143-398: Xuanzang ( Chinese : 玄奘 ; Wade–Giles : Hsüen Tsang ; [ɕɥɛ̌n.tsâŋ] ; 6 April 602 – 5 February 664), born Chen Hui or Chen Yi ( 陳褘 / 陳禕 ), also known by his Sanskrit Dharma name Mokṣadeva , was a 7th-century Chinese Buddhist monk , scholar, traveler, and translator. He is known for the epoch-making contributions to Chinese Buddhism ,
286-469: 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
429-457: 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
572-541: A Buddhist stupa, such as raging flames bursting out of them leaving behind stream of pearls. The citizens here, states Xuanzang, worship pieces of Buddha's remains that were brought here in more ancient times. He mentions four stupas built in this area by king Ashoka . To Xuanzang, he entered India as he crossed the Black range and entered the country of Lampa. His travelogue presents India in fascicles separate from those for Central Asia. He, however, does not call it India, but
715-510: 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
858-599: 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
1001-524: A boy, he took to reading religious books, and studying the ideas therein with his father. Like his elder brother, he became a student of Buddhist studies at Jingtu monastery. Xuanzang was ordained as a śrāmaṇera (novice monk) at the age of thirteen. Due to the political and social unrest caused by the fall of the Sui dynasty , he went to Chengdu in Sichuan , where he was ordained as a bhikṣu (full monk) at
1144-462: 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
1287-443: A component—either a character or a sub-component called a radical —usually involves either a reduction in its total number of strokes , or an apparent streamlining of which strokes are chosen in what places—for example, the ⼓ ' WRAP ' radical used in the traditional character 沒 is simplified to ⼏ ' TABLE ' to form the simplified character 没 . By systematically simplifying radicals, large swaths of
1430-615: 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
1573-434: A conversion table. While exercising such derivation, the following rules should be observed: Sample Derivations : The Series One List of Variant Characters reduces the number of total standard characters. First, amongst each set of variant characters sharing identical pronunciation and meaning, one character (usually the simplest in form) is elevated to the standard character set, and the rest are made obsolete. Then amongst
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#17327649321831716-714: 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
1859-535: A dark cave here where dangerous beings lived, recited Srimaladevi Simhanadasutra , and they became Buddhists. Thereafter they all burnt incense and worshipped the Buddha with flowers. Some five hundred li (~200 kilometer in 7th-century) to the southeast is the country of Gandhara – which some historic Chinese texts phonetically transcribed as Qiantuowei . On its east, it is bordered by the Indus river, and its capital
2002-575: A desert, icy valleys and the Pamir range (which link Tian Shan , Karakoram , Kunlun , Uparisyena and the Himalaya mountain ranges). Here, observed Xuanzang, the wind is cold and "blows with a piercing vehemence" (Li Rongxi translation). Ferocious dragons live here and trouble the travellers particularly those who wear "reddish brown" color clothes. Thereafter, he crossed past a salty sea, one narrow from north to south and long from east to west, he calls
2145-407: A few revised forms, and was implemented for official use by China's State Council on 5 June 2013. In Chinese, simplified characters are referred to by their official name 简化字 ; jiǎnhuàzì , or colloquially as 简体字 ; jiǎntǐzì . The latter term refers broadly to all character variants featuring simplifications of character form or structure, a practice which has always been present as
2288-576: 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
2431-567: A month, and studied the Madhyamika sastra with him. To the northeast of Varsha country, states Xuanzang, there is a lofty mountain with a bluish stone image of Bhimadevi . She is the wife of Mahesvara . It is a great site of pilgrimage, where Indians from very far come with prayers. At the foot of this mountain is another temple for Mahesvara where ceremonies are performed by naked heretics who smear ash on their body. About 30 li (about 12 kilometers in 7th-century) southeast from these temples
2574-698: A newly built great stupa. The Kashmira region has numerous monks well versed with the Tripitaka , states Xuanzang. He stays in Kashmira for two years and studies the treatises with them. Xuanzang describes many events where he is helped by both Buddhists and non-Buddhists. For example, he describes leaving the city of Sakala and Narasimha, then passing with his companions through the Great Palasha forest. They get robbed and are walked towards some dry pond to be killed. A monk and he slip away. They hurry towards
2717-610: A newly coined phono-semantic compound : Removing radicals Only retaining single radicals Replacing with ancient forms or variants : Adopting ancient vulgar variants : Readopting abandoned phonetic-loan characters : Copying and modifying another traditional character : Based on 132 characters and 14 components listed in Chart 2 of the Complete List , the 1,753 derived characters found in Chart 3 can be created by systematically simplifying components using Chart 2 as
2860-518: A part of the Chinese writing system. The official name tends to refer to the specific, systematic set published by the Chinese government, which includes not only simplifications of individual characters, but also a substantial reduction in the total number of characters through the merger of formerly distinct forms. According to Chinese palaeographer Qiu Xigui , the broadest trend in the evolution of Chinese characters over their history has been simplification, both in graphical shape ( 字形 ; zìxíng ),
