80-535: Lim Jock Seng ( Chinese : 林玉成 ; pinyin : Lín Yùchéng ; born 22 January 1944), also known as Pehin Dato Lim Jock Seng , is a Bruneian aristocrat, anthropologist , politician and diplomat who served as first Minister of Foreign Affairs & Trade II . Additionally, he was a member of the Privy Council in 2003, and Legislative Council of Brunei in 2004. Other than holding government offices, he
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
400-470: A Muslim prayer hall, and a floor area of more than 70,000 square feet (6,500 m ). Surrounding the Reception and Plenary Halls are reflecting pools, while open-air facilities like The Courtyard and The Garden are also present within the complex. The PICC is home to four intrinsic artworks by renowned Filipino artists, also declared as National Cultural Treasures in 2022, such as: In addition to these,
480-595: 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
560-462: 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
640-597: 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
720-593: A conference center. The conference center was initially named as Manila International Conference Center. This was a part of Marcos' efforts to make Metro Manila as one of Southeast Asia's financial centers . The PICC building, along with other buildings in the Cultural Center of the Philippines complex, has been associated with what has been termed Imelda Marcos ' " edifice complex ," which writer Gerard Lico defined as "obsession and compulsion to build edifices as
800-700: 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
880-545: A hallmark of greatness or as a signifier of national prosperity." The construction of the conference center complex was undertaken in a short span of 23 months, from November 1974 to September 1976, with Leandro Locsin , who was subsequently named a National Artist of the Philippines , as architect. On May 27, 1975, the under-construction conference center was renamed as the Philippine International Convention Center (PICC). On September 5, 1976,
SECTION 10
#1732852257303960-564: 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
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
1520-697: Is a convention center located in the Cultural Center of the Philippines Complex in Pasay , Philippines. The facility has been the host of numerous local and foreign conventions, meetings, fairs, and social events. The PICC also hosts the satellite office of the Professional Regulation Commission and an office of the Securities and Exchange Commission . It formerly housed the office of
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
1680-485: 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,
SECTION 20
#17328522573031760-595: 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
1840-445: 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
1920-668: 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
2000-484: 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,
2080-496: 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
2160-497: 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
2240-540: 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
2320-428: 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
2400-735: 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
2480-491: The 2019 Southeast Asian Games . On September 27, 2022, PICC and its four intrinsic artworks were publicly declared as National Cultural Treasure (NCT). The PICC is composed of five building modules: the Delegation Building, Secretariat Building, Plenary Hall, Reception Hall and The Forum. Designed by Leandro Locsin , the facility is situated on a 12-hectare (30-acre) lot in reclaimed land. It has 38 meeting rooms,
Lim Jock Seng - Misplaced Pages Continue
2560-738: The Asian Development Bank in 1993 and 2012, the Miss Universe in 1994 , the APEC meeting in 1996 , and the 3rd Informal Summit of the ASEAN in 1999. Renovation work of the PICC was completed in 1996, which took around seven months for the APEC Meeting after the aging structure has been neglected since 1985. Renovations were headed by Raul Locsin, the cousin of the original architect of the facility. The endeavor
2640-788: The Batasang Bayan to function as a legislative body before the Interim Batasang Pambansa convened in 1978. So, on the 4th founding anniversary of the Bagong Lipunan (New Society) on September 21, 1976, the Batasang Bayan held its inauguration at the PICC. For the first time, the PICC was used to house a legislative body from 1976 to 1978. In 1986, the PICC Plenary Hall hosted the Commission on Elections (COMELEC) canvassing of
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
2800-647: The Legislative Council as an official member. On 24 May 2005, Lim was named Second Minister of Foreign Affairs. On 1 May 2010, the Western Washington University Department of Anthropology hosted a group from Brunei. Pehin Lim and Yusoff Abdul Hamid traveled with the intention of seeing Linda Kimball. Kimball was a renowned expert on the language and customs of the Bruneian Malay people. On
