106-448: Ong Sum Ping ( Chinese : 黄森屏 ; pinyin : Huáng Sēnpíng ) is a legendary figure. Identified as Pengiran Maharaja Lela of Brunei . The Hokkien name implies that Ong Sum Ping was a native of Fujian , China . During the Mongolian invasion of China , Ong Sum Ping reportedly fled from Fujian with his siblings and traveled to East Kalimantan , according to The Philippine Islands,
212-464: A nucleus that has a vowel (which can be a monophthong , diphthong , or even a triphthong in certain varieties), preceded by an onset (a single consonant , or consonant + glide ; a zero onset is also possible), and followed (optionally) by a coda consonant; a syllable also carries a tone . There are some instances where a vowel is not used as a nucleus. An example of this is in Cantonese, where
318-609: A sacred place believed that the act had angered the mountain spirits. Four of the group were convicted on charges of public indecency, and sentenced to three days in jail and a fine of 5,000 ringgit . Following the incident, some of the tourists and their families expressed their apologies to all involved parties, and the government of the United Kingdom began to review its travel advice for Malaysia. Climbers must be accompanied by accredited guides at all times due to national park regulations. There are two main starting points for
424-457: A subject–verb–object word order , and like many other languages of East Asia, makes frequent use of the topic–comment construction to form sentences. Chinese also has an extensive system of classifiers and measure words , another trait shared with neighboring languages such as Japanese and Korean. Other notable grammatical features common to all the spoken varieties of Chinese include the use of serial verb construction , pronoun dropping , and
530-505: A Chinese character is the morpheme, as characters represent the smallest grammatical units with individual meanings in the Chinese language. Estimates of the total number of Chinese words and lexicalized phrases vary greatly. The Hanyu Da Zidian , a compendium of Chinese characters, includes 54,678 head entries for characters, including oracle bone versions. The Zhonghua Zihai (1994) contains 85,568 head entries for character definitions and
636-539: A Chinese trader from Guangzhou , Huang Qhuo Qi, allegedly discovered the tomb of Ong Sum Ping by accident in 1942, during a business trip to Brunei. However, the present whereabouts of this tomb is unknown and remains a mystery. The only Malay source that mentions Ong Sum Ping, is the Salasilah Raja-Raja Brunei (Genealogy of the Brunei Kings). Ong Sum Ping and his variation counterparts are not mentioned in
742-595: 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
848-584: A book authored by H. Clark Company in 1903. According to Wen Xiongfei 温雄飞 in the 《南洋华侨史》, Ong Sum Ping came to Brunei in 1375 during the early years of China's Ming dynasty . The Brunei History Centre presents a rather incredible story in which Ong Sum Ping later married Princess Ratna Dewi, the daughter of Sultan Muhammad Shah of Brunei . For that he was conferred the nobility title of Pengiran Maharaja Lela and elected Chief of Kinabatangan. Some authors speculate that Ong Sum Ping could have been an admiral of Zheng He 's navy who visited Brunei and stayed there due to
954-462: 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
1060-430: A closed canopy 40 meters tall, along with an understory stratum of lower trees, and an emergent stratum of taller trees which extend above the canopy. Montane rain forest , also known as cloud forest, extends from approximately 1400 metres elevation up to 2900 metres. Montane forest typically has a closed canopy with single stratum, and the canopy height generally decreases with elevation. Typical trees include species of
1166-597: 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
SECTION 10
#17328445788141272-700: 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
1378-564: A millennium. The Four Commanderies of Han were established in northern Korea in the 1st century BCE but disintegrated in the following centuries. Chinese Buddhism spread over East Asia between the 2nd and 5th centuries CE, and with it the study of scriptures and literature in Literary Chinese. Later, strong central governments modeled on Chinese institutions were established in Korea, Japan, and Vietnam, with Literary Chinese serving as
1484-554: A re-survey using satellite technology established its summit (known as Low's Peak) height at 4,095 m (13,435 ft) above sea level, which is some 6 m (20 ft) less than the previously thought and hitherto published figure of 4,101 m (13,455 ft). The mountain and its surroundings are among the most important biological sites in the world, with between 5,000 and 6,000 species of plants, 326 species of birds, and more than 100 mammalian species identified. Among this rich collection of wildlife are famous species such as
