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102-465: Mandarin Chinese is the most commonly spoken variety of the Chinese language today, with over 1 billion total speakers (approximately 12% of the world population), of which about 900 million are native speakers, making it the most spoken first language in the world and second most spoken overall . It is the official variety of Chinese in mainland China , Taiwan , and Singapore . Meanwhile, Cantonese

204-487: A koiné language based on various northern varieties. When Jesuit missionaries learned this standard language in the 16th century, they called it "Mandarin", from its Chinese name Guānhuà ( 官话 ; 官話 ; 'language of the officials'). In everyday English, "Mandarin" refers to Standard Chinese , which is often called simply "Chinese". Standard Mandarin Chinese is based on Beijing dialect , with some lexical and syntactic influence from other Mandarin dialects. It

306-541: A combination of any of these is also common. In Malaysia , Mandarin has been adopted by local Chinese-language schools as the medium of instruction with the standard based on that of Singapore. However, it is not as widespread in daily life among the Malaysian Chinese community, as Hokkien speakers continue to form a plurality among the ethnic Chinese population and Cantonese serves as the common language (especially in commerce and local media). An exception

408-565: A common form of speech developed based on the dialects of the North China Plain around the capital, a language referred to as Old Mandarin. New genres of vernacular literature were based on this language, including verse, drama and story forms, such as the qu and sanqu poetry. The rhyming conventions of the new verse were codified in a rime dictionary called the Zhongyuan Yinyun (1324). A radical departure from

510-536: A final glottal stop . Many Mandarin varieties, including the Beijing dialect, retain retroflex initial consonants, which have been lost in southern varieties of Chinese. The Chinese capital has been within the Mandarin-speaking area for most of the last millennium, making these dialects very influential. Some form of Mandarin has served as a lingua franca for government officials and the courts since

612-579: A large geographical area that stretches from Yunnan in the southwest to Xinjiang in the northwest and Heilongjiang in the northeast. This is generally attributed to the greater ease of travel and communication in the North China Plain compared to the more mountainous south, combined with the relatively recent spread of Mandarin to frontier areas. Most Mandarin varieties have four tones . The final stops of Middle Chinese have disappeared in most of these varieties, but some have merged them as

714-455: A lower pitch and by the late Tang dynasty , each of the tones had split into two registers conditioned by the initials. When voicing was lost in all languages except the Wu subfamily, this distinction became phonemic and the system of initials and tones was rearranged differently in each of the major groups. The Zhongyuan Yinyun shows the typical Mandarin four-tone system resulting from a split of

816-521: A medium of instruction. This is largely influenced by the fact that Malaysian Chinese comprise nearly a quarter of the country's population and have traditionally been highly influential in the country's economic sector. While Mandarin is the variant of Chinese used in Chinese-language schools, speakers of Hokkien form a plurality in the ethnic Chinese population and Cantonese serves as the common language, especially in commerce and media. With

918-838: A member of Academia Sinica. Starting in 2023, election is to be restricted to citizens of the Republic of China . This change led Academia Sinica to discuss formally classifying non-Taiwanese members as honorary or foreign members. Such a classification system would require amendments to the Organic Act of the Academia Sinica. A group of academicians proposed that membership be further restricted to Taiwan passport or national identification card holders. Academia Sinica has its main campus located in Nangang , Taipei , and runs over 40 research stations distributed across

1020-552: A monthly stipend of 40,000 NTD , roughly $ 1,200 or € 1,150 in their first year and up to 50,000 NTD, roughly $ 1,500 or € 1,400 in their third year. Applications can normally be sent starting in December and the submission deadline is usually set on March 31, for enrollment in September of the same year. Lectures start around the middle of September and end around the middle of June, with slight variations mostly depending on

1122-585: A region where two or more languages are spoken" and Francophonie "French-speaking, collectively, the French-speaking world" (commonly abbreviating the Organisation internationale de la Francophonie ). Haun Saussy contrasted the English lexicon lacking an inclusive term like Sinophonie or Sinophonia , and thus using Sinophone to mean both "Chinese-speaking, especially in a region where it

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1224-580: A second appointment or joint professorship at these universities. In addition, Academia Sinica established joint PhD programs in biological sciences with Taiwan's universities, such as the Doctoral Degree Program in Marine Biotechnology with National Taiwan Ocean University . Through these mechanisms, the faculty at Academia Sinica give lecture courses and supervise graduate students. Since 2002, Academia Sinica set up

1326-617: A separate top-level group, but this remains controversial. The Language Atlas of China calls the remainder of Mandarin a "supergroup", divided into eight dialect groups distinguished by their treatment of the Middle Chinese entering tone (see Tones below): The Atlas also includes several unclassified Mandarin dialects spoken in scattered pockets across southeastern China, such as Nanping in Fujian and Dongfang on Hainan . Another Mandarin variety of uncertain classification

1428-426: A three-year program for gifted and talented high school students interested in the biological sciences. To enroll, students must first pass an entrance exam at the start of 10th grade (first year for Taiwanese senior high schools). During 10th grade, students attend expert lectures and visit the various laboratories on campus. During 11th and 12th grade, students enter a lab of their choice and gain hands-on experience in