2880-659: The London School of Economics in 1981. Lim joined the civil service on 23 July 1969, starting his career as a curator in the Museums Department. He worked at the Department of Ethnography, British Museum from 1972 to 1973, in addition to being an Assistant Curator for the Museums Department from 1969 to 1973. He became the Deputy Director at the Museums Department from 1974 to 31 December 1982, promoted to Director at
2960-680: 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
3040-579: 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
3120-725: The Philippine International Convention Center (PICC), Pasay City , Pehin Lim signed the updated Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between the governments of the ASEAN member states and the government of China on establishing the ASEAN-China Center. On 22 September, Pehin Lim speaks during the general discussion of the 72nd session of the United Nations General Assembly . He later traveled to Thailand on 25 October, in order to be present for
3200-481: The TPP , Japan , ASEAN, and other nations, commerce has been facilitated, export competitiveness has grown, and economic diversification has been encouraged. In January 2016, Lim met with Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida . At that time, Seng's official role was "Minister at Prime Minister's Office and Second Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade of Brunei Darussalam." At the signing ceremony held on 5 August 2017, at
3280-473: 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
Lim Jock Seng - Misplaced Pages Continue
3360-591: 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
3440-647: The presidential snap elections , where a walkout occurred to protest the alleged electoral manipulation favoring President Ferdinand Marcos, an event considered as the triggering factor leading to the People Power Revolution . The PICC was the venue of numerous significant events, including the World Law Conference in 1977, the XXIII World Medical Assembly in 1978, 30th World Chess Olympiad in 1992, Board of Governors Annual Meeting of
3520-545: The vice president of the Philippines from 1992 to 2005 and the Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office . On July 23, 1974, President Ferdinand Marcos signed Presidential Decree No. 520, which authorized the Central Bank of the Philippines (now Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas ) to construct an international conference building, acquire a suitable area for that purpose, and organize a corporation to manage
3600-776: 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. Philippine International Convention Center The Philippine International Convention Center ( Filipino : Sentrong Pangkumbensyong Pandaigdig ng Pilipinas ; PICC )
3680-648: The Kerygma Conference (now Feast Conference) in November 2013 and November 2014. On November 18–19, 2015, the PICC hosted the APEC Economic Leaders' Meeting . On April 29, 2017, the PICC hosted the 30th ASEAN Summit . It was the site of protests on November 11, 2017, against the arrival of U.S. President Donald Trump . On December 4–9, 2019, the PICC Forum became the venue for the sport of boxing at
3760-555: 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
3840-770: The MFA in May 1986 as the Director of Politics and was later elevated to the position of Permanent Secretary . In October 1986, Lim was named Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. From 2001 until 2003, he was international chair on the Pacific Economic Cooperation Council and a member of the ASEAN Eminent Persons Group . Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah named him in 2003 to the Privy Council and in 2004 to
3920-592: The Museums Department from 1 January 1983 to 5 August 1983. Lim has published several works which included: Lim entered the Diplomatic Service Department in 1982, and joined the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA). He first held roles such as Director-General of ASEAN–Brunei Darussalam in August 1983. In February 1986, he was then named High Commissioner of Brunei Darussalam to New Zealand. He started working for
4000-486: The PICC also houses a variety of other artworks displayed in its buildings. The APEC Sculpture Garden is located in the right, left and front lawns of the PICC. It was jointly organized by the Department of Foreign Affairs and the National Commission for Culture and the Arts , the curator of the garden, in commemoration of the APEC Philippines 1996 . The garden is composed of 20 unique sculptures made by artists from their respective APEC countries. Each sculpture embodies
4080-438: The PICC, Asia 's first international convention center, was officially opened ahead of its first major event, the 1976 IMF–World Bank Meeting scheduled on October 4–8. From its inception to the present, the PICC has also hosted the annual Awards Night of the Filipino Academy of Movie Arts and Sciences (FAMAS), the Philippine-equivalent of the Academy Awards , mostly at its Plenary Hall. Presidential Decree No. 995 created