3003-922: A river with "poisonous dragons and evil animals". There, he visited a major Buddhist monastery of the Sautrantika school. From there, after covering some 2200 li, he passed through the country of Simhapura ( Kalabagh ), of Urasa (now Hazara ), and then into Kashmira. He was received by the king, and numerous monks from the Jayendra monastery. Kashmira is land with a very cold climate and is often calm without any wind. The region has lakes, grows plenty of flowers and fruit, saffron and medicinal herbs. Kashmira has over 100 monasteries and more than 5000 monks. The residents revere four large stupas that were built in ancient times by Ashoka. Emperor Kanishika too built many Buddhist monasteries here. He also had treatises with 960,000 words written on copper plates and had them stored in
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#17327649321833146-490: A rock in the mountains, some one hundred and forty feet tall and decorated with gems. This valley has Buddhist monasteries, and also a colossal copper statue of the Buddha, that is over a hundred foot tall. He was told that it was cast in separate parts and then joined up together. To the east of a monastery in the Bamiyana valley was a Reclining Buddha entering Parinirvana that was over one thousand foot long. The people and
3289-542: 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
3432-508: 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
3575-678: A single language. However, their lack of mutual intelligibility means they are sometimes considered to be separate languages in a family . Investigation of the historical relationships among the varieties of Chinese is ongoing. Currently, most classifications posit 7 to 13 main regional groups based on phonetic developments from Middle Chinese , of which the most spoken by far is Mandarin with 66%, or around 800 million speakers, followed by Min (75 million, e.g. Southern Min ), Wu (74 million, e.g. Shanghainese ), and Yue (68 million, e.g. Cantonese ). These branches are unintelligible to each other, and many of their subgroups are unintelligible with
3718-631: 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
3861-575: 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
4004-509: A vassal of the Buddhist Kingdom of Kapisa found near Bamiyana . The monasteries in these kingdoms are splendid, with four corner towers and halls with three tiers. They have strange looking figures at the joints, rafters, eaves and roof beams. The Indians paint the walls, doors and windows with colors and pictures. People prefer to have home that look simple from outside, but is much decorated inside. They construct their homes such
4147-448: A village. Near it, they meet a Brahmana who is tilling his land. They tell him that robbers attacked them and their companions. The Brahmin goes to the village and beats a drum and blows a conch. About 80 men gather, and together they proceed to rescue the companions of Xuanzang. While other rescued companions of his wail about the loss of all their property, Xuanzang reminds them that they should all be happy to be alive and not worry about
4290-404: A way that they open towards the east. Xuanzang also describes implausible events such as glowing rock footprints of Buddha, dragons, tales of Naga, a stupa in which is preserved the Buddha's eyeball as "large as a crabapple" and that is "brilliant and transparent" throughout, a white stone Buddha idol that worked miracles and "frequently emitted light". The travelogue states that Xuanzang went into
4433-471: Is Purusapura . This is the land of ancient sages and authors of Indic sastras , and they include Narayanadeva, Asanga, Vasubandhu, Dharmatrata, Monaratha and Parshva. To the southeast of Purusapura city is a 400-foot-high stupa built by Emperor Kanishka , one with nearly 2000 feet in diameter and a 25 layer wheel on the top. There is a large monastery near it. Gandhara has numerous holy Buddhist sites, and Xuanzang visited and worshipped all of them. He calls
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4576-441: Is Salatura , which says Xuanzang was the birthplace of Rishi Pāṇini and the author of "Sabda-vidya-sastra". Inspired by Mahesvara , this Rishi set out to "make inquiries into the way of learning" (Li Rongxi translation). He thoroughly studied all written and spoken language, words in ancient and his times, then created a treatise of one thousand stanzas. The heretics (Hindus) transmit this text orally from teacher to pupil, and it
4719-524: Is Sanzang Fashi ( simplified Chinese : 三藏法师 ; traditional Chinese : 三藏法師 ; pinyin : Sānzàngfǎshī ; lit. 'Sanzang Dharma (or Law) Teacher'): 法 being a Chinese translation for Sanskrit " Dharma " or Pali / Prakrit Dhamma , the implied meaning being "Buddhism". "Sanzang" is the Chinese term for the Buddhist canon, or Tripiṭaka ("Three Baskets"), and in some English-language fiction and English translations of Journey to
4862-602: 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
5005-709: Is a group of languages spoken natively by the ethnic Han Chinese majority and many minority ethnic groups in China , as well as by various communities of the Chinese diaspora . Approximately 1.35 billion people, or 17% of the global population, speak a variety of Chinese as their first language . Chinese languages form the Sinitic branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family. The spoken varieties of Chinese are usually considered by native speakers to be dialects of