1530-573: Is James C. Liao , an expert in metabolic engineering , systems biology and synthetic biology . Academia Sinica, which means "Chinese Academy", was founded in 1928 in Nanking , then capital of the Republic of China , with its first meeting held in Shanghai . By December 1948, all fourteen institutes of the Academia Sinica had agreed to move from Nanking to Taiwan alongside other institutions of

1632-723: Is Mandarin with 1.12 billion speakers (921 million native speakers), followed by Yue (which includes Cantonese ) with 85 million speakers (84 million native). Other branches of the Chinese language subgroup with over 2 million speakers include: Wu with 82 million (81.7 million native), Min Nan with 49 million (48.4 million native), Hakka with 48.2 million, Jin with 47 million, Xiang with 37.3 million, Gan with 22.1 million, Min Bei with 11 million, Min Dong with 10.3 million, Huizhou with 4.6 million, and Pu-Xian Min with 2.5 million. Below

1734-471: Is a minority language" and "all Chinese-speaking areas, including China and Taiwan , Chinese-speaking world ". "Sinophone" operates as a calque on "Francophone", as the application of the logic of Francophonie to the domain of Chinese extraterritorial speech. But that analogy is sure to hiccup, like all analogies, at certain points. Some, but not all, Francophone regions are populated by descendants of French emigrants, as virtually all of Sinophonia (I think)

1836-650: Is a table of the Chinese-speaking population in various countries and territories: Mandarin Chinese Transcriptions: Mandarin ( / ˈ m æ n d ər ɪ n / MAN -dər-in ; simplified Chinese : 官话 ; traditional Chinese : 官話 ; pinyin : Guānhuà ; lit. 'officials' speech') is a group of Chinese language dialects that are natively spoken across most of northern and southwestern China and Taiwan. The group includes

1938-436: Is an honorary lifetime privilege without remuneration. They do not necessarily perform research or reside at the Academia Sinica campus. According to their own expertise, academicians are grouped into three divisions: Mathematics and Physical Sciences, Life Sciences, and Social Sciences and Humanities. A maximum number of ten new members is allocated to each of the three divisions during the biennial convocation. The eligibility of

2040-518: Is apparently Gyami , recorded in the 19th century in the Tibetan foothills, who the Chinese apparently did not recognize as Chinese. Some northwestern Mandarin varieties in the Qinghai–Gansu sprachbund have undergone drastic changes in phonology, lexicon and grammar. A syllable consists maximally of an initial consonant, a medial glide , a vowel, a coda, and tone . In the traditional analysis,

2142-474: Is appointed by the president of the Republic of China (Taiwan) from three candidates recommended by the Council Meeting. The president of Academia Sinica must be an academician. After the appointment, the president serves a five-year term and can serve up to two consecutive terms. Academia Sinica's current president is James C. Liao , a biochemist, who replaced Chi-Huey Wong , a biological chemist and

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2244-567: Is in the state of Johor , where Mandarin is increasingly used alongside Cantonese as a lingua franca in part due to Singaporean influence. As in Singapore, the local colloquial variant of Mandarin exhibits influences from Cantonese and Malay. In northern Myanmar , a Southwestern Mandarin variant close to the Yunnanese dialect is spoken by local Chinese and other ethnic groups. In some rebel group -controlled regions, Mandarin also serves as

2346-820: Is lost after apical initials in several areas. Thus Southwestern Mandarin has /tei/ "correct" where the standard language has dui /twei/ . Southwestern Mandarin also has /kai kʰai xai/ in some words where the standard has jie qie xie /tɕjɛ tɕʰjɛ ɕjɛ/ . This is a stereotypical feature of southwestern Mandarin, since it is so easily noticeable. E.g. hai "shoe" for standard xie , gai "street" for standard jie . Mandarin dialects typically have relatively few vowels. Syllabic fricatives , as in standard zi and zhi , are common in Mandarin dialects, though they also occur elsewhere. The Middle Chinese off-glides /j/ and /w/ are generally preserved in Mandarin dialects, yielding several diphthongs and triphthongs in contrast to

2448-450: Is one of the official languages of Taiwan . The Taiwanese standard of Mandarin differs very little from that of mainland China, with differences largely in some technical vocabulary developed from the 1950s onwards. While the spoken standard of Taiwanese Mandarin is nearly identical to that of mainland China, the colloquial form has been heavily influenced by other local languages, especially Taiwanese Hokkien . Notable differences include:

2550-478: Is populated by descendants of Chinese emigrants. Other regions, the majority in both area and population, are Francophone as a result of conquest or enslavement. That might be true of some areas of China too, but in a far more distant past. And at another level, the persistence of French had to do with the exportation of educational protocols by the Grande Nation herself, something that wasn't obviously true of

