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114-515: The Book of Documents ( Chinese : 書經 ; pinyin : Shūjīng ; Wade–Giles : Shu King ) or the Classic of History , is one of the Five Classics of ancient Chinese literature . It is a collection of rhetorical prose attributed to figures of ancient China , and served as the foundation of Chinese political philosophy for over two millennia. The Book of Documents was

228-547: 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

342-469: 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

456-457: 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

570-510: 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

684-599: 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

798-462: 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

912-409: A common human nature that causes people to respond the same way to certain ethical situations. One of the most famous arguments for this is presented when Mencius successfully predicts an observer's immediate reaction to seeing a child about to fall into a well (§2A:6). Mencius argues that all people have innate compassion, and goes further to imply that compassion is a universal duty. Mencius refers to

1026-615: 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

1140-714: 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

1254-412: A family environment. There exist four 'sprouts': 'humanity' ( rén 仁 ), 'appropriateness' ( yì 義 ), 'ritual propriety' ( lǐ 禮 ), and 'wisdom' ( zhì 智 ). The four sprouts are what distinguish humans from other beings; though they are innate, these virtues develop in the acculturation of one's environment, "just as we have four limbs" (§2A:6). Mencius also thinks that there exists

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1368-451: A friendship-based approach to literary criticism: The good scholars of a village befriend other good scholars of the village. The good scholars of the world befriend other good scholars of the world. If befriending the good scholars in the world isn't enough, they also proceed to consider the ancients. But how can they recite their poetry and read their books without knowing what kind of people they are? Therefore, they consider their age. This

1482-523: A less familiar worldview. Fewer than half the passages quoted by these authors are present in the received text. Authors such as Mencius and Xunzi , while quoting the Documents , refused to accept it as genuine in its entirety. Their attitude contrasts with the reverence later shown to the text during the Han dynasty, when its compilation was attributed to Confucius. Many copies of the work were destroyed in

1596-576: 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

1710-513: A physical notion of compassion as a form of duty, as "our sense of duty pleases the heart just as meat pleases the tastebuds" (§4A:2). To Mencius, in acting compassionately, we not only please ourselves physically but also dutifully. The Mencius expands on the Confucian claims about the necessary practices of a good ruler. This consists of 'virtue politics' ( dé zhèng 德政 ), 'benevolent politics' ( rén zhèng 仁政 ), or 'politics that

1824-542: 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

1938-508: 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

2052-578: 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

2166-575: 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

2280-444: Is "proceeding to befriend" [the ancients]. (§5B:8) The idea of knowing authors as people, is seen by Gearney as Mencius's suggestion for the reader to attempt to learn, as best they can, the author's intention when they were creating the text. Mencius emphasises knowing the author as a person, to suggest the importance of the setting and temporal context of a literary work in one's evaluation of it. Though Mencian literary criticism

2394-602: 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

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2508-490: 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,

2622-603: 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

2736-445: 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

2850-586: Is possible to single out Eight Announcements of the early Zhou, directed to the Shang people. Their titles only partially correspond to the modern chapters marked as gao (apart from the nos. 13, 14, 15, 17, 18 that mention the genre, Su Shi names nos. 16 "Zi cai", 19 "Duo shi" and 22 "Duo fang"). As pointed out by Chen Mengjia (1911–1966), announcements and commands are similar, but differ in that commands usually include granting of valuable objects, land or servants to their recipients. Guo Changbao 过常宝 claims that

2964-462: Is seen as having fostered intentionalist hermeneutics in China. Gearney notes that the form of intentionalism within the book differs from the style of traditional Western intentionalist modes of criticism. This difference is mainly to do with Mencius's emphasis on learning the author's contextual settings during the conception of the work, instead of the author's own feelings during its conception. Hence,

3078-443: Is sensitive to the suffering of others' ( bùrěn rén zhī zhèng 不忍人之政 ). These refer to the ideal modes of governance, where enacted policies extend benevolence. Such policies result in a fair material distribution and protection for marginalized members of society. Confucius and Mencius contend that a good ruler must gain the devotion of the people through the exertion of benevolence and goodness; Mencius asserts Confucian ethics as

3192-668: 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

3306-489: 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,

3420-551: Is unclear what happened to these manuscripts. According to the Book of Han , Liu Xiang collated the Old Script version against the three main "Modern Script" traditions, creating a version of the Documents that included both groups. This was championed by his son Liu Xin , who requested in a letter to Emperor Ai the establishment of a boshi position for its study. But this did not happen. Most likely, this edition put together by