5148-950: Is a mix of the implausible, the hearsay and a firsthand account. Selections from it are used, and disputed, as a terminus ante quem of 645 for events, names and texts he mentions. His text in turn provided the inspiration for the novel Journey to the West written by Wu Cheng'en during the Ming dynasty , around nine centuries after Xuanzang's death. Less common romanizations of "Xuanzang" include Hyun Tsan, Hhuen Kwan, Hiuan Tsang, Hiouen Thsang, Hiuen Tsang, Hiuen Tsiang, Hsien-tsang, Hsyan-tsang, Hsuan Chwang, Huan Chwang, Hsuan Tsiang, Hwen Thsang, Hsüan Chwang, Hhüen Kwān, Xuan Cang, Xuan Zang, Shuen Shang, Yuan Chang, Yuan Chwang, and Yuen Chwang. Hsüan, Hüan, Huan and Chuang are also found. The sound written x in pinyin and hs in Wade–Giles , which represents
5291-512: Is a monastery with a Buddha's idol decorated with jewels and its halls studded with rare precious substances. The Buddhist monastery also has an image of Vaishravana deity as its guardian. The monastery and the capital attracts repeated raids from the Turk chieftains who seek to loot these precious jewels. This monastery has a large bathing pot that looks dazzlingly brilliant and has a Buddha's tooth relic and Buddha's broom made of "kasa grass". Outside
5434-480: Is a vihara built ages ago, and many stupas to honor the arhats (Buddhist saints). South of Bactra is the country of Kacik, then the Great Snow Mountains with valleys "infested with gangs of brigands" (Li Rongxi translation). Crossing this pass, thereafter is the country of Bamiyana (a part of modern Afghanistan ). There, state his travelogue is a colossal statue of standing Buddha, carved from
5577-440: Is actually more complex than eliminated ones. An example is the character 搾 which is eliminated in favor of the variant form 榨 . The 扌 'HAND' with three strokes on the left of the eliminated 搾 is now seen as more complex, appearing as the ⽊ 'TREE' radical 木 , with four strokes, in the chosen variant 榨 . Not all characters standardised in the simplified set consist of fewer strokes. For instance,
5720-490: 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,
5863-454: Is derived. Merging homophonous characters: Adapting cursive shapes ( 草書楷化 ): Replacing a component with a simple arbitrary symbol (such as 又 and 乂 ): Omitting entire components : Omitting components, then applying further alterations : Structural changes that preserve the basic shape Replacing the phonetic component of phono-semantic compounds : Replacing an uncommon phonetic component : Replacing entirely with
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6006-1105: Is found in Guang hongming ji from Daoxun and is also in Japanese and Korean texts. The 629 CE is found in Chinese and western versions. This confusion, though merely of two years, is of significance to western history. The date when Xuanzang's pilgrimage started is not resolved in any of the texts that Xuanzang himself wrote. Further, he did not write his own biography or travelogue, rather he recited it to his fellow monks after his return from India. Three of his immediate collaborators wrote his biography, and thus leaving three versions and with variant details. All three of these versions begin his pilgrimage in 629 CE. Yet, one version by Huili, states that Xuanzang met Yabghu Qaghan, someone who died in 628 CE according to Persian and Turkish records. If this detail in Xuanzang's biography and Persian-Turkish records are true, then Xuanzang must have left before Qaghan's death, or in 627 CE. In other words, some of
6149-455: Is four: three months each of spring, summer, monsoon, and autumn. The kingdoms of India have numerous villages and cities. Their towns and cities have square walls, streets are winding and narrow, with shops lined along these roads. Wine is sold in shops on the side streets. Those whose profession is butchering, fishing, executioners, scavengers (people that kill living beings and deal with products derived from them) are not allowed to live inside
6292-550: Is not to obtain personal offerings. It is because I regretted, in my country, the Buddhist doctrine was imperfect and the scriptures were incomplete. Having many doubts, I wish to go and find out the truth, and so I decided to travel to the West at the risk of my life in order to seek for the teachings of which I have not yet heard, so that the Dew of the Mahayana sutras would have not only been sprinkled at Kapilavastu, but
6435-813: Is now discouraged. A State Language Commission official cited "oversimplification" as the reason for restoring some characters. The language authority declared an open comment period until 31 August 2009, for feedback from the public. In 2013, the List of Commonly Used Standard Chinese Characters was published as a revision of the 1988 lists; it included a total of 8105 characters. It included 45 newly recognized standard characters that were previously considered variant forms, as well as official approval of 226 characters that had been simplified by analogy and had seen wide use but were not explicitly given in previous lists or documents. Singapore underwent three successive rounds of character simplification , eventually arriving at
6578-603: 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
6721-445: 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
6864-623: Is referred to as the " big seal script ". The traditional narrative, as also attested in the Shuowen Jiezi dictionary ( c. 100 AD ), is that the Qin small seal script that would later be imposed across China was originally derived from the Zhou big seal script with few modifications. However, the body of epigraphic evidence comparing the character forms used by scribes gives no indication of any real consolidation in character forms prior to