1590-406: A reference, and/or with a substantial contribution to the development of geological sciences through history.' The climate of the mountain varies from humid tropical at its base to alpine at its summit. The temperature at the summit of Mount Kinabalu usually stands from −4 to 8 °C (25 to 46 °F) from December to January, and 3 to 12 °C (37 to 54 °F) from June to September. Due to
1696-538: 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
1802-503: 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
1908-446: A single day trip, or hikers may (usually) stay one night at Laban Rata Resthouse at 3,270 m (10,730 ft) to complete the climb in 2 days, finishing the ascent and descending on the second day. The majority of climbers begin the ascent on day one of a two-day hike from Timpohon gate at 1,866 m (6,122 ft), reaching this location either by minibus or by walking, and then walk to Laban Rata. Most people accomplish this part of
2014-678: A single language. However, their lack of mutual intelligibility means they are sometimes considered to be separate languages in a family . Investigation of the historical relationships among the varieties of Chinese is ongoing. Currently, most classifications posit 7 to 13 main regional groups based on phonetic developments from Middle Chinese , of which the most spoken by far is Mandarin with 66%, or around 800 million speakers, followed by Min (75 million, e.g. Southern Min ), Wu (74 million, e.g. Shanghainese ), and Yue (68 million, e.g. Cantonese ). These branches are unintelligible to each other, and many of their subgroups are unintelligible with
2120-610: 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
2226-563: 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
SECTION 20
#17328445788142332-596: 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
2438-689: 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
2544-520: Is a very young mountain as the granodiorite cooled and hardened only about 10 million years ago. The present landform is considered to be a mid- Pliocene peneplain, arched and deeply dissected, through which the Kinabalu granodiorite body has risen in isostatic adjustment. It is still pushing up at the rate of 5 mm (0.20 in) per annum. During the Pleistocene Epoch of about 100,000 years ago,
2650-485: 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,
2756-484: Is essentially a massive pluton formed from granodiorite which is intrusive into sedimentary and ultrabasic rocks , and forms the central part, or core, of the Kinabalu massif. The granodiorite is intrusive into strongly folded strata, probably of Eocene to Miocene age, and associated ultrabasic and basic igneous rocks . It was pushed up from the Earth's crust as molten rock millions of years ago. In geological terms, it
2862-595: 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
2968-445: 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
3074-668: 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
3180-565: Is the highest mountain in Borneo and Malaysia . With an elevation of 4,095 metres (13,435 ft), it is the third-highest peak of an island on Earth, the 28th highest peak in Southeast Asia , and 20th most prominent mountain in the world. The mountain is located in Ranau district, West Coast Division of Sabah , Malaysia . It is protected as Kinabalu Park , a World Heritage Site . In 1997,
3286-484: 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,
Ong Sum Ping - Misplaced Pages Continue
3392-496: 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
3498-497: 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
3604-540: 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
3710-428: 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
3816-735: 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
3922-525: 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
4028-680: 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
4134-579: 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
4240-501: The Sultan of Sulu . The promised territory was or included Kinabatangan. In the early 20th century, a Chinese trader, Huang Zhuoru 黄卓如 claimed that he visited the tomb of Ong Sum Ping located on a hill 1 li (about half km) from the Brunei capital at that time and there were Chinese inscriptions 黄总兵之墓 on the tombstone which meant 'Tomb of Commander Huang'. In another version of this story
4346-543: The Yuan (1279–1368) or Ming (1368–1644) dynasties' official Chinese sources. Yet Ong has been referred to in Borneo lore as, among other things, the admiral of Zheng He's fleet, the governor of a purported Yuan province in Sabah, a Ming dynasty ambassador, and many more. The current study critically assess the plausibility of these various identities formed by Chinese writers, particularly from
