Misplaced Pages

#130869

106-607: The district's name ( 宝塔 ) literally translates to pagoda . Government sources believe that the Guifang established an independent state in the area circa the 16th century BCE. A few dozen ancient jade artifacts uncovered within the district indicate that the territory once belonged to the Shang dynasty . During the Zhou dynasty, the area was inhabited by the Xianyun and Xirong tribes. Later,

212-464: 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

318-510: A spire crowning the top. Its walls are 2.5 m thick, with a ground floor diameter of 10.6 m. Another early brick pagoda is the Sui dynasty Guoqing Pagoda built in 597. The earliest large-scale stone pagoda is a Four Gates Pagoda at Licheng , Shandong, built in 611 during the Sui dynasty . Like the Songyue Pagoda, it also features a spire at its top, and is built in the pavilion style. One of

424-457: 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

530-505: 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

636-595: 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

742-566: A central pagoda might not have been either desirable or possible. In the Song dynasty (960–1279), the Chan (Zen) sect developed a new 'seven part structure' for temples. The seven parts—the Buddha hall, dharma hall, monks' quarters, depository, gate, pure land hall and toilet facilities—completely exclude pagodas, and can be seen to represent the final triumph of the traditional Chinese palace/courtyard system over

848-462: 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

954-595: A century, with Mongol Empire soldiers capturing the eastern portion of Yan'an Fu in 1221. When the Western Xia was completely conquered by the Mongol Empire in 1227, Jin forces withdrew from Yan'an Fu, allowing the Mongol Empire to occupy it. A earthquake struck the region during one night in September 1303. In May 1314, a hailstorm with strong winds impacted much of the regions crops, farm animals, and humans. Flooding in

1060-597: 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

1166-700: 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

SECTION 10

#1732855058131

1272-402: A list inscribed on it of the recently successful examination candidates, in hopes that it would reverse the trend and win the county supernatural favor. Pagodas come in many different sizes, with taller ones often attracting lightning strikes , inspiring a tradition that the finial decoration of the top of the structure can seize demons. Today many pagodas have been fitted with wires making

1378-564: 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

1484-790: A notable exception being the eighteenth-century orientalist pagoda designed by Sir William Chambers at Kew Gardens in London. The pagodas in Himalayas are derived from Newari architecture , very different from Chinese and Japanese styles. During the Southern and Northern dynasties , pagodas were mostly built of wood, as were other ancient Chinese structures. Wooden pagodas are resistant to earthquakes, and no Japanese pagoda has been destroyed by an earthquake, but they are prone to fire, natural rot, and insect infestation. Examples of wooden pagodas: The literature of subsequent eras also provides evidence of

1590-599: A population of over 50,000 households, visited the Song capital of Bianjing (present-day Kaifeng ) in 982 CE. In 977 CE, the region was afflicted by a severe drought. When the Western Xia declared independence in 1038, Yanzhou became an important border location. Emperor Renzong of the Song dynasty organized a number of circuits in the region to consolidate Song rule in the region, including Fyuan Circuit  [ zh ] and Huanqing Circuit  [ zh ] . However,

1696-508: A rebellion, killing local governor Wang Zhengzhi  [ zh ] . From 1753 to 1773, the region was afflicting by droughts during 10 of its 20 springs, culminating in a failed harvest in 1773. The White Lotus Rebellion afflicted the region in 1796. Rich families were robbed, and tax collections were resisted. The Dungan Revolt afflicted the region in 1868, with a major riot breaking out in Sanshilipu ( Chinese : 三十里铺 ), in what

1802-491: 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

1908-503: 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

2014-678: 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

2120-494: A span of 60 consecutive days. Following the collapse of the Tang dynasty, Yanzhou was thrown into decades of unrest, with reported military conflicts in the region happening in 936, 947, and 953 CE. In 962 CE, the Tangut and Qiang peoples, who lived around Yanzhou, became tributaries of the newly emergent Song dynasty . Local Tangut leader Li Jipeng  [ zh ] , who ruled over