7007-479: Is rich and moist, cultivation productive, vegetation luxuriant. He adds that it has its own ancient customs, such as measuring its distance as " yojana ", equal to forty li, but varying between thirty and sixteen depending on the source. They divide day and night into kala, and substances into various divisions, all the way to a fineness that they call indivisible and emptiness. The country has three seasons: hot, cold, rainy according to some Buddhists; while others say it
7150-668: 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
7293-552: Is the country of (modern Nangarhar ), with many Buddhist monasteries and five Deva temples. The number of monks here, however, are few. The stupa are deserted and in a dilapidated condition. The local Buddhists believe that the Buddha taught here while flying in the air, because were he to walk here, it caused many earthquakes. Nagarahara has a 300 feet high stupa built by Ashoka , with marvellous sculptures. Xuanzang paid homage by circling it. Both Lampaka and Nagarahara countries were independent with their own kings, but they have become
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#17327649321837436-489: 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,
7579-470: Is this that makes the Brahmanas of this city "great scholars of high talent with knowledge of wide scope". They have an image of Pāṇini installed in reverence of him in this city of Salatura . Chinese language Chinese ( simplified Chinese : 汉语 ; traditional Chinese : 漢語 ; pinyin : Hànyǔ ; lit. ' Han language' or 中文 ; Zhōngwén ; 'Chinese writing')
7722-501: 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
7865-500: 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
8008-552: 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
8151-547: Is used instead of 叠 in regions using traditional characters. The Chinese government stated that it wished to keep Chinese orthography stable. The Chart of Generally Utilized Characters of Modern Chinese was published in 1988 and included 7000 simplified and unsimplified characters. Of these, half were also included in the revised List of Commonly Used Characters in Modern Chinese , which specified 2500 common characters and 1000 less common characters. In 2009,
8294-428: 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
8437-697: 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
8580-508: The Chinese language , with the other being traditional characters . Their mass standardization during the 20th century was part of an initiative by the People's Republic of China (PRC) to promote literacy, and their use in ordinary circumstances on the mainland has been encouraged by the Chinese government since the 1950s. They are the official forms used in mainland China and Singapore , while traditional characters are officially used in Hong Kong , Macau , and Taiwan . Simplification of
8723-533: 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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#17327649321838866-710: 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
9009-595: 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
9152-478: 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
9295-596: 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
9438-459: The "external appearances of individual graphs", and in graphical form ( 字体 ; 字體 ; zìtǐ ), "overall changes in the distinguishing features of graphic[al] shape and calligraphic style, [...] in most cases refer[ring] to rather obvious and rather substantial changes". The initiatives following the founding of the Qin dynasty (221–206 BC) to universalize the use of their small seal script across
9581-737: 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. Simplified Chinese characters Simplified Chinese characters are one of two standardized character sets widely used to write
9724-482: The 1986 General List of Simplified Chinese Characters , hereafter the General List . All characters simplified this way are enumerated in Chart 1 and Chart 2 in the 1986 Complete List . Characters in both charts are structurally simplified based on similar set of principles. They are separated into two charts to clearly mark those in Chart 2 as 'usable as simplified character components', based on which Chart 3
9867-520: The 1986 mainland China revisions. Unlike in mainland China, Singapore parents have the option of registering their children's names in traditional characters. Malaysia also promulgated a set of simplified characters in 1981, though completely identical to the mainland Chinese set. They are used in Chinese-language schools. All characters simplified this way are enumerated in Charts 1 and 2 of
10010-571: The Avalokitesvara Bodhusattva image, one is noted for "its miraculous manifestations". Crossing another 1000 li, he reached Darada valley – the old capital of Udayana, with a 100 feet golden wood statue of Maitreya Boddhisattva. This statue, states his travelogue, was built by an artist who went three times into heaven to see how he looks and then carve the realistic image of him on earth. Xuanzang arrived in Taxila, after crossing
10153-470: The Chinese government published a major revision to the list which included a total of 8300 characters. No new simplifications were introduced. In addition, slight modifications to the orthography of 44 characters to fit traditional calligraphic rules were initially proposed, but were not implemented due to negative public response. Also, the practice of unrestricted simplification of rare and archaic characters by analogy using simplified radicals or components
