99-575: The Bohai Sea ( Chinese : 渤海 ; pinyin : Bó Hǎi ; lit. 'Bo Sea') is a gulf / inland sea approximately 77,000 km (30,000 sq mi) in area on the east coast of Mainland China . It is the northwestern and innermost extension of the Yellow Sea , to which it connects via the Bohai Strait. It has a mean depth of approximately 18 meters (59 ft), with a maximum depth of about 80 meters (260 ft) located in
198-469: 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
297-457: 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
396-510: 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
495-599: 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
594-462: 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
693-615: 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
792-714: 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
891-470: A day. Their amplitude varies between about 0.9 and 3 meters (3.0 and 9.8 ft) at the coast of China. Tides are higher at the Korean Peninsula, typically ranging between 4 and 8 meters (13 and 26 ft) and reaching the maximum in spring. The tidal system rotates in a counterclockwise direction. The speed of the tidal current is generally less than 1.6 km/h (0.99 mph) in the middle of
990-576: 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
1089-512: A pipeline exploded at the north-east port of Dalian , causing a wide-scale fire and spreading about 1,500 tonnes of oil over the sea area of 430 km (170 sq mi). The port had been closed and fishing suspended until the end of August. Eight hundred fishing boats and 40 specialized vessels were mobilized to relieve the environmental damage. The Yellow Sea is considered among the most degraded marine areas on earth. Loss of natural coastal habitats due to land reclamation has resulted in
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#17327655340961188-542: 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
1287-508: 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
1386-678: 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
1485-631: 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
1584-575: 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
1683-655: A warm cyclone current, forming part of the Kuroshio Current , which diverges near the western part of Japan and flows northward into the Yellow Sea at a speed of less than 0.8 km/h (0.50 mph). Southward currents prevail near the sea coast, especially in the winter monsoon period. The water temperature is close to freezing in the northern part in winter, so drift ice patches and continuous ice fields form and hinder navigation between November and March. The water temperature and salinity are homogeneous across
1782-548: A year, at the beginning of May and in the middle of June. It had long been celebrated in a local festival called "Jindo Sea Parting Festival", but was largely unknown to the outside world until 1975, when the French ambassador Pierre Randi described the phenomenon in a French newspaper. The sea is rich in seaweed (predominantly kelp , Laminaria japonica ), cephalopods , crustaceans , shellfish , clams , and especially in blue-green algae which bloom in summer and contribute to
1881-602: 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
1980-584: Is a flooded section of continental shelf that formed after the last glacial period (some 10,000 years ago) as sea levels rose 120 m (390 ft) to their current levels. The depth gradually increases from north to south. The sea bottom and shores are dominated by sand and silt brought by the rivers through the Bohai Sea ( Liao River , Yellow River , Hai He ) and the Korea Bay ( Yalu River ). These deposits, together with sand storms are responsible for
2079-490: 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,
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#17327655340962178-697: Is called the Bohai Sea (previously Gulf of Zhili / Beizhili ), into which flow some of the most important rivers of northern China , such as the Yellow River (through Shandong province and its capital Jinan ), the Hai River (through Beijing and Tianjin ) and the Liao River (through Liaoning province). The northeastern extension of the Yellow Sea is called the Korea Bay , into which flow
2277-486: Is now Hebei Province. There are three major bays inside the Bohai Gulf: Laizhou Bay to the south, Bohai Bay to the west, and Liaodong Bay to the north. The provincial-level administrative divisions that have a coastline to the Bohai Sea are, from the south going clockwise: Shandong , Hebei, Tianjin (Tientsin), Hebei again, and Liaoning . Some of the major rivers draining into the gulf include
2376-603: 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
2475-445: 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
2574-412: Is relatively low, at 30 ‰ in the north to 33–34‰ in the south, dropping to 26‰ or lower near the river deltas. In the southwest monsoon season (June to August) the increased rainfall and runoff further reduce the salinity of the upper sea layer. Water transparency increases from about 10 meters (33 ft) in the north up to 45 meters (148 ft) in the south. Tides are semidiurnal, i.e. rise twice
2673-668: 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
2772-489: 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,
2871-501: 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
2970-500: 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
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3168-428: 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
3267-753: 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
3366-533: 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