2226-428: A traditional part of Chinese architecture . In addition to religious use, since ancient times Chinese pagodas have been praised for the spectacular views they offer, and many classical poems attest to the joy of scaling pagodas. The oldest and tallest pagodas were built of wood, but most that survived were built of brick or stone. Some pagodas are solid with no interior. Hollow pagodas have no higher floors or rooms, but

SECTION 20

#1732855058131

2332-610: 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

2438-563: 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

2544-606: Is Beijing's Yonghe Temple , which was the residence of Yongzheng Emperor before he ascended the throne. It was donated for use as a lamasery after his death in 1735. Examples of Han dynasty era tower architecture predating Buddhist influence and the full-fledged Chinese pagoda can be seen in the four pictures below. Michael Loewe writes that during the Han dynasty (202 BC – 220 AD) period, multi-storied towers were erected for religious purposes, as astronomical observatories , as watchtowers , or as ornate buildings that were believed to attract

2650-596: 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

2756-689: 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

2862-465: Is a tiered tower with multiple eaves common to Thailand , Cambodia , Nepal , China , Japan , Korea , Myanmar , Vietnam , and other parts of Asia. Most pagodas were built to have a religious function, most often Buddhist , but sometimes Taoist , and were often located in or near viharas . The pagoda traces its origins to the stupa , while its design was developed in ancient India . Chinese pagodas ( Chinese : 塔 ; pinyin : Tǎ ) are

2968-485: 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,

3074-427: Is from a South Chinese pronunciation of the term for an eight-cornered tower, Chinese: 八角塔 , and reinforced by the name of a famous pagoda encountered by many early European visitors to China, the "Pázhōu tǎ" (Chinese: 琶洲塔 ), standing just south of Guangzhou at Whampoa Anchorage . Another proposed etymology is Persian butkada , from but , "idol" and kada , "temple, dwelling." Yet another etymology

3180-585: Is from the Sinhala word dāgaba , derived from Sanskrit dhātugarbha or Pali dhātugabbha : "relic womb/chamber" or "reliquary shrine", i.e. a stupa , by way of Portuguese. The origin of the pagoda can be traced to the stupa (3rd century BCE). The stupa, a dome shaped monument, was used as a commemorative monument to house sacred relics and writings. In East Asia, the architecture of Chinese towers and Chinese pavilions blended into pagoda architecture, eventually also spreading to Southeast Asia. Their construction

3286-508: Is now the town of Liulin . In 1877, a drought afflicted the region so badly that people resorted to cannibalism . This episode was part of the wider Northern Chinese Famine of 1876–1879 , which afflicted the Shaanbei region that year, and led to numerous documented instances of cannibalism in and around present-day Yan'an. In August 1889, a severe flood afflicted the region, resulting in crops getting washed away. Pagoda A pagoda

Baota District - Misplaced Pages Continue

3392-595: 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

3498-445: 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

3604-668: 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

3710-712: Is the Liaodi Pagoda. In April 2007 a new wooden pagoda Tianning Temple of Changzhou was opened to the public, the tallest in China, standing 154 m (505 ft). Chinese iconography is noticeable in Chinese and other East Asian pagoda architectures. Also prominent is Buddhist iconography such as the image of the Shakyamuni and Gautama Buddha in the abhaya mudra . In an article on Buddhist elements in Han dynasty art, Wu Hung suggests that in these temples, Buddhist symbolism

3816-484: 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,

3922-496: 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

4028-452: 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

4134-540: 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

4240-428: 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

4346-735: 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

Baota District - Misplaced Pages Continue

4452-563: The Great Xia dynasty in 407 CE, he built the ancient city of Fenglin ( simplified Chinese : 丰林 ; traditional Chinese : 豐林 ), which was located in present-day Zhoujiawan Village ( Chinese : 周家湾村 ) in the town of Liqu . In 451 CE, the Northern Wei organized the area under the jurisdiction of Guangluo County ( simplified Chinese : 广洛县 ; traditional Chinese : 廣洛縣 ), located in present-day Ansai District . Guangluo County