10296-737: The Eastern Cakuri monastery and Ascarya monastery, with Buddha's footprints and Buddha idols. According to Xuanzang's accounts, mystical light emanated from Buddha's footprints on "fast days". In the country of Baluka, the Sarvastivada school of Hinayana Buddhism was in vogue. He crossed the countries of Samarkand, Mimohe, Kaputana, Kusanika, Bukhara, Betik, Horismika and Tukhara. These had cities near rivers or lakes, then vast regions with no inhabitants, little water or grass. He describes warring factions of Turk chieftains in control, with "illness and pestilence" rampant. From here, he crossed
10439-571: The Great Pure Lake. He describes supernatural monsters, fishes and dragons living in this lake. The Xuanzang travelogues then rush through the names of many countries, stating that more details are provided in the return part of his journey, as he crosses into country of Bactra (modern Balkh ). He adds that the Hinayana Buddhist schools were followed in all these regions. In the capital of the country of Bactra, states Xuanzang,
10582-565: 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
10725-570: The Sui Dynasty collapsed and Xuanzang and his brother fled to Chang'an , which had been proclaimed as the capital of the Tang dynasty , and thence southward to Chengdu , Sichuan . Here the two brothers spent two or three years in further study in the monastery of Kong Hui, including the Abhidharma-kośa Śāstra . The abbot Zheng Shanguo allowed Xuanzang to study these advanced subjects though he
10868-564: The West , Xuanzang is addressed as "Tripitaka." Xuanzang was born Chen Hui (or Chen Yi) on 6 April 602 CE in Chenhe Village, Goushi Town ( Chinese : 緱氏鎮 ), Luozhou (near present-day Luoyang , Henan ). His family was noted for its erudition for generations, and Xuanzang was the youngest of four children. His ancestor was Chen Shi (104–186), a minister of the Eastern Han dynasty . His great-grandfather Chen Qin (陳欽) served as
11011-462: The age of twenty. He later travelled throughout China in search of sacred books of Buddhism. At length, he came to Chang'an , then under the peaceful rule of Emperor Taizong of Tang , where Xuanzang developed the desire to visit India. He knew about Faxian 's visit to India and, like him, was concerned about the incomplete and misinterpreted nature of the Buddhist texts that had reached China. He
11154-428: The character set are altered. Some simplifications were based on popular cursive forms that embody graphic or phonetic simplifications of the traditional forms. In addition, variant characters with identical pronunciation and meaning were reduced to a single standardized character, usually the simplest among all variants in form. Finally, many characters were left untouched by simplification and are thus identical between
11297-407: The chosen variants, those that appear in the "Complete List of Simplified Characters" are also simplified in character structure accordingly. Some examples follow: Sample reduction of equivalent variants : Ancient variants with simple structure are preferred : Simpler vulgar forms are also chosen : The chosen variant was already simplified in Chart 1 : In some instances, the chosen variant
11440-418: The cities. The cities are built from bricks, while homes are either made mostly from bricks or from "wattled bamboo or wood". Cottages are thatched with straw and grass. The residents of India clean their floor and then smear it with a preparation of cow dung, followed by decorating it with flowers, unlike Chinese homes. Their children go to school at age seven, where they begin learning a number of treatises of
11583-575: The country of Agni had more than ten monasteries following the Sarvastivada school of Hinayana Buddhism, with two thousand monks who ate " three kinds of pure meat " with other foods, rather than vegetarian food only that would be consistent with Mahayana Buddhist teachings. Therefore, the Buddhists in this country had stagnated in their Buddhist teachings. Moving further westward, Xuanzang met about two thousand Turkic robbers on horses. The robbers began fighting with each other on how to fairly divide
11726-473: The country's writing system as a serious impediment to its modernization. In 1916, a multi-part English-language article entitled "The Problem of the Chinese Language" co-authored by the Chinese linguist Yuen Ren Chao (1892–1982) and poet Hu Shih (1891–1962) has been identified as a turning point in the history of the Chinese script—as it was one of the first clear calls for China to move away from
11869-523: The details in the surviving versions of Xuanzang biography were invented or a paleographic confusion introduced an error, or the Persian-Turkish records are unreliable. The Japanese version is based on 8th to 10th-century translations of texts that ultimately came from Xuanzang's monastery, which unfortunately has added to the confusion. Most sources state that Xuanzang started his pilgrimage in 629 CE. Purpose of journey The purpose of my journey
12012-399: 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
12155-484: 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
12298-543: The diversity of languages spoken, how harmonious and elegant they sound when they speak their languages, Xuanzang presents the various kingdoms of India. Xuanzang includes a section on the differences between the Hinayana and Mahayana Buddhist communities. There are eighteen sects in Buddhism, according to Xuanzang. They stand against each other, debate "various viewpoints, as vehemently as crashing waves". Though they share
12441-522: The dragon-horses. These were men who will have massacred an entire city, leaving the place deserted.". Further west he passed Aksu before turning northwest to cross the Tian Shan and then Tokmak on its northwest. He met the great Khagan of the Göktürks . After a feast, Xuanzang continued west then southwest to Tashkent , capital of modern Uzbekistan . Xuanzang describes more monasteries, such as
