19 Surprising Facts about Chinese Languages

Did you know that the accurate meaning of the Mandarin greeting nĭhăo is good? This 你 Chinese character mean s you and this 好 character means good, forming jointly nihao or Hello! So if you decide you wish to get a tattoo, that truly means luck, you’ve to be confident you know the actual meaning of the random mandarin characters tattooed. Now, you got most of the basics down.

Mandarin Chinese is a very beautiful language, though, it’s rarely chosen for study as the mandarin characters are some of the most complicated combinations of strokes. According to recent times, this language is spoken by more than 1.3 billion people globally. They mainly live in China, Taiwan and Singapore, the Philippines, and other states where you can find local communities. The Chinese language is rightfully considered one of the oldest among the existing dialects. Let’s check out some of the surprising facts about the Chinese language you even didn’t know.

1, Mandarin Chinese is one of the most ancient languages still in use now 

Mandarin Chinese is one of the oldest languages on the planet. Mandarin characters were first seen in 1250 BC. That is over 3 thousand years ago! They were written in animal bones. The developed pictograms later turn out to be the basis for the hieroglyphs. Though, the proof excavated from the Liangzhu Culture indicates there was a written language utilized in China at least one thousand years earlier.

2, Mandarin Chinese is the most extensively spoken language on Earth 

There’re over 8 hundred million native mandarin Chinese speakers around the world, one out of 5 people speaks the language. Mandarin Chinese is the state language of China (it is also referred to as Standard Mandarin or Putonghua). That does not mean Mandarin Chinese is the single language in China. Far from it, while the several varieties of spoken mandarin are often called dialects several of them are different enough to be languages in their way. When you look at all of the Mandarin languages together, the number of speakers becomes even more staggering: about 1.3 billion native Chinese speakers or around 16 percent of the world’s population.

3, The Word Mandarin originates from the Sanskrit language 

Do you known the words Mandarin comes from the Portuguese Mandarin, it’s derived from the Malay word Menteri that originates from the Sanskrit language Mantrin meaning minister. We know mandarin is the most widely spoken language, it’s also the official language of Mainland China is used in other expatriates states such as Taiwan and Hong Kong. Though, there’re other forms of Chinese such as Wu, Hakka, Cantonese, Min, Xiang, Putonghua, Gan, and more that are also used in China.

4, While the spoken mandarin and dialects different across the region, written mandarin has only slight regional variations

That is because the Mandarin character is logograms. They represent phrases and words rather than sounds. As such, they exceed most of the language differences in speech found across China. That said, there’re dialectal differences in written mandarin, especially with Hakka and Cantonese. Mostly, these differences are apparent in informal writing among friends and online. Though written Cantonese is sometimes utilized in adverts in Hong Kong, particularly in Hong Kong’s Metro!

5, Written Mandarin is fundamentally different from other languages 

The mandarin consists not of letters, but hieroglyphs. Every character intended to mean only syllable, sound, or a complete word. Also, writing is different and it doesn’t go from the left side to the right, but from top to bottom and from the right side to left. Though, in recent times, Mandarin has preferred to use conventional European writing. Furthermore, there’s no alphabet as well as nouns don’t have a singular or plural distinction.

6, Does not have Alphabet 

Unlike European languages, Mandarin does not have an alphabet, instead of alphabetical letters, you have to learn standalone mandarin characters. These characters can be written in various forms – traditional or simple. Simple Chinese characters were introduced by the GOVT of PRC in 56. This set of Mandarin characters was released to make the learning reading and writing process easier. Intro of simplified mandarin characters was successful in China and Singapore.

Nevertheless, other areas like Hong Kong and Taiwan are more likely to utilize traditional mandarin characters. Learning the Pinyin system is way simpler and it can help you get around in China as most Common Street names are translated to it.

7, Words with Single Grammatical Style 

While several students are challenged by Chinese writing, this is not the case with the grammar of the language. Compared to most EU languages, Mandarin grammar has a lot of simple parts. 

• First of all, you do not need to worry about tenses and how they’ll change verbs. Instead of modifying verbs, mandarin uses particles or verbs such as yesterday or after to indicate time. Also, verbs are not being modified based on aspect or mood.
• Second of all, in Mandarin, there’s no grammatical difference between singular and Plural. Instead of adding –s- plural nouns, it’s being shown by sentence structure. This means that nouns in the Mandarin language remain a similar form even if they’re plural.
• Third of all, when forming a question in this language, it’s not essential to change sentence form. In most cases work order keeps the similar and speakers use particles to form questions. These described aspects make learning the Mandarin language a simple task and you can focus more of your energy on speaking or writing parts.

8, Mandarin Chinese is a tonal language

The pitch of how you say alike or word in the Chinese language can completely change the word’s meaning. Mandarin Chinese has 4 tones, each tone having its pitch. To understand what I mean here an instance:

1. First – Higher pitch
2. Second – Begins with the lower pitch rising to the higher pitch
3. Third – Starts with a neutral way, dips to a lower pitch, and finishes with a higher pitch
4. Fourth – Starts with a little higher pitch and goes very strong downward.