4558-525: 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

4664-563: The Liaodi Pagoda of Kaiyuan Monastery, Dingxian, Hebei , completed in the year 1055 AD under Emperor Renzong of Song and standing at a total height of 84 m (275 ft). Although it no longer stands, the tallest pre-modern pagoda in Chinese history was the 100-metre-tall wooden pagoda (330 ft) of Chang'an , built by Emperor Yang of Sui , and possibly the short-lived 6th century Yongning Pagoda ( 永宁宝塔 ) of Luoyang at roughly 137 metres. The tallest pre-modern pagoda still standing

4770-680: 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

4876-579: 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

4982-474: The Northern Wei and Sui dynasties (386–618) experiments began with the construction of brick and stone pagodas. Even at the end of the Sui, however, wood was still the most common material. For example, Emperor Wen of the Sui dynasty (reigned 581–604) once issued a decree for all counties and prefectures to build pagodas to a set of standard designs, however since they were all built of wood none have survived. Only

5088-645: The Qin took the land over from the Wei state. Under the rule of Emperor Qin Shihuang , the area was organized as Gaonu County within the Shang Commandery beginning in 221 BCE. Following the collapse of the Qin in 206 BCE, as part of Xiang Yu's attempted rebellion, Gaonu County briefly was held by rebel forces. However, this proved to be short lived, and forces loyal Emperor Gaozu of

5194-690: The Shaanbei region, resulting in a period of significant agricultural development. The Commentary on the Water Classic , written by Li Daoyuan , highlights observations made during this period that Gaonu County had certain flammable water, which would turn out to be petroleum . A major earthquake afflicted the Shang Commandery in 32 BCE. In 9 CE, Gaonu County was renamed to Pingli County ( simplified Chinese : 平利县 ; traditional Chinese : 平利縣 ; pinyin : Pínglì Xiàn ). Shortly afterwards, it

5300-566: The Songyue Pagoda has survived, a circular-based pagoda built out of brick in 523 AD. The earliest extant brick pagoda is the 40-metre-tall Songyue Pagoda in Dengfeng Country, Henan . This curved, circle-based pagoda was built in 523 during the Northern Wei dynasty , and has survived for 15 centuries. Much like the later pagodas found during the following Tang dynasty, this temple featured tiers of eaves encircling its frame, as well as

5406-604: The Sui dynasty . Sui forces in contemporary Baota District successfully repelled them. Yanzhou  [ zh ] , the zhou which governed the area during the early Sui dynasty, was abolished in 607 CE, and replaced with Yan'an Commandery  [ zh ] . Under both Yanzhou and Yan'an Commandery, the area of contemporary Baota District was governed as Fushi County ( simplified Chinese : 肤施县 ; traditional Chinese : 膚施縣 ; pinyin : Fūshī Xiàn ). In 614 CE, general Liu Jia ( simplified Chinese : 刘迦 ; traditional Chinese : 劉迦 ) attempted an uprising in

SECTION 50

#1732855058131

5512-473: 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

5618-591: 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

5724-512: The English term pagoda is a more generic term referring to a place of worship , although pagoda is not an accurate word to describe a Buddhist vihara. The architectural structure of the stupa has spread across Asia, taking on many diverse forms specific to each region. Many Philippine bell towers are highly influenced by pagodas through Chinese workers hired by the Spaniards . One proposed etymology

5830-555: 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

5936-570: The Western Xia invaded the region in early 1040, led by Emperor Jingzong . Song forces, led by Fan Yong  [ zh ] , mobilized to defend 36 villages in the area. Emperor Jingzong captured Jinming (in present-day Ansai District), and then moved on to Yanzhou's center, located in what is now Baota District. After three days of fighting, Western Xia forces captured the area. However, heavy snowfalls later led to food shortages among Western Xia soldiers in Yanzhou, and they were forced to withdraw from

