Chinese morphology

Chinese morphology is the study of words and make the word. Its objective is to understand the meaning of the relationships between words and forms that are expressed, including how grammatical relations are marked in different languages. For example, plurality is explicitly marked by an s - Spanish, for example, books as a plural noun, and the book as a singular noun. In addition, relations between words may require some morphological in different parts of the sentence changes. For example, the form of the verb varies depending on the person and number of the subject phrase in an English sentence as this book is very interesting from these books are very interesting in that the subjects and verbs have a relationship agreement, i.e., a third-person singular, subjective substantive corresponds to the copular verb is and a third-person plural subjective different noun to a copular verb.

Cross-linguistically, the minimal unit of meaning is commonly called a morpheme, and is divided into two major types, free and dependent. Dependent morphemes mainly relate to affixes like the English plural marker - s that only makes sense when it is attributed to a nominal stem. Alternatively, a noun as a book is called a free morpheme because it makes sense on its own and refers to something in the real world or is called a stem of an affix which shall be attached to the.

Affixes are prefixes such as the English UN - unhappy and suffixes such as the ingleses-capaz of laughable. Suffixes can be derivational or inflected. In general, affixes inflectional refer to elements as the - s in plural marker in English and fewer in derivational suffixes number as the old function to create forms of words with additional grammatical meaning as a plurality. Include other inflectional morphemes in English - ed indicating tense, - ing progressive, possessive, s-er comparative, superlative etc.,-est. Morphemes derivational as - English tend to be more numerous than inflectional affixes in a language they operate in a stem or a root, like laughing resulting in a new Word ridiculous. Other English derivational affixes include re - reproduction-, lie in the establishment- and luck, etc.. Finally, not all linked morphemes are affixes, also there are linked roots as - sist in English that constitute the root or stem, to derivational processes to generate words like resist, they consist in, remain while is does not occur by themselves makes sense in a language, as in the forced morphologically affixes. Although there are free morphemes that make up the majority of the stems, they still provide a form base to new words in a way other affixes derivational in a language.

Compared to English, the limit of a Chinese word is far from being transparent, as many bookmarks morphological affixes are often non-existent, because the Chinese language does not mark tense, or parts of the sentence, morphologically. The fluidity of the concept "word" in Chinese has even led some to claim (Hoosain 1992, Zhang 1992) morphemes are more versatile in Chinese than other languages and more indeterminate with respect to their status as bound-free. The notion of "word", known as c? in Chinese, is a concept particularly intuitive or easily defined. In addition, Chinese orthography does not require any space between characters, regardless of its morphological State, i.e. not distinguishes written between free and dependent morphemes which conceals its existence in the mind of the speaker. On the other hand, wenz? "characters" that are used to represent each syllable of a morpheme with a character regardless of morphological status appear to be a more natural concept. Perhaps for this reason, almost all Chinese dictionaries list vocabularies through characters instead of words. Dictionaries are most commonly referred to as z?dian, literally "norms of nature."

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About spoken Chinese

Chinese is the language of more than one billion speakers. There are several families of dialect of Chinese, each in turn composed of many dialects. Although different dialect families are often mutually unintelligible, systematic correspondences (e.g. in the lexicon and syntax) exist between them, making it easy to ensure that the speakers of a dialect collect another relatively quickly. The largest dialect family is the family of the North, which consists of more than 70% of Chinese speakers. Standard or Chinese Mandarin is a member of the family of the North and is based on the pronunciation of the Beijing dialect. Interestingly, most standard Chinese speakers have another dialect as their first language and only less than one percent of them speak without some degree of accent.

There are 22 consonants in Chinese Mandarin. Compared to English, the distribution of the consonants in Chinese Mandarin is closely dependent on the position of the syllable and the syllable structure is much simpler. There are two kinds of syllables - complete and weak ones - in Chinese Mandarin. The first is inherent, underlying tone and is long, while the latter does not have any intrinsic tone and is short. A complete syllable can change to a weak, losing his tone intrinsic and subjected to syllable rime reduction and shortening (similar to the reduction of the syllable in English).

In contrast to English, which has more than 10,000 syllables (mono), Chinese Mandarin has only about 400 syllables excluding tones (and 1300) including tones. Relatively simple phonological constraints can be sufficiently described the way in which many available syllables are excluded as being valid in Chinese Mandarin.

The special characteristics in spoken Chinese signal properties consist of tonality and fundamental frequency variations indicating identity in language paralinguistic information lexical. Analysis of the discourse of fundamental frequency or tone extraction techniques, therefore, are most important for the Chinese than for non-tonal languages, like English. Recent research has provided production and accounts perceptual tonal variations in Chinese, where the articulatory restriction in the processing of perception has been quantified.

