80-492: Jurong Road ( Chinese : 裕廊路 ) was a road in western Singapore. It was the oldest road in Jurong area, having been first constructed between 1852 and 1853 during the early British colonial period to create a proper road link between the rural areas of Jurong and the rest of Singapore. During its peak, it was a major road spanning between Bukit Timah Road and Tuas Village. However, as more roads were constructed, and as sections of
160-464: 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
240-457: 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
320-505: 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
400-595: 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
480-462: 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
560-597: 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
640-452: A conducive habitat for dragonflies and amphibians, which add to the biodiversity of the town and help promote a healthy ecological balance. Prior to September 2023, the transport options were limited to a free shuttle bus provided by the transport authority. At present, bus services 870, 871 and 992 serve the interior of Tengah. On 21 July 2024, a new bus service, 871 was introduced. The two existing bus services, 870 and 992 were amended to
720-700: 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
800-564: 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
880-406: A new decentralized business district. In old maps, the area appears as Tengeh or Tengah. In Malay , the word Tengah means "centre," "central," or "middle." The name may be taken from the nearby Sungei Tengah (Malay for Tengah River ). In the 1980s, under the government's resettlement plan, the residents of Hong Kah Village and Kampong Ulu Jurong were relocated to nearby towns newly built by
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#1732855519141960-512: A road interchange linking the road with Jurong by 2028. Tengah will be connected to the Jurong Region MRT line in 2027, with MRT stations Tengah , Tengah Plantation , and Tengah Park servicing the area, and a new integrated transport hub to be ready by 2027 and 2028. All roads in Tengah will have walking and cycling paths on both sides. The bigger part of the former Hong Kah Village
1040-538: 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
1120-503: 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
1200-678: 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
1280-610: 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
1360-563: 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
1440-596: 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
1520-578: Is a planning area and HDB town located within the West Region of Singapore. It is bound by Choa Chu Kang to the northeast, Jurong East and Jurong West to the south, Bukit Batok to the east, and the Western Water Catchment to its west and north. Formerly a military restricted area, Tengah is currently reserved for new housing developments since URA Concept Plan 2001, making it Singapore's newest Housing and Development Board town since
1600-689: 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
1680-523: Is also the only town in Singapore which has a car-free town centre. Various types of dense vegetation are planted along roads to serve as noise and visual barriers, providing a cleaner, greener living environment. Eco-friendly features in Tengah include bioswales and bioretention basins (or rain gardens), which will collect and cleanse the rainwater before it is stored for reuse within the development or channelled into reservoirs. Such water features also create
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#17328555191411760-599: Is being replaced by Tengah Way and Tengah Drive. In late 2018, massive construction works for the HDB estates started in Tengah C1 and C2 planning areas, which are estimated to be completed by 2025. Most of the construction work will be headed by China Construction (South Pacific) Pte Ltd, whereas a few other local construction firms will also be in charge of construction work. The HDB flats in Tengah are constructed via precast components. The first flats in Tengah were completed in 2023, and
1840-485: 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,
1920-453: Is east of Jurong Road Track 22) in 2005. In the past, there were several village roads that used to serve the area. Roads such as Hong Kah Road/Lane/Drive/Circle, Sing Nan Road, Kian Hong Road, Jalan Keladan, Jalan Beka, Jalan Pelawan, Jalan Jelawi, Jalan Sena, Lorong Putek, Jalan Buey, Jalan Mandar, and Jalan Ara. The last few roads, such as Jalan Lam Sam and Jalan Chichau, existed until January 2019. Jurong Road closed on 27 September 2020, and
2000-595: 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
2080-445: 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
2160-668: 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
2240-484: 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,
2320-496: 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
2400-497: 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
2480-540: 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
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2560-428: 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
2640-735: 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
2720-525: 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
2800-680: 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
2880-579: 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
2960-473: 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
3040-591: 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
3120-658: 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. Tengah, Singapore Tengah / ˈ t ə ŋ ɑː /
3200-555: 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
3280-533: The PIE, until the road was permanently closed on 27 September 2020. The Land Transport Authority announced two days later that it would expunge the remaining section of Jurong Road to make way for a new flyover and road interchange linking the PIE, Tengah and Jurong. Chinese language Chinese ( simplified Chinese : 汉语 ; traditional Chinese : 漢語 ; pinyin : Hànyǔ ; lit. ' Han language' or 中文 ; Zhōngwén ; 'Chinese writing')
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3360-521: The Tengah and Hong Kah localities) along the stretch of Jurong Road closed in 2020 spread out further into the largely-forested area of Tengah ; these include Track 18, Track 20 and Track 22. Track 22 links to Jalan Chichau and Jalan Lam Sam (located along the southern edge of the Choa Chu Kang area). A short section of the original road (bearing the historic Jurong Road name) connected Jurong West Avenue 2 and Bukit Batok Road, running roughly parallel to
3440-452: The current site of the former Bukit Timah Fire Station was constructed at a cost of $ 158,000, with its opening announced in March 1959. The stretch of Jurong Road west of Boon Lay Road (now called Jalan Boon Lay ) was renamed to Upper Jurong Road between 1958 and 1961. The bypass road was later made a part of Jurong Road, and the original stretch of the road which connected to Bukit Timah Road
3520-675: The development of Punggol in the late-90s. In September 2016, HDB officially unveiled the official plans for the Tengah new town with an official master plan and blueprint for the town. After the demilitarisation, of the military training area at Tengah, the first estate, Plantation Grove, was launched in Tengah in November 2018. Tengah is divided into various districts, namely Plantation, Park, Garden, Market Place, Forest Hill, and Brickland Districts. Tengah lies east of Jurong Innovation District and north of Jurong Lake District , two new industrial and business developments. These areas are planned as