Ong Sum Ping - Misplaced Pages Continue
4452-499: The black shrew ( Suncus ater ). However, others of its endemics, such as the Bornean ferret-badger ( Melogale everetti ) and Rattus baluensis , have also recently been recorded in the nearby Mount Tambuyukon . Endemic annelids number less than a dozen known species but include the Kinabalu giant red leech that preys on various earthworms, including the Kinabalu giant earthworm . In
4558-473: 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
4664-591: 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
4770-713: 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. Mount Kinabalu Mount Kinabalu ( Dusun: Gayo Ngaran or Nulu Nabalu , Malay : Gunung Kinabalu )
4876-504: The 2 officers and 3 Hong Kong soldiers were trapped for 16 days and did not eat for five days before being rescued when stretchers were lowered by helicopter. The breakaway party of five completed the first descent of the gully in three days. A book about the 31-day fight for survival entitled Descent into Chaos was published in 1996 and a film drama The Place of the Dead was released in 1997. The first successful complete descent of Low's Gully
4982-540: The Brunei Kings) which was possibly first compiled during the reign of Sultan Muhammad Hassan (1582–1598) and subsequently copied and updated from time to time and also the Sejarah Melayu (written by Tun Seri Lanang in 1612), Ong Sum Ping "succeeded his father-in-law. He was known as Sultan Ahmad and ruled Brunei". This version, however, contradicts later account engraved on the Batu Tarsilah (Genealogical Tablet of
5088-573: The Kina Balu (Chinese widow) as a reference to the mountain. This story lacks coherence due to the likelihood that the Dusun people, who have lived in the area for approximately 6000 years, would not have been aware of the term "Cina" (Chinese in Malay) and thus could not have adapted it to "Kina" to refer to Chinese people or China. The Chinese language itself employs distinct words to represent Chinese individuals or
5194-555: 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
5300-559: The Sultans of Brunei) founded in 1807 that Sultan Ahmad was a brother of Sultan Muhammad Shah and he was not Ong Sum Ping. The latter version is the accepted official history of Brunei. During the Brunei Civil War (1661–1673), Sultan Muhyiddin of Brunei called for the assistance of Sultan of Sulu to help defeat Sultan Abdul Hakkul Mubin promising them independence as well as the territory of present-day (north-eastern) Sabah to be given to
5406-504: The chieftain's connection to the Ming dynasty. Local Brunei Malay folklore suggest that there was a Chinese settlement in present-day Kinabatangan , Sabah . Linguistic evidence does not support the view held commonly by the Brunei History Centre that "Kinabatangan" could mean "Chinese river". According to early accounts which survive only in copies dating back to the 19th century such as Salasilah Raja-Raja Brunei (Genealogy of
SECTION 50
#17328445788145512-623: The climb in 3 to 6 hours. Since there are no roads, the supplies for the Laban Rata Resthouse are carried by porters, who sometimes bring more than 35 kg (77 lb) of supplies on their backs. Hot food and beverages are available at Laban Rata. Most rooms have no hot water in the bathrooms and whilst the dining area is heated, most rooms are not. The last 2 km (6,600 ft), from the Laban Rata Resthouse at 3,270 m (10,730 ft) to Low's Peak (summit) at 4,095.2 m (13,436 ft), takes between 2 and 4 hours. The last part of
5618-404: The climb is on bare granite rock. Given the high altitude, some people may suffer from altitude sickness although staying overnight at the lodges before the climb and climbing at a lower rate of ascent may reduce the likelihood of this happening. Low's Gully (named after Hugh Low who first looked down into it in 1851) is a 1,800 m (5,906 ft) deep gorge carved out by glaciation on
5724-522: The climb: the Timpohon Gate (located 5.5 km (3.4 mi) from Kinabalu Park Headquarters, at an altitude of 1,866 m (6,122 ft)), and the Mesilau Nature Resort . The latter starting point is slightly higher in elevation, but crosses a ridge, adding about two kilometres to the ascent and making the total elevation gain slightly higher. The Mesilau Trail is no longer accessible due to
5830-495: The coldness of the mountain from December to January, there are a few occasions where frost and ice appear at the summit of Mount Kinabalu. Snow has been recorded three times in this area; in 1975, 1993 and 2022. Mount Kinabalu along with other upland areas of the Crocker Mountains is known worldwide for its biodiversity with plants of Himalayan , Australasian , and Indomalayan origin. A recent botanical survey of