2652-596: Is the official spoken language of the People's Republic of China (PRC) and Taiwan (Republic of China, ROC), as well as one of the four official languages of Singapore , and a high-prestige minority language in Malaysia . It also functions as the language of instruction in mainland China and Taiwan. It is one of the six official languages of the United Nations , under the name "Chinese". Chinese speakers refer to

2754-608: Is the official variety of Chinese in Hong Kong and Macau and is also widely spoken among significant Overseas Chinese communities in Southeast Asia as well as the rest of the world. The etymology of Sinophone stems from Sino- "China; Chinese" (cf. Sinology ) and -phone "speaker of a certain language" (e.g. Anglophone , Francophone ). Edward McDonald (2011) claimed the word sinophone "seems to have been coined separately and simultaneously on both sides of

2856-407: Is the only other Chinese language that is widely taught as a foreign language, in part due to the global economic importance of Hong Kong and its widespread presence in significant Overseas Chinese communities. Ethnologue estimates the total number of Sinophones at about 1.4 billion worldwide as of 2020, the vast majority (1.3 billion) of whom are native speakers. The most spoken branch of Chinese

2958-579: Is the sole official language of both the People's Republic of China (PRC) and the Republic of China (ROC, Taiwan) as well as one of the four official languages of Singapore . It is also one of the six official languages of the United Nations . Cantonese is an official language of Hong Kong and Macau (alongside English and Portuguese respectively), where it is the dominant variety of Chinese rather than Mandarin. Overseas Chinese and Chinese-speaking communities are found worldwide, with

3060-542: Is used by linguists to refer to the northern dialects recorded in materials from the Yuan dynasty. Native speakers who are not academic linguists may not recognize that the variants they speak are classified in linguistics as members of "Mandarin" (or so-called "Northern dialects") in a broader sense. Within Chinese social or cultural discourse, there is not a "Mandarin" identity based on language; rather, there are strong regional identities centred on individual dialects because of

3162-599: Is wholly identical to the Beijing dialect . The written forms of Standard Chinese are also essentially equivalent, although simplified characters are used in mainland China and Singapore, while traditional characters remain in use in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau. Singapore has followed mainland China in officially adopting simplified characters. Mandarin is spoken across northern and southwestern China, with some pockets in neighbouring countries. Unlike their compatriots on

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3264-513: The Beijing dialect , the basis of the phonology of Standard Chinese , the official language of China and Taiwan. Because Mandarin originated in North China and most Mandarin dialects are found in the north, the group is sometimes referred to as Northern Chinese ( simplified Chinese : 北方话 ; traditional Chinese : 北方話 ; pinyin : Běifānghuà ; lit. 'northern speech'). Many varieties of Mandarin, such as those of

3366-607: The Cyrillic script . The classification of Chinese dialects evolved during the 20th century, and many points remain unsettled. Early classifications tended to follow provincial boundaries or major geographical features. In 1936, Wang Li produced the first classification based on phonetic criteria, principally the evolution of Middle Chinese voiced initials. His Mandarin group included dialects of northern and southwestern China, as well as those of Hunan and northern Jiangxi . Li Fang-Kuei 's classification of 1937 distinguished

3468-609: The Max Planck Institutes of Germany , Taiwan's Academia Sinica covers three major academic divisions: The research stations in Taiwan include: The research sites abroad include: In general Academia Sinica is a non-teaching institution, but it has very close collaboration with the top research universities in Taiwan, such as National Taiwan University , National Tsing Hua University , National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University and National Central University . Many research fellows from Academia Sinica have

3570-524: The National Language Unification Commission finally settled on the Beijing dialect in 1932. The People's Republic, founded in 1949, retained this standard, calling it pǔtōnghuà ( simplified Chinese : 普通话 ; traditional Chinese : 普通話 ; lit. 'common speech'). Some 54% of speakers of Mandarin varieties could understand the standard language in the early 1950s, rising to 91% in 1984. Nationally,

3672-645: The Quebec English sense) "without English or French as their mother tongue", including sinophones defined as "Cantonese/Mandarin speakers". The Oxford English Dictionary does not yet include Sinophone , but records 1900 as the earliest usage of the French loanwords Francophone for "French-speaking" and Anglophone for "English-speaking". The French language – which first used Sinophone to mean "Chinese-speaking" in 1983 (CNRTL 2012) – differentiates Francophone meaning "French-speaking, especially in

3774-857: The TIGP International Internship Program (TIGP-IIP) is an intensive, predoctoral , summer research training program for two months that prepares its participating interns with the necessary knowledge and skills for future research or career development through rigorous hands-on training. Successful applicants from around the world will receive for each month a stipend of 30,000 NTD and a round-trip ticket to Taiwan. The program highlights include internship at an applicant-chosen host lab, visits to Academia Sinica facilities and partner institutions, field trips in Taiwan and basic Mandarin lessons. Many institutes of Academia Sinica offers their own summer internship programs for undergraduate students in Taiwan. Academia Sinica also offers

