109-476: Watsons ( Chinese : 屈臣氏 ; Jyutping : Watsansi ) is a Hong Kong health care and beauty care chain store in Asia and Europe . It is the flagship health and beauty brand of AS Watson , which is majority owned by CK Hutchison Holdings . It operates 8,000 stores and 1,500 pharmacies in 15 Asian and European markets, including Japan , Hong Kong , Indonesia , Macau , mainland China , Malaysia ,
218-547: 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
327-469: 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
436-457: 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
545-510: 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
654-599: 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
763-462: 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
872-615: 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
981-714: 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
1090-710: A fellow doctor, he moved to Hong Kong in 1856 where he became part owner of the Hong Kong Dispensary, an offshoot of the Canton Dispensary which operated from 1828 to 1858. Known as the "Big Medicine Shop" ( Chinese : 大藥房 ; Cantonese : Dai Yeuk Fong ), the dispensary's main customers were soldiers and sailors. The dispensary was not known as A.S. Watson until 1870, although Alexander Skirving Watson took over in 1858 following management changes. T. B. Watson sent his family back to Scotland in 1857, and he himself followed two years later. Following
1199-576: 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
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#17327721643971308-508: A rescheduling of the mall's opening was made to give the company an opportunity to allow more tenants to open shops and denied that the change was due to structural defects. The mall was officially inaugurated by President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo with a special screening of Everest at the San Miguel Coca-Cola IMAX Theater. The movie was shown three days after Philippine triathlete Leo Oracion reached
1417-846: A revival in the Philippines (2002) after 92 years. The first Watsons store in Indonesia opened on 13 January 2006 in Jakarta. In 2019, Watsons reached 7,800 stores and expanded to Vietnam, the 13th operating market of Watsons. In 2020, Al-Futtaim and AS Watson have signed a franchise agreement to open stores of healthcare and beauty chain Watsons in the Gulf. Watsons opened its first flagship store at The Dubai Mall in October 2020. In 2024, Watson opened its 8,000th store at SM Mall of Asia in
1526-698: A seating capacity of 16,000 and a full house capacity of 20,000, which opened to the public on June 16, 2012. The arena is the alternative venue of the Philippine Basketball Association and the main venue of the University Athletic Association of the Philippines . The Mall of Asia concert grounds, also called the Mall of Asia parking grounds when there is no event, are public spaces located west of
1635-542: 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
1744-508: 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
1853-507: A statement that the globe was not stolen and was just "undergoing maintenance for marketing strategy". The globe was covered in scaffolding. The mall management released a statement a day later that the globe is "back" and revealed that the supposed theft was staged as part of a publicity stunt to promote the Netflix film, Red Notice . This quickly went viral and was adapted into Internet memes . The mall includes branches of all of
1962-420: A total of 10 cinemas, with six regular cinemas, Director's Club Cinema for intimate screenings (30 La-Z-Boy seats), Premier Cinema, CenterStage which can use for live musical concerts and theatrical performances, and an IMAX theater. One of the mall's main attractions is the first ever and the largest IMAX theater in the Philippines. Originally with the naming rights of San Miguel - Coca-Cola , IMAX Theatre
2071-631: A unified standard. The earliest examples of Old Chinese are divinatory inscriptions on oracle bones dated to c. 1250 BCE , during the Late Shang . The next attested stage came from inscriptions on bronze artifacts dating to the Western Zhou period (1046–771 BCE), the Classic of Poetry and portions of the Book of Documents and I Ching . Scholars have attempted to reconstruct
2180-575: 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
2289-602: 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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#17327721643972398-522: Is a dome-shaped museum that will feature the history of the Manila Galleon trade system, in which (over a period of 250 years) the Philippines and Mexico played major roles. The main attraction will be the Galleon ship which was used for trading. The museum is set to open in October 2025, after a lengthy delay due to undisclosed reasons. The Exploreum was a science and technology museum within
