91-427: Kunlun Volcanic Group ( Chinese : 昆仑火山群 ), also known as Ashikule Volcanic Field , is a volcanic field in northwestern Tibet . Eight other volcanic fields are also in the area. The field is within a basin that also contains three lakes. Volcanism in the field has produced lavas and cones, with rocks having varying compositions dominated by trachyandesite . Volcanism in the field may be influenced by faults in
182-464: 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
273-457: 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
364-680: A 60 metres (200 ft) high secondary cone within its 300 metres (980 ft) wide crater; Maoniu Shan volcano is located nearby and they are surrounded by even smaller centres. Heilong Shan is a long volcanic ridge on the terraces of the Akesu River and to the east of it is the horseshoe-shaped Mati Shan and the 7–8 metres (23–26 ft) high Dong Shan. Other volcanoes are known as Binhushan, Gaotaishan, Yinshan and Yizishan. The trachyandesitic Ashi volcano, also known as Ka-er-daxi or Vulkan, ( 35°41′56″N 81°34′34″E / 35.69885°N 81.57623°E / 35.69885; 81.57623 ,)
455-505: 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
546-595: 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
637-462: 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
728-436: A cinder cone eruption, the magma has lost most of its gas content. This gas-depleted magma does not fountain but oozes quietly into the crater or beneath the base of the cone as lava. Lava rarely issues from the top (except as a fountain) because the loose, uncemented cinders are too weak to support the pressure exerted by molten rock as it rises toward the surface through the central vent. Because it contains so few gas bubbles,
819-409: A cinder cone is usually basaltic to andesitic in composition. It is often glassy and contains numerous gas bubbles "frozen" into place as magma exploded into the air and then cooled quickly. Lava fragments larger than 64 mm across, known as volcanic bombs , are also a common product of cinder cone eruptions. The growth of a cinder cone may be divided into four stages. In the first stage,
910-597: 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
1001-700: 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
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#17328475764471092-409: A low-rimmed scoria ring forms around the erupting event. During the second stage, the rim is built up and a talus slope begins to form outside the rim. The third stage is characterized by slumping and blasts that destroy the original rim, while the fourth stage is characterized by the buildup of talus beyond the zone where cinder falls to the surface (the ballistic zone ). During the waning stage of
1183-564: 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
1274-576: A new vent. Eruptions continued for nine years, built the cone to a height of 424 meters (1,391 ft), and produced lava flows that covered 25 km (9.7 sq mi). The Earth's most historically active cinder cone is Cerro Negro in Nicaragua. It is part of a group of four young cinder cones NW of Las Pilas volcano. Since its initial eruption in 1850, it has erupted more than 20 times, most recently in 1995 and 1999. Satellite images suggest that cinder cones occur on other terrestrial bodies in
1365-711: A role in volcanic activity there. The numerous strike slip faults in the area could be involved too, whereas subduction of the Tarim Basin beneath the Kunlun is unlikely. The Altyn Tagh fault crosses the field in east-northeast to south-southwest direction, and several other fault zones such as the Kangxiwa fault pass north of the basin; they are involved in the genesis of the Ashikule basin. There are 11 or 14 principal volcanoes in Ashikule, formed by lava , pumice and pyroclastics , with
1456-538: 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
1547-503: 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
1638-678: 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
1729-401: A summit height of 5,104.6 metres (16,747 ft) and a height of 400 metres (1,300 ft) above base, Dahei Shan volcano is the highest volcano at Ashikule and features a V-shaped crater. 80 metres (260 ft) high Wuluke cone north of Wukule lake features a crater lake and has sent out many lava flows, some of which entered Wuluke lake. Migong Shan is east of Wuluke volcano. Yueya Shan has
1820-407: A total volume of about 20 cubic kilometres (4.8 cu mi). Spatter cones and volcanoes of Quaternary age are in the Ashikule area, for a total amount of over 70 cones. Over 20 volcanoes have been found in the eastern part of the field, they reach heights of several 100 metres (330 ft). It features perfectly preserved cinder cones . Silicic lava domes are also found. The Ashikule basin
1911-610: 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
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#17328475764472002-563: 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