3876-585: The Taiwan Strait . The institution was low on monetary funds, and reopened with the Institute of History and Philology in December 1954. In the same year, its main campus was constructed in Jiuzhuang  [ zh ] , Nangang, Taipei. Due to the importance of agriculture to the economy of Taiwan , efforts were made to revive the Institute of Botany. The second convocation of the Academia Sinica

3978-533: The government of the Republic of China as a result of the Chinese Civil War . In the end, only the Academia Sinica's Institute of History and Philology was relocated to Taiwan, because the head of the Institute of Mathematics, Jiang Lifu , resigned his position in June 1949, and never traveled to Taiwan. Of the 81 inaugural research fellows appointed by the Academia Sinica prior to its move, nine crossed

4080-558: The rime table tradition that had evolved over the previous centuries, this dictionary contains a wealth of information on the phonology of Old Mandarin. Further sources are the 'Phags-pa script based on the Tibetan alphabet, which was used to write several of the languages of the Mongol empire, including Chinese and the Menggu Ziyun , a rime dictionary based on 'Phags-pa. The rime books differ in some details, but overall show many of

4182-480: The "even" tone and loss of the entering tone, with its syllables distributed across the other tones (though their different origin is marked in the dictionary). Similarly, voiced plosives and affricates have become voiceless aspirates in the "even" tone and voiceless non-aspirates in others, another distinctive Mandarin development. However, the language still retained a final -m , which has merged with -n in modern dialects and initial voiced fricatives. It also retained

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4284-479: The 14th century. In the early 20th century, a standard form based on the Beijing dialect, with elements from other Mandarin dialects, was adopted as the national language . Standard Chinese is the official language of China and Taiwan , as well as one of the four official languages of Singapore . It is also used as one of the official languages of the United Nations . Recent increased migration from Mandarin-speaking regions of China and Taiwan has now resulted in

4386-475: The 18th century, and as a result the Northeastern Mandarin dialects spoken there differ little from the Beijing dialect . The Manchu people of the area now speak these dialects exclusively; their native language is only maintained in northwestern Xinjiang , where Xibe , a modern dialect, is spoken. The frontier areas of northwest China were colonized by speakers of Mandarin dialects at

4488-424: The Beijing accent, and also take some elements from other sources, and deviate from the Beijing dialect in vocabulary, grammar, and pragmatics . Comparison of dictionaries produced in the two areas will show that there are few substantial differences. However, both versions of "school-standard" Chinese are often quite different from the Mandarin varieties that are spoken in accordance with regional habits, and neither

4590-502: The French EFEO ( L'École française d'Extrême-Orient ; French School of Asian Studies) was hosted by the Institute of Modern History, AS, from 1992 to 1996 and since 1996 by the Institute of History and Philology. Its research projects center on the local and cultural history of Taiwan and China, and it organizes conferences and talks, support visiting scholars and students, and hosts EFEO fellows. Academia Sinica currently sponsors

4692-611: The Jiaxu manuscript (Chinese: 甲戌本 ; pinyin: Jiǎxū běn ) until his death. The fifth president, Yuan T. Lee , won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for "contributions to the dynamics of chemical elementary processes". The Convocation of Academia Sinica consists of 281 academicians , including 105 domestic and 176 overseas appointed scientists. Seven academicians of Academia Sinica are Nobel laureates. Academician membership

4794-517: The Mandarin group, pointing out that the Lower Yangtze dialects also retain the glottal stop. The southern boundary of the Mandarin area, with the central Wu , Gan and Xiang groups, is weakly defined due to centuries of diffusion of northern features. Many border varieties have a mixture of features that make them difficult to classify. The boundary between Southwestern Mandarin and Xiang is particularly weak, and in many early classifications

4896-713: The Middle Kingdom in recent decades but now, with the Confucius Institutes, is perhaps taking form. (2012) English Sinophonia was the theme of an international conference organized by Christopher Lupke, President of the Association of Chinese and Comparative Literature, and hosted by Peng Hsiao-yen, Senior Researcher in the Institute of Chinese Literature and Philosophy, ( Academia Sinica 2012) on "Global Sinophonia" – Chinese Quanqiu Huayu Wenhua 全球華語文化 (literally "global Chinese-language culture"). In

4998-596: The Northwestern dialects are the most diverse, particularly in the province of Shanxi . The linguist Li Rong proposed that the northwestern dialects of Shanxi and neighbouring areas that retain a final glottal stop in the Middle Chinese entering tone (plosive-final) category should constitute a separate top-level group called Jin . He used this classification in the Language Atlas of China (1987). Many other linguists continue to include these dialects in

5100-612: The Pacific" in 2005, by Geremie Barmé of Australia National University and Shu-mei Shih of UCLA . Barmé (2008) explained the "Sinophone world" as "one consisting of the individuals and communities who use one or another—or, indeed, a number—of China-originated languages and dialects to make meaning of and for the world, be it through speaking, reading, writing or via an engagement with various electronic media." Shih (2004:29) noted, "By 'sinophone' literature I mean literature written in Chinese by Chinese-speaking writers in various parts of

