10) Chinese has no articles, verb inflections, or plurals. The first 100 characters every beginner Chinese learner needs to know.

For regular use, you only need 20,000 Chinese characters and 2,500 to read a newspaper in China. 9) You don’t need to learn all 50,000 characters!įor daily use, you don’t have to master all 50,000 characters. The good thing is you only need to know about 2,500 characters to read a newspaper in China. Some Chinese dictionaries even say that it’s much higher than 50,000. The Chinese language is composed of more than 50,000 characters. This takes out the burden of memorizing thousands of Chines characters! 8) There are over 50,000 distinct Chinese characters. The good thing is, Chinese can be transcribed into characters with the use of Pinyin.

You learn Chinese by studying different characters. Here’s where the challenge of learning Chinese lies – it doesn’t have a segmental alphabet. 7) The Chinese language doesn’t have an alphabet. The world mountain or “shan, 山” in Chinese has three points signifying the three peaks of a mountain ridge. Chinese is represented by images or drawings of subjects that they are meant to describe. It is the only existing pictographic language in the world today. Like the hieroglyphics in ancient Egypt, Chinese is also a pictographic language. 6) It’s the only modern pictographic language. This means that Chinese is also used in countries such as Singapore, Indonesia, Vietnam and Malaysia. More than 40 million Chinese people reside in other Asian countries. However, there are other forms of Chinese such as Wu, Xiang, Cantonese, Putonghua, Min, Hakka, Gan and more that are also used in China.ĥ) Chinese is a major language in numerous Southeast Asian countries. It is also the official language of China and is used in other expatriate countries such as Hong Kong and Taiwan. Mandarin is the the most widely spoken form of Chinese language. 4) Mandarin isn’t the only “Chinese language”. Mandarim is derived from the Malay word menteri, which originates from the Sanskrit word mantrin, meaning minister. “Mandarin” comes from the Portuguese word mandarim. 3) The word “Mandarin” originates from Sanskrit. Aside from being a widely spoken language, here are more reasons to study Chinese. Not even a combination of Spanish, English, French, and German can add up to that number. This means one in six people speak the language and 15% of the world’s population use it as their mother tongue. Photo from Xinhua 2) Chinese is the most widely spoken language in the world. These “oracle bone” fragments, some of which show an ancient Chinese script, are housed at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto. That’s over 3,000 years ago! They were engraved in animal bones. Chinese characters were first seen in 1250 BC. Amazing Facts About The Chinese Language: 1) Chinese is one of the most ancient languages still in use today.Ĭhinese is one of the oldest languages in the world. Imagine being able understand and converse with more than a billion people across the world… This is an opportunity you’ll have if you speak Chinese! Whether you are planning to study Chinese or you’re simply fascinated by the the world’s oldest language, here are amazing facts about the Chinese language that you should know first.

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