12584-476: The early 20th century. In 1909, the educator and linguist Lufei Kui formally proposed the use of simplified characters in education for the first time. Over the following years—marked by the 1911 Xinhai Revolution that toppled the Qing dynasty , followed by growing social and political discontent that further erupted into the 1919 May Fourth Movement —many anti-imperialist intellectuals throughout China began to see
12727-528: 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
12870-646: The famed Nalanda University in modern day Bihar , India where he studied with the monk, Śīlabhadra . He departed from India with numerous Sanskrit texts on a caravan of twenty packhorses. His return was welcomed by Emperor Taizong in China, who encouraged him to write a travelogue. This Chinese travelogue, titled the Records of the Western Regions , is a notable source about Xuanzang, and also for scholarship on 7th-century India and Central Asia. His travelogue
13013-475: The few monks who can expound all four are provided with lay servants. Expounders of five texts have elephants for travel, while six texts entitles them to security retinue. Xuanzang describes Lampaka (modern Laghman , near the source of Kabul river) as the territory of north India, one whose circuit is more than 1000 li and where all monasteries studied Mahayana Buddhism. They have tens of Deva temples (Hindu) which heretics (non-Buddhists) frequent. To its southeast
13156-634: The first official list of simplified forms was published, consisting of 324 characters collated by Peking University professor Qian Xuantong . However, fierce opposition within the KMT resulted in the list being rescinded in 1936. Work throughout the 1950s resulted in the 1956 promulgation of the Chinese Character Simplification Scheme , a draft of 515 simplified characters and 54 simplified components, whose simplifications would be present in most compound characters. Over
13299-413: 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
13442-463: The first round—but was massively unpopular and never saw consistent use. The second round of simplifications was ultimately retracted officially in 1986, well after they had largely ceased to be used due to their unpopularity and the confusion they caused. In August 2009, China began collecting public comments for a revised list of simplified characters; the resulting List of Commonly Used Standard Chinese Characters lists 8,105 characters, including
13585-703: The five knowledges – first grammar, second technical skills which he states includes arts, mechanics, yin-yang and the calendar, third medicine, fourth being logic, and fifth field of knowledge taught is inner knowledge along with theory of cause and effect. After further similar introduction covering the diverse aspects of the Indian culture he observed, including fashion, hair styles, preference for being barefoot, ritual washing their hands after releasing bodily waste, cleaning teeth by chewing special tree twigs, taking baths before going to their temples, worshipping in their temples, their alphabet that contains forty seven letters,
13728-475: The following decade, the Script Reform Committee deliberated on characters in the 1956 scheme, collecting public input regarding the recognizability of variants, and often approving forms in small batches. Parallel to simplification, there were also initiatives aimed at eliminating the use of characters entirely and replacing them with pinyin as an official Chinese alphabet, but this possibility
13871-491: 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
14014-459: The founding of the Qin. The Han dynasty (202 BC – 220 AD) that inherited the Qin administration coincided with the perfection of clerical script through the process of libian . Eastward spread of Western learning Though most closely associated with the People's Republic, the idea of a mass simplification of character forms first gained traction in China during
14157-565: 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
14300-466: The increased usage of 朙 was followed by proliferation of a third variant: 眀 , with 目 'eye' on the left—likely derived as a contraction of 朙 . Ultimately, 明 became the character's standard form. The Book of Han (111 AD) describes an earlier attempt made by King Xuan of Zhou ( d. 782 BC ) to unify character forms across the states of ancient China , with his chief chronicler having "[written] fifteen chapters describing" what
14443-532: The king of this valley serve the Buddhist monks, records Xuanzang. Heading east and crossing the Black range, Xuanzang describes the country of Kapishi , where the Mahayana tradition of Buddhism had come in vogue. It had over 100 monasteries with stupas. More than 6000 monks, mostly Mahayana, studied here. Along with these Buddhist monasteries, states his travelogue, there were over ten Deva temples (Hindu) with "heretical believers who go about naked and smear dust over their bodies", translates Li Rongxi. Furthermore, in
14586-586: 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
14729-528: 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
14872-408: The later form of Mahayana prospered. According to Xuanzang, these monasteries of early Buddhist schools are desolate and attract few monks. He then reached the city of Hi-lo and Manglaur . In all these places, he mentions how the Buddha lived here in one of his previous lives (Jataka legends) and illustrated compassion-strength through his actions. There is a Buddhist temple northeast of Manglaur with
15015-465: The left, with the 月 'Moon' component on the right. Li Si ( d. 208 BC ), the Chancellor of Qin, attempted to universalize the Qin small seal script across China following the wars that had politically unified the country for the first time. Li prescribed the 朙 form of the word for 'bright', but some scribes ignored this and continued to write the character as 明 . However,