2507-538: Is a large shopping mall in the Philippines, located at Bay City , Pasay , Philippines , within the SM Central Business Park, a reclaimed area within Manila Bay , and the southern end of Epifanio de los Santos Avenue (EDSA/ C-4 ). Owned and developed by SM Prime , the largest mall chain owner and developer in the Philippines, the mall currently occupies 16 hectares (40 acres) of land area of
2616-490: 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,
2725-652: Is headquartered in Watson House, Fo Tan , Hong Kong. An 11-story distribution centre opened in April 1983. 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
2834-601: Is located on a 1,947-square-meter (20,960 sq ft) space at the 3rd Level of the South Entertainment Mall. It was opened in November 2023, after delays. Similar to its branch in SM Southmall and SM City Fairview , it features bowling, billiards, other sports facilities, a mini-arcade, KTV, and a sports bar. The mall features the Philippines ' first Olympic -sized ice skating rink which
2943-483: Is located on the third level of the mall's main building. It covers an area of 1,800 square meters (19,000 sq ft) and has a spectators area which can seat up to 200 people and accommodate up to 300 people. An older ice skating rink was one of the main features of the SM Mall of Asia at the time of its inauguration in 2006, which was situated at the ground level of the mall's main building. Its opening followed
3052-603: 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
3161-411: Is one of the world's biggest IMAX screens in 3D including 2D screenings. It was originally a traditional film projector that uses its 15/70 mm film format, IMAX GT (Grand Theatre). The IMAX Theater was closed on October 11, 2013, for digital conversion , and re-opened on October 30, 2013, along with the release of Thor: The Dark World . On November 6, 2014, the old traditional 70mm IMAX projector
3270-445: 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
3379-668: Is specifically meant. However, when one of the above words forms part of a compound, the disambiguating syllable is generally dropped and the resulting word is still disyllabic. For example, 石 ; shí alone, and not 石头 ; 石頭 ; shítou , appears in compounds as meaning 'stone' such as 石膏 ; shígāo ; 'plaster', 石灰 ; shíhuī ; 'lime', 石窟 ; shíkū ; 'grotto', 石英 ; 'quartz', and 石油 ; shíyóu ; 'petroleum'. Although many single-syllable morphemes ( 字 ; zì ) can stand alone as individual words, they more often than not form multi-syllable compounds known as 词 ; 詞 ; cí , which more closely resembles
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3488-489: 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,
3597-485: Is undergoing a ₱ 1.5 billion expansion project since 2014, featuring new expansion areas for retail establishments and new indoor and outdoor amenities, including a football field and the installation of roof solar panels at the mall. A new two-level expansion is currently under construction at the top of the Main Mall and Entertainment Mall. It is expected to be fully complete by December DD, 2024. It will connect to
3706-501: 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
3815-500: 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
3924-552: 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
4033-428: 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
4142-753: 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
4251-626: 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
4360-479: The IMAX lobby. It has since been permanently closed, with no plans for its return. Premier Cinema was closed on August 22, 2018, for renovation works and was now occupied by three Director's Club Cinemas. The SM Central Business Park is a 67-hectare (170-acre) mixed-use development located within the surrounding areas of the Mall of Asia complex, and is owned and developed by SM Prime . The complex currently occupies
4469-533: 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
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4578-710: 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
4687-595: 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
4796-565: The Philippines , Singapore , Taiwan , Thailand , Vietnam , Turkey , Ukraine , United Arab Emirates , Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and Qatar. Its South Korean branch closed down in 2021. Dr. Thomas Boswell Watson (1815–1860), from Scotland , was the first member of the Watson family to arrive in the Far East , where in 1845 he set up a private practice in Macau . After selling his practice to