3465-710: 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
3564-595: 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
3663-899: The North Sea , is a marginal sea of the Western Pacific Ocean located between mainland China and the Korean Peninsula , and can be considered the northwestern part of the East China Sea . It is one of four seas named after color terms (the others being the Black Sea , the Red Sea and the White Sea ), and its name is descriptive of the golden-yellow color of the silt -ridden water discharged from major rivers. The innermost bay of northwestern Yellow Sea
3762-707: The Yalu River , the Chongchon River and the Taedong River . The International Hydrographic Organization defines the limits of the Yellow Sea ("Hwang Hai") as follows: The Yellow Sea is separated from the Sea of Japan by the boundary from the southern end of Haenam Peninsula in Jeollanamdo to Jeju Island and divided into the East China Sea by the boundary from the west end of Jeju Island to
3861-543: The Yangtze River estuary. The Yellow Sea, excluding the Bohai, extends by about 960 km (600 mi) from north to south and about 700 km (430 mi) from east to west; it has an area of approximately 380,000 km (150,000 sq mi) and a volume of about 17,000 km (4,100 cu mi). Its depth is only 44 m (144 ft) on average, with a maximum of 152 m (499 ft). The sea
3960-545: The Yellow River , Xiaoqing River , Hai River , Luan River , Dai River , Daling River , Xiaoling River, Liao River and Daliao River . There are a few important oil reserves in the vicinity of the gulf, including the Shengli Field . Important islands or island groups in the gulf include the Changshan Archipelago , Juehua Island ( 觉华岛 ; 覺華島 ), Bijia Mountain , Changxing Island , Xizhong Island ,
4059-633: The municipality of Tianjin makes it one of the busiest seaways in the world. The entrance to the Bohai Sea is considered a part of the territorial sea of the People's Republic of China due to the presence of the Miaodao islands . China declared the Bohai sea to be part of its inland waters in 1958. During the Pleistocene , the Bohai Sea experienced numerous glacioeustatic transgressions and regressions , as evidenced by sediment cores sampled from
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4158-478: 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
4257-596: 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
4356-413: The 100 million ton landmark in the near future. The Bohai Bay contains significant oil and gas reserves, which provide much of China's offshore production. The main field in the region, named Shengli , has been exploited since the 1960s. It still produces about half a million barrels a day, but is declining . Production is dominated by Chinese majors ( China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC)
4455-652: 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. Yellow Sea The Yellow Sea , also known as
4554-451: The Chinese, Korean and Japanese ships for centuries. Especially rich in fish are the bottom layers. About 200 fish species are exploited commercially, especially sea bream , croakers , lizard fishes , prawns , cutlassfish , horse mackerel , squid, eel , filefish , Pacific herring , chub mackerel , flounder and jellyfish. The intensity of fishing has been gradually increasing for China and Korea and decreasing for Japan. For example,
4653-646: The East/West Mayi Islands ( 蚂蚁岛 ), Zhu Island ( 猪岛 ; 豬島 ) and She Island ( 蛇岛 ; 蛇島 ). The opening of the Bohai Sea is bounded by the Changshan Archipelago between Dalian 's Lüshunkou District on the southern tip of Liaodong Peninsula , and the Cape of Penglai on the northernmost protrusion of Shandong Peninsula . Due to its proximity to the capital city Beijing and the population of its surrounding provinces exceeding 210 million,
4752-565: 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
4851-586: The Liaodong and Shandong peninsulas. When completed, the tunnel would be 106 kilometers (66 mi) long, making it twice as long as the channel tunnel connecting England and France. In July 2013, a modified plan was announced, involving a 123-kilometer (76 mi)-long tunnel between Dalian , Liaoning and Yantai , Shandong. The tunnel was first proposed by officials in Yantai in 1992, but a clear plan remained elusive. In 2019, construction had still not started, and
4950-483: The Soviet Union with support from Japan have been major drivers of population decline. Species that reside in the area today include spotted seals , and cetaceans such as minke whales , killer whales , false killer whales , and finless porpoises , but nonetheless all the remnants of species listed could be in very small numbers. Historically, large whales were very abundant either for summering and wintering in
5049-547: The Yellow Sea Large Marine Ecosystem. Declines of biodiversity, fisheries and ecosystem services in the Yellow Sea are widespread. The tidal flats of the Yellow Sea are considered endangered. On 1 November 2018, officials from South Korea's Ministry of National Defense confirmed that "peace zones" had been established by the North and South Korean militaries in the Yellow Sea area that touches
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#17327655340965148-536: The Yellow Sea are Incheon , Gunsan and Mokpo , and that for North Korea is Nampho , the outport of Pyongyang . The Bohai Train Ferry provides a shortcut between the Liaodong Peninsula and Shandong . A major naval accident occurred on 24 November 1999 at Yantai , Shandong , China when the 9,000-ton Chinese ferry Dashun caught fire and capsized in rough seas. About 300 people were killed, making it