2093-472: A volcanic episode 120 kilometres (75 mi) north of Ashikule occurred 1.63-1.21 million years ago. Most volcanoes formed 670,000 - 500,000 years ago, two other minor episodes occurred 440,000 - 280,000 and 200,000 - 120,000 years ago. Gaotaishan volcano is one million years and Binhushan volcano 370,000 years old. A burst of volcanic activity took place 270,000 years ago, forming several volcanoes, and Ashi and Wuluke cone erupted around 113,000 years ago. Most of
2184-596: 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
2275-689: 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
2366-441: Is a steep conical hill of loose pyroclastic fragments, such as volcanic clinkers, volcanic ash, or scoria that has been built around a volcanic vent . The pyroclastic fragments are formed by explosive eruptions or lava fountains from a single, typically cylindrical, vent. As the gas-charged lava is blown violently into the air, it breaks into small fragments that solidify and fall as either cinders, clinkers, or scoria around
2457-485: 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,
2548-436: Is covered by 250 square kilometres (97 sq mi)-200 square kilometres (77 sq mi) of lava from this field. Various kinds of rock coatings have developed on these lavas, some of biogenic origin. The entire field covers a surface of about 4,820 square kilometres (1,860 sq mi). Xi Shan is the westernmost volcano with a diameter of 500 metres (1,600 ft) and a height of 25–30 metres (82–98 ft) With
2639-629: Is not clear why volcanism occurs in the Tibetan plateau considering that the area is dominated by the collision between continents rather than subduction, which happens in other volcanically active areas. Southward subduction of the Asian Plate and the northward one of the Indian Plate have been found. Mélange from these subducting plates forms the source material of the magmas of the volcanic fields in northwestern Tibet, although isotope data suggest that
2730-595: 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
2821-638: Is one of the driest areas of Tibet. Discrepancies between dates obtained by surface exposure dating and potassium-argon dating on some rocks have been interpreted as being due to lava flows being covered by snow and ice in the past. From this it has been inferred that the Ashikule field was covered by glaciers during the Last Glacial Maximum , when temperatures decreased by 6–9 °C (11–16 °F). Some ages are 5.0 ± 0.6 and 2.7 ± 1.8 million years ago and were obtained by argon-argon dating . Xi Shan volcano formed 2.8 million years ago. Mati Shan and
Kunlun Volcanic Group - Misplaced Pages Continue
2912-471: Is one of the highest volcanic regions in the world and being remote and with a harsh climate, poorly researched. It occupies the southern parts of a large pull apart basin , the Ashikule Basin in the western Kunlun . This basin covers a surface area of 700 square kilometres (270 sq mi) at an altitude of 4,700 metres (15,400 ft), sloping southeastward. East-west stretching of the crust may play
3003-445: 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
3094-448: Is south of Ashikule lake in a lava plateau, at an altitude of 4,868 metres (15,971 ft). The 350 metres (1,150 ft) wide cone features an uneroded 120 metres (390 ft) high cone with a 50 metres (160 ft) deep crater breached to the south. Lava flows from Ashi extend both north and south and cover a surface area of 33 square kilometres (13 sq mi), reaching as far as lake Ashikule. There are three salt lakes in
3185-668: 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
3276-484: 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,
3367-496: 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
3458-497: 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
3549-540: 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
3640-428: 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
3731-735: 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
Kunlun Volcanic Group - Misplaced Pages Continue
3822-512: The Changce Ice Cap , whereas the occurrence of lava flows at that time is unclear and no rocks in the field itself have been conclusively linked to the eruption. Another unconfirmed report claims an eruption took place in the 19th century. Presently, the field is dormant and there is no evidence for the presence of a magma chamber (magmas may come from the mantle, however) nor of any ongoing deformation. Fumarolic activity has been observed in
3913-525: 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
4004-680: 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
4095-579: 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
4186-473: 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
4277-591: 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
4368-657: 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. Cinder cone A cinder cone (or scoria cone )