4905-478: 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
5014-596: 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
5123-732: 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. SM Mall of Asia SM Mall of Asia (also abbreviated as SM MoA , or simply Mall of Asia or MoA ; [ˈmoː.ɐ] ),
5232-582: The 3rd floor, was opened in 2017. Several ice skating competitions have been held at the mall's ice skating rink such as the Skate Asia 2007, the first time an international competition at that scale was held in the Philippines. The ice hockey competition of the 2019 Southeast Asian Games was also held in the venue. The mall features a total of 16 cinemas with 11 regular cinemas (including Center Stage Cinema), three Director's Club Cinemas, one Event Cinema, and one IMAX Theater. It originally featured
5341-550: The Digistar Planetarium housed within a 16-meter-tall (52 ft) dome which was designed by Evans & Sutherland. In 2009, it was renamed into Nido Fortified Science Discovery Center as SM Prime Holdings partnered with Nido Fortified, a milk brand of Nestlé . In 2014, Nido Fortified Science Discovery Center was rebranded to The Exploreum, which featured 118 new interactive exhibits and over 100 non-interactive exhibits in eight major interactive galleries namely
5450-548: The Director's Club Cinema is now occupied by Surplus Shop. As part of the mall's continuing expansion in the North Wing, the original cinemas including the centerstage were temporarily closed. Five new cinemas under Cinemas 6-10 will replace the former Cinemas 1-3, and a large format cinema will replace the former Centerstage. Cinemas 7 and 8 were permanently closed and will be converted to tenant spaces. The SM Mall of Asia
5559-690: The E-com Center buildings that are used to hold mass gatherings , primarily concerts. When there is no event, the venue is used as a parking lot to accommodate employees of the E-com Center buildings, as well as mall guests. The venue was the site of the Close-Up Forever Summer concert deaths that occurred in May 2016. Amidst the COVID-19 pandemic in the Philippines which led cinemas to be closed since March 2020, SM Cinema opened up
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#17327721643975668-565: 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
5777-424: The Mall of Asia Complex and a gross floor area of approximately 589,891 m (6,349,530 sq ft), and offers 46,647 m (502,100 sq ft) of floor area space for conventions and social functions. The area attracts a daily average foot traffic of about 200,000 people. The mall is currently the largest shopping mall in the Philippines and the sixth in the world . When it opened in 2006, it
5886-458: The Music Hall, an events hall (formerly open-air, now airconditioned) facing Manila Bay . As of late 2021, majority of the area has been renovated with addition of air-conditioning. Due to the mall's size, all buildings have concierge desks, assisting local information within the area. The mall's 5,000 parking spaces are divided across two, six-story parking buildings conveniently designated
5995-533: The Natural World, Human Adventure, Zoom, Connect, Cyberville, Space Camp, the Living Earth, and Science Park. Exploreum was closed in 2017 as a part of the mall expansion. The XD Cinema was a 4D theater located at the IMAX lobby at the ground floor, opened on November 25, 2014, on soft opening equipped with strategically located 48 pneumatic controlled seats that highlight the immersive nature of
6104-601: The North and South Parking Buildings, which have been covered with a solar rooftop. The South Parking Building houses the mall's official The SM Store , while the mall's supermarket, the SM Hypermarket is located at the North Parking Building. Since 2016, these parking buildings are equipped with elevators and escalators, which allow fast access to parking levels. Since its opening in 2006, visitors to
6213-738: The Northwest Main Mall's 2nd Level reopened in September 2024, whilst the 3rd Level of the North Entertainment Mall and Northwest Main Mall remains under construction. A new wing connecting The Galeon Museum and the north side of Entertainment Mall was opened, featuring restaurants on the ground floor and the new Cinemas 7 and 8 on the second floor. The estimated gross floor area of the expansion project would be 650,000 m (6,996,541.8 sq ft) upon full completion. Museo del Galeón (formerly The Galeón)
6322-524: The Philippines in 1883, but withdrew from both countries in 1910. Retail outlets were known as "Watsons the Chemist". The current owners, Hutchison Group, acquired a controlling interest in A.S. Watson & Co., Ltd in 1963. In 1981, it became a wholly owned subsidiary of Hutchison Whampoa Ltd. At this time, the group had 75 retail outlets. In the late 1980s, the chain expanded to other parts of Asia. The first modern Watsons store outside Hong Kong opened in
