John Beagley# age 12, of Riverton, Utah, for his question:
WHEN DID THE CHINESE LANGUAGE ORIGINATE?
Before you can read even a simple novel written in Chinese, you must be able to recognize about 3,500 different printed characters. Each character in the Chinese language is used to convey a complete idea, and it is treated as a single unit. A scholar must be able to know at least 10,000 different characters before he is able to read classical Chinese literature.
More than 600 million people speak Chinese today. It is one of the world's oldest living languages and has been spoken since about 2000 B.C.
The spoken Chinese language has many different dialects. In fact, the dialects are pronounced in no standard way, so that each is often considered to be a different foreign language. But the classical written Chinese is the same throughout the country and it unites the people in spite of the many different dialects.
Most Chinese schools today teach the Mandarin dialect which is the official language of China and the chief dialect of northern China.
Historians tell us that the Chinese language originated about 4,000 years ago in the valley of the Hwang Ho. It was here that a culture called the Shang dynasty originated, named after a ruling family. A thousand years later it became the Chou dynasty as Chou warriors from western valleys invaded the empire. The language expanded at this time.
The great Chinese philosopher Confucius lived during this Chou dynasty and made some excellent use of the growing Chinese language.
Chinese grammar is logical and simple. It has no declension or conjugations. Special words, which are called auxiliary or assisting words, show tenses. A single Chinese character often is used without change as a noun, verb, adjective or adverb. Each character fulfills each of these jobs simply by appearing in the proper place in a sentence.
First significant work of Chinese literature appeared with a collection of 300 poems called the "Classic of Songs." The first of the poems goes back to about 1100 B.C. when they originated as songs about love, the hardships of war and even farming. Some of the early poems were used in religious and wedding ceremonies.
In 1957, the State Council of Communist China issued a draft alphabet for a phonetic transcription of Chinese characters. The alphabet uses all 26 letters of the Roman alphabet. Purpose of the new alphabet is to make it easier for the masses to learn to read.
Another objective of the new alphabet is to gradually unify the spoken language in China. In 1858, the radio started language broadcasts so the public could learn the new phonetic alphabet.