5202-651: The Parsons Foundation Professor and Chair of the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at the University of California, Los Angeles , as the 11th president on 21 June 2016. The list of past presidents also includes Hu Shih , a philosopher and essayist, and a key contributor to Chinese liberalism and language reform in his advocacy for the use of vernacular Chinese , as well as an influential redology scholar and holder of

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5304-526: The Qing dynasty novel Dream of the Red Chamber and beyond, there developed a literature in written vernacular Chinese ( 白话 ; 白話 ; báihuà ). In many cases, this written language reflected Mandarin varieties and since pronunciation differences were not conveyed in this written form, this tradition had a unifying force across all the Mandarin-speaking regions and beyond. Hu Shih , a pivotal figure of

5406-592: The Southwest (including Sichuanese ) and the Lower Yangtze , are not mutually intelligible with the standard language (or are only partially intelligible). Nevertheless, Mandarin as a group is often placed first in lists of languages by number of native speakers (with nearly one billion). Mandarin is by far the largest of the Chinese dialect groups ; it is spoken by 70 percent of all Chinese speakers over

5508-557: The Taiwan International Graduate Program (TIGP), open to local and international students for PhD programs. All courses at TIGP are conducted in English . Students can choose their advisor among a faculty selected for the program out of outstanding researchers and professors appointed at Academia Sinica or at one of the partner universities (or both). Currently, admittance to the programme guarantees

5610-567: The Tibetan script and "Chinese-language", or Sinophone, Tibetan writers. Even though the main purpose of these scholars' use of the term is denotative, their underlying intent is to clarify contrast by naming: in highlighting a Sinophone Chinese American literature, Wong exposes the anglophone bias of scholars and shows that American literature is multilingual; Crossley, Rawski, and Lipman emphasize that Muslims in China have divergent languages, histories, and experiences; Schiaini- Vedani and Maconi suggest

5712-516: The academicians is not restricted to the residents of Taiwan or Republic of China citizens. More than half of the academicians are overseas scholars and scientists. At the convocation, the academicians elect new academicians and honorary academicians, and elect members to the Council of Academia Sinica. The convocation can also recommend policies to the government on academic research. The academicians also have responsibilities to carry out research at

5814-424: The academy supports research activities in mathematical and physical sciences , to life sciences , and to humanities and social sciences. As an educational institute, it provides PhD training and scholarship through its English-language Taiwan International Graduate Program in biology , agriculture , chemistry , physics , informatics , and earth and environmental sciences . The current president since 2016

5916-720: The campus and to the north by the National Biotechnology Research Park. The National Biotechnology Research Park, finished in 2017 and inaugurated in October 2018 by Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen , is located about 500 m north of the main campus and 500 m south of the Nankang Software Park , with the Nangang station to the west and the Taipei Nangang Exhibition Center MRT station to

6018-414: The capital moved to Beijing in 1421, though the speech of the new capital emerged as a rival standard. As late as 1815, Robert Morrison based the first English–Chinese dictionary on this koiné as the standard of the time, though he conceded that the Beijing dialect was gaining in influence. By the middle of the 19th century, the Beijing dialect had become dominant and was essential for any business with

6120-485: The country and throughout the world. The main campus in Jiuzhuang  [ zh ] , Nangang was constructed in 1954. In addition to the Central Office of Administration and 28 institutes and research centers, the main campus has 10 museums or memorial halls open to the public, as well as an ecological pond, a forest park, a Tudigong temple (Fude Temple 福德宮 ), and Sifen Creek ( 四分溪 ), which runs through

6222-556: The country, coupled with a strong decline in usage of other Chinese variants. Standard Singaporean Mandarin is nearly identical to the standards of China and Taiwan, with minor vocabulary differences. It is the Mandarin variant used in education, media, and official settings. Meanwhile, a colloquial form called Singdarin is used in informal daily life and is heavily influenced in terms of both grammar and vocabulary by local languages such as Cantonese, Hokkien, and Malay. Instances of code-switching with English, Hokkien, Cantonese, Malay, or

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6324-469: The distinction between velars and alveolar sibilants in palatal environments, which later merged in most Mandarin dialects to yield a palatal series (rendered j- , q- and x- in pinyin ). The flourishing vernacular literature of the period also shows distinctively Mandarin vocabulary and syntax, though some, such as the third-person pronoun tā ( 他 ), can be traced back to the Tang dynasty. Until

6426-419: The dominant variants of Chinese , with the former traditionally serving as a lingua franca amongst most ethnic Chinese in the region. In Western countries with large ethnic Chinese populations, more established Chinese communities use Cantonese, although Mandarin is increasingly spoken by newer arrivals. Malaysia is the only country outside of the Chinese-speaking world that permits the usage of Chinese as

6528-607: The early 20th century, formal writing and even much poetry and fiction was done in Literary Chinese , which was modeled on the classics of the Warring States period and the Han dynasty . Over time, the various spoken varieties diverged greatly from Literary Chinese, which was learned and composed as a special language. Preserved from the sound changes that affected the various spoken varieties, its economy of expression