5936-427: The conifer Dacrydium gibbsiae , Leptospermum recurvum , and species from the plant families Myrtaceae and Ericaceae , along with dwarf shrubs, mosses, lichens, liverworts, and ferns. Orchids are abundant and diverse in subalpine and alpine plant communities, except for at the highest summits. Above 3,500 meters conditions are too extreme for trees, and above 3,700 meters persistent ground frost limits plants to
6042-399: 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
6148-484: 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
6254-512: The earthquake and a massive landslide that followed it. Ranau and many parts of Sabah West Coast were affected and Donkey Ear's Peak was heavily damaged. Six days before the earthquake, a group of ten western tourists (comprising six men and four women from Canada, Germany, Netherlands and the United Kingdom) had stripped naked and urinated while on the mountain's summit. Local people were deeply offended, and many who considered Kinabalu to be
6360-515: The earthquake in 2015. The two trails meet about 2 km (1.2 mi) before Laban Rata. Sabah Parks grants a summit-climbing permit only to climbers who stay at mountain huts. Due to the limited number of beds at the mountain huts, only 130 people are allowed to climb Mount Kinabalu per day. Accommodation is available inside the park or outside near the headquarters. Sabah Parks has privatised Mount Kinabalu activities to an organisation called Sutera Sanctuary Lodges. The mountain may be climbed on
6466-566: 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
SECTION 60
#17328445788146572-432: The endemic Nepenthes rajah ). The parasitic Rafflesia plant, which has the largest single flower in the world, is also found in Kinabalu (particularly Rafflesia keithii whose flower grows to 94 cm (37 in) in diameter), though blooms of the flower are rare and difficult to find. Meanwhile, another Rafflesia species, Rafflesia tengku-adlinii , can be found on the neighbouring Mount Trus Madi and
6678-413: 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
6784-648: The first recorded ascent of Mount Kinabalu's summit plateau in March 1851 with local Dusun guide Lemaing of Kampung Kiau. Low did not scale the mountain's highest peak, however, considering it "inaccessible to any but winged animals". In April and July 1858, Low was accompanied on two further ascents by Spenser St. John , the British Consul in Brunei. The highest point of Mount Kinabalu was finally reached in 1888 by zoologist John Whitehead . British botanist Lilian Gibbs became
6890-602: The first woman and the first botanist to summit Mount Kinabalu in February 1910. Botanist E. J. H. Corner led two important expeditions of the Royal Society of Great Britain to the mountain in 1961 and 1964. Kinabalu National Park was established in 1964. The park was designated a natural World Heritage Site in 2000. On 5 June 2015 at 07:15 MST , the area around Mount Kinabalu was damaged by an earthquake. Eighteen people, including hikers and mountain guides, were killed by
6996-491: 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
7102-428: The gigantic Rafflesia plants and orangutans . Mount Kinabalu has been accorded UNESCO World Heritage status. Low's Peak can be climbed by a person in good physical condition and there is no need for mountaineering equipment at any point on the main route, but climbers must be accompanied by accredited guides at all times due to national park regulations and may experience altitude sickness . Mount Kinabalu
7208-599: 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
7314-602: The hardiest grasses, sedges and dwarf shrubs, including Leptospermum recurvatum and Rhododendron ericoides , which grow in crevices and other sheltered areas on the rocky summits. The plants of Mount Kinabalu have high levels of biodiversity and endemism (i.e. species which are found only within Kinabalu Park and are not found anywhere else in the world). Orchids are the best-known example, with 866 species in 134 genera, including species of Bulbophyllum , Dendrobium , Coelogyne , Liparis , and Calanthe , and some of
7420-406: The highly valued Paphiopedilum slipper orchids . There are also over 600 species of ferns (more than the whole of Africa's 500 species) of which 50 are found nowhere else. Mount Kinabalu has the richest collection in the world of Nepenthes pitcher plants (five of the thirteen are found nowhere else on earth), some of which reach spectacular proportions (the largest-pitchered in the world being
7526-581: 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