6431-463: The Philippines. As of 2021, there are around 8,000 stores and more than 1,500 pharmacies in 14 Asian and European markets, including Mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Macau, Japan, Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia, the Philippines, Indonesia, Vietnam, Turkey, Ukraine, United Arab Emirates (UAE), Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and Qatar. A.S. Watson Retail, as well as the Watson chain of stores in Hong Kong,
6540-640: The Portuguese territory of Macau in late May 1987. The first Watsons in Taiwan opened in September 1987, and by May 1991 the number of Taiwanese locations numbered 25. The first Watsons store in Singapore opened on 29 April 1988, with the chain expanding to operate 27 outlets across the city-state by 1993. The first Watsons store in China opened in April 1989. Located in Beijing's newly opened Palace Hotel ,
6649-677: The closure of the old skating rink at the SM Megamall which was built in 1992. On 2015, the skating rink made a comeback and eventually opened at the SM Megamall, and during the mall's renovation works, the skating rink was temporarily moved from 2015–2017 to the open area lot between the SMX Convention Center Manila and the MOA Arena, which is currently occupied by MOA Square. The new skating rink, located at
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#17327721643976758-510: The country and the largest IKEA store in the world, at the mall's complex. Following the mall's opening in 2006, it caused several smaller shopping malls nearby to close, such as the Pearl Plaza and the Uniwide Coastal Mall, both located in Barangay Tambo , Parañaque . However, this is changing with the rise of other malls and similar structures such as the Ayala Malls Manila Bay and W Mall. Plans for SM Mall of Asia began in 1995, with construction originally slated to begin in January 1996; it
6867-421: The country; however, its temporary lobby is closed being used as offices for cinema personnel and as an emergency fire exit . On August 18, 2019, the IMAX Theater was closed for renovation and re-opened on October 29, 2019, with updated interiors and high-end spectator seats with comfortable Paragon 918 chairs from world-class spectator seats manufacturer Ferco Seating. The IMAX re-opened on May 4, 2022, along with
6976-412: The death of Dr T. B. Watson in 1860, the Hong Kong Dispensary was leased to A. S. Watson and two other doctors, and onwards from 1862, the name A.S. Watson featured prominently at the Hong Kong Dispensary. In 1871, the Watson family leased the company to Dr John David Humphreys and Dr Arthur Hunt, and thereafter trading was executed under the name A.S. Watson & Company. The company entered China and
7085-447: The delivery of construction materials. Frequent rains in the last quarter of 2005 also delayed the turnover of mall space to tenants. Due to these circumstances, SM Prime decided to move the opening date to March 3, 2006. On February 27, 2006, the local newspaper Manila Standard Today reported that a team of Pasay City engineers found huge cracks underneath the structure, which was causing the structure to vibrate. When questioned about
7194-399: 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
7303-484: 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
7412-435: The eastern side of J.W. Diokno Boulevard and EDSA Extension. The entirety of the Mall of Asia complex, which includes the SM Business Park and other nearby commercial buildings, office towers, and condominiums located across J.W. Diokno Boulevard and the Business Park complex comprises a total area of roughly 110 hectares (270 acres). The SM Mall of Asia Arena is an indoor arena within the SM Mall of Asia complex which has
7521-464: 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
7630-413: 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
7739-491: 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
7848-618: 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
7957-625: The inspection, the Pasay City Engineering Department denied making any statement regarding defects in the Mall of Asia. Engineer Edwin Javaluyas, Pasay City Engineering Officer, in his letter to SM Prime Holdings Inc., said he never stated that the city hall's engineering department inspected the Mall of Asia on February 23, 2006. SM Prime, however, decided to move the opening to May 21 of that year. Jeffrey Lim, corporate information officer of SM Prime, emphasized that
8066-586: 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
