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86-536: Historical records only identify Murong Xiang as a great-grandson of Murong Huang , who was the founder of Former Yan and the father of Later Yan's founder, Murong Chui . He also had an elder brother named, Murong Qing (慕容青), who was the Prince of Nan'an during Later Yan. Under the Later Yan, Murong Xiang received the peerage of Duke of Kaifeng, and by 396, he was serving as Administrator of Shanggu . In 396, amidst

172-469: 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

258-457: 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

344-510: 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

430-599: 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

516-599: A burial after his death. Tuoba Gui, who was reportedly devastated by Tuoba Gu's death, had Murong Xiang dug up and beheaded again. Murong Huang Murong Huang ( Chinese : 慕容皝 ; 297 – 25 October 348 ), courtesy name Yuanzhen (元真), also known by his posthumous name as the Emperor Wenming of Former Yan (前燕文明帝), was the founding monarch of the Xianbei -led Former Yan dynasty of China. When he first succeeded his father Murong Hui in 333, he carried

602-462: 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

688-615: 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

774-714: 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

860-485: A general named Kunuguan Ji (庫傉官驥) to reinforce Murong Xiang. Kunuguan Ji arrived after Murong Xiang's defeat to Tuoba Gui, but instead of helping each other, fighting ensued between Kunuguan Ji and Murong Xiang. Murong Xiang killed Kunuguan Ji and massacred his clan. Murong Xiang also did the same to the Intendant of Zhongshan, Fu Mo (苻謨), and his family. In late June 397, Tuoba Gui, unable to fix his supply issue, lifted

946-569: A hostage to Yan. Tuoba Gu remained in Zhongshan when Murong Bao left, but after Murong Xiang became emperor, Murong Xiang executed him to raise morale in the city. Murong Xiang's reign would only last two months. During his brief reign, Murong Xiang proved to be a cruel and neglectful ruler. Records described him as having an addiction to wine and overly engaging himself in pleasurable activities. Throughout his rule, he indiscriminately executed over 500 people in Zhongshan, including Kezuhun Tan. There

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1032-576: 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

1118-542: 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

1204-508: 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

1290-678: 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

1376-631: 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

1462-575: 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

1548-569: A vassal and requesting a joint attack against the Duan. Later Zhao's emperor Shi Hu was very pleased, and they agreed on an attack in 338. In the spring, they launched the attacks. Murong Huang quickly attacked and pillaged the Duan cities north of its capital Lingzhi (令支, in modern Tangshan , Hebei ), defeating Duan Lan's forces. He then withdrew, and when Later Zhao forces arrived, Duan Liao no longer dared to face them but instead abandoned Lingzhi and fled. Lingzhi surrendered to Later Zhao. Shi Hu

1634-451: A withdrawal. (While his comments were intended to force Duan Lan to agree to a withdrawal, Murong Han's comments at this time stating that Murong Huang was "false and treacherous" may indicate what his true feelings about Murong Huang were.) In early 336, Murong Huang made a daring surprise attack, personally leading his army by a route that Murong Ren did not expect—over the frozen Bohai —arriving at Pingguo. Murong Ren, not realizing that it

1720-602: 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

1806-709: 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

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1892-490: 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,

1978-603: 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

2064-445: 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

2150-668: 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

2236-489: 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,

2322-501: 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

2408-500: 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

2494-552: 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

2580-428: 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

2666-753: 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

Murong Xiang - Misplaced Pages Continue

2752-509: The Duan tribe , he humbly sought peace with the Duan and married one of Duan Jie's daughters. From this union came Murong Huang (in 297) and two of his younger brothers, Murong Ren (慕容仁) and Murong Zhao (慕容昭). During Murong Hui's rule as tribal chief, the Jin dynasty's central government was in constant turmoil and eventually collapsed due to infighting and agrarian rebellions, the strongest of which

