中国的语言

1. Single-Morpheme Words of One Character Compared with disyllabic(or two-Character) words, single-morpheme words of one character have only a small number in Modern Chinese. However, some of these words play an essential role in the structure of the language and should be learned at the very outset of the course. The following is a list of such examples. 是shi4 an affirmative function word used between the subject and its complement of a sentence. The basic meaning is "yes","right". It's related with the English copula BE but different in that it is not indispensable as the English link verb unless when making an assertion, carring a strong affirmative meaning or making and emphasis. 是我。shi4 wo3. It IS me. 我是老师。wo3 shi4 lao3 shi1. I'm a teacher. 我是在这儿。wo3 shi4 zai4 zher4. I AM here. Compare: 我在这儿。I'm here. ...... Languages of the han chinese and Chinese Ethnic Groups Hanyu， or the language of the Han nationality， commonly known as theMandarin Chinese， is certainly the language generally used by the Chinesepeople. Its standard form is also called Putonghua， Guoyu， or Huayu， respec-tively in Mainland China， Taiwan， Malaysia and Singapore. But it is not theonly language used by all Chinese. This is because China is a big country with55 ethnic minorities in addition to the Han people， and most of them have theirown languages. Chinese linguists generally agree that the total number of lan-guages used by China's ethnic groups is over 80， with some ethnic groups us-ing more than one languages. Among these different languages， 30 have writ-ten forms. In terms of language genealogy， they are categorized into 5 differentfamilies： the Sino-Tibetan， Altai， Austro-Asiatic， Austronesian and Indo-European. Therefore， the phrase "Chinese Language" should in fact have its plural forms.When used in the singular form， it only means the language originally belong-ing to the Han people （hence called Hanyu）， which has been adopted as thecommon language used across ethnic boundaries. Among all ethnic groups ofChina， some have adopted the Han people's language， with their own languageshaving gone into extinction， such as the Hui and Manchurian people（respectively counting for 9.8 million and 10.6 million in population）. Othersuse both Hanyu and their own languages. The Chinese central government's language policy is to promote the use ofStandard Chinese （or Standard Mandarin） as the national language. In the meantime， however， the policy also encourages protection of the ethnic languages.According to Article 8 of the Law of the Peoples Republic of China on the StandardSpoken and Written Chinese Language， "all the nationalities shall have the free-dom to use and develop their own spoken and written languages". As a result，most preliminary and secondary schools in China's ethnic minority areas prac-tice bilingual education in both Mandarin Chinese and their own languages.