SECTION 50
#17328522573034160-469: The collective ideals of the 20 APEC member economies. The countries that donated their sculptures to the garden include Australia , Brunei Darussalam , Canada , Chile , Chinese Taipei , Hong Kong , Indonesia , Japan , Malaysia , Mexico , New Zealand , Philippines , Papua New Guinea , People's Republic of China , Republic of Korea , Russian Federation , Singapore , Thailand , United States and Vietnam . As of 2017, only Peru has yet to donate
4240-399: 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
4320-484: 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
4400-464: The end of the syllable, developing into tone distinctions in Middle Chinese. Several derivational affixes have also been identified, but the language lacks inflection , and indicated grammatical relationships using word order and grammatical particles . Middle Chinese was the language used during Northern and Southern dynasties and the Sui , Tang , and Song dynasties (6th–10th centuries CE). It can be divided into an early period, reflected by
4480-515: The final day of the APEC Ministerial Meeting in Yokohama , Japan, 10–11 November 2010, Peter Van Loan talks with Pehin Lim. Pehin Lim emphasised the significance of bilateral and international free trade agreements for Brunei at the Legislative Council meeting on 7 March 2011. He stressed that these accords help consumers, expand the nation's market reach, boost the competitiveness of domestic goods, and draw in foreign capital. Because to Brunei's participation in various accords, such as those with
4560-413: 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
4640-491: 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
4720-435: The government of the People's Republic of China, with Singapore officially adopting them in 1976. Traditional characters are used in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau, and among Chinese-speaking communities overseas . Linguists classify all varieties of Chinese as part of the Sino-Tibetan language family , together with Burmese , Tibetan and many other languages spoken in the Himalayas and the Southeast Asian Massif . Although
4800-531: The language of administration and scholarship, a position it would retain until the late 19th century in Korea and (to a lesser extent) Japan, and the early 20th century in Vietnam. Scholars from different lands could communicate, albeit only in writing, using Literary Chinese. Although they used Chinese solely for written communication, each country had its own tradition of reading texts aloud using what are known as Sino-Xenic pronunciations . Chinese words with these pronunciations were also extensively imported into
4880-408: 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
SECTION 60
#17328522573034960-455: 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
5040-425: 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
5120-583: 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
5200-538: 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
5280-404: 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 ,
5360-552: 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
5440-509: 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
5520-606: The royal cremation of King Bhumibol Adulyadej . Pehin Lim is married to Datin Tan Bee Yong . Pehin Lim was bestowed the Manteri title of Yang Dimuliakan Pehin Orang Kaya Pekerma Dewa in May 1996, in recognition of his contributions, together with other commendable honours. Throughout his career, he has earned the following honours and fellowships: National Foreign Chinese language Chinese ( simplified Chinese : 汉语 ; traditional Chinese : 漢語 ; pinyin : Hànyǔ ; lit. ' Han language' or 中文 ; Zhōngwén ; 'Chinese writing')
5600-399: 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
5680-511: 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
5760-609: 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
5840-547: 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
5920-512: 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
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,
6240-575: Was also the chairman of Brunei Shell Petroleum (BSP) and Royal Brunei Airlines (RBA) from 2008 to 2010. Lim Jock Seng was born in Muara town on 22 January 1944. He obtained his early education at the Sultan Omar Ali Saifuddien College , and graduated with a Bachelor of Science (BSc) with honours in economics from Swansea University , Wales in 1969, and received a Master of Philosophy (Mphil) in social anthropology from
6320-559: Was funded by the facility's owner, the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas . In 2003, the PICC Forum was inaugurated as part of the expansion. In March 2011, "The Feast," a weekly prayer meeting of the Light of Jesus Family founded by Bo Sanchez , began holding its sessions at the PICC. The Feast PICC has an attendance of 3,000 at the Plenary and Reception Halls combined. Similarly, PICC was a venue of
6400-481: 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
#302697