2838-598: The Eastern Jin -bestowed title Duke of Liaodong, but in 337 claimed the title of Prince of Yan, which is traditionally viewed as the founding date of Former Yan. ( Emperor Cheng of Jin did retroactively recognize Murong Huang's princely title in 341 after much debate among Eastern Jin officials.) After his son Murong Jun completely broke away from the Eastern Jin and claimed the title of emperor in January 353, he

2924-533: 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

3010-710: 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

3096-595: 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

3182-478: 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

3268-596: 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

3354-465: The Duan, extending into modern northern Hebei. In early 339, after Duan Liao sent conflicting requests to Later Zhao and Former Yan, requesting surrender, the Later Zhao and Former Yan forces engaged, and Murong Ke again won a great victory over Later Zhao. Murong Huang honored Duan Liao as a guest and merged Duan's remaining forces into his own. Later that year, however, Duan planned a rebellion and

3440-581: The Duke of Liaodong title as well. Jin messengers sent to bestow on Murong Huang the same titles his father had were intercepted and detained by Murong Ren. Also in 334, Duan forces, under the commands of Murong Han and Duan Liao's brother Duan Lan (段蘭) attacked Liucheng (柳城, in modern Zhaoyang , Liaoning ), and Murong Huang's forces sent to relieve Liucheng suffered a great defeat at Duan forces' hands. Duan Lan wanted to further advance on Jicheng, but Murong Han, fearful that his own tribe would be destroyed, ordered

3526-565: 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

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3612-467: The Prince of Dai , cementing an alliance between the two Xianbei powers. (The two would, however, engage in occasional battles after Princess Murong's death in 342.) He also sent messengers to the Jin capital to formally request from Emperor Cheng the Prince of Yan title—explaining that he needed it to increase his authority over the people but that he was still loyal to Jin. In 341, after several months of debate, Emperor Cheng decided to grant Murong Huang

3698-666: The Wei army's food supply was running low. The Prince of Wei, Tuoba Gui , ordered his general, Tuoba Yi , to lift his siege of Ye and move to Julu to gather grains at Yangcheng (楊城; in present-day Yi County, Hebei ). Murong Xiang used this opportunity to launch an attack with 6,000 infantry on the Wei camps. Tuoba Gui instructed his general, Zhangsun Fei , to feign a retreat. As Murong Xiang pursued Zhangsun Fei, Tuoba Gui attacked his rear and routed him. 5,000 of Murong Xiang's men died, while Tuoba Gui captured 700 others, although he soon pardoned and released them. Previously, Murong Bao had sent

3784-671: The Yuwen tribe south and merged them into Former Yan's own population. Later that year, Murong Huang, still apprehensive of Murong Han's abilities, forced him to commit suicide. In 345, Murong Huang stopped using Jin's era names —which is viewed by some as the sign of Former Yan's formal independence. In October 348, Murong Huang grew ill and died. He was succeeded by his son Murong Jun . Chinese language Chinese ( simplified Chinese : 汉语 ; traditional Chinese : 漢語 ; pinyin : Hànyǔ ; lit. ' Han language' or 中文 ; Zhōngwén ; 'Chinese writing')

3870-591: The capital Jicheng (棘城, in modern Jinzhou , Liaoning ) from his defense post of Pingguo (平郭, in modern Yingkou , Liaoning ) and for Murong Zhao to rise within Jicheng to join him, ready to divide the dukedom if they succeeded. Murong Ren soon launched a surprise attack, but scouts by Murong Huang discovered the attack and readied for the attack, so Murong Ren instead captured the cities in the eastern dukedom ( Liaodong Peninsula ). Forces that Murong Huang sent to attack him were repelled, and Murong Ren claimed for himself

3956-414: The city for nearly 20 days, and Later Zhao forces were forced to withdraw; Murong Huang then sent his son Murong Ke to attack the retreating Later Zhao troops, scoring a great victory, and the only Later Zhao force remaining intact was that of Shi Min , Shi Hu's adopted grandson. After Later Zhao's withdrawal, Murong Huang recaptured the cities that had rebelled. He also took over cities formerly ruled by