8175-528: 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
8284-434: The limited-early release of Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker , while the other remaining cinemas, the three Director's Club Cinemas equipped with Dolby Atmos and laser projector were re-opened on its grand re-launch on January 22, 2020, at the former space of Premier Cinema. Cinemas 9 to 11, which are former Cinemas 1 to 3 remained in temporary operations after the re-opening of the renovated theaters. The former space of
8393-537: The main SM Mall of Asia shopping mall complex. A ₱313 million joint venture between SM Prime Holdings and United-States-based Leisure Entertainment Consultancy (LEC), it opened in 2007 as the SM Science Discovery Center. It featured a digital planetarium and a wide range of technology and science-themed exhibits. At the time of its opening, the two-level science center covered an area of 3,200 square meters (34,000 sq ft). It also featured
8502-425: The mall anchor Cyberzone for IT-related shops, one of the biggest Cyberzones in the country since the opening of SM North EDSA . Opened on February 12, 2020, the new Food Hall is located in the 3rd Level, across SM Skating Rink at the main mall. Replacing the former SM Food Court at the second floor, it features budget to upscale dining choices. A replacement of SM Bowling Center, the flagship branch of SM Game Park
8611-404: The mall carpark buildings. The new expansion will feature a football pitch with grandstand (which it will be suitable for various uses like soccer , Summer Olympics , concerts , and other concert/sporting events), botanical gardens, and parks at the mall's 4th level roof deck with all-new shops and restaurants at the mall's third and fourth levels. It is built in phases. The first phase features
8720-472: The mall have been welcomed by large steel framed globe on a roundabout at the southern tip of Epifanio de los Santos Avenue (EDSA), known as the MoA Globe. In 2009, the globe was turned into Globamaze, an LED display. On November 13, 2021, the iconic globe was reportedly stolen by a helicopter that was recorded by a delivery rider at 11:00 p.m. on the previous day. The Pasay City police issued
8829-497: The mall's opening in 2006. The mall also provides office space. Dell International Services , a subsidiary of Dell, Inc. once occupied a 13,470 m (145,000 sq ft) area at the second floor of the North Parking Building of the mall. Eventually, in 2015, Teleperformance took over that space until 2019, as the company moved its operations to the MOA Annex Building. Currently, the site has been replaced by
8938-455: 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
9047-425: 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
9156-583: 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
9265-691: The new Olympic-sized ice skating rink and a Food Hall (replacing the old Foodcourt) on the 3rd Floor along with more new shops and restaurants. The new ice skating rink and the Food Hal, were completed in 2017 and in February 2020, respectively. As of October 2023, a portion of the North Main Atrium, which would soon connect to the rest of the mall, has reopened, as well as the Sky Garden. The North Entertainment Mall's Ground and 2nd Levels and
9374-533: The newly renovated IMAX theater lobby, which can be used for birthday parties , corporate events, and seminars, and it can house up to 45 people. Half of the original cinema area, including Cinemas 4 to 6, Director's Club and Premier Cinema, was closed on August 22, 2018, after the celebration of the 2nd Pista ng Pelikulang Pilipino and were demolished for renovation as part of the mall expansion. The new Cinemas 1 to 5 softly re-opened in December 2019 along with
9483-540: The northern and southern channels situated along J.W. Diokno Boulevard and the western end of the EDSA Extension. The complex serves as one of Henry Sy 's vision to build a landmark within Metro Manila , and currently features events venues, mixed-use buildings, office towers, hotels, and transport hubs. The business park does not include the complex's condominiums, hotels, and other properties situated along
9592-538: 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
9701-554: The project's design architect and Architect Robert Carag Ong, Architect of Record, and GHT Services as the complex's project managers. SM tapped two separate construction firms for the construction of the mall: Hilmarc's Construction Corp. for the South Parking Building, Main Mall, and Entertainment Mall; and Monolith Construction Development Corp. for the North Parking Building. The mall would have opened before Christmas Day of 2005 but had been delayed due to hitches in
