Language
Han Chinese speak various forms of the Chinese language that are descended from a common early language; one of the names of the language group is Hanyu (simplified Chinese: 汉语; traditional Chinese: 漢語), literally the "Han language". Similarly, Chinese characters, used to write the language, are called Hanzi (simplified Chinese: 汉字; traditional Chinese: 漢字), or "Han characters".
In the late imperial period, more than two thirds of the Han Chinese population used a variant of Mandarin Chinese as their native tongue. However, there was a larger variety of Chinese dialects in certain areas of southeast China, like Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Guangxi. Since the Qin dynasty which standardized the various forms of writing that existed in China, a standard literary Chinese emerged with vocabulary and grammar that was significantly different from the various forms of spoken Chinese. A simplified and elaborated version of this written standard was used in business contracts, notes for Chinese opera, ritual texts for Chinese folk religion, and other daily documents for educated people.
During the early 20th century, written vernacular Chinese based on Beijing Mandarin, which has been developing for a few centuries, was standardized and adopted to replace Literary Chinese. While written vernacular forms of other languages of China exist, such as written Cantonese, written Chinese based on Mandarin is widely understood by speakers of all Chinese languages and has taken up the dominant position among written Chinese languages, formerly occupied by Literary Chinese. Thus, although the residents of different regions would not necessarily understand each other's speech, they generally share a common written language.
Beginning in the 1950s, Simplified Chinese characters was adopted in mainland China and later in Singapore, while Chinese communities in Hong Kong, Macau, the Republic of China (Taiwan) and overseas countries continue to use Traditional Chinese characters. While significant differences exist between the two character sets, they are largely mutually intelligible.
Read more about this topic: Subgroups Of Han Chinese, Culture
Famous quotes containing the word language:
“Man acts as though he were the shaper and master of language, while in fact language remains the master of man.”
—Martin Heidegger (1889–1976)
“I invented the colors of the vowels!—A black, E white, I red, O blue, U green—I made rules for the form and movement of each consonant, and, and with instinctive rhythms, I flattered myself that I had created a poetic language accessible, some day, to all the senses.”
—Arthur Rimbaud (1854–1891)
“Just as language has no longer anything in common with the thing it names, so the movements of most of the people who live in cities have lost their connexion with the earth; they hang, as it were, in the air, hover in all directions, and find no place where they can settle.”
—Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926)