6042-607: The Yanhua Canal ( Chinese : 延化渠 ) was dug out in Yanzhou to better conserve water in the region, and to help irrigate crops. However, the region's agriculture remains highly susceptible to episodes of severe frost, which killed local crops in 651 CE, 679 CE, and 704 CE. The area of present-day Baota District was greatly affected by the An Lushan Rebellion , which reduced Yanzhou's population from 16,345 households down to just 938 households. In 765 CE, while travelling through

6148-651: The area was inhabited by the Baidi ( Chinese : 白狄 ; pinyin : Báidí ) clan of the Beidi groups. These people were predominantly nomads and hunters. In 627 CE, the Jin state defeated the local Baidi, captured their leader, and incorporated the territory into their lands. When the Jin state collapsed in 376 BCE, the area of present-day Baota District was incorporated into the Wei state . In 328 BCE,

6254-457: The area, centered on nearby Fu County . The uprising quickly failed, and was crushed. In February of 617 CE, rebel leader Liang Shidu captured the northern portions of Yan'an Commandery during his march southward. In September of 619 CE, Liang Shidu and his army was expelled from the region by Tang dynasty general Duan Decao  [ zh ] , who was appointed as the head of the Tang's Yanzhou armed forces. In 633 CE, under Tang rule,

6360-399: 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

6466-484: 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

SECTION 60

#1732855058131

6572-632: The domination of wooden pagoda construction. The famous Tang dynasty poet, Du Mu , once wrote: 480 Buddhist temples of the Southern Dynasties, uncountable towers and pagodas stand in the misty rain. The oldest standing fully wooden pagoda in China today is the Pagoda of Fugong Temple in Ying County, Shanxi , built in the 11th century during the Song/ Liao dynasty (see Song architecture ). During

6678-529: The earliest brick and stone pagodas was a three-storey construction built in the (first) Jin dynasty (266–420) , by Wang Jun of Xiangyang . However, it is now destroyed. Brick and stone went on to dominate Tang , Song , Liao and Jin dynasty pagoda construction. An example is the Giant Wild Goose Pagoda (652 AD), built during the early Tang dynasty. The Porcelain Pagoda of Nanjing has been one of

6784-464: 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

6890-423: The favor of spirits, deities, and immortals . Pagodas built during the Sui and Tang dynasty usually had a square base, with a few exceptions such as the Daqin Pagoda: Pagodas of the Five Dynasties, Northern and Southern Song, Liao, Jin, and Yuan dynasties incorporated many new styles, with a greater emphasis on hexagonal and octagonal bases for pagodas: Pagodas in the Ming and Qing dynasties generally inherited

6996-464: The finial into a lightning rod . Wooden pagodas possess certain characteristics thought to resist earthquake damage. These include the friction damping and sliding effect of the complex wooden dougong joints, the structural isolation of floors, the effects of wide eaves analogous to a balancing toy, and the Shinbashira phenomenon that the center column is bolted to the rest of the superstructure. Pagodas traditionally have an odd number of levels,

7102-413: 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

7208-491: 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

7314-435: 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

7420-404: The interior often contains an altar or a smaller pagoda, as well as a series of staircases for the visitor to climb to see the view from an opening on one side of each tier. Most have between three and 13 tiers (almost always an odd number) and the classic gradual tiered eaves. In some countries, the term may refer to other religious structures. In Vietnam and Cambodia, due to French translation,

7526-531: 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

7632-516: 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

7738-469: The latter of whom went on to capture Boyan Timur. This marked the final military conflict in Yan'an Fu for many decades. The region went on to suffer two major natural disasters in 1439. First, a drought happened in the summer, then, the region was flooded in the autumn. These two disasters resulted in a nearly non-existent harvest that year. Another major disaster struck on September 30, 1448, when an earthquake hit

