancel the luncheon talk by Chan. The Chinese Foreign Ministry's Hong Kong office issued an announcement on 3 Aug, stating its resolute opposition to "any external forces providing
8277-453: Was a koiné based on dialects spoken in the Nanjing area, though not identical to any single dialect. By the middle of the 19th century, the Beijing dialect had become dominant and was essential for any business with the imperial court. In the 1930s, a standard national language ( 国语 ; 國語 ; Guóyǔ ), was adopted. After much dispute between proponents of northern and southern dialects and an abortive attempt at an artificial pronunciation,
8370-627: Was a must. British consul general in Hong Kong Andrew Heyn wrote to Carrie Lam about Mallet's denial of entry. Mark Field , British minister of state for Asia and the Pacific, warned that the controversy could affect business sentiment in the city. He expressed concern that the increasing signs of pressure upon " one country, two systems " would undermine business confidence. Field was scheduled to meet Chief Secretary Matthew Cheung as he passed through Hong Kong. Malcolm Rifkind ,
8463-485: Was hidden by their written form. Often different compounds for the same concept were in circulation for some time before a winner emerged, and sometimes the final choice differed between countries. The proportion of vocabulary of Chinese origin thus tends to be greater in technical, abstract, or formal language. For example, in Japan, Sino-Japanese words account for about 35% of the words in entertainment magazines, over half
8556-431: Was however welcomed by their pro-establishment counterparts. A spokesperson for the Financial Times , said "[t]his is the first time we have encountered [a refusal to renew the work visa] in Hong Kong, and we have not been given a reason for the rejection." On 8 November, Mallet attempted to enter Hong Kong again as a visitor, but was turned away after four hours of questioning at immigration, again without being given
8649-511: Was unrelated to press freedom, but declined to explain the decision. The incident caused a furious debate over the one country, two systems model which Deng Xiaoping promised for Hong Kong, and over restrictions to freedoms that were promised in the Sino-British Joint Declaration which included a "high degree of autonomy", democratic reforms, and maintenance of the freedom of the press. The Hong Kong National Party
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