3534-501: Is used as an everyday language in Hong Kong and Macau . The designation of various Chinese branches remains controversial. Some linguists and most ordinary Chinese people consider all the spoken varieties as one single language, as speakers share a common national identity and a common written form. Others instead argue that it is inappropriate to refer to major branches of Chinese such as Mandarin, Wu, and so on as "dialects" because

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3648-500: 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

3762-552: 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

3876-428: 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

3990-753: 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

4104-587: The Book of Documents by the recovery between 1993 and 2008 of caches of texts written on bamboo slips from tombs of the state of Chu in Jingmen, Hubei . These texts are believed to date from the late Warring States period, around 300 BC, and thus predate the burning of the books during the Qin dynasty. The Guodian Chu Slips and the Shanghai Museum corpus include quotations of previously unknown passages of

4218-506: The Burning of Books during the Qin dynasty . Fu Sheng reconstructed part of the work from hidden copies in the late 3rd to early 2nd century BC, at the start of the succeeding Han dynasty . The texts that he transmitted were known as the "Modern Script" ( 今文 jīn wén ) because it was written in the clerical script . It originally consisted of 29 chapters, but the "Great Speech" 太誓 chapter

4332-626: 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 a single language. However, their lack of mutual intelligibility means they are sometimes considered to be separate languages in

4446-602: The Documents to illustrate general principles, though it seems that several different versions were in use. Six citations to unnamed chapters of the Documents appear in the Analects . While Confucius invoked the pre-dynastic emperors Yao and Shun , as well as figures from the Xia and Shang dynasties, he complained of the lack of documentation prior to the Zhou. The Documents were cited increasingly frequently in works through

4560-505: The Duke of Zhou and Duke of Shao , uncles of King Cheng who were key figures during his reign (late 11th century BC). They provide insight into the politics and ideology of the period, including the doctrine of the Mandate of Heaven , explaining how the once-virtuous Xia had become corrupt and were replaced by the virtuous Shang, who went through a similar cycle ending in their replacement by

4674-461: The Eastern Jin court a 58-chapter (59 if the preface is counted) Book of Documents as Kong Anguo's version of the text. This version was accepted, despite the doubts of a few scholars, and later was canonized as part of Kong Yingda 's project. It was only in the 17th century that Qing dynasty scholar Yan Ruoqu demonstrated that the "old script" were actually fabrications "reconstructed" in

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4788-533: 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

4902-710: 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

5016-475: The Mencius through a Victorian missionary perspective. The text's ability to transcend culture and time is seen by scholars such as Behuniak as what canonises the work as a world classic. There are seven chapters within the Mencius , each divided into two halves. The book's narrative depicts its characters' extensive dialogues on specific philosophical arguments, alongside Mencius's own reflections upon them in

5130-501: The Mencius was not canonized as one of the Chinese classics until the Song dynasty (960 – 1279). Various interpretations exist of the Mencius as a philosophical and literary text. E. Bruce and A. Taeko Brooks state that these various interpretations belong to a continuous discourse that represents each new generation of readers. Examples are scholars such as James Legge, who opened the text to Western readers by comparatively exploring

5244-595: 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

5358-775: The Spring and Autumn period . Six of these chapters concern figures prior to the first evidence of writing, the oracle bones dating from the reign of the Late Shang king Wu Ding . Moreover, the chapters dealing with the earliest periods are the closest in language and focus to classical works of the Warring States period . The five announcements in the Documents of Zhou feature the most archaic language, closely resembling inscriptions found on Western Zhou bronzes in both grammar and vocabulary. They are considered by most scholars to record speeches of King Cheng of Zhou , as well as

5472-545: The Warring States period . When the Zhou dynasty was ended by the Qin, Mencius and other scholars went to the different kingdoms and advised the rulers and people like in the Jixia Academy . It was during this time that Mencius was able to access, and further developed the philosophical doctrines of Confucius. The creation of the Mencius , serves as a further elaboration on the Confucian school of thought called 'subjective idealism'. Through this work, Mencius developed

5586-478: 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

5700-596: 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

5814-412: The "Old Script" texts was allegedly rediscovered by the scholar Mei Ze during the 4th century, and presented to the imperial court of the Eastern Jin . His version consisted of the 31 modern script texts in 33 chapters, and 18 additional old script texts in 25 chapters, with a preface and commentary purportedly written by Kong Anguo. This was presented as Guwen Shangshu 古文尚書, and was widely accepted. It

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5928-419: The "drift" being referred to here can be understood as the author's intention. In this passage, Mencius poses that when it comes to evaluating a text, its form or structure should not come before the individual phrases. While the individual phrases should not obstruct the authorial intention (the drift) of the work, where the intention is met with the reader's own thoughts to form meaning. Mencius also encourages

