History of the Chinese Language: Everything You Need to Know

China has been counted in the world’s largest economy many times and it is holding as an Asian giant’s restoration. China has a great influence on the world and so has its language. The history of the Chinese language is a crucial part of its civilization and tells a lot about its growth.

In the world, around 1.3 billion people, or one-fifth of the world speak the Chinese language.

This makes the Chinese language as the language with the most native speakers.

The commonly spoken Chinese language is in the form of Standard Mandarin and it is highly spoken in China and Taiwan.

Many people often compare Cantonese language with Chinese.

Cantonese is the closest to ancient China’s language but it didn’t develop into a major language.

However, the Chinese language constantly changed a lot in its pronunciation, tones, vocabulary, and even grammar.

For businesses that are focusing on expanding to a Chinese audience consider translation as the useful influencer marketing strategy.

But during translation, the translators need to be careful in using the right Chinese language form as ancient Chinese languages sound nothing like Mandarin Chinese.

How Old is the Chinese Language?

The Chinese language is said to be in existence from 6000 years ago.

The ancient Chinese languages have evolved a lot and with time there have been several changes noticed.

The Chinese language has changed a lot in language and the written scripts did take their course and evolved into four stages:

● Old Chinese

● Middle Chinese

● Mandarian Chinese

● Modern Chinese

According to experts, Chinese language belongs to the Sino-Tibetan language family.

It comprises languages descending from Proto-Sino-Tibetan (PST).

But with the controversy over the relationship between the Chinese language and other Sino-Tibetan languages, the Chinese language started to diverge with no written documentation for research.

There are several language translators who have great experience in providing Chinese translation and generally have a better idea about the Chinese language and its type if they are native language experts.

Chinese Language Evolution

The Chinese language is the world’s oldest written language that has evolved a lot with time.

Mentioned below describes it clearly:

1- Old Chinese

Old Chinese is also known as “Archaic Chinese” which was a common language during the early and middle Zhou Dynasty (11th to 7th centuries B.C.).

From then, the work on reconstructing Old Chinese started with Qing dynasty philologists.

During this period, the phonetic elements were found in the majority of Chinese characters.

This hints about a rich sound system in which rough breathing differentiated the consonants.

With this, it is seen that there is the development of the spoken Chinese languages.

When there is a need for the most suitable Chinese translation solutions to translate old texts, experienced translators are needed to understand the Chinese language from early historical times.

2- Middle Chinese

Middle Chinese is spoken during the period of the Sui, Tang, and Song dynasties (7th through 10th centuries A.D.)

The evidence for the pronunciation of Middle Chinese comes from sources such as:

● Modern dialect variations

● Rhyming dictionaries

● Foreign transliterations

3- Mandarin Chinese

It is commonly spoken by people living in northern China, Sichuan.

From Manchuria to the Yunnan, people use various Mandarin dialects.

They consider it as their native language.

The usage of Mandarin throughout northern China is largely due to the result of geography and namely the plains of northern China.

4- Modern Chinese

The majority of southern Chinese language speakers have changed their integral methods for communication.

With the evolution of the educational system, the locals were determined to teach Mandarin, the language was more accessible and easy to learn.

With this, various global business expansions find it easy to use the Mandarin Chinese language to expand and prosper into other parts of the country.

Mandarin Chinese become more and more influential in China’s educational system and businesses were also using this language.

Invention Of Chinese Characters

The reason that makes the Chinese language so difficult is the Chinese characters.

According to experts, Chinese characters were invented by the legendary figure Cangjie (倉頡), who was an official historian of the Yellow Emperor and also took the lead of creating Chinese characters for writing.

It’s incredible just to imagine how Chinese characters were used by people thousands of years ago and they are still the same today.

Here are some facts about Chinese characters:

● Chinese language has 40,000 characters.

● Chinese language doesn’t have an alphabet but has a collection of over 200 radicals.

● To read the Chinese language, an individual need to master 2,000 characters.

Whenever there is a need to seek accurate Chinese translation, it is always best to look for the popular translation solutions near me.

To deliver the right translation, it is very important to have a better understanding of the Chinese language and its characters.

Professional translators have mastered the tone of Chinese characters because a different tone can mean something entirely different.

The comparison brought a lot and the strokes present in the Chinese characters also change with time.

Now it is much easy to understand as the Chinese characters transformed a lot.

As the script developed, the fewer strokes, in general, became more structured and gave a diamond-shaped.

Conclusion

Chinese is the oldest language and it has developed a lot since then.

It covers a huge audience base and the business that wants to enter this market has to seek Chinese translation.

Seeking translation provides great ease of operations however it is important to choose the conclusive translation company in Delhi with greatly experienced translators.

The Chinese language is difficult however, professional translators can ensure to deliver the best translation. If you want highly accurate and affordable Chinese language translation, contact us at +91-8527599523 or quickly send us a instant quote.