4042-399: 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

4128-484: 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

4214-576: 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

4300-413: 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

4386-491: 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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4472-618: 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

4558-586: 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

4644-528: 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

4730-455: 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

4816-425: 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

4902-583: 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

4988-559: The oncoming Wei onslaught, the people of Zhongshan quickly elected Murong Xiang as their leader. Zhongshan was reluctant to surrender to Wei, as they feared Wei would execute them en masse just like they did to the Yan soldiers after the Battle of Canhe Slope two years prior. Under Murong Xiang, the people of Zhongshan put up a strong defence and prevented Wei from breaching the city. Later, Murong Bao's party, by chance, discovered Murong Lin along

5074-514: The only domain in northern China still under titular Jin rule, carrying the Jin-bestowed title of the Duke of Liaodong. He entrusted Murong Huang with many important military tasks. These included fighting the powerful fellow Xianbei Yuwen tribe in 320 and 325. In early 322, Murong Hui named Murong Huang heir apparent . However, Murong Hui also greatly favored Murong Huang's brothers Murong Ren, Murong Zhao, and particularly Murong Han , who

5160-538: 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

5246-597: The princely title. In 340, Murong Han, who had fled to the Yuwen after the Duan were defeated but who had subsequently been mistrusted and mistreated by the Yuwen, agreed to return under Murong Huang's command, and he fled back to Liaodong. Murong Huang gave him a military command. In 341, Murong Huang moved his capital from Jicheng to a newly built city, Longcheng (龍城, in modern Zhaoyang , Liaoning ). In 344, Murong Huang, with Murong Han as his deputy, attacked Yuwen, greatly defeating it and forcing its chief Yuwen Yidougui (宇文逸豆歸) to flee. The Former Yan forces forcibly moved

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5332-404: 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 ,

5418-552: 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

5504-509: 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

5590-531: The siege of Zhongshan to replenish his grains in Hejian . Having repelled the Wei army, Murong Xiang declared himself Emperor of Yan and changed the reign era title of Jianshi (建始). He also handed out imperial offices and appointed the Duke of Xiping, Kezuhun Tan (可足渾潭), as Grand General of Chariots and Cavalry, and Prefect of the Masters of Writing. Earlier, in 391, Tuoba Gui had sent his brother, Tuoba Gu (拓拔觚), as

5676-517: 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

5762-561: 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

5848-447: The title of Duke of Liaodong, which his father had carried. Murong Huang carried out strict and harsh enforcement of laws and regulations, which unsettled some of his subordinates. His suspicions of Murong Han, Murong Ren, and Murong Zhao also became clear. Murong Han, in fear, fled to the Duan tribe (Dukedom of Liaoxi ) and became a general for the Duan chief Duan Liao (段遼). Murong Ren and Murong Zhao conspired to have Murong Ren attack

5934-574: 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

6020-547: 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

6106-512: 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

6192-516: The war between Later Yan and Northern Wei, Wei troops attacked and killed Yan's Administrator of Guangning (廣寧郡; in present-day Zhangjiakou , Hebei ), Liu Kangni (劉亢泥). This prompted Murong Xiang to abandon his post and flee for the Yan capital in Zhongshan. In 397, Northern Wei placed Zhongshan with the Emperor of Yan, Murong Bao, under siege. Just as concerning, Murong Bao's brother, Murong Lin, had rebelled and his whereabouts were unknown. Murong Bao

6278-418: The way to Longcheng, causing Murong Lin to flee to Wangdu . However, once Murong Lin was at Wangdu, Murong Xiang sent an army to attack him. Murong Xiang's army captured Murong Lin's wife and children, but Murong Lin himself escaped to the hills. In May 397, Murong Bao defeated his rebellious son, Murong Hui . Murong Hui fled to Zhongshan, but Murong Xiang had him executed. As the siege of Zhongshan continued,