6042-702: 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. Mencius (book) Mencius's core ideas on education and human nature were largely shaped during

6156-463: The 3rd or 4th centuries AD. In the transmitted edition, texts are grouped into four sections representing different eras: the legendary reign of Yu the Great , and the Xia , Shang and Zhou dynasties. The Zhou section accounts for over half the text. Some of its modern-script chapters are among the earliest examples of Chinese prose, recording speeches from the early years of the Zhou dynasty in

6270-519: The 4th century BC, including in the Mencius , Mozi and Zuo Zhuan . These authors favoured documents relating to Yao, Shun and the Xia dynasty, chapters now believed to have been written in the Warring States period . The chapters currently believed to be the oldest—mostly relating to the early Zhou—were little used by Warring States authors, perhaps due to the difficulty of the archaic language or

6384-589: The Christian God, and used passages from the Documents in their commentaries on other works. 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 the ethnic Han Chinese majority and many minority ethnic groups in China , as well as by various communities of

6498-616: The Empire within the Four Seas unless he is benevolent; a feudal lord cannot preserve the altars to the gods of earth and grain unless he is benevolent; a Minister or a Counsellor cannot preserve his ancestral temple unless he is benevolent; a junzi or a commoner cannot preserve his four limbs unless he is benevolent. Now if one dislikes death yet revels in cruelty, he is just like someone who drinks alcohol beyond his capacity while he dislikes drunkenness. (§4A:3) Mencius also counsels against

6612-565: 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

6726-731: The Modern Script texts, the "Old Script" material had 16 more chapters. However, this seems to have been lost at the end of the Eastern Han dynasty , while the Modern Script text enjoyed circulation, in particular in Ouyang Gao's  [ zh ] study, called the Ouyang Shangshu ( 歐陽尚書 ). This was the basis of studies by Ma Rong and Zheng Xuan during the Eastern Han. In 317 AD, Mei Ze presented to

6840-444: The Zhou dynasty section concerns the reign of King Cheng of Zhou (r. c.  1040 –1006 BC) and the king's uncles, the Duke of Zhou and Duke of Shao . The last four Modern Script chapters relate to the later Western Zhou and early Spring and Autumn periods. Not all of the Modern Script chapters are believed to be contemporaneous with the events they describe, which range from the legendary emperors Yao and Shun to early in

6954-460: The Zhou. The "Timber of Rottlera", "Numerous Officers", "Against Luxurious Ease" and "Numerous Regions" chapters are believed to have been written somewhat later, in the late Western Zhou period. A minority of scholars, pointing to differences in language between the announcements and Zhou bronzes, argue that all of these chapters are products of a commemorative tradition in the late Western Zhou or early Spring and Autumn periods. Chapters dealing with

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7068-450: The basis for achieving an ideal state. These views are expressed in a passage detailing an encounter between Mencius and King Xuan of Qi ( r.  319–301 BC ), who rules without practising benevolent politics. In this encounter, Mencius refers to the king's actions as 'looking for fish by climbing a tree' ( yuán mù qiú yú 緣木求魚 ; §2A:4). Other passages address benevolence in politics more directly: An Emperor cannot keep

7182-525: The beginning of the Western Han dynasty. A longer version of the Documents was said to be discovered in the wall of Confucius 's family estate in Qufu by his descendant Kong Anguo in the late 2nd century BC. This new material was referred to as " Old Script " ( gǔwén 古文 ), because they were written in the script that predated the standardization of Chinese script during the Qin. Compared to

7296-399: 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

7410-484: 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

7524-404: The earliest material in the Documents , from the 2nd millennium BC, most scholars believe they were written during the Warring States period . The Shang dynasty section contains five chapters, of which the first two – the "Speech of King Tang " and " Pan Geng " – recount the conquest of the Xia by the Shang and their leadership's migration to a new capital (now identified as Anyang ). The bulk of

7638-576: 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

7752-416: The field of literary discourse in China, mainly in a direction for Chinese literary criticism that resembles Western intentionalist hermeneutics . This concept of interpretation, termed "Mencian literary criticism", is seen as having dominated the methodology of literary criticism and interpretation in China since its emergence. Traditionally, Western intentionalism judges the meaning of a literary work by

7866-413: 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

7980-479: The forger had cut and pasted text, and even suggested Huangfu Mi as a probable culprit. In the 17th century, Yan Ruoqu 's unpublished but widely distributed manuscript entitled Evidential analysis of the Old Script Documents ( 尚書古文疏證 ; Shàngshū gǔwén shūzhèng ) convinced most scholars that the rediscovered Old Script texts were fabricated in the 3rd or 4th centuries. New light has been shed on