6630-785: The east. It is home to four Academia Sinica centers for translational medicine , innovation , incubation , and bioinformatics service, as well as the Biotechnology Development Center of the Ministry of Economic Affairs , the Food and Drug Administration of the Ministry of Health and Welfare , and the National Laboratory Animal Center of the Ministry of Science and Technology . Three physical sciences institutes, Mathematics, Astronomy, and Atomic and Molecular Sciences, are located in

6732-612: The economic and political rise of the Sinophone world since the latter half of the 20th century, particularly China itself starting in the 1980s, Mandarin Chinese has increasingly become a popular foreign language throughout the world. While not as widespread as a standard foreign language at the scale of English, French, Spanish, or German, student enrollment rates and courses in Mandarin have rapidly grown in East and Southeast Asia and Western countries. Besides standard Mandarin, Cantonese

6834-491: The empire using a common language based on Mandarin varieties, known as Guānhuà . Knowledge of this language was thus essential for an official career, but it was never formally defined. Officials varied widely in their pronunciation; in 1728, the Yongzheng Emperor , unable to understand the accents of officials from Guangdong and Fujian , issued a decree requiring the governors of those provinces to provide for

6936-510: The features characteristic of modern Mandarin dialects, such as the reduction and disappearance of final plosives and the reorganization of the Middle Chinese tones. In Middle Chinese, initial stops and affricates showed a three-way contrast between tenuis , voiceless aspirated and voiced consonants. There were four tones , with the fourth or "entering tone", a checked tone comprising syllables ending in plosives ( -p , -t or -k ). Syllables with voiced initials tended to be pronounced with

7038-413: The first half of the twentieth century, wrote an influential and perceptive study of this literary tradition, entitled "A History of Vernacular Literature" ( Báihuà Wénxuéshǐ ). Until the mid-20th century, most Chinese people living in many parts of South China spoke only their local variety. As a practical measure, officials of the Ming and Qing dynasties carried out the administration of

7140-425: The government's request, although the government has never requested any task. Academicians are elected annually, with nominations open in July and ending in October. Outcome of election to academicians are publicly announced in July the following year. Election to the academy is regarded a national honor in Taiwan. Up until the 34th convocation of academicians in 2022, any scientist of Chinese descent could be elected

7242-409: The imperial court. The variant of Mandarin as spoken by educated classes in Beijing was made the official language of China by the Qing dynasty in the early 1900s and the successive Republican government. In the early years of the Republic of China , intellectuals of the New Culture Movement , such as Hu Shih and Chen Duxiu , successfully campaigned for the replacement of Literary Chinese as

7344-550: The language being one of the more frequently used varieties of Chinese among Chinese diaspora communities. It is also the most commonly taught Chinese variety . The English word "mandarin" (from Portuguese mandarim , from Malay menteri , from Sanskrit mantrī , mantrin , meaning 'minister or counsellor') originally meant an official of the Ming and Qing empires. Since their native varieties were often mutually unintelligible, these officials communicated using

7446-440: The larger sets of monophthongs common in other dialect groups (and some widely scattered Mandarin dialects). Academia Sinica Academia Sinica ( AS , Latin : Academia Sinica , lit.   'Chinese Academy'; Chinese : 中央研究院 ; lit. 'Central Research Academy') is the national academy of the Republic of China (Taiwan). It is headquartered in Nangang , Taipei . Founded in Nanking ,

7548-404: The latter two groups as Xiang and Gan , while splitting the remaining Mandarin dialects between Northern, Lower Yangtze and Southwestern Mandarin groups. The widely accepted seven-group classification of Yuan Jiahua in 1960 kept Xiang and Gan separate, with Mandarin divided into Northern, Northwestern, Southwestern and Jiang–Huai (Lower Yangtze) subgroups. Of Yuan's four Mandarin subgroups,

7650-852: The lingua franca. The Dungan people of Kyrgyzstan , Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan are descendants of Hui people who fled to the Russian Empire from Dzungaria in 1877 after the fall of Kashgaria to Qing forces and from the Ili valley after it was ceded to China in the Treaty of Saint Petersburg in 1881. About 500 speakers live in a compact area in Rovensky District, Saratov Oblast in Russia. The Dungan speak two dialects, descended from Central Plains Mandarin dialects of southeast Gansu and southwest Shaanxi, and write their language in

7752-783: The main campus of National Taiwan University in Gongguan , Daan , Taipei . A joint office between the two institutions was established in 2014. A campus in the Shalun Smart Green Energy Science City , near the Tainan High Speed Rail station , Guiren District , Tainan , opened in 2024. The Southern Campus is part of an effort to promote regional balance in the academic landscape of Taiwan and will prioritize research on agricultural biotechnology, sustainable development, and archaeology of early Taiwanese history and culture. Similar to

7854-403: The media, formal speech, and everyday life remains the local Cantonese because of their colonial and linguistic history. While Standard Mandarin is now the medium of instruction in schools throughout China, it still has yet to gain traction as a common language among the local population in areas where Mandarin dialects are not native. In these regions, people may be either diglossic or speak

