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82-511: Beigan/Peikan Township is named for Beigan Island (Peikan Island or Pei-kan), the main island in the township. Beigan Island has also been known as Pei-kan-t'ang, Pei-kan Tang / Peikantang ( Chinese : 北竿塘 ; pinyin : Běigāntáng ; Wade–Giles : Pei-kan-t'ang ), Changche shan ( 長岐山 ) / Changqidao ( 長岐島 ) and Ch'ang-hsü Shan ( 長㠘山 ). In Song and Ming records, Beigan Island was called Xiagantang / Xiagantangshan ( 下竿塘 / 下干塘 / 下竿塘山 ) as opposed to Nangan Island (Matsu Island), which

164-428: A lianbao (associated bao ) was created encompassing the inhabitants of the islands of Nangan, Beigan, Daqiu, Xiaoqiu, Gaodeng, Xiyang ( 西洋 ) and Dongyong ( Dongyin ). Later, Xiyang and Dongyong (Dongyin) were divided into a separate lianbao . On September 10, 1937, Japan occupied Beigan and Nangan. Beigan's vast resources of fish attracted many coastal Fujian residents to settle in the area to fish. In 1949, with

246-615: A baojia was created including Nangan Island. In 1949, ROC forces were stationed on Nangan Island. At 3 AM on January 9, 1966, three seamen from the PRC defected to the ROC at Nangan (Nankan) Island. They were ambushed and killed in transit to Taipei. In 2000, as part of the Three Links , transportation between Nangan Island's Fuao and Mawei District in Fuzhou was established. In 2003, Nangan Airport

328-464: 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

410-457: 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

492-505: 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

574-595: 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

656-462: 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

738-597: 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

820-700: 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

902-564: 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

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984-538: 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

1066-503: 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

1148-678: 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

1230-610: 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

1312-563: 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

1394-569: A watchtower was in place on Beigan Island. In 1869, the Qing government erected tablets in Tangqi and Qiaozi villages concerning salt taxes. On August 18, 1928, during the middle of the night, the previous several days of torrential rain caused a landslide in Qiaozi resulting in the deaths of more than thirty people. One resident was rescued three days after the landslide. A family of eight was wiped out. In 1934,

1476-632: Is Beigan Island, which is 6.43 square kilometres (2.48 sq mi) in area. Minor islands include Gaodeng Island (second largest), Daqiu Island (third largest), Liang Island (fourth largest) and Xiaoqiu Island (小坵) (fifth largest). The northernmost and easternmost points of Beigan Township are on Liang Island , the westernmost point is on Jinyu ( 進嶼 ), and the southernmost point is on Queshi ( 鵲石 ). Other islands include Wumingdao ( 無名島 ), Qiaotou ( 峭頭 ), Jinyu ( 進嶼 ), Langyan ( 浪岩 ) / Liang Reef (Liangjiao Reef; 亮礁 ), Sanlianyu (Trio Rocks; 三連嶼 ), Zhongdao ( 中島 ), Geli Dao (Clam Island; 蛤蜊島 ) which

1558-596: 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

1640-543: Is Tangqi (Tan-chi) village and is the place where major shops and restaurant are located. Beigan is a long and narrow island with tall mountains. Its highest peak is Bishan (Mount Bi) ( Chinese : 壁山 ; pinyin : Bìshān ), standing at 298 metres (978 ft) above sea level, which is the highest point in the Matsu Islands. The terrain of the rest of the island rises and falls with large numbers of sandy beaches and outlying islands. The main island of Beigan Township

1722-571: Is a rural township in the Matsu Islands and the county seat of Lienchiang County , Fujian . There is an airport in Nangan. The highest point is Yuntai Mountain , at 248 m (814 ft) above sea level. Nangan Township is named for Nangan Island (Nankan Island ), the main island in the township. Nangan was also known Nangantang ( 南竿塘 ; Nàng-găng-dòng). Because Lin Moniang's (who later became

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1804-689: 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

1886-568: Is also important as there is a neighborhood there called Zhonglong (中隴). Mazu is also referred to as Magang (馬港) and Siwei as Xiwei (西尾). As for Mazu and Magang, Magang is the preferred name. This could be in order to distinguish the village and its harbor from Mazu (媽祖), the goddess, and Mazu (馬祖) the island chain. Xiwei was derived from the local Fuzhou dialect's pronunciation of Siwei. The nine rural villages of Nangan Township are: The Palace of Heavenly Empress (天后宮) in Matsu Village contains