7844-455: 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

7950-471: The most famous brick and stone pagoda in China throughout history. The Zhou dynasty started making the ancient pagodas about 3,500 years ago. Pagodas, in keeping with the tradition of the White Horse Temple , were generally placed in the center of temples until the Sui and Tang dynasties. During the Tang, the importance of the main hall was elevated and the pagoda was moved beside the hall, or out of

8056-425: 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

8162-583: 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

8268-563: The newly created Han dynasty retook Gaonu County. Xiongnu forces number approximately 30,000 invaded and looted Gaonu County in 158 BCE. News of this reached Chang'an , and Han troops were sent to reclaim Gaonu County, which they did after a month. In 117 BCE, as part of the Han–Xiongnu War , Han dynasty forces retook areas of Gaonu County which were previously occupied by Xiongnu forces. An imperial edict from Emperor Wu in 120 BCE forced approximately 700,000 poor peasants to migrate to

8374-509: The original central-pagoda tradition established 1000 years earlier by the White Horse Temple in 67. Although they were built outside of the main temple itself, large pagodas in the tradition of the past were still built. This includes the two Ming dynasty pagodas of Famen Temple and the Chongwen Pagoda in Jingyang of Shaanxi . A prominent, later example of converting a palace to a temple

8480-538: 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

8586-404: 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 ,

8692-675: The region in 1629, and again in 1632. Chinese peasant rebel leader Li Zicheng occupied Yan'an Fu in November 1643, as part of his short-lived Shun dynasty . Li renamed Yan'an Fu to Tianbao Fu ( Chinese : 天保府 ). Shun forces continued to control Tianbao Fu in the face of ascendant Qing dynasty forces in 1645. Led by Li Guo  [ zh ] and Gao Yigong  [ zh ] , Shun forces retreated from Wayaobao to Tianbao Fu's urban center. They held it for 20 days before being abandoning it due to lack of food supplies. In March 1649, Qing general Wang Yongqiang  [ zh ] led

8798-450: The region shortly after. Song general Zhao Zhen  [ zh ] was put in charge of guarding the Song's border with the Western Xia, but was dismissed from this role in June 1040 following a Western Xia raid which killed two major generals. Zhao Zhen commanded 8,000 soldiers, but only sent 100 to fend off the attack, resulting in accusations that he refused to help. In 1041, Fan Zhongyan

8904-470: The region to migrate to an area less afflicted by the conflict, famous poet Du Fu spent a night in Qilipu ( Chinese : 七里铺 ), in what is now the southern portion of Baota District. From 766 to 779 CE, the pagoda on Jialing Mountain ( simplified Chinese : 嘉岭山 ; traditional Chinese : 嘉嶺山 ), now known as Baota Mountain  [ zh ] , was constructed. In 895 CE, Yanzhou experienced rain for

9010-484: The region. Heavy rainfalls in 1456 resulted in major structural damage to many buildings in the region. Serious droughts again afflicted the region in the summer of 1481, and the autumn of 1484. Yanli Canal ( Chinese : 延利渠 ) was built in the south of Yan'an Fu in 1496, creating Liu Lake ( Chinese : 柳湖 ). An insect plague destroyed much of the region's crops in October 1497. The Yongji Bridge ( Chinese : 永济桥 )

9116-399: The region. In November 1128, the Jin conquered nearby Danzhou (in present-day Yichuan County , directly to Baota's south), and then moved to conquer the eastern portion of Yan'an Fu  [ zh ] , the fu which governed the region at the time. Following their success in the eastern portion, the Jin conquered the western portions of Yan'an Fu. Jin rule in the region lasted less than