7956-581: The medial, vowel and coda are combined as a final . Not all combinations occur. For example, Standard Chinese (based on the Beijing dialect) has about 1,200 distinct syllables. Phonological features that are generally shared by the Mandarin dialects include: The maximal inventory of initials of a Mandarin dialect is as follows, with bracketed pinyin spellings given for those present in the standard language: Most Mandarin dialects have three medial glides, /j/ , /w/ and /ɥ/ (spelled i , u and ü in pinyin), though their incidence varies. The medial /w/ ,

8058-463: The merger of retroflex sounds (zh, ch, sh, r) with the alveolar series (z, c, s), frequent mergers of the "neutral tone" with a word's original tone, and absence of erhua . Code-switching between Mandarin and Taiwanese Hokkien is common, as the majority of the population continues to also speak the latter as a native language. Mandarin is one of the four official languages of Singapore along with English , Malay , and Tamil . Historically, it

8160-411: The modern standard language as but not as Guānhuà . Linguists use the term "Mandarin" to refer to the diverse group of dialects spoken in northern and southwestern China, which Chinese linguists call Guānhuà . The alternative term Běifānghuà ( 北方话 ; 北方話 ; 'Northern dialects'), is used less and less among Chinese linguists. By extension, the term "Old Mandarin" or "Early Mandarin"

8262-580: The most sizable concentrated in much of Southeast Asia and some countries in the Western World, particularly the United States , Canada , Australia , United Kingdom , and France . The usage and varieties of Chinese among the Chinese diaspora is usually dependent on various factors, mostly the ancestral region of the dominant Chinese group and official language policy of the country of residence. In Southeast Asia, Cantonese and Hokkien are

8364-531: The mountains and rivers of southern China have spawned the other six major groups of Chinese varieties, with great internal diversity, particularly in Fujian . However, the varieties of Mandarin cover a huge area containing nearly a billion people. As a result, there are pronounced regional variations in pronunciation , vocabulary , and grammar , and many Mandarin varieties are not mutually intelligible. Most of northeast China , except for Liaoning , did not receive significant settlements by Han Chinese until

8466-686: The other six are Wu , Gan , and Xiang in central China and Min , Hakka , and Yue on the southeast coast. The Language Atlas of China (1987) distinguishes three further groups: Jin (split from Mandarin), Huizhou in the Huizhou region of Anhui and Zhejiang , and Pinghua in Guangxi and Yunnan . After the fall of the Northern Song (959–1126) and during the reign of the Jin (1115–1234) and Yuan (Mongol) dynasties in northern China,

8568-542: The partner university's academic calendar. The TIGP offers PhD programs only in selected disciplines agreed upon by Academia Sinica and its national research universities partners. The program offers doctoral degrees in highly interdisciplinary areas in the physical sciences, applied sciences, engineering, biological and agricultural sciences, health and medical sciences, humanities and social sciences. As of March 2017, Academia Sinica administers 13 such programs with degrees issued from partner universities: Launched in 2009,

8670-636: The past few years, scholars have used the term Sinophone for largely denotative purposes to mean "Chinese-speaking" or "written in Chinese". Sau-ling Wong used it to designate Chinese American literature written in "Chinese" as opposed to English ("Yellow"); historians of the Manchu empire such as Pamela Kyle Crossley, Evelyn S. Rawski, and Jonathan Lipman described "Chinese-speaking" Hui Muslims in China as Sinophone Muslims as opposed to Uyghur Muslims, who speak Turkic languages; Patricia Schiaini- Vedani and Lara Maconi distinguished between Tibetan writers who write in

8772-560: The predicament of Tibetan writers who write in the "language of the colonizer" and whose identity is bound up with linguistic difference. (2013:8) "Chinese-speaking" is the literal meaning of sinophone , without the academic distinction of speakers outside of Greater China . The Wiktionary is one of the few dictionaries that define sinophone : The word sinophone has different meanings among scholars in fields such as Sinology , linguistics , comparative literature , language teaching , and postcolonialism . Recent definitions of

8874-403: The principal investigator) and Academia Sinica Postdoctoral Scholars (annual salary up to NT$ 1,167,278 (US$ 40,000), plus round-trip ticket and research subsidy of ( US$ 4,500). The institute has extensive cooperation with research and academic institutions from other countries (such as Harvard-Yenching Institute ) and hosts several foreign institutes and their scholars. The Taipei Center of

8976-467: The proportion understanding the standard rose from 41% to 90% over the same period. This standard language is now used in education, the media, and formal occasions in both mainland China and Taiwan , as well as among the Chinese community of Singapore . However, in other parts of the Chinese-speaking world , namely Hong Kong and Macau , the standard form of Chinese used in education,

9078-501: The same time, and the dialects in those areas similarly closely resemble their relatives in the core Mandarin area. The Southwest was settled early, but the population fell dramatically for obscure reasons in the 13th century, and did not recover until the 17th century. The dialects in this area are now relatively uniform. However, long-established cities even very close to Beijing , such as Tianjin , Baoding , Shenyang , and Dalian , have markedly different dialects. Standard Mandarin