1968-582: Is an intense fog period during March and April which often affects the scheduled flights at Nangan Airport. Other islets in Nangan Township include Huangguan Yu ( 黃官嶼 ), Xie Jiao ( 鞋礁 ), Beiquan Jiao ( 北泉礁 ), and Liuquan Jiao ( 劉泉礁 ). There are 10 villages on Nangan. At the eastern end of the island is Jieshou (介壽村), the seat of the county government and the largest village. Following the coastal road west from Jieshou, there are Fuxing (復興村), Fuao (福澳村), Qingshui (清水村), Zhuluo (珠螺村) and Mazu (馬祖村). Following

2050-485: 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,

2132-569: Is not only the largest island of its township, but also the largest island of Matsu. Nangan Township is also the largest township in Lienchiang County, with a population of about 4,000. The highest point of the island is the Mount Yuntai peak at 248 meters. Nangan's climate is classified as subtropical, with distinct seasons. The average year-round temperature is 20C, with July and August reaching 34C and January temperatures as low as 1.8C. There

2214-487: Is now connected to southern Beigan Island by a causeway and Luoshan ( 螺山 ) and Bangshan ( 蚌山 ) which are near the northeastern coast of Beigan Island. There is a small island just a few meters off the beach of Qinbi (Chinbi) which is about 5m high called Turtle Island . Since the restoration of the county government on August 15, 1953, Beigan Township has been divided into 6 villages: Since 1951, Beigan Township has had seventeen mayors: There are branches of 7-Eleven at

2296-595: 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

2378-445: 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

2460-668: 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

2542-570: Is the Matsu Blue Tears Ecological Museum , Matsu Folk Culture Museum and Ching-kuo Memorial Hall . There are two abandoned military tunnels on the island: Tunnel 88 and Beihai Tunnel . Former military stronghold is Dahan Stronghold . Nature in the township is Shengtian Park and Mount Yuntai . Nangan was initially powered by Matsu Power Plant which was funded by the Ministry of National Defense , Taiwan Power Company and

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2624-484: 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,

2706-496: 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

2788-497: 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

2870-540: 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

2952-428: 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

3034-735: 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

3116-525: The Double-Heart of Stacked Stones at Cimei were halted after residents raised environmental concerns. Beigan Township is located approximately 110 nautical miles (200 km) northwest of Taiwan Island. The township is located to the north of Nangan (Matsu Island) and is the second largest island in the Matsu Islands. At their closet points, Beigan Island and Nangan Island are within 3 kilometres (1.6 nmi) of each other. The population center of Beigan

3198-525: 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

3280-1033: The Matsu Islands and Taiwan Island at Taipei Songshan Airport and Taichung Airport . The township houses the Beigan Harbor. There are commercial boat rides from Nangan regularly every 10 to 15 minutes. Boats from the Port of Keelung on Taiwan Island regularly visit Nangan, and from Nangan one can take the ferry to Beigan. Starting 23 December 2015, there will be direct ferry service between Beigan and Huangqi in Lianjiang County , Fuzhou , Fujian , Mainland China. Roads in Beigan are served by taxi or rented cars and buses. Scooters can also be rented from several places. Chinese language Chinese ( simplified Chinese : 汉语 ; traditional Chinese : 漢語 ; pinyin : Hànyǔ ; lit. ' Han language' or 中文 ; Zhōngwén ; 'Chinese writing')

3362-680: 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

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3444-579: 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

3526-582: The coffin of Lin Moniang. The temple also contains statues of the guards, Thousand-li Eye (千里眼) and Wind-following Ear (順風耳). There is an annual celebration on March 3. Matsu Distillery on Wujiao Hill (午角嶺) in Fusing Village produces daqu wine (大麴酒) and sorghum wine (高梁酒). Shengli Water Reservoir (勝利水庫 "Victory") and a museum are located in Cingshuei village. The museum contains four cannons from Jyuguang which were used to guide boats. Another museum

3608-473: 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

3690-591: 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

3772-673: 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. Nangan, Lienchiang Nangan Township ( Chinese : 南竿 鄉 )

3854-597: The Banli campus became the National Taiwan Ocean University Matsu Campus (國立臺灣海洋大學馬祖校區). National Matsu Senior High School  [ zh ] (國立馬祖高級中學), operated by the national government, is located in Nangan . The library of Beigan opens daily from Wednesday to Sundays with the exception of national holidays. The township is powered up by its Beigan Power Plant . The Beigan Airport links

3936-490: The Goddess Mazu ) bodily relic was claimed to be washed ashore here, Nangan was also known as Matsu Island / Ma-tsu Island / Matsu Shan / Matsu-Shan (Matsoo / Matsoo shan ) ( 馬祖島 ; Mā-cū-dō̤). In Song and Ming records, Nangan Island (Matsu Island) was called Shanggantang / Shanggantangshan ( 上竿塘 / 上干塘 / 上竿塘山 ) as opposed to Beigan Island, which was called Xiagantang / Xiagantangshan ( 下竿塘 / 下干塘 / 下竿塘山 ). In 1935,