8094-491: 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

8208-399: The form of short sentences. Most of the chapters that explore moral philosophy are presented as conversations with other thinkers, while those offering political counsel are depicted as conversations with rulers. Frequently explored is Mencius's most famous idea that there exists intrinsic good in human nature. His argument that each person possessed an inborn potential of virtue, contrasts with

8322-618: 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

8436-638: The graph for announcement ( 誥 ), known since the Oracle bone script , also appears on two bronze vessels ( He zun and Shi Zhi gui 史[臣+舌]簋 ), as well as in the "six genres" 六辞 of the Zhou li In many cases a speech is introduced with the phrase Wáng ruò yuē ( 王若曰 'The king seemingly said'), which also appears on commemorative bronze inscriptions from the Western Zhou period, but not in other received texts. Scholars interpret this as meaning that

8550-570: The imperial librarians was lost in the chaos that ended the Western Han dynasty, and the later movement of the capital and imperial library. A list of 100 chapter titles was also in circulation; many are mentioned in the Records of the Grand Historian , but without quoting the text of the other chapters. The shu were designated one of the Five Classics when Confucian works made official by Emperor Wu of Han , and jīng ('classic')

8664-480: The intentions of the author at the moment of its conception. Jane Gearney notes that there exist various passages within the Mencius that propose a theory of literary interpretation that resembles this tradition—an example being "one who explains poetry should not let the form obstruct the phrases or let the phrases obstruct the drift. One should meet the drift with one's own thoughts—that's how to obtain it." (§5A:4) In her evaluation of this passage, Gearney notes that

8778-586: 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

8892-480: The late 11th century BC. Although the other three sections purport to record earlier material, most scholars believe that even the New Script chapters in these sections were composed later than those in the Zhou section, with chapters relating to the earliest periods being as recent as the 4th or 3rd centuries BC. The history of the various versions of the Documents is particularly complex, and has been

9006-528: 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

9120-468: The late Shang and the transition to Zhou use less archaic language. They are believed to have been modelled on the earlier speeches by writers in the Spring and Autumn period, a time of renewed interest in politics and dynastic decline. The later chapters of the Zhou section are also believed to have been written around this time. The "Gaozong Rongri" chapter comprises only 82 characters, and its interpretation

9234-455: 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

9348-425: 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

9462-583: 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

9576-519: The next. It is the longest speech in the Documents , and is unusual in its extensive use of analogy. Scholars since the Tang dynasty have noted the difficult language of the "Pan Geng" and the Zhou Announcement chapters. Citing the archaic language and worldview, Chinese scholars have argued for a Shang dynasty provenance for the "Pan Geng" chapters, with considerable editing and replacement of

9690-447: The original documents were prepared scripts of speeches, to be read out by an official on behalf of the king. The chapters are grouped into four sections representing different eras: the semi-mythical reign of Yu the Great , and the three ancient dynasties of the Xia , Shang and Zhou . The first two sections – on Yu the Great and the Xia dynasty – contain two chapters each in the Modern Script version, and though they purport to record

9804-509: The orthodox arrangement, the work consists of 58 chapters, each with a brief preface traditionally attributed to Confucius, and also includes a preface and commentary, both purportedly by Kong Anguo. An alternative organization, first used by Wu Cheng , includes only the Modern Script chapters, with the chapter prefaces collected together, but omitting the Kong preface and commentary. In addition, several chapters are divided into two or three parts in

9918-462: The orthodox form. With the exception of a few chapters of late date, the chapters are represented as records of formal speeches by kings or other important figures. Most of these speeches are of one of five types, indicated by their titles: Classical Chinese tradition lists six types of Shu , beginning with dian 典 , Canons (2 chapters in the Modern corpus). According to Su Shi (1037–1101), it

10032-538: 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

10146-413: The political use of violence and force: When one uses force to win people's allegiance ( yǐ lì fú rén 以力服人 ), as opposed to subdue others by virtue ( yǐ dé fú rén 以徳服人 ), one does not win people's hearts and minds ( xīn fú 心服 ); they submit to your force because they are not strong enough. (§4A:7) Asides from its influences on Neo-Confucianism . The Mencius has also had an effect on

10260-588: The position of contemporary figure Yang Zhu (440 – 360 BC), who argued that that human nature is motivated by self-interest. Alongside this, the Mencius largely expands on Confucian ideas of political ruling, and benevolent politics. In the Mencius , debates about morality and human nature are in direct dialogue with Confucian views. The theory of natural goodness is explored through a concept of 'sprouts'. According to Mencius, 'sprouts' are innate moral habits that are present at birth, and are related to one's 'family affection' ( qīn 親 ), and likewise grow in