7632-516: The late 19th century. Today Japanese is written with a composite script using both Chinese characters called kanji , and kana. Korean is written exclusively with hangul in North Korea, although knowledge of the supplementary Chinese characters called hanja is still required, and hanja are increasingly rarely used in South Korea. As a result of its historical colonization by France, Vietnamese now uses
7738-733: The main subjects in the legend of Mount Kinabalu . The legend tells of two Chinese delegates of the Ming – Ong Sum Ping and his well-built assistant Wang Kong – sent to capture a precious gemstone from the mountain which was being guarded by a dragon . Using his wits, Ong Sum Ping swapped the pearl for a lit glass bottle. Wanting to get all the credit, Wang Kong snatched the retrieved treasure and ran away. Bitterly appalled by his trusted assistant's behaviour, Ong Sum Ping chose to stay behind in Brunei. Chinese language Chinese ( simplified Chinese : 汉语 ; traditional Chinese : 漢語 ; pinyin : Hànyǔ ; lit. ' Han language' or 中文 ; Zhōngwén ; 'Chinese writing')
7844-449: The massive mountain was covered by huge sheets of ice and glaciers which flowed down its slopes, scouring its surface in the process and creating the 1,800 m (5,906 ft) deep Low's Gully (named after Hugh Low ) on its north side. Its granitic composition and the glacial formative processes are readily apparent when viewing its craggy rocky peaks. In respect of it being 'one of the youngest granitic intrusions exposed on Earth and
7950-455: 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
8056-429: The mountain estimated a staggering 5,000 to 6,000 plant species (excluding mosses and liverworts but including ferns). It is therefore one of the world's most important biological sites. A reason for its rich diversity and endemisms is that its great height could have provided refuge to cold-adapted species during interglacials. In 2015, a major Malaysian-Dutch study showed that the unique flora, fauna, and fungi on
8162-402: The mountain summit are younger than the mountain itself, and have evolved from both local and distant montane ancestors. The flora of the mountain varies with elevation and geology. Lowland forest extends up to about 1500 metres elevation, and consists of two main types, based on the dominant tree species – mixed dipterocarp forest and mixed Casuarina forest. Lowland forests generally have
8268-511: The mountain. The mountain is home to some 100 mammalian species mostly living high in the trees, including one of the great apes, the Bornean orangutan (though sightings of these are uncommon; estimates of its numbers in the park range from 25 to 120). Other mammals include three kinds of deer, the Malayan weasel ( Mustela nudipes ), Oriental small-clawed otter ( Aonyx cinerea ), and leopard cat ( Prionailurus bengalensis ). Endemic mammals include
8374-425: 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
8480-516: The name to the Dusun expression "tina balu," which translates to "a widow mother," suggesting that tina balu may represent the spirit of the mountain itself. Alternatively, some propose that "Kinabalu" results from the combination of two Dusun words, "ki" (have/has) and "nabalu" (mountain), forming "ki-nabalu" or "have mountain." It is a common practice among the Dusun people to name places based on their distinctive features or characteristics, exemplified by
8586-583: 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
8692-523: The nearby Maliau Basin . Mount Kinabalu's above-average biodiversity in plant life is due to a combination of several unique factors: its setting in one of the richest plant regions of the world (the tropical biogeographical region known as western Malesia which comprises the island of Sumatra , the Malay Peninsula , and the island of Borneo ), the fact that the mountain covers a wide climatic range from near sea level to freezing ground conditions near
8798-511: The north side of Mount Kinabalu, which is exceptionally inhospitable due to its depth and high rainfall. In March 1994 two British Army officers were severely criticised after leading a party of 7 British and 3 Hong Kong soldiers in an attempt to abseil and climb down into the gully that required extensive rescue efforts from both the RAF and the Malaysian army. The party were not equipped with radios and
8904-538: 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
9010-466: The place called "kiwaig," meaning "having water. A popular story told to Western and Chinese tourists states that the name "Kinabalu" actually means "Cina Balu" (meaning "A Chinese Widow"). Due to the lingual influence among the Kadazan Dusun of Sabah , the pronunciation for the word "cina" (chee-na) was changed to "Kina" (kee-na). An earlier book by Spenser St. John published in 1863 mentioned
