There is not one single Chinese language, just like there are different accents of The English language except that there is not a complete different version of the English language like the Chinese which has many different versions or dialects including Wu, Cantonese and Taiwanese. Northern Chinese, also known as Mandarin, is the most commonly used language for China with a figure of 70% of the population that understand and speak it. English and Chinese have many significant differences. This makes learning English a serious challenge for Chinese native speakers and vice a versa. The Chinese do not have an alphabet but uses a logographic system for its written language. Each symbol can represent a word or a phrase. Also English has more vowels than the Chinese do as the Chinese don't have an official alphabet and distinctive vowels and consonants.
The oracle bones where one of the first legible scripts that had engraved into them Chinese symbols and questions. These bones were used during the late Shang Dynasty. The oracle-bone script was, at its time, a very sophisticated and well-developed writing system. The bones were actually written by the yellow emperor. The oracle bones are believed to show the legend of the genealogy of the Shang king. Oracle bone inscriptions were the records of the rituals with the spirits and where performed in communication with royal ancestral spirits. The shortest are only several characters long, whilst the longest are thirty to forty characters in length. The Shang king used these bones as a means to communicate with his ancestors on topics relating to the royal family, military success, weather forecasting, ritual sacrifices, and other related topics.
According to legend, Chinese characters were invented by Cangjie, a bureaucrat under the legendary Yellow Emperor. He had been Inspired by his study of the animals and nature in our world. the landscape of the earth and the stars in the sky, Cangjie is said to have invented symbols called zì and many other words and phrases that are used today. The characters that we know now have evolved from pictograms and have become more complex.
Chinese characters were first invented and used by bureaucrat of the yellow empire. Not only was the emperor known for apparently creating the Chinese calendar and Chinese astronomy but also he was credited to write the first Chinese characters on shells and bones hence the name the oracle bones. The Chinese language has evolved over thousands of years and this is what we know of where it started from and its history.
Theodor G. Pop
I thought this was a great summary of Chinese characters! I had no idea that there were so many different dialects, and I now understand why Chinese is so hard to learn. This gives me even more respect for the people in our grade learning Mandarin, and for all of the students from China. The yellow emperor also sounds very interesting, and as someone who was very confused while researching him, I thought it was amazing how easy you made this to understand.
ReplyDeleteI thought this is a really good blog. I learned a lot about the oracle bone and the Chinese characters. I can totally connect to why English speakers have a hard time learning Chinese. This blog is very clear! Good job Theo!
ReplyDeleteWell since I am in Mandarin 1 I can totally relate with Kwan, mandarin is very hard. Reading this I learned a lot about the background of the Chinese language, you went into great depths explaining the history of mandarin characters and I throughly enjoyed it.
ReplyDeleteNow I am able to understand why learning Mandarin is so hard for English speakers, and why it is hard for people who speak Mandarin to learn English. Learning how to make new sounds for new vowels does nothing easy. Before reading your blog I did not even know what oracle bones were, but now I do! The yellow emperor seamed like a very knowledgeable and important person of his time.
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