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96-596: The college motto is "Holding forth the Word of Life" (Phil 2:16) and "Holding fast the Faithful Word" (Titus 1:9). Far Eastern Bible College was established on 17 September 1962 as an autonomous institution independent of ecclesiastical control. It shares premises with the Life Bible-Presbyterian Church (LBPC), but the two organisations had a falling out over a doctrinal issue. In 2008,

192-469: 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

288-457: 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

384-510: 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

480-599: 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

576-462: 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

672-615: 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

768-714: 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

864-576: 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

960-542: 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

1056-508: 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

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1152-678: 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

1248-631: 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

1344-575: 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

1440-602: 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

1536-709: 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

1632-637: Is actually closely related to the VPI doctrine which both parties [i.e., FEBC and LBPC ] adhere to,” (rejecting LBPC's contention in [59] of the Court of Appeal Judgement that it is “an entirely different creature from the VPI doctrine");” (ii) “the College, in adopting the VPP doctrine, has not deviated from the fundamental principles which guide and inform the work of the College right from its inception, and as expressed in

1728-490: 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,

1824-603: 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

1920-445: 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

2016-668: 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

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2112-489: 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,

2208-501: 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

2304-500: 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

2400-552: 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

2496-428: 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

2592-753: 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

2688-533: 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

2784-710: 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

2880-595: 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

2976-680: The Novena Planning Area , within the Central Region of Singapore . It is the first and oldest Bible-Presbyterian church in Singapore and Southeast Asia, and the mother church of Bible-Presbyterian churches in the region. Church members are referred to as "Lifers." The pastor is the Rev Charles Seet. The church motto is "Holding Forth the Word of Life" (Philippians 2:16). Life Bible-Presbyterian Church ("LBPC")

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3072-502: The VPP doctrine is a deviation from the principles contained within the Westminster Confession . Far Eastern Bible College subscribes to the system of theology called "Reformed" as expressed in the Westminster Confession of Faith , and its Larger and Shorter Catechisms (1643–1648). The college rejects the documentary hypothesis , source criticism , Form criticism , and redaction criticism . The "FEBC Anthem"

3168-460: The Westminster Confession ”; (iii) “[i]t is not inconsistent for a Christian who believes fully in the principles contained within the Westminster Confession (and the VPI [Verbal Plenary Inspiration] doctrine) to also subscribe to the VPP doctrine”; and (iv) “[i]n the absence of anything in the Westminster Confession that deals with the status of the apographs, we [the Court] hesitate to find that

3264-478: 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

3360-596: 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

3456-587: The Bible: I swear in the name of the triune God—Father, Son and Holy Spirit—that the Bible is none other than the voice of Him that sitteth upon the throne. Every book of it, every chapter of it, every verse of it, every word of it, every syllable of it, every letter of it, is the direct utterance of the Most High. The Bible is none other than the Word of God, not some part of it more, some part of it less, but all alike

3552-618: The Bible: Chronology of Events II" in The Burning Bush, July 2015, Volume 21, Number 2, pp. 95–98. ) LBPC first rejected on 18 November 2013 FEBC's offer of a love gift of SGD350,000 made on 5 November 2013, based on “the higher law of Christian charity,” as full and final settlement of any and all claims by LBPC up to the date of the Scheme despite FEBC having received legal advice that it had strong grounds to resist

3648-488: The Bible: Chronology of Events II" in The Burning Bush, July 2015, Volume 21, Number 2, pp. 95–98. ) On the termination of Suit DC1956/2013R, Seet wrote briefly, without any details, at the end of his pastoral message “Live At Peace With All Men” in LBPC's weekly of 4 January 2015: “Regarding what the church claimed from the college for using the premises, both parties have agreed to an out-of-court settlement. This concludes

3744-459: The Court of Appeal, in accordance with the Abrahamic principle of Genesis 13:8–9 , that the two parties be housed on separate land parcels – 9/9A Gilstead Road and 10 Gilstead Road (collectively, the “Premises”) – located on opposite sides of the road, with FEBC allowing LBPC to have the first pick. After an unsuccessful attempt by the parties to mutually agree on a scheme (the “Scheme”) on how

3840-626: The English Bible like the NIV , NASV , ESV , RSV , TEV , CEV , TLB , etc., but the Board of Elders of LBPC disagrees. LBPC wrote in its weekly of 13 July 2008 regarding “1 Corinthians 6 which teaches us not to take fellow Christians to court.” However, LBPC commenced two lawsuits against FEBC: (i) Suit 648 in the High Court of Singapore on 15 September 2008; and (ii) DC1956/2013R in