10374-413: The pre-Qin seal script . They were transcribed into clerical script and interpreted by Confucius' descendant Kong Anguo . Han dynasty sources give contradictory accounts of the nature of this find. According to the commonly repeated account of the Book of Han , the "Old Script" texts included the chapters preserved by Fu Sheng, another version of the "Great Speech" chapter and some 16 additional ones. It

10488-516: The products of philosophical schools of the late Warring States period. Some chapters, particularly the "Tribute of Yu", may be as late as the Qin dynasty . When Jesuit scholars prepared the first translations of Chinese Classics into Latin, they called the Documents the "Book of Kings", making a parallel with the Books of Kings in the Old Testament . They saw Shang Di as the equivalent of

10602-519: The provenance of the allegedly rediscovered "Old Script" texts in Mei Ze's edition. In the 16th century, Mei Zhuo ( 梅鷟 ) published a detailed argument that these chapters, as well as the preface and commentary, were forged in the 3rd century AD using material from other historical sources such as the Zuo Commentary and the Records of the Grand Historian . Mei identified the sources from which

10716-404: 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 ,

10830-552: 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

10944-509: 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

11058-517: 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

11172-561: 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

11286-459: The subject of a long-running literary and philosophical controversy. According to a later tradition, the Book of Documents was compiled by Confucius (551–479 BC) as a selection from a much larger group of documents, with some of the remainder being included in the Yi Zhou Shu . However, the early history of both texts is obscure. Beginning with Confucius, writers increasingly drew on

11400-467: The subject of one of China's oldest literary controversies, between proponents of different versions of the text. A version was preserved from Qin Shi Huang 's burning of books and burying of scholars by scholar Fu Sheng , in 29 chapters ( piān 篇 ). This group of texts were referred to as "Modern Script" (or "Current Script"; jīnwén 今文 ), because they were written with the script in use at

11514-399: The theory of natural goodness ( xingshan ), that confers that all people have an intrinsic cardinal virtues, and that these virtues are developed in the same way that knowledge is cultivated. The Mencius came to be regarded as one of the most important texts that explores the philosophy of Confucianism—mainly due to its philosophical dialogue with the Analects . Despite its importance,

11628-623: 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

11742-547: 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

11856-512: 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

11970-423: The vocabulary by Zhou dynasty authors accounting for the difference in language from Shang inscriptions. The chapters dealing with the legendary emperors, the Xia dynasty and the transition to Shang are very similar in language to such classics as the Mencius (late 4th century BC). They present idealized rulers, with the earlier political concerns subordinate to moral and cosmological theory, and are believed to be

12084-452: 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

12198-467: The work. The Tsinghua Bamboo Slips includes a version of the transmitted text "Golden Coffer", with minor textual differences, as well as several documents in the same style that are not included in the received text. The collection also includes two documents that the editors considered to be versions of the Old Script texts "Common Possession of Pure Virtue" and "Command to Fu Yue ". Other authors have challenged these straightforward identifications. In

12312-465: 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

12426-453: 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,

12540-400: Was added to its name. The term Shàngshū 'venerated documents' was also used in the Eastern Han. The Xiping Stone Classics , set up outside the imperial academy in 175–183 but since destroyed, included a Modern Script version of the Documents . Most Han dynasty scholars ignored the Old Script version, and it disappeared by the end of the dynasty. A version of the Documents that included

12654-473: Was already disputed in Western Han commentaries. Pointing to the similarity of its title to formulas found in the Anyang oracle bone inscriptions , David Nivison proposed that the chapter was written or recorded by a collateral descendant of Wu Ding in the late Shang period some time after 1140 BC. The "Pan Geng" chapter (later divided into three parts) seems to be intermediate in style between this group and

12768-485: 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

12882-442: Was lost shortly afterwards and replaced by a new version. The remaining 28 chapters were later expanded into 30 when Ouyang Gao divided the "Pangeng" chapter into three sections. During the reign of Emperor Wu , renovations of the home of Confucius are said to have uncovered several manuscripts hidden within a wall, including a longer version of the Documents . These texts were referred to as "Old Script" because they were written in

12996-536: Was the basis of the Shàngshū zhèngyì ( 尚書正義 'Correct interpretation of the Documents' ) published in 653 and made the official interpretation of the Documents by imperial decree. The oldest extant copy of the text, included in the Kaicheng Stone Classics (833–837), contains all of these chapters. Since the Song dynasty , starting from Wu Yu ( 吳棫 ), many doubts had been expressed concerning

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