General
Chinese （中文，汉语）or the Sinitic language(s) (汉语/漢語, Pinyin: Hànyǔ; 华语/華語, Huáyǔ; or 中文, Zhōngwén) can be considered a language or language family. Originally the indigenous languages spoken by the Han Chinese in China, it forms one of the two branches of Sino-Tibetan family of languages[1]. About one-fifth of the world’s population, or over 1 billion people, speak some form of Chinese as their native language. The identification of the varieties of Chinese as "languages" or "dialects" is controversial.[2] As a language family Chinese has an estimated nearly 1.2 billion speakers; Mandarin Chinese alone has around 850 million native speakers, outnumbering any other language in the world.
Spoken Chinese is distinguished by its high level of internal diversity, though all spoken varieties of Chinese are tonal and analytic. There are between six and twelve main regional groups of Chinese (depending on classification scheme), of which the most populous (by far) is Mandarin (c. 850 million), followed by Wu (c. 90 million), Min (c. 70 million) and Cantonese (c. 70 million). Most of these groups are mutually unintelligible, though some, like Xiang and the Southwest Mandarin dialects, may share common terms and some degree of intelligibility. Chinese is classified as a macrolanguage with 13 sub-languages in ISO 639-3, though the identification of the varieties of Chinese as multiple "languages" or as "dialects" of a single language is a contentious issue.
The standardized form of spoken Chinese is Standard Mandarin, based on the Beijing dialect. Standard Mandarin is the official language of the People's Republic of China and the Republic of China (Taiwan), as well as one of four official languages of Singapore. Chinese—de facto, Standard Mandarin—is one of the six official languages of the United Nations. Of the other varieties, Standard Cantonese is common and influential in Cantonese-speaking overseas communities, and remains one of the official languages of Hong Kong (together with English) and of Macau (together with Portuguese). Min Nan, part of the Min language group, is widely spoken in southern Fujian, in neighbouring Taiwan (where it is known as Taiwanese or Hoklo) and in Southeast Asia (where it dominates in Singapore and Malaysia and is known as Hokkien).
External Links:
Dictionaries
- MDBG free online Chinese-English dictionary
- Chinese Characters Dictionary: supports Japanese, Korean, Cantonese, Hakka etc.
- Chinese - English Dictionary: from Webster's Online Dictionary - the Rosetta Edition
- CEDICT Chinese-English Dictionary Project
- Stardict free (GPL) multilanguage dictionary including simplified/traditional Chinese for Unix (Linux, FreeBSD, etc.) and win32
- English-Chinese Translation Dictionary: Chinese-English-Chinese Online Dictionary (Taiwan-based; simplified characters not recognised)
- CantoDict: Cantonese-English Dictionary Project
- Collection of Chinese dictionaries
- Chinese Pronunciation Dictionary Input Chinese words or sentences, get audio file of Mandarin pronunciation. Web-based tool.
- Pinyin Annotator Add pinyin on top of any Chinese text. Mouse over any word to see English tranlation. Save output to OpenOffice Writer format. Prints nicely. Also adds pinyin to any Chinese web page.
Learning
- Chinese Language Information Page A collection of Chinese language learning resources.
- Learn Chinese - One At A Time
- Oneaday.org One Chinese idiom a day (simplified and traditional characters) with pinyin transliteration and English translation.
- Mandarin Tone Drill Testing your knowledge of Mandarin tones.
- Pinyin Practice Pinyin practice for Mandarin learners in all levels
- Marjorie Chan's ChinaLinks: A large collection of Web resources by a professor of linguistics at Ohio State University
- Learning Chinese One Idiom at a Time: Chinese idioms in Simplified Chinese and Hanyu pinyin
- Sinoling.com: Chinese language resources
- 4 words of Chinese every day
- Why Chinese Is So Damn Hard
- Chinese Character of the Day Learn to Read Chinese one word at a time.
- Audio files with basic Chinese words
- General Introduction of Chinese Language
- Free Chinese Character Input Software Google Pinyin Input Software
- Chinese Level Chinese Language Level System & Assessment
All information is from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_language