9116-638: The plant families Fagaceae and Lauraceae , with conifers increasingly abundant at higher elevations. The lower montane forests have a high diversity of orchid and fern species. Carnivorous plants , including species of Nepenthes , Drosera , and Utricularia , are most diverse between 2200 and 2550 meters elevation, in areas with high rainfall and a stunted, open tree canopy. The montane forests are interspersed with areas of graminoid scrub, generally associated with hypermagnesic cambisol soils. Sub-alpine scrub extends from 2,600 to 3,200 m (8,530 to 10,499 ft). It includes short trees and shrubs such
9222-575: The plant life, and plant communities on ultramafic soils show lower stature and lower biomass, higher levels of endemism, and a distinct species composition compared to plant communities at similar elevations elsewhere on the mountain. The variety of plant life is also habitat for a great variety of birds and mammals. There are some 326 species of birds in Kinabalu Park, including the spectacular rhinoceros hornbill , mountain serpent-eagle , Dulit frogmouth , eyebrowed jungle flycatcher , and bare-headed laughingthrush . Twenty-four birds are mainly found on
9328-404: 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 ,
9434-552: 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
9540-509: 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
9646-539: The site of spectacular tropical glacial landscapes', the International Union of Geological Sciences (IUGS) included the 'Mount Kinabalu Neogene granite' in its assemblage of 100 'geological heritage sites' around the world in a listing published in October 2022. The organisation defines an IUGS Geological Heritage Site as 'a key place with geological elements and/or processes of international scientific relevance, used as
9752-505: 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
9858-557: 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
9964-577: The summit zone, at least 26 endemic species of land snail exist. In 2012, a major scientific expedition, jointly organised by the Malaysian Sabah Parks and the Dutch Naturalis Biodiversity Center , performed DNA analysis of several dozen endemic flora, fauna, and fungi, to understand the evolutionary origin of the unique biodiversity of Kinabalu. The steep mountainsides with poor soil are not suitable for farming or for
10070-404: The summit, the jagged terrain and diversity of rocks and soils, the high levels of rainfall (averaging about 2,700 mm (110 in) a year at park HQ), and the climatic instability caused by periods of glaciation and catastrophic droughts which result in evolution and speciation . This diversity is greatest in the lowland regions (consisting of lowland dipterocarp forests, so called because
10176-511: The timber industry so the habitats and animal life of Kinabalu remain largely intact, with about a third of the original habitat now degraded. Kinabalu Park was established in 1964 and the nearby mountains were protected as the Crocker Range National Park in 1984. However even national park status does not guarantee full protection, as logging permits were granted on Trus Madi in 1984. British colonial administrator Hugh Low made
10282-609: 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
10388-547: 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
10494-474: The tree family Dipterocarpaceae are dominant). However, most of Kinabalu's endemic species are found in the mountain forests, particularly on ultramafic soils. The ultramafic rocks which make up parts of the mountain create soils rich in certain metallic elements (nickel, cobalt, chromium, and manganese), high cation imbalances (high Mg:Ca molar quotients), and deficiencies of some nutrients including potassium and phosphorus. These soil conditions affect
10600-509: The turn of the 20th century. In 1947, a reef in the South China Sea for a short while was named 'Senping reef' 森屏礁 by the Government of the Republic of China in honour of Ong Sum Ping. In the Brunei capital of Bandar Seri Begawan, there is a street named after him, Jalan Ong Sum Ping, which is the only street in Brunei with a Chinese name. Ong Sum Ping has been repeatedly cited as one of
10706-512: 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
10812-452: 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
10918-508: 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
11024-453: 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,
11130-426: Was achieved by a 27 strong joint Malaysian-British team led by mountaineer and former British Army officer Pat Gunson in 1998. Several narratives exist that explain the primary beliefs surrounding the mountain's name. The most plausible origin of the word "Kinabalu" is believed to be derived from the Dusun phrase 'Aki Nabalu,' signifying "the revered place of the dead" . Another possible interpretation attributes
11236-481: 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
#813186