6364-452: 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

6450-517: 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

6536-453: 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,

6622-700: Was a major attack, came out of the city to fight Murong Huang, who defeated and captured him, forcing him to commit suicide. In November 337, Murong Huang claimed for himself the title of Prince of Yan—a title that Jin had previously considered but declined to confer on his father Murong Hui. This is commonly viewed as the founding of Former Yan, particularly because he also set up a governmental structure mirroring Jin's imperial government, albeit with different office titles intentionally showing inferiority to Jin. That same year, Murong Huang, countering his father's prior policy of having no contact at all with Jin's rival Later Zhao, sent messengers to Later Zhao promising to be

6708-493: Was afraid that Murong Lin was making his way to the pivotal city of Longcheng (龍城, in modern Jinzhou , Liaoning ). Therefore, Murong Bao abandoned Zhongshan and brought his army to secure Longcheng. Members of the Murong clan in Zhongshan left the city, all except for Murong Xiang, who had either not completed his preparations to leave by the time they left or had failed to catch up with them. Left with only themselves to fend off

6794-515: Was also a famine that struck Zhongshan, and when his people asked him for permission to forage for food outside the city, Murong Xiang denied them. As a result, many perished in the famine. Desperate for a new leader, the people of Zhongshan looked to Murong Lin, who was in hiding since his last encounter with Murong Xiang. In the autumn of 397, Murong Xiang sent his general, Zhang Xiang (張驤) to collect taxes in Changshan commandery. While Zhang Xiang

6880-463: Was happy about the victory but angry that Murong Huang withdrew before the armies could meet, and he decided to turn his armies against Murong Huang instead. With Later Zhao's massive armies arriving in Former Yan territory, nearly all of the cities submitted to Later Zhao except the capital Jicheng. Murong Huang considered fleeing, but under advice of his general Muyu Gen , he stayed and defended

6966-485: 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

7052-473: Was killed by Murong Huang. (However, the Duan clan was not wiped out, and many members of the Duan clan later served as generals, officials, and imperial consorts of the Murongs.) From this point on, Former Yan forces would conduct yearly raids against Later Zhao's border region. They would also periodically attack the Yuwen tribe and Goguryeo . Also in 339, Murong Huang married his sister to Tuoba Shiyiqian ,

7138-439: Was posthumously elevated to imperial status. In the Book of Jin , Murong Huang was described as a strong looking tall man (approximately 1.91 metres). Murong Huang's father Murong Hui had initially been a Xianbei chief who fought Jin forces during the late reign of Emperor Wu of Jin , Jin's founding emperor, but he submitted as a Jin vassal in c. June 289. Under constant attack by fellow Xianbei chief Duan Jie (段階) of

7224-515: Was regarded very highly as a general. Murong Huang became jealous and suspicious of these brothers, feelings which became known to them and which would sow the seeds of future troubles. On 4 June 333, Murong Hui died. Murong Huang took over his administration under the Jin-bestowed office of General Pingbei (平北將軍) and sent messengers to report his father's death to Emperor Cheng of Jin and request commission official for himself. Soon after, with Jin commission expected but not yet arrived, he claimed

7310-454: Was the Xiongnu state Han-Zhao . As a result, many refugees arrived in the relatively safe domain of Murong Hui's, and as he treated the ethnically Han refugees with kindness, most chose to stay, greatly strengthening his power, and as Jin forces in the north gradually fell to Han-Zhao's capable general Shi Le (who later established his own independent state Later Zhao ), Murong Hui became

7396-481: Was there, Murong Lin and his remaining troops blended into Zhang Xiang's men and followed them back to Zhongshan. Murong Lin and his followers secretly entered Zhongshan when the gates were open, and once inside, they captured Murong Xiang and beheaded him. Murong Lin subsequently declared himself Emperor of Yan. Shortly after Murong Lin's declaration, however, Northern Wei attacked Zhongshan again. In November 397, Zhongshan finally fell to Wei. Murong Xiang had been given

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