4018-555: 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

4100-447: The crew and passengers died. On November 17, 2000, President Chen Shui-bian visited the township. In 2011, prehistoric human skeletons were found on Liang Island . On January 19, 2013, President Ma Ying-jeou visited the township. In 2013, the movie 100 Days was filmed in Qinbi (Cinbi) Village. In 2016, plans for constructing a heart-shaped stone structure at Beigan Island like

4182-498: The death of one nineteen year-old, injury of six others and the destruction of three buildings. On May 3, 1977, and May 2 and September 28, 1980, President Chiang Ching-kuo visited the township. In 1994, the Beigan Airport was built on Beigan Island. On June 17, 1994, and again on August 31, 1996, President Lee Teng-hui visited the township. On August 10, 1997, Formosa Airlines Flight 7601 crashed on Beigan Island. All of

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4264-399: 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

4346-484: 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

4428-566: 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

4510-714: The establishment of the People's Republic of China in Mainland China , Matsu was separated from the mainland and was subsequently incorporated under Lienchiang County by the Government of the Republic of China . In the early 1950s, skirmishes between Nationalist and Communist forces occurred near Gaodeng Island . On December 12, 1950, Beigan District was established as part of the Matsu Administrative Commission ( 馬祖行政公署 ). The county government and baojia system

4592-413: 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

4674-491: 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

4756-599: 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

4838-581: 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

4920-516: 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

5002-455: 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

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5084-400: The mountain road west, there are Meishi (梅石村), Renai (仁愛村) and Jinsha (津沙聚落), before once again reaching Mazu. Located to the north of Mazu is Siwei (四維村). In addition to these, there are two smaller villages or clusters of homes. These are Furen (夫人村) and Ketiao (科蹄澳), they are located near Siwei. Many villages on Nangan have two names. In some cases, this was the result of politics, as one is

5166-425: 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

5248-583: 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

5330-538: 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

5412-404: 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 ,

5494-552: 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

5576-509: 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

5658-505: 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

5740-557: 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

5822-609: 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

5904-547: 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

5986-429: The traditional name and the second has a political connotation. These instances are paired as follows with the traditional name first: Shanlong (山隴): Jieshou (介壽), Niujiao (牛角(聚落)): Fuxing (復興), Tieban (鐵板): Renai (仁愛), and Fuao (福澳): Jingze (經澤). These names are often used interchangeably by residents, except for Jingze. Residents objected to this latter name, and so it never came into popular use. The reference to Shanlong

6068-512: 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

6150-594: The villages of Tangqi and Banli and several other shops on the island. With the withdrawal of most of the military forces, the main source of income is now tourism, with several hotels in Tangqi, and numerous B&Bs in Qinbi and Qiaozi. There are no banks on the island of Beigan, but the Chunghwa Post office has an ATM. There is one junior high school and one elementary school on Beigan Island. In August 2018 ( Republic of China calendar year 107), Banli Elementary School (坂里國小校) consolidated into Tang Chi Elementary, since

6232-452: 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

6314-508: 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

6396-453: 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,

6478-517: Was called Shanggantang / Shanggantangshan ( 上竿塘 / 上干塘 / 上竿塘山 ). Prehistoric settlement of Beigan dates back over six-thousand years before present. Fishing villages were established on Beigan Island during the Song and Yuan dynasties. During the Ming and Qing dynasties, the island was abandoned several times due to the Great Clearance edicts. Pirates were often seen in the area. In 1754,

6560-520: Was ended. On August 15, 1953, Lienchiang County government was reestablished including Beigan Township. On May 31, 1955, a Chinese Communist motor torpedo boat was engaged to the northeast of Beigan Island. On May 17, 1959, Communist guns on the mainland coast fired 112 shells that landed on Beigan (Peikantang) Island according to the Nationalist Defense Ministry. On October 25, 1967, Chinese Communist shelling at Tangqi Village lead to

6642-481: 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

6724-650: Was opened. On the morning of May 4, 2016, Jiaonan Village (in Tailu , Lianjiang County , Fuzhou , Fujian , China (PRC)) Branch Chinese Communist Party Secretary Liu Wenjian ( 刘文件 ) and Niujiao Community Assistant Manager Tsao Erh-Chang ( 曹爾章 ) met in Nangan Township and signed a memorandum of mutual exchange and cooperation. Others present included the Magistrate of Lienchiang County, ROC Liu Cheng-ying , Tailu Party Secretary Huang Duanming ( 黄端明 ), Nangan Township Mayor Chen Chen-Ko ( 陳振國 ) and others. The island of Nangan

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