4459-450: The Ashikule magma may not derive from subduction. Magma generation in Ashikule could have been affected by garnet or garnet-containing crustal layers. More generally, the crust beneath northern and central Tibet is suspected to be partially molten between 55–60 kilometres (34–37 mi) of depth. Rocks younger than 350,000 years have been found in the Tengchong system in the southeast and
4550-592: The Ashikule plateau in the northwestern part of Tibet. These are also the only volcanic systems with Holocene activity in Tibet. The volcanic areas of northwestern Tibet for the most part are situated at over 4,500 metres (14,800 ft) altitude and are poorly accessible. The Ashikule volcanic field is one among nine in northwestern Tibet, other volcanic fields are Dahongliutan , Heishibei, Kangxiwa , Keriya, Pulu, Qitai Daban, Quanshuigou and Tianshuihai . Some of these volcanic centres are occasionally grouped with Ashikule in
4641-458: The Coalstoun Lakes volcanic field , and some cinder cones on Mauna Kea are monogenetic cinder cones. However, not all cinder cones are monogenetic, with some ancient cinder cones showing intervals of soil formation between flows that indicate that eruptions were separated by thousands to tens of thousands of years. Monogenetic cones likely form when the rate of magma supply to a volcanic field
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#17328475764474732-555: 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
4823-594: The Yutian-Yumen volcanic zone. A pronounced seismic velocity anomaly in southern Tarim may be associated with the volcanism at Ashikule, and a seismically imaged gap between the Tarim block and the Indian Plate below the crust may be a pathway for mantle upwelling that feeds the Ashikule volcanoes. The Ashikule volcanic field is located in the Kunlun Shan , 131 kilometres (81 mi) south of Yutian County, Xinjiang . It
4914-495: The area, Ashikule (also called Ashi or Aqqikkol), Shagesikule, and Wulukekule (also called Wuluke or Ulugkol). Ashi is 5.5 kilometres (3.4 mi) long and Urukele 7 kilometres (4.3 mi). 40 metres (130 ft) deep Ashikule covers a surface area of 14 square kilometres (5.4 sq mi) and formed when a valley was dammed by lava. Wulukekule and Ashikule are separated from each other by lava. Between 13,000 and 11,000 years ago Ashikule and Shagesikule were one lake. Playas of
5005-537: The area. The dates obtained from the field range from 5.0 ± 0.6 million years ago to 74,000 ± 4,000 years ago. An eruption of Ashi volcano was observed in 1951, making this one of China's youngest volcanoes. The Tibetan Plateau formed through the collision of India with Eurasia . Potassium -rich volcanic activity in the Tibetan Plateau has been occurring since 50 million years ago. After 8 million years ago, this volcanism occurred mainly in northwestern Tibet. It
5096-399: 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
5187-484: 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
5278-599: The dispersion of ejected scoria particles. For example, cinder cones on Mars seem to be more than two times wider than terrestrial analogues as lower atmospheric pressure and gravity enable wider dispersion of ejected particles over a larger area. Therefore, it seems that erupted amount of material is not sufficient on Mars for the flank slopes to attain the angle of repose and Martian cinder cones seem to be ruled mainly by ballistic distribution and not by material redistribution on flanks as typical on Earth. Cinder cones often are highly symmetric, but strong prevailing winds at
5369-566: 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
5460-413: 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
5551-510: The flanks of Mauna Kea , a shield volcano located on the island of Hawaii . Such cinder cones likely represent the final stages of activity of a mafic volcano. However, most volcanic cones formed in Hawaiian-type eruptions are spatter cones rather than cinder cones, due to the fluid nature of the lava. The most famous cinder cone, Paricutin , grew out of a corn field in Mexico in 1943 from
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#17328475764475642-491: 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
5733-599: 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
5824-581: 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
5915-516: 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
6006-528: The lava flows around Ashi were erupted 66,000 years ago. Sediments underlying volcanic rocks have ages of 9,700-6,700 years, indicating that eruptions took place during the Holocene . The latest eruption was on 27 May 1951, at Ashi volcano as was reported by the newspaper Xinjiang Daily . The report claimed that soldiers building a road heard roaring and saw a column of smoke, which continued for several days. A volcanic ash layer from this eruption has been found in