3600-399: 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
3680-484: 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
3760-566: 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
3840-413: 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
3920-491: 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
4000-507: The former road can be found along Bukit Batok East Avenue 6, the PIE, and Jurong West Avenues 2 and 4. Jurong Road was extended by two miles to Sungei Jurong around 1929 at a cost of 11,900 Straits dollars . In the 1950s, Jurong Road spanned from Bukit Timah Road (at the present-day junction between Upper Bukit Timah Road and Jalan Jurong Kechil) to Tuas Village (slightly west of the present-day junction of Tuas Road and Pioneer Road). A bypass road connecting Jurong Road to Bukit Timah Road at
4080-599: 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
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#17328555191414160-403: The government, particularly into the present Jurong Green , Jurong Spring , and Bukit Batok areas. Schools were shifted elsewhere, and one example is Xingnan Primary School , which used to operate at a temple along "Hong Kah Road" in the village. The HDB estates of Jurong Green and Jurong Spring are given the name "Hong Kah," probably meaning that most of the villagers resettled there. When
4240-581: 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
4320-516: 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
4400-455: 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
4480-425: 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
4560-583: 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
4640-513: The neighbourhood centre, Plantation Plaza, opened on 28 June 2024. According to HDB, residential areas in Tengah will be divided into five districts, each with a unique character. The five districts are Plantation, Garden, Park, Forest Hill, and Brickland. Tengah was also marketed as Singapore's first smart and sustainable town with a centralised cooling system, which is managed by national grid operator SP Group . The cooling system encountered issues with installation and operational issues. It
4720-487: The new Tengah Bus Interchange as well. These services will connect residents to Jurong East, Bukit Batok West, Bukit Gombak and Beauty World. All roads in Tengah, with the exception of Plantation Crescent due to JRL construction, are required to have a bus lane. Tengah Boulevard will be connected to the eastbound direction of the Pan Island Expressway via slip roads from 5 October 2024. This would be expanded to
4800-429: The original alignment from Hillview Avenue (now named Bukit Batok East Avenue 2) closed on 5 July 1985, with the rest of what was then called Old Jurong Road being closed between 1984 and 1988. The stretch of the original alignment between Bukit Batok East Avenue 2 and Jalan Jurong Kechil remains preserved as a park connector in the southern part of Bukit Batok Nature Park . A stretch of Jurong Road from Jalan Boon Lay to
4880-424: The original alignment was retained and named Old Upper Jurong Road, stretching from Jalan Ahmad Ibrahim to a point on the new alignment between Jurong West Streets 72 and 81, but this was closed by 1991. The stretch of Jurong Road between Jalan Jurong Kechil and Upper Bukit Timah Road was renamed Old Jurong Road between 1988 and 1991. With the construction of the PIE's extension to Tuas, Jurong Road's 1991 alignment
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#17328555191414960-538: 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
5040-490: The present-day Bukit Batok Avenue 1 was converted into a stretch of the Pan Island Expressway, with Jurong Road being realigned north from 1978 to make way for the expressway, using parts of the 1966 alignment for the realigned road. The section of Upper Jurong Road south of Jalan Ahmad Ibrahim was closed on 14 March 1980. Following this, Upper Jurong Road was straightened and widened between 1984 and 1988. A portion of
5120-404: 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 ,
5200-552: 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
5280-509: 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
5360-420: The road were closed or renamed, the road's span was reduced to a small stretch along the PIE near Tengah , before its final closure in 2020. The only stretches of road remaining which include "Jurong Road" in their names are Old Jurong Road ( Chinese : 旧裕廊路 ), which runs between the former Bukit Timah Fire Station and Jalan Jurong Kechil, and Upper Jurong Road ( Chinese : 裕廊上路 ), which starts from
5440-505: 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
5520-557: 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
5600-609: 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
5680-547: 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
5760-512: 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
5840-467: The village was cleared, the PIE and KJE projects started in the area, leading to the creation of "Jurong West Avenue 2," which brought about the rise of both Jurong West New Town and Choa Chu Kang New Town . The western part became inaccessible to the public first in 1996 and was used by the military for training activities (which is west of Jurong Road Track 22), followed by the eastern part of Hong Kah (which
5920-574: The western end of Boon Lay Way and ends at Pasir Laba Flyover of the Pan Island Expressway (PIE), after which it continues briefly towards Pasir Laba Camp and the SAF Multi-Mission Range Complex (MMRC). In addition to these two, Jalan Jurong Kechil's name is "Small Jurong Road" when translated into English, and hence also has "Jurong Road" in its name. The road starts from the intersection of Bukit Batok East Avenue 6 and Old Jurong Road, and ends at Jalan Anak Bukit. Other remnants of
6000-452: 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
6080-508: 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
6160-453: 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,
6240-481: 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
6320-467: Was renamed to Jalan Jurong Kechil between 1963 and 1966. A five-mile stretch of Jurong Road spanning westwards from Jalan Jurong Kechil was straightened and realigned between 1966 and 1969, but with parts of the original alignment being retained for motorists to use. A stretch of the original alignment from Jalan Jurong Kechil to a point on the present-day Bukit Batok East Avenue 6 was given the name Old Jurong Road sometime between 1975 and 1978. A section of
6400-661: Was split by the Hong Kah Flyover in 1993. However, due to the realignment of the PIE as part of the extension, a section of the removed stretch between Corporation Road and Jalan Boon Lay (previously part of Jurong Road) was named Jurong Road, and ran parallel to the split 1991 alignment. The former PIE stretch between Jalan Boon Lay and the Hong Kah Flyover was renamed Jurong West Avenue 2 sometime between 1995 and 1998. These other stretches of Jurong Road were phased out or renamed progressively: Smaller roads (mostly rural tracks formerly serving several villages (kampongs) scattered in
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