9180-442: The southeast coast, few Mandarin speakers engaged in overseas emigration until the late 20th century, but there are now significant communities of them in cities across the world. Most Han Chinese living in northern and southwestern China are native speakers of a dialect of Mandarin. The North China Plain provided few barriers to migration, leading to relative linguistic homogeneity over a wide area in northern China. In contrast,

9282-641: The standard language with a notable accent. However, since the start of the 21st century, there has been an effort of mass education in Standard Mandarin Chinese and discouragement of local language usage by the Chinese government in order to erase these regional differences. From an official point of view, the mainland Chinese and the Taiwanese governments maintain their own forms of the standard under different names. The codified forms of both Pǔtōnghuà and Guóyǔ base their phonology on

9384-530: The teaching of proper pronunciation. Although the resulting Academies for Correct Pronunciation ( 正音書院 ; Zhèngyīn Shūyuàn ) were short-lived, the decree did spawn a number of textbooks that give some insight into the ideal pronunciation. Common features included: As the last two of these features indicate, this language was a koiné based on dialects spoken in the Nanjing area, though not identical to any single dialect. This form remained prestigious long after

9486-414: The two decades since the English word sinophone was coined, it has gone through semantic change and increasing usage. Authors currently use it in at least two meanings, the general sense of "Chinese-speaking", and the academic "Chinese-speaking, especially in areas where it is a minority language." Shu-mei Shih , one of the leading academic authorities on Sinophone scholarship, summarized treatments. In

9588-606: The two were not separated. Zhou Zhenhe and You Rujie include the New Xiang dialects within Southwestern Mandarin, treating only the more conservative Old Xiang dialects as a separate group. The Huizhou dialects have features of both Mandarin and Wu, and have been assigned to one or other of these groups or treated as separate by various authors. Li Rong and the Language Atlas of China treated it as

9690-653: The various fields of biological sciences. To graduate from the program, an academic paper must be submitted and presented in front of professors and peers. Academia Sinica has a high number of both domestic and international postdoctoral fellows. They are funded by grants of the Ministry of Science and Technology (Taiwan) or by Academia Sinica. The latter, the Academia Sinica Postdoctoral Fellow Program, consists of two tracks: Regular Postdoctoral Scholars (starting annual salary: NT$ 810,351 (US$ 28,100), additional benefits depending on

9792-715: The wide geographical distribution and cultural diversity of their speakers. Speakers of forms of Mandarin other than the standard typically refer to the variety they speak by a geographic name—for example the Sichuan dialect and the Hebei dialect or Northeastern dialect , all being regarded as distinct from the standard language, with which they may not share much mutual intelligibility. The hundreds of modern local varieties of Chinese developed from regional variants of Old Chinese and Middle Chinese . Traditionally, seven major groups of dialects have been recognized. Aside from Mandarin,

9894-404: The word include: Chinese is an official language of five countries and territories. While Chinese is a group of related languages rather than a single language itself, the governments of nearly all nations and territories where it is official simply designate the ambitious "Chinese" to refer to the official variant used in administration and education, with the exception of Singapore. Mandarin

9996-500: The world outside China, as distinguished from 'Chinese literature'—literature from China." Nevertheless, there are two earlier sinophone usages. Ruth Keen (1988:231) defined "Sinophone communities" in Chinese literature as "the Mainland, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Indonesia and the U.S." Coulombe and Roberts (2001:12) compared students of French between anglophones "with English as their mother tongue" and allophones (in

10098-416: The written standard by written vernacular Chinese , which was based on northern dialects. A parallel priority was the definition of a standard national language ( traditional Chinese : 國語 ; simplified Chinese : 国语 ; pinyin : Guóyǔ ; Wade–Giles : Kuo²-yü³ ). After much dispute between proponents of northern and southern dialects and an abortive attempt at an artificial pronunciation ,

10200-610: Was greatly valued. For example, 翼 ( yì ; 'wing') is unambiguous in written Chinese, but has over 75 homophones in Standard Chinese . The literary language was less appropriate for documents that were meant to be performed or recited, such as plays or stories. From at least the Yuan dynasty plays that recounted the subversive tales of China's Robin Hoods to the Ming dynasty novels such as Water Margin , on down to

10302-518: Was held in 1957. At the same time, the mainland part of Academia Sinica remained functioning under Communist rule and was renamed as the Chinese Academy of Sciences in the 1980s. In the 2000s, many of the current institutes and research centers were established, partially through reorganization of old ones. Academia Sinica's first PhD program, the Taiwan International Graduate Program, was inaugurated in 2006. The president of Academia Sinica

10404-658: Was seldom used by the Chinese Singaporean community , which primarily spoke the Southern Chinese languages of Hokkien , Teochew , Cantonese , or Hakka . The launch of the Speak Mandarin Campaign in 1979 by the government prioritized the language over traditional vernaculars in an attempt to create a common ethnic language and foster closer connections to China. This has led to a significant increase and presence of Mandarin usage in

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