3936-544: The High Court and Suit DC1956/2013R in the Subordinate (later renamed State) Courts (see above). 1°18′56″N 103°50′18″E  /  1.3156°N 103.8382°E  / 1.3156; 103.8382 Chinese language Chinese ( simplified Chinese : 汉语 ; traditional Chinese : 漢語 ; pinyin : Hànyǔ ; lit. ' Han language' or 中文 ; Zhōngwén ; 'Chinese writing')

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4032-610: The High Court less than eight months later. Seet and the Elders of LBPC had in January 2008 written to their church members in “Mark Them Which Cause Divisions” that “the mouths of heretics must be stopped” within the Gilstead Road premises from teaching VPP, which Seet and the Elders viewed to be heresy, “for the sake of protecting the flock of God from being influenced and infiltrated by their teaching.” In Suit 648, LBPC sued

4128-565: 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

4224-547: The Premises are to be maintained and used by the College and the Church, the parties appeared before the Court of Appeal on 11 April 2012 to make their submissions on the terms of the Scheme as well as the course to take to move forward. The appellate court in a Supplementary Judgment issued on 25 July 2012 ruled that a High Court judge be designated to further hear the parties and to conduct a detailed examination before drawing up

4320-427: The Premises “free of charge for this extended period." LBPC's pastoral announcement gave as background and impression that because the Court of Appeal had on 26 April 2011 ruled (with the High Court here) that FEBC is separate and independent from LBPC, LBPC then requested FEBC to pay the sum claimed as FEBC's obligation to contribute towards the past maintenance and upkeep of the premises. But LBPC had already taken

4416-485: The SGD350,000 offered on 5 November 2013 (because of further legal costs incurred)—and this was accepted on 14 August 2014 despite LBPC threatening on 4 August 2014 to transfer the suit to the High Court to sue for a higher sum of SGD615,000, which action never materialised (although an application for transfer was filed on 8 August 2014) and the suit was finally discontinued on 21 January 2015. (See details in "The Battle for

4512-446: The Scheme to set out the parties’ respective rights and obligations in relation to the use, occupation and maintenance of the Premises. The Scheme was finalised on 27 November 2014 with certain areas in the Premises allocated for the exclusive use of LBPC and certain areas allocated for the exclusive use of FEBC while other areas were designated for shared use by both parties and with the periods for each to use them fully defined. FEBC

4608-622: The Subordinate Courts of Singapore (later renamed the State Courts of Singapore ) on 27 June 2013. Brutus Balan in a letter dated 30 January 2008, addressed to Seet and the Board of Elders of LBPC with a plea to them to avoid carrying out their legal threat to evict the College from the Gilstead Road premises, had concluded: “You [LBPC leaders] have the most inconsistent and contradictory position over this matter and yet

4704-453: The apex court in the Singapore legal system, looked at Article VIII Ch 1 in the WCF and – in overturning the High Court decision – ruled on 26 April 2011 that: Despite expressing in “Mark Them Which Cause Divisions” about the need for “protecting the flock of God from being influenced and infiltrated by [FEBC's] teaching” (see above), LBPC did not take up FEBC's suggestion of 9 March 2012 made to

4800-506: The appeal and in 2011 a sum of SGD188,519 for the costs and disbursements in respect of the trial below (i.e., the High Court trial which was held from 25 to 29 January 2010 ). In Suit DC1956/2013R, LBPC sued FEBC over money, and not doctrine. After filing the Writ of Summons for the suit, LBPC claimed in their pastoral announcement on 14 July 2013 that FEBC had failed and refused to honour its commitment to pay for past maintenance and upkeep of

4896-530: The charge of heresy is thrown at FEBC. It has ceased to be a theological debate and has become personal. Now the legal threat to evict the college over your own inconsistent stand is heartless … The fiery darts of evil have struck deep the armor-less leadership. Isn't there any one in the Life BP church session with wisdom and understanding? Will not the silent church rise to wake the dead? God have mercy!” However, this did not stop LBPC from commencing Suit 648 in

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4992-554: The church sued the college over what it considered to be "deviant Bible teachings", and sought to force FEBC to leave the Gilstead Road premises. The FEBC faculty had been promoting a doctrine known as " Verbal Plenary Preservation ", which states that the text of Scripture has been perfectly preserved. However the church failed as the Court of Appeal , the apex court in the Singapore legal system, held on 26 April 2011 that (i) “the VPP doctrine

