Chinese Language
The Chinese language is a group of languages descended from 
Old Chinese that are 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. Chinese is commonly spoken in 
PRC, 
ROC, 
HK, and 
MC, while being relevant in 
Singapore and (sometimes) 
Malaysia. Chinese is regarded as one of the hardest if not the hardest language to learn.
A very common misconception about the Chinese Language is that he is one singular language with a variety of dialects. But in reality, he is a group of languages that have descended from Old Chinese, but not mutually intelligible. Approximately 1.39 billion people, or 17% of the 
global population, speak one of the Chinese languages as their first language.
歷史 (History)
The Chinese language probably evolved from the hypothetical 
Proto-Sino-Tibetan Language into Old Chinese around 3000 BC. The mythological 
Cangjie is credited with the creation of Chinese characters when he saw inspirations on a giant turtle's shell. Although many of the finer details remain unclear, most scholars agree that Old Chinese differs from the later 
Middle Chinese in lacking retroflex and palatal obstruents but having initial consonant clusters of some sort, and in having voiceless nasals and liquids.
The first recorded existence of Chinese is from the 
Oracle Bone Script, belonging to the late 
Shang Dynasty circa 1250 BC. The characters are pictographic but are considered a script and not random inscriptions/drawings because the characters have grammar. The next attested stage came from inscriptions on bronze artifacts dating to the 
Zhou Dynasty, specifically the Western Zhou period (1046 BC-771 BC), the Classic of Poetry and portions of the Book of Documents and 
I Ching. The script was known as the 
Bronze Script, which was quite diverse and all over the place.
The complex relationship between spoken and written Chinese is an example of diglossia: as spoken, Chinese varieties have evolved at different rates, while the written language used throughout China changed comparatively little, crystallizing into a prestige form known as 
Classical Chinese. Literature written distinctly in the Classical form began to emerge during the 
Spring and Autumn Period and continued to rule for almost the rest of 
history.
The next Chinese script was known as the 
Seal Script, which was more standardized and less pictographic than their Oracle predecessors. These Seal Scripts developed independently in the many 
feudal states of the Eastern Zhou period (771 BC-256 BC), until they were unified officially following the 
Qin Dynasty's unification of China in 221 BC.
During the 
Northern and Southern Dynasties (420-589), Middle Chinese went through several sound changes and split into several varieties following prolonged geographic and political separation. The Qieyun (601), a rhyme dictionary, recorded a compromise between the pronunciations of different regions. The evidence for the pronunciation of Middle Chinese comes from several sources: modern dialect variations, rhyme dictionaries, foreign transliterations, rhyme tables constructed by ancient Chinese philologists to summarize the phonetic system, and Chinese phonetic translations of foreign words. Middle Chinese was also used during the 
Sui, 
Tang, and 
Song dynasties between the 4th and 10th centuries.
After the fall of the 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 the slightly later Menggu Ziyun, this dictionary describes a language with many of the features characteristic of modern 
Mandarin dialects.
The royal courts of the 
Ming (1368-1644) and early 
Qing (1644-1912) dynasties operated using a koiné language known as 
Guanhua, based on the 
Nanjing Dialect of Mandarin.
Classical Chinese writing style remained nearly universal until the 
late 19th century, culminating with the widespread adoption of 
Written Vernacular Chinese with the May Fourth Movement beginning in 1919.
Standard Chinese, based on the 
Beijing Dialect, was adopted for official use in 1930, largely shared by readers who may otherwise speak mutually unintelligible varieties. This variant is continued to be used officially by 
ROC and PRC today.
In the 1950s, PRC pushed for the 
simplification of Chinese characters by removing strokes and merging multiple characters, and this campaign was successful as in modern times all of mainland uses the Simplified Script, while the rest of the Chinese ( Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau) uses the original 
Traditional Script (which had 
evolved naturally).
Singapore adopted Standard Chinese in 1976.
變體 (Variants)
There are hundreds of local Chinese language varieties forming a branch of the 
Sino-Tibetan Language Family, many of whom are not mutually intelligible. Variation is particularly strong in the more mountainous southeast part of mainland China.
† indicates that the language is extinct.
聲調 (Tones)
Tones in addition to consonants and vowels are used to distinguish words from each other. There's around 3,500 commonly used Chinese characters, but only 400 sounds for them, so that's why tones are needed, and that's why everywhere in Chinese one sound can mean on average 8 to 9 different things. Mandarin has four main tones and neutral tone. First tone is high (ā), the pitch stays high; second is rising (á), with the pitch rising from middle to high; third is low/dipping (ǎ), the pitch rise high after low fall; forth is falling (à), the pitch is from sharp high to low; fifth is neutral, it's silent and doesn't use any tones. 
Cantonese has six tones.
特殊字的聲調 (Tones on Special Characters)
Some tones change on certain characters in certain situations, especially in Mandarin.
- 不 (bù) changes from fourth tone to second tone (bú) when followed by another fourth-tone character. For example: 不是 (bù + shì) becomes búshì.
- 一 (yī) changes from first tone to second tone (yí) when it comes before a fourth-tone character. For example: 一下 (yī + xià) becomes yíxià.
語法 (Grammar)
Chinese have probably the most simple grammar of all languages. Chinese doesn't have meaningless words that unnecessarily complicate things, like "the" or "it is".
subject verb objective
The sentence structure is S-V-O.
我爱苹果.
I love apples.
如何畫 (How to draw)
Chinese Language has a drawing rating of hard.
- Draw a ball.
- Draw a white circle in the middle.
- Divide the rest of the ball into four parts equal using white bars.
- Fill in red in the top left part, and draw a black 9-pointed star with yellow circles at each point.
- Fill in blue in the bottom left part, and draw a white sun.
- Fill in red in the top right part, and draw a white crescent moon with five 5-pointed stars.
- Fill in green in the bottom right part, and draw a white flower.
- Fill in the middle with red, and draw a white flower.
- Add Chinese eyes and done.
| Color Name | HEX | |
|---|---|---|
| China Red | #EF0000 | |
| China Yellow | #FFEF00 | |
| Black | #000000 | |
| White | #FFFFFF | |
| Blue | #000095 | |
| Singapore Red | #ED2939 | |
| Green | #00785E | |
| Macau Yellow | #FBD116 | |
| Hong Kong Red | #DE2910 | |