6097-442: The mixing of trachyandesitic magma with a more silicic component. The conditions in the magma chamber of Ashi volcano have been estimated. There are two populations of rocks, one formed at temperatures of 1,135–1,176 °C (2,075–2,149 °F) at a depth of 18–25 kilometres (11–16 mi), the other at temperatures of 1,104–1,143 °C (2,019–2,089 °F) at a depth of 13–18 kilometres (8.1–11.2 mi). The Ashikule basin
6188-446: The molten lava is denser than the bubble-rich cinders. Thus, it often burrows out along the bottom of the cinder cone, lifting the less dense cinders like corks on water, and advances outward, creating a lava flow around the cone's base. When the eruption ends, a symmetrical cone of cinders sits at the center of a surrounding pad of lava. If the crater is fully breached, the remaining walls form an amphitheater or horseshoe shape around
6279-455: 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
6370-425: 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
6461-583: 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
6552-863: The northern side of the crater of Ashi volcano. It is one of the few active volcanic regions in China . The magnitude 7.2 2008 Yutian earthquake took place 30 kilometres (19 mi) south of the volcanic field, at the intersection of two major faults, the Karakax fault and the Altyn-Tagh fault. Other earthquakes occurred in 2012 and 2014. Volcanic activity may also be related to the Longmu-Gozha fault system; conversely some volcanic landforms have been deformed by faulting. Chinese language Chinese ( simplified Chinese : 汉语 ; traditional Chinese : 漢語 ; pinyin : Hànyǔ ; lit. ' Han language' or 中文 ; Zhōngwén ; 'Chinese writing')
6643-538: 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
6734-404: 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 ,
6825-552: 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
6916-509: 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
7007-500: The rocks of Ashi volcano. Ashikule and Tengchong have high ratios of thorium to uranium in their composition. Thorium isotope data indicate that in comparison with the volcanoes of the Tengchong area, Ashikule volcanoes formed by slower melting of rocks. The magmas of Ashikule probably did not form under the influence of water metasomatism . The ultimate source rocks may be mafic - ultramafic rocks. The magma of Ashi volcano formed by
7098-435: The same name are found in the area and are a source of mineral dust. The basin is in the area of the upper Keriya River . The field is dominated by trachyandesite and trachydacite , ranging from tephrite over trachyandesite to trachyte and rhyolite . Ashi volcano has erupted trachyandesite. Phenocrysts in the rocks contain clinopyroxene , olivine , orthopyroxene and phlogopite . Xenoliths of gneiss are found in
7189-505: 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
7280-557: 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
7371-677: The solar system. On Mars, they have been reported on the flanks of Pavonis Mons in Tharsis , in the region of Hydraotes Chaos on the bottom of the Coprates Chasma , or in the volcanic field Ulysses Colles . It is also suggested that domical structures in Marius Hills (on the Moon) might represent lunar cinder cones. The size and shape of cinder cones depend on environmental properties as different gravity and/or atmospheric pressure might change
7462-465: The time of eruption can cause a greater accumulation of cinder on the downwind side of the vent. Some cinder cones are monogenetic , forming from a single short eruptive episode that produces a very small volume of lava. The eruption typically last just weeks or months, but can occasionally last fifteen years or longer. Parícutin in Mexico, Diamond Head , Koko Head , Punchbowl Crater , Mt Le Brun from
7553-609: 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
7644-547: 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
7735-512: 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
7826-460: The vent to form a cone that often is symmetrical; with slopes between 30 and 40°; and a nearly circular ground plan. Most cinder cones have a bowl-shaped crater at the summit. Cinder cones range in size from tens to hundreds of meters tall. They are composed of loose pyroclastic material ( cinder or scoria ), which distinguishes them from spatter cones , which are composed of agglomerated volcanic bombs . The pyroclastic material making up
7917-443: The vent. Basaltic cinder cones are the most characteristic type of volcano associated with intraplate volcanism . They are particularly common in association with alkaline magmatism , in which the erupted lava is enriched in sodium and potassium oxides . Cinder cones are also commonly found on the flanks of shield volcanoes , stratovolcanoes , and calderas . For example, geologists have identified nearly 100 cinder cones on
8008-452: 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
8099-508: 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
8190-453: 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,
8281-481: 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
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