15158-592: The loot. After the loot had thus been lost, they dispersed. Xuanzang thereafter reached the country of Kuchi . This country of 1000 li by 600 li, had over one hundred monasteries with five thousand monks following the Sarvastivada school of Hinayana Buddhism, and studying its texts in "original Indian language". Xuanzang writes of a dragon race and a region where water dragons metamorphose into horses to mate and create dragon-horses, also into men and mating with women nearby, creating dragon-men who could run as fast as
15301-618: The loss of property. The villagers help his companions and him by hosting them before the resume their journey. Yet, elsewhere, Xuanzang also recites the implausible tale of meeting a Brahmana who was 700 years old and had two associates, each over 100 years old, who had mastered all of the Vedas and the Buddhist Madhyamika sastra . He calls them heretics (non-Buddhists). These heretics help him and his companions get new garments and food. He stayed with this implausibly old Brahmana for
15444-455: 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
15587-402: The most prominent Chinese authors of the 20th century, stated that "if Chinese characters are not destroyed, then China will die" ( 漢字不滅，中國必亡 ). During the 1930s and 1940s, discussions regarding simplification took place within the ruling Kuomintang (KMT) party. Many members of the Chinese intelligentsia maintained that simplification would increase literacy rates throughout the country. In 1935,
15730-425: 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
15873-583: 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
16016-538: 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
16159-408: The phonetic equivalent of what previously has been variously interpreted as "Tianzhu" or "Shengdu" or "Xiandou". More recent scholarship suggests the closest pronunciation of the 7th-century term in his travelogues would be "Indu". Xuanzang states that India is a vast country over ninety thousand li in circuit, with seventy kingdoms, sea on three sides and snow mountains to its north. It is a land that
16302-704: The prefect of Shangdang (上黨; present-day Changzhi , Shanxi ) during the Eastern Wei ; his grandfather Chen Kang (陳康) was a professor in the Taixue (Imperial Academy) during the Northern Qi . His father Chen Hui (陳惠) served as the magistrate of Jiangling County during the Sui dynasty . According to traditional biographies, Xuanzang displayed a superb intelligence and earnestness, studied with his father, and amazed him by his careful observance of filial piety after one such study about that topic. His elder brother
16445-430: The public and quickly fell out of official use. It was ultimately formally rescinded in 1986. The second-round simplifications were unpopular in large part because most of the forms were completely new, in contrast to the familiar variants comprising the majority of the first round. With the rescission of the second round, work toward further character simplification largely came to an end. In 1986, authorities retracted
16588-404: 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 ,
16731-465: The recently conquered parts of the empire is generally seen as being the first real attempt at script reform in Chinese history. Before the 20th century, variation in character shape on the part of scribes, which would continue with the later invention of woodblock printing , was ubiquitous. For example, prior to the Qin dynasty (221–206 BC) the character meaning 'bright' was written as either 明 or 朙 —with either 日 'Sun' or 囧 'window' on
16874-552: 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
17017-509: 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
17160-427: The s- or sh-like [ɕ] in today's Mandarin, was previously pronounced as the h-like [x] in early Mandarin, which accounts for the archaic transliterations with h . Another form of his official style was "Yuanzang", written 元奘. It is this form that accounts for such variants as Yuan Chang, Yuan Chwang, and Yuen Chwang. Tang Monk (Tang Seng) is also transliterated /Thang Seng/. Another of Xuanzang's standard aliases
17303-504: The same capital region, there is a Hinayana monastery with 300 monks at the northern foothills. The citizens of this country, adds Xuanzang, fondly recall "King Kanishka of Gandhara " (2nd-century CE, Kushan empire ). To its east are the "City of Svetavat temple" and the Aruna Mountain known for its frequent avalanches. His travelogue then describes several popular legends about a Naga king. He also describes miraculous events from
17446-479: The same goal, they study different subjects and use sharp words to argue. Each Buddhist sect has different set of rules and regulations for their monks. The monks who cannot expound a single text must do the routine monastic duties (cleaning monastery and such). Those who can expound one Buddhist text flawlessly is exempt from such duties. Those who can recite two texts, get better quality rooms. Monks who can expound three Buddhist texts get attendants to serve them, while
17589-481: The same set of simplified characters as mainland China. The first round was promulgated by the Ministry of Education in 1969, consisting of 498 simplified characters derived from 502 traditional characters. A second round of 2287 simplified characters was promulgated in 1974. The second set contained 49 differences from the mainland China system; these were removed in the final round in 1976. In 1993, Singapore adopted