9222-552: 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

9328-509: 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

9434-505: 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

9540-557: 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

9646-582: The styles of previous eras, although there were some minor variations: Tiered towers with multiple eaves: Stupas called "pagodas": Places called "pagoda" but which are not tiered structures with multiple eaves: Structures that evoke pagoda architecture: Structures not generally thought of as pagodas, but which have some pagoda-like characteristics: Chinese language Chinese ( simplified Chinese : 汉语 ; traditional Chinese : 漢語 ; pinyin : Hànyǔ ; lit. ' Han language' or 中文 ; Zhōngwén ; 'Chinese writing')

9752-579: The summer of June 1326 uprooted 90 households in Fushi County. In May 1369, Ming dynasty forces led by Xu Da conquered Yan'an Fu. Yan'an Fu suffered another natural disaster in July 1373, when a drought caused a local famine . Remnants of the Mongol -led Yuan dynasty , led by Boyan Timur  [ zh ] , attacked the region in 1376. However, they were repelled by Ming generals Tang He and Fu Youde ,

9858-405: The temple compound altogether. In the early Tang, Daoxuan wrote a Standard Design for Buddhist Temple Construction in which the main hall replaced the pagoda as the center of the temple. The design of temples was also influenced by the use of traditional Chinese residences as shrines, after they were philanthropically donated by the wealthy or the pious. In such pre-configured spaces, building

9964-513: 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

10070-547: 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

10176-512: 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

10282-452: 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

10388-508: 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

10494-453: 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,

10600-576: Was built outside of the eastern gate of the central city in Yan'an Fu in 1503. Yongji Bridge reached a height of 2.18 metres (7.2 ft), and spanned across a distance of 3.11 metres (10.2 ft). On October 17, 1505, Yan'an Fu was hit by two separate earthquakes on the same day. Chinese poet Li Panlong  [ zh ] , one of the Latter Seven Masters , wrote a poem about the city in 1570 titled "Yanzhou City" ( Chinese : 延州城 ; pinyin : Yánzhōu Chéng ). Severe famine afflicted

10706-474: Was fused with native Chinese traditions into a unique system of symbolism. Some believed reverence at pagodas could bring luck to students taking the Chinese civil service examinations . When a pagoda of Yihuang County in Fuzhou collapsed in 1210, local inhabitants believed the disaster correlated with the recent failure of many exam candidates in the prefectural examinations The pagoda was rebuilt in 1223 and had

10812-481: 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

10918-401: Was popularized by the efforts of Buddhist missionaries , pilgrims, rulers, and ordinary devotees to honor Buddhist relics. Japan has a total of 22 five-storied timber pagodas constructed before 1850. The earliest styles of Chinese pagodas were square-base and circular-base, with octagonal -base towers emerging in the 5th–10th centuries. The highest Chinese pagoda from the pre-modern age is

11024-446: Was put in charge of Qing Prefecture , and Pang Ji was put in charge of Yanzhou. While serving as a military officer in Yanzhou, Song dynasty scientist Shen Kuo conducted a number of experiments with petroleum in the region, which he believed would have many uses. Following the collapse of the Song dynasty, the Jin dynasty (not to be confused with the aforementioned Western Jin) was established, and began making quick advances into

11130-697: Was renamed Gaonu County. Towards the end of the Eastern Han period , the Xiongnu retook control of the area. During its incorporation into the Xiongnu confederacy, the Xiongnu people, the Qiang people , and a number of smaller ethnic groups inhabited the area. However, the Western Jin would then retake the land, until Liu Yuan , a Xiongnu noble, rose up and established the Han Zhao state in 304 CE. After Liu Bobo established

11236-671: Was ruled by the Jinming Commandery ( Chinese : 金明郡 ). In 559 CE, local Jihu leaders Hao Abao  [ zh ] and Hao Langpi  [ zh ] fought against the Northern Zhou on behalf of the Northern Qi , but were defeated by Northern Zhou leader Gao Lin  [ zh ] . In 582 CE, a number of prominent Göktürk leaders, including Tardu Khagan , Apa Khaghan , and Tanhan Khargan  [ zh ] , led an army of approximately 400,000 Göktürks to invade

#130869