5088-590: The claim. Then, in efforts to have the parties resolve their dispute by alternative dispute resolution, the State Courts arranged for mediation in their Primary Dispute Resolution Centre with two District Judges (Ong Chin Rhu and Joyce Low) appointed as mediators. Despite FEBC offering at the first mediation meeting on 29 January 2014 to pay LBPC the sum of SGD250,000 sued for in Suit DC1956/2013R and, at

5184-516: The college directors, including Timothy Tow, over allegedly “deviant Bible teachings” in an attempt to force FEBC to leave the Gilstead Road premises. Bearing the burden of proof, LBPC however failed to adduce the requisite expert evidence to show that FEBC's adoption of the VPP doctrine is inconsistent with the fundamental doctrines of the College, viz. the Westminster Confession of Faith (“WCF”). The Court of Appeal of Singapore ,

5280-491: The college. In 1995 it was replaced with the present journal format to allow for longer articles such as term papers, graduate theses, and faculty write-ups. The papers published reflect the reformed, premillennial, and separatist stance of the college. Life Bible-Presbyterian Church Life Bible-Presbyterian Church ( Abbreviation : LBPC ; Chinese : 笃信圣经长老会生命堂 ) is a reformed , fundamental , and separatist Bible-Presbyterian church located at Gilstead Road, under

5376-464: The congregation) for the claim in Suit DC1956/2013R to be resolved expeditiously and amicably without the need for adjudication by the Courts, notwithstanding the filing of the Writ of Summons. However, the matter was not resolved expeditiously and amicably as it went to trial before LBPC requested amicable settlement when faced with the prospect of losing another lawsuit. (See details in "The Battle for

5472-400: The courts. (See details in "The Battle for the Bible: Chronology of Events II" in The Burning Bush, July 2015, Volume 21, Number 2, Events 23 November 2013, 29 January 2014, 19 February 2014 and 6 March 2014, pp. 95–96. ) Although LBPC sued for only SGD250,000, being restricted by the jurisdictional limit based on the venue or court (viz the State Courts in this instance) where the action

5568-399: 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

5664-484: 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

5760-576: 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

5856-413: 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

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5952-491: 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

6048-618: 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

6144-650: The historic Westminster Assembly together with the Larger Catechism and the Shorter Catechism . The Far Eastern Bible College ("FEBC") shares premises with LBPC, but it had a falling out with LBPC over Verbal Plenary Preservation (VPP). FEBC teaches that God has supernaturally preserved each and every one of His inspired Hebrew/Aramaic OT words and Greek NT words to the last jot and tittle so that God's people will always have in their possession His infallible and inerrant Word kept intact without

6240-586: 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

6336-408: 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

6432-723: The letters from LBPC's lawyers dated 25 January 2013, 4 February 2013 and 12 March 2013, which "were not written in the form of a request, but a demand coupled with threats of legal action," contained no unambiguous or amicable offer "to accept the sum previously tendered.” The “sum previously tendered” by FEBC was SGD225,000 and this was included in the sum of SGD250,000 claimed by LBPC in Suit DC1956/2013R as owing by FEBC for utilities and maintenance from March 1970 to May 2008 even though LBPC had on their own accord returned on 28 January 2008 all FEBC cheques totaling SGD225,000 for contributions to such expenses and advised FEBC not to tender any further cheques as they were prepared to let FEBC occupy

6528-411: The loss of any word, and that the infallible and inerrant words of Scripture are found in the faithfully preserved Traditional/Byzantine/Majority manuscripts and fully represented in the Printed and Received Text (or Textus Receptus ) that underlie the Reformation Bibles best represented by the KJV, and not in the corrupted and rejected texts of Westcott and Hort that underlie the many modern versions of

6624-475: The maintenance suit amicably.” The brief statement here on the ending of Suit DC1956/2013R is understandable as Seet's pastoral announcement of 14 July 2013 before the lawsuit's commencement was rebutted by Jeffrey Khoo for inaccuracy without any rejoinder from Seet, and LBPC had also contradicted itself by letting its claim proceed to trial despite Seet asking in the pastoral announcement to pray that “[the] matter will be resolved expeditiously and amicably, without

6720-455: 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

6816-425: 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

6912-583: 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

7008-539: The need for adjudication by the Courts.” (See above.) Seet had also in 2004 preached a sermon titled "Can Christians Sue One Another?" based on 1 Cor 6:1-8 and this was published as an article in the LBPC's weekly of 23 May 2004 with the conclusion that Christians should follow the example of the Lord Jesus Christ to absorb whatever grief or loss caused to them and not sue fellow Christians in secular courts. The apparent motivation for Seet's sermon and article