17732-467: The second round completely, though they had been largely fallen out of use within a year of their initial introduction. That year, the authorities also promulgated a final version of the General List of Simplified Chinese Characters . It was identical to the 1964 list save for 6 changes—including the restoration of 3 characters that had been simplified in the first round: 叠 , 覆 , 像 ; the form 疊
17875-517: 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
18018-511: 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
18161-634: The stupas and the Buddha images in this region as "magnificent" and made with "perfect craftmanship". Heading north towards Kashmir , he arrived in the city of Pushkalavati , with many holy Buddhist sites. Xuanzang worshipped at these "great stupas and big monasteries". Thereafter he reached the country of Udayana, through which flowed the Subhavastu river (now called Swat river). It had 1400 monasteries of five early Buddhist schools (of 18 sub-traditions) – Sarvastivada , Mahāsāṃghika , Kasyapiya, Mahisasaka and Dharmagupta. These schools became unpopular, as
18304-505: The sublime truth may also be known in the eastern country. — Xuanzang (Translator: Li Yung-hsi) In 630 CE, he arrived in the kingdom of Agni (Yanqi, in a place called Turpan ). Here he met the king, a Buddhist along with his uncle Jnanachandra and precept Mokshagupta, who tried to persuade him to quit his journey and teach them Buddhist knowledge. He declined and they equipped him further for his travels with letters of introduction and valuables to serve as funds. Xuanzang observed that
18447-623: 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
18590-547: 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
18733-497: The traditional and simplified Chinese orthographies. The Chinese government has never officially announced the completion of the simplification process after the bulk of characters were introduced by the 1960s. In the wake of the Cultural Revolution , a second round of simplified characters was promulgated in 1977—largely composed of entirely new variants intended to artificially lower the stroke count, in contrast to
18876-833: The traditional character 強 , with 11 strokes is standardised as 强 , with 12 strokes, which is a variant character. Such characters do not constitute simplified characters. The new standardized character forms shown in the Characters for Publishing and revised through the Common Modern Characters list tend to adopt vulgar variant character forms. Since the new forms take vulgar variants, many characters now appear slightly simpler compared to old forms, and as such are often mistaken as structurally simplified characters. Some examples follow: The traditional component 釆 becomes 米 : The traditional component 囚 becomes 日 : The traditional "Break" stroke becomes
19019-528: The travelogue of his journey to India in 629–645, his efforts to bring at least 657 Indian texts to China, and his translations of some of these texts. He was only able to translate 75 distinct sections of a total of 1335 chapters, but his translations included some of the most important Mahayana scriptures. Xuanzang was born on 6 April 602 in Chenliu, near present-day Luoyang , in Henan province of China. As
19162-522: The use of characters entirely. Instead, Chao proposed that the language be written with an alphabet, which he saw as more logical and efficient. The alphabetization and simplification campaigns would exist alongside one another among the Republican intelligentsia for the next several decades. Recent commentators have echoed some contemporary claims that Chinese characters were blamed for the economic problems in China during that time. Lu Xun , one of
19305-512: 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
19448-452: 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
19591-517: 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
19734-453: 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,
19877-464: Was abandoned, confirmed by a speech given by Zhou Enlai in 1958. In 1965, the PRC published the List of Commonly Used Characters for Printing [ zh ] (hereafter Characters for Printing ), which included standard printed forms for 6196 characters, including all of the forms from the 1956 scheme. A second round of simplified characters was promulgated in 1977, but was poorly received by
20020-590: Was already a monk in a Buddhist monastery. Inspired, at a young age, Xuanzang expressed interest in becoming a Buddhist monk like his brother. After the death of his father in 611, he lived with his older brother Chen Su ( Chinese : 陳素 ), later known as Zhangjie ( Chinese : 長捷 ), for five years at Jingtu Monastery ( Chinese : 淨土寺 ) in Luoyang , supported by the Sui state. During this time he studied Mahayana as well as various early Buddhist schools . In 618,
20163-401: Was also concerned about the competing Buddhist theories in variant Chinese translations. He sought original untranslated Sanskrit texts from India to help resolve some of these issues. At age 27, he began his seventeen-year overland journey to India. He defied his nation's ban on travel abroad, making his way through central Asian cities such as Khotan to India. He visited, among other places,
20306-485: 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
20449-547: Was young. Taking the monastic name Xuanzang, he was fully ordained as a monk in 622, at the age of twenty. The myriad contradictions and discrepancies in the Chinese translations at that time prompted Xuanzang to decide to go to India and study in the cradle of Buddhism. He knew about Faxian 's visit to India and, like him, sought original untranslated Sanskrit texts from India to help resolve some of these issues. Xuanzang started his pilgrimage to India in either 627 or 629 CE, according to two East Asian versions. The 627 CE version
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