5247-580: The Yellow Sea), respectively. Major islands of the sea include Anmado , Baengnyeongdo , Daebudo , Deokjeokdo , Gageodo , Ganghwado , Hauido , Heuksando , Hongdo , Jejudo , Jindo , Muuido , Sido , Silmido , Sindo , Wando , Yeongjongdo and Yeonpyeongdo (all in South Korea). The area has cold, dry winters with strong northernly monsoons blowing from late November to March. Average January temperatures are −10 °C (14 °F) in
5346-455: The Yellow Sea. The southern part of the Yellow Sea, including the entire west coast of Korea , contains a 10 km-wide (6.2 mi) belt of intertidal mudflats , which has the total area of 2,850 km (1,100 sq mi) and is maintained by 4–10 m (13–33 ft). Those flats consist of highly productive sediments with a rich benthic fauna and are of great importance for migratory waders and shorebirds. Surveys show that
5445-639: The Yellow and Bohai Seas. For example, a unique population of resident fin whales and gray whales were historically presented, or possibly hosted some North Pacific right whales and Humpback whales (3 whales including a cow calf pair was observed at Changhai County in 2015 ) year-round other than migrating individuals, and many other migratory species such as Baird's beaked whales . Even blue whales , Japanese sea lions , dugongs (in southern regions only), and leatherback turtles used to breed or migrate into Yellow and Bohai seas. Spotted seals are
5544-501: The area is the single most important site for migratory birds on northward migration in the entire East Asian – Australasian Flyway , with more than 35 species occurring in internationally significant numbers. Two million birds, at minimum, pass through at the time, and about half that number use it on southward migration. About 300,000 migrating birds were transiting annually only through the Saemangeum tidal flat area. This estuary
5643-498: The classification of this ecosystem as endangered . In addition to land reclamation , the Yellow Sea ecosystem is facing several other serious environmental problems. Pollution is widespread and deterioration of pelagic and benthic habitat quality has occurred, and harmful algal blooms frequently occur. Invasion of introduced species are having a detrimental effect on the Yellow Sea environment. There are 25 intentionally introduced species and 9 unintentionally introduced species in
5742-475: The depth. The southern waters are warmer at 6–8 °C (43–46 °F). In spring and summer, the upper layer is warmed up by the sun and diluted by the fresh water from rivers, while the deeper water remains cold and saline. This deep water stagnates and slowly moves south. Commercial bottom-dwelling fishes are found around this mass of water, especially at its southern part. Summer temperatures range between 22 and 28 °C (72 and 82 °F). The average salinity
5841-401: The destruction of more than 60% of tidal wetlands around the Yellow Sea coastline in approximately 50 years. Rapid coastal development for agriculture , aquaculture and industrial development are considered the primary drivers of coastal destruction in the region. This degree of loss of area, widespread pollution, algal blooms and declines of invertebrate and vertebrate fauna have resulted in
5940-399: 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
6039-484: 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
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#17327655340966138-576: 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
6237-663: 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
6336-563: The exit of the Bohai Gulf to the Yellow Sea , the Bohai Strait ( 渤海海峡 ; 渤海海峽 ), has become one of busiest sea routes in recent times. Due to the Changshan Island Chain traversing the southern half of the strait, the strait is subdivided into several channels : (from north to south, the most commonly used ones in bold ) There are five major ports along the Bohai Sea rim, with throughputs over 100 million tons, though
6435-413: 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
6534-491: 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
6633-565: 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
6732-586: 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
6831-408: 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
6930-455: 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
7029-425: 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
7128-583: 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
7227-428: The north and 3 °C (37 °F) in the south. Summers are wet and warm with frequent typhoons between June and October. Air temperatures range between 10 and 28 °C (50 and 82 °F). The average annual precipitation increases from about 500 mm (20 in) in the north to 1,000 mm (39 in) in the south. Fog is frequent along the coasts, especially in the upwelling cold-water areas. The sea has
7326-554: The northern part of the Bohai Strait. The Bohai Sea is enclosed by three provinces and one direct-administered municipality from three different regions of China — Liaoning Province (of Northeast China ), Hebei Province and Tianjin Municipality (of North China ), and Shandong Province (of East China ). It is the center of the Bohai Economic Rim , and its proximity to the Chinese capital of Beijing and
7425-411: The only resident species of seal in the Yellow Sea. A sanctuary for these seals is situated at Baengnyeongdo , which is also known for its finless porpoises . Great white sharks have also been known to prey on seals in the area. The coasts of the Yellow Sea are very densely populated, at approximately 250 inhabitants per square kilometer (650/sq mi). The sea waters had been used for fishing by