7104-418: The next two mediation meetings on 19 February 2014 and 6 March 2014, an additional sum of SGD5,000 per month until the implementation of the Scheme, as full and final settlement of all claims, LBPC rejected FEBC's offers so that the mediation process had to be terminated by the mediators for directions to be given regarding procedures to be followed and the setting down for trial of the matter to be adjudicated by

7200-538: 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

7296-520: The premises at 9&9A Gilstead Road after they [LBPC] had made many requests to FEBC and indicated their being prepared to accept the amount offered by FEBC as an amicable compromise. FEBC disputed this in True Life Bible-Presbyterian Church's weekly of 11 August 2013 by publishing that contrary to LBPC's “pastoral announcement,” there was no indication from LBPC that they intended to accept an “amicable compromise” and

7392-404: 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 ,

7488-552: 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

7584-509: 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

7680-517: 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

7776-561: 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

7872-623: 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

7968-547: 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

8064-512: 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

8160-478: The utterance of Him that sitteth upon the throne, faultless, unerring, supreme. So help me God. Amen. The college publishes a theological journal , The Burning Bush , a biannual academic journal . It is distributed for free to students and alumni of the college and members of the Bible-Presbyterian churches . The editor-in-chief is Jeffrey Khoo. The journal was established in 1971 as a newsletter of

8256-655: The view in 2008 that FEBC had become separate and independent from the church after its registration as a charity in January 2004 and the courts could also find FEBC not to be a ministry of the church but a separate charity from the outset. No amount was alleged or claimed as owing by FEBC to LBPC in Suit 648. In fact, LBPC returned “the sum previously tendered” on 28 January 2008 and advised FEBC not to tender any further cheques for maintenance expenses before commencing Suit 648 on 15 September 2008 to evict FEBC. LBPC's pastoral announcement of 14 July 2013 also requested prayer (from

8352-452: 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

8448-517: 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

8544-453: 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,

8640-456: Was allotted 1,811.88 sqm of space in the Premises for its exclusive use whereas the Church was allotted 1,999.72 sqm for its exclusive use. The details of the Scheme can be found in FEBC's semi-annual theological journal, The Burning Bush , July 2015, vol. 21, Number 2, pp. 83–91. For the costs order made against LBPC, it paid to FEBC on 17 December 2014 a sum of SGD75,000 for the costs of

8736-596: Was commenced, it was clear that LBPC had wanted much more than this sum. However, after a 2-day open court trial before District Judge Seah Chi Ling on 24–25 July 2014 when it became clear that FEBC would be able to successfully make a “no case to answer” submission (upon resumption of the court hearing), LBPC requested FEBC to make an offer for settlement which FEBC obliged even though it had viewed LBPC's claim to be devoid of any legal basis and FEBC's earlier offers of settlement (see above) had been rejected. FEBC responded with an offer of SGD300,000 on 8 August 2014 – lower than

8832-660: Was completed on 30 April 1990. In 1988, the Synod of the Bible-Presbyterian Church was dissolved, but LBPC and other Bible-Presbyterian churches continue to exist under their respective names. Article 4.1 of LBPC's constitution states that the church's doctrine shall be in accordance with that system commonly called "the Reformed Faith" as expressed in the Confession of Faith ” as set forth by

8928-692: Was established by Timothy Tow , who in 1950 became pastor of the Life Church English Service at Say Mia Tng a Chinese Presbyterian Church at Prinsep Street (not to be confused with Prinsep Street Presbyterian Church ). In 1955 Tow and others left the Chinese Presbyterian Synod to form the Bible-Presbyterian Church and LBPC was established. In 1963, LBPC moved into new premises in 9 & 9A Gilstead Road. The acquisition of 10 Gilstead Road

9024-485: 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

9120-668: Was to pre-empt or deter those Lifers who had stood with Timothy Tow on the VPP doctrine from suing LBPC in the courts and staking their claim to the Gilstead Road premises as Tow had started a new church, True Life Bible-Presbyterian Church, by holding worship services in rented premises at the Regional English Language Centre (RELC) in Orange Grove Road. Seet's sermon and article boomeranged on him and dented his credibility and that of LBPC as they later commenced two lawsuits against FEBC: Suit 648 in

9216-492: Was written by the founding principal to music composed by M. D. Buell and arranged by Dave Haas. The early years of hardships and difficulties moved the founding principal to write the lyrics while on a train journey from Singapore to Kuala Lumpur in 1966. Since 1979, the Dean Burgon Oath has been taken by members of the board of directors and Faculty at every annual convocation to publicly affirm their allegiance to

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