9, The Chinese language separated into a group of dialects 

We call this language mandarin, but several linguists separate this group of dialects into a separate side. Currently, about ten dialects are distinguished that differ mainly in phonetic and vocabulary. The main differences are so significant that several Chinese people don’t understand each other. Most speak at least Chinese mandarin and their Chinese dialect's mother tongue.

10, Oldest Writing System on Earth 

From all the spoken Languages presently, Mandarin Chinese has the oldest writing method. It fact research suggest that Mandarin character were utilized even in 1.6 thousand BC. This period can be confirmed by archaeological findings of animal bones that have mandarin characters craved on them (as we read above). While the Latin alphabet is quite very much old too, it originated one thousand years later than the Chinese language. While dialects of Mandarin can be different enough to be mutually incomprehensible, they entire share a similar writing system!

11, More than Twenty thousand different characters

Mandarin Writing system is not only the oldest on the planet, but it’s also quite hard to learn. It’s comprised of various characters representing syllables of spoken language. One character in the mandarin writing system can represent both full words and only a part of them. A few dictionaries identify even more than twenty thousand unique characters. This might seem like a lot or learn for both native as well as non-native speakers.

However in reality you do not need to learn all of them. Yes, you read it right. Today’s written Mandarin uses only 2500 to 3500 characters. So by learning the main mandarin characters, you be will be capable to read and comprehend what is written in a newspaper or Chinese book without any difficulty. Due to historic circumstances, part of mandarin character has been included in neighboring states languages. A few characters are still being utilized in Japanese and at minor degrees in Korean languages. Prior to adopting the alphabetic system, Vietnamese utilized mandarin characters also.

12, The following English words come from mandarin:

• Catsup – A pidgin Eng description of the Cantonese form 茄汁 (means Tomato Sauce)
• Brain Washing – an exact translation of the mandarin 洗腦
• Tea – An anglicized model of HOKKIEN 茶
• Typhoon – it comes from either Hokkien, Mandarin, or Cantonese, all of which have the same
• Tycoon – A Sino Japanese word which means  Great nobleman

13, Challenging to learn for English Speakers

China has one of the quickest growing economies for the past 30 years. It’s also one of the biggest exporter and manufacturer of goods in the world. These and same China’s success factors make the Mandarin language among the top options between foreign language learners. Due to its uniqueness, most English speakers find it as one of the hardest languages to understand. Based on FSI, it might take more than 88 weeks or 2200hrs of time in class to learn the Mandarin language for English speakers. In comparison, it’s only necessary to spend 600hrs to learn languages like Spanish, French or Italian.

14, New Mandarin Characters are being added Every Year 

Fifty thousand is already a mind-blowing number, but more and more mandarin characters are still being added every year in the language and for years to come. People are forever coming up with new mandarin characters so the mandarin language will continue to grow non-stop!

15, Learn Chinese make you smart 

It’s not surprising that learn languages or learning, in general, is advantageous for the brain. Nevertheless, a study suggests that speaking and learning mandarin can be especially helpful for the brain. This for the reason that speaking the Mandarin language needs us to use both sides of our mind, this is the main reason that speaking the Mandarin language needs to use both sides of our mind, in comparison, English speakers only need to use the left-brain side for this purpose.

As it was discussed earlier, Mandarin is a tonal language, hence when studying mandarin, we have to distinguish from the similar words that have various intonation. In order to do this, we have to stimulate various parts of our minds. This in turn can lead to advantages such as improved creativity, higher smartness, and superior ability to solve problems.

A few other types of research indicate that learning mandarin can result in better math skills in kids. This is not a surprise, because writing mandarin characters needs ordering, counting, and identifying similarities and differences among grouping and characters. As the same concepts being utilized in Math, kids with Chinese knowledge can cope with them simply.

Writing mandarin character also needs a lot of hand practice. This sort of practice can have several benefits as well. It can lead to higher identification of shapes and recognition of graphics as well as the development of motor skills.

16, Chinese is the only modern pictographic language

Like the hieroglyphics in early Egypt, Mandarin Chinese is also a pictographic language. It’s the only existing pictographic language on the planet today. Mandarin Chinese is represented by drawings or images of subjects that they’re meant to describe.

17, It follows different calligraphy styles 

There’re 5 traditional forms of Mandarin calligraphy:

1. Official Character
2. Seal character
3. Running Script
4. Formal Script
5. Cursive Hand

All these are considered Mandarin Chinese art styles.

18, The first Mandarin Language Day was held on 12 Nov 2010

The date was moved to 20th Apr in 2011. The 20 date corresponds with the Rain of Millet in the mandarin calendar. As such it celebrates the legendry and well-known Chinese historian Cangjie, whose deities and ghosts cried and the sky rained millet. This myth also says he had 4 eyes and 4 pupils but takes with a grain of salt.

19, Chinese is an official UN language

In 1945-46 Mandarin Chinese was included as an official UN language but it was not utilized until 1973 for the United National Assembly. The 6 official languages of the UN include English, Arabic, Chinese, Russian, French, and Spanish.