7524-538: 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
7623-407: The port of Tangshan is further subdivided into Jingtang and Caofeidian: Caofeidian and Jingtang are usually treated as one port for statistical purposes. The ports of Dalian and Yantai are also traditionally considered part of the Bohai rim, even though strictly speaking they lie outside the limits of the sea. The Port of Longkou reached 70 million tons of cargo in 2013, and is expected to reach
7722-414: The production volumes for China rose from 619,000 tonnes in 1985 to 1,984,400 tonnes in 1996. All species are overfished, however, and while the total catchments are rising, the fish population is continuously declining for most species. Navigation is another traditional activity in the Yellow Sea. The main Chinese ports are Dalian , Tianjin , Qingdao and Qinhuangdao . The major South Korean ports on
7821-422: The proposed cost had reached 300 billion yuan ($ 43 billion USD). 38°42′N 119°54′E / 38.7°N 119.9°E / 38.7; 119.9 Chinese language Chinese ( simplified Chinese : 汉语 ; traditional Chinese : 漢語 ; pinyin : Hànyǔ ; lit. ' Han language' or 中文 ; Zhōngwén ; 'Chinese writing') is a group of languages spoken natively by
7920-404: 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 ,
8019-552: 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
8118-509: 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
8217-522: The sea, but may increase to more than 5.6 km/h (3.5 mph) near the coasts. The fastest tides reaching 20 km/h (12 mph) occur in the Myeongnyang Strait between Jindo Island and the Korean Peninsula. The tide-related sea level variations result in a land pass 2.9 km (1.8 mi) long and 10–40 meters (33–131 ft) wide opening for approximately an hour between Jindo and Modo islands. The event occurs about twice
8316-632: The seafloor showing fluvial floodplain conditions during intervals of low sea level. Until the early 20th century, Bo Hai was often called the Gulf of Zhili (Chinese: 直隸海灣 ; pinyin: Zhílì Hǎiwān ) or Gulf of Beizhili ( 北直隸海灣 ; Běizhílì Hǎiwān ). The romanization systems widely used in the West at the time rendered these names as variations of "Jili", "Chihli", "Pechihli", or "Pe-Chihli". Zhili and North Zhili were historic provinces in an area surrounding Beijing that approximately corresponds to what
8415-517: 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
8514-561: 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
8613-623: 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
8712-547: 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
8811-512: 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
8910-416: The water color (see image above). For example, the seaweed production in the area was as high as 1.5 million tonnes in 1979 for China alone. The abundance of all these plant and animal species increases toward the south and indicates a high sea productivity, accounting for the diversity of fish species and high fish yield from the sea. Several species of goby new to science have been discovered recently in
9009-452: 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
9108-561: The worst maritime incident in China. Oil exploration has been successful in the Chinese and North Korean portions of the sea, with the proven and estimated reserves of about 9 and 20 billion tonnes, respectively. However, the study and exploration of the sea is somewhat hindered by insufficient sharing of information between the involved countries. China initiated collaborations with foreign oil companies in 1979, but this initiative declined later. A major oil spill occurred on 16 July 2010 when
9207-517: 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
9306-473: The yellowish colour of the water referenced in the sea's name. The sea annually receives so much sand and silt from rivers such as the Yellow River , that it actually turns into a golden-yellow colour. The seas surrounding Korea, which occupy a corner of Northeast Asia, border the "island nation" from the east, south, and west. Korea has named these the East Sea, South Sea, and West Sea (officially known as
9405-453: 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,
9504-400: Was discovered in 1987, and produces from Oligocene fluvial - deltaic and lacustrine sandstones . Oil spills have been reported frequently in this region: three spills occurred in a two-month timeframe in 2011. In 2024, CNOOC discovered a 100 million ton oilfield in Bohai Sea. In February 2011, China announced that it would build a road and rail tunnel across the Bohai Strait to connect
9603-485: 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
9702-508: Was however dammed by South Korea in 1991–2006 that resulted in drying off the land. Land reclamation also took 65% of the intertidal area (of China, North Korea and South Korea) between the 1950s and 2002, and as of 2005 there were plans to reclaim a further 45%. Populations of oceanic megafauna , such as marine mammals , sea turtles , and larger fish, have decreased in modern times, not only due to pollution but also due to hunting. Japanese industrial whaling and illegal mass operations by
9801-557: Was mostly created for this region), but foreign companies, including ConocoPhillips and Roc Oil Company , are present. The Gudao Field, located in the Zhanhua sedimentary basin , was discovered in 1968, based on gravity, magnetic and seismic surveys conducted between 1963 and 1964. The reservoir includes the Guantao ( Miocene ) and Minghuazhen ( Pliocene ) geologic formations within the dome-like anticline . The Suizhong 36-1 Oil Field
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