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The strokes of Chinese writing

The Chinese character for "cloud" was written as in the Oracle bone script and bronze script, those who have a line of curves in the bottom something like a piece of floating cloud. However, after Chinese writing was standardized after the dynasty Han, various Chinese graphemes can be analyzed in terms of lines, i.e., lines, points and hooks that draw not a piece of paper with a writing instrument, forming Chinese characters encode words. For example, in the standard script, the previous angular and wavy lines were replaced by more and more regular lines that are more compatible with stroke techniques. In so doing different types of strokes can be identified easily. A Chinese character should write blow by blow. Chinese children are taught to write different strokes in each Chinese character strictly following the rules of stroke order.

There are many practical reasons for students to learn these rules of stroke order. For example, writing is considered an art form in Chinese culture. These rules can help students to develop some skills in the placement of several strokes proportionally to produce aesthetically acceptable Chinese characters. In addition, one could not use many Chinese dictionaries effectively without knowing the order of the strokes, as most index dictionary rules systems draw for order of strokes as a useful to help users form are the entries of a certain Chinese character. Even though the romanized spelling system was introduced, most Chinese dictionaries still offer an index based on the number of strokes because there are many people who are not familiar with the system of romanized adopted in a given dictionary pronunciation or a certain Chinese character pronunciations. For example, in the most commonly used the contemporary Chinese dictionary in China, is a system of index two stages is divided into two sections, "radical initial" and "guide of the radical", both of which largely depend on the number of strokes. This dictionary, which contains over 56,000 words, recognize some initial radical 200. The user needs to count the number of strokes in the radical initial of a Chinese character, or the first Chinese character if the word has more than one Chinese character, find the section that has all the Chinese characters with the same radical initial. Then the user must have the number of strokes in the rest of the Chinese characters to find the page number where are listed all the entries from the Chinese characters.

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Have fun with Chinese by learning among locals

With China's economy grows at an incredible pace, who can communicate in standard Chinese (Mandarin) is set to enjoy a great advantage in the international world of business in the future. China also is a great country that offers a wealth of exciting travel experiences, and if you know some Chinese will help obtain and get more of your trip.

The Chinese language, spoken by more people than any other language in the world, is the official language of the people's Republic of China, and is one of the four official languages of Singapore.

The best way to learn any language is to have fun with him and speak in context - giving to the Chinese language students the perfect excuse for a long trip to China.

On its own immersion in the culture and the Chinese language, absorb much more than you would by studying alone or in a course of language in their country of origin.

Study options

In major universities or private schools, with courses available for all levels, from beginners to intermediate and advanced level students can study in China.

Some courses last just a few weeks, while others are much longer. Beijing language and Culture University (BLCU), for example, is the University most known in China for the teaching of Chinese language and culture to foreign students. It offers short courses for a duration of 4 weeks, 5 weeks, six weeks, 8 weeks, 12 weeks or 20 weeks, in addition to courses in the long term of duration of one or two academic years.

If you are interested in learning Chinese while traveling, more for communication for companies, might consider joining a study and travel program, which normally combines learning of languages with trips and cultural activities, often pairing him with a 'buddy': a student of native Chinese school which will give you many opportunities to socialize with locals and immerse yourself in Chinese life.

Immerse yourself in the language

Wherever you choose to study in China, be sure that the course incorporates immersion teaching methodologies - where most classes are taught in Chinese to completely immerse you themselves in the language from the beginning. The course should provide a balance of speaking, listening, reading and writing skills if seriously learning the language at a decent level and class sizes should not be too big or not obtain sufficient individual attention.

And after classes, when not busy doing their homework, get and visit shops and markets to put their new language skills in use in everyday life.

Before you leave

If you travel to China, need to take comprehensive travel insurance to cover you during your trip. Make sure that you take out a policy with a renowned company, well established as travelinsurance.co.uk, that has more than 10 years of experience and ensures more than two million customers each year.

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Chinese language and culture

The Chinese language, which is a communication system used by the Chinese people on a daily basis to meet several goals in life, inevitably leads many features that reflect some of the social beliefs widespread in their culture. Culture can be defined more or less as socially learned patterns of behavior and interpretative practices, what language plays an important role. In fact, the ways in which many words in Chinese idioms, popular proverbs, metaphors and neologisms are widely used among Chinese correspond to cultural beliefs and experiences that have shaped China as a country in the last three millennia.

In addition, the Chinese people, which has been in contact with many foreign cultures and languages throughout history, has also embraced and integrated into their own culture, many ideas and foreign concepts. The structures of neologisms, including many Chinese words of European origin and the system of writing Chinese morpheme-syllable are examined together to show the importance of the meaning of coining neologisms in Chinese. For example, the use of modern Chinese culture representing the culture was adopted from Japanese as it was first widely used in Japan as a lexicon neologized that represents the culture of the European word in the 19th century. In the 19th century the Japanese taken these two Chinese graphemes to create a new Word to translate the European culture word in Japanese. Later, this Japanese word neologized was reintroduced in Chinese or returned to China, to translate the word Europe itself.

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