9810-404: 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 ,
9919-552: 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
10028-509: 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
10137-478: The release of Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness . The cinema was closed for renovation some time in 2024 for an IMAX with Laser upgrade and reopened on November 20, 2024. Additional cinemas were opened in the mall since 2016. Two digital theaters, Cinemas 7 and 8, were opened at the north side of the entertainment mall in December 2016. The Event Cinema was opened on December 12, 2018, and located at
10246-504: The shop's products were all shipped from Hong Kong, and were therefore for sale in foreign exchange certificates only. Watson's management thus expected the shop's customers to mainly comprise foreign tourists. The Palace Hotel was partly owned by the People's Liberation Army , which required all shop staff to complete a month-long boot camp. Watsons personal care stores were subsequently opened in Malaysia (1994), Thailand (1996), and
10355-517: 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
10464-561: 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
10573-719: The standard anchor stores found in most of the SM Supermalls . The first-ever branch of Taste Asia, one of the SM Supermalls' food court brands, is located right outside the mall's supermarket, the sprawling SM Hypermarket. Opened on September 27, 2024, the first-ever branch of Disney Store in Southeast Asia is located in Level 1, North Main Mall. The mall's open-air Music Hall directly facing Manila Bay has also held numerous events, contests, and concerts since
10682-565: The summit of Mount Everest , the world's highest mountain. The Mall of Asia consists of four buildings interconnected by walkways and elevated pathways: the Main Mall, the Entertainment Mall, and the North and South Wing Parking Buildings. The Main Mall includes numerous shopping and dining establishments and the food court. The Entertainment Mall is a two-story complex, most of which is open-air, and also features some shopping and dining businesses. The Entertainment Mall also hosts
10791-455: The theater while maintaining an exclusive ambiance to delight the audience, it has enormous in-theatre effects including snow , wind , water , scent , fog , and strobe /lightings. It also has leg tickler, motion seats, seat vibrators, and seat impactors to add a breathtaking fourth dimension experience. The first local film to be shown in this theater is Feng Shui 2 . The XD Cinema was closed in April 2017 for ongoing renovation works of
10900-623: 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
11009-547: 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
11118-512: 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
11227-452: 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
11336-517: The written language used throughout China changed comparatively little, crystallizing into a prestige form known as Classical or Literary Chinese . Literature written distinctly in the Classical form began to emerge during the Spring and Autumn period . Its use in writing remained nearly universal until the late 19th century, culminating with the widespread adoption of written vernacular Chinese with
11445-453: 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,
11554-485: 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
11663-411: Was marketed to become the largest shopping mall in the world upon completion. The mall is the centerpiece project of SM Prime at the SM Central Business Park, where five one-story buildings serve as the company's corporate offices, while the sixth building is being occupied by TeleTech Holdings, Inc. as their flagship site in the country. The SM Mall of Asia's design team includes Arquitectonica as
11772-419: Was the largest shopping mall in the Philippines until SM North EDSA was redeveloped in 2008, and was relegated to third place by the expansion of SM Megamall from 2011 to 2015 when SM Seaside City opened to the public before returning to this spot in 2017. Later, it again became the largest shopping mall in the Philippines starting 2021, following the opening of IKEA Pasay City, the first IKEA store in
11881-534: Was used for Christopher Nolan 's Interstellar . In July 2017, the main lobby was temporarily closed for renovation (where the XD Cinema is going to be demolished), and its lobby was temporarily moved at the second floor in front of Cinemas 7 and 8, the main lobby re-opened on December 11, 2018, upon the launch of Event Cinema and the Asian premiere screening of Aquaman where its star Jason Momoa has arrived in
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