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Definition: Chinese from Philip's Encyclopedia

Group of languages spoken by c.95% of the population of China and by millions more in Taiwan, Hong Kong, SE Asia and elsewhere. There are six major languages, which are not mutually intelligible; the most common is Mandarin, spoken by c.66% of the Chinese population. All Chinese languages are written in a single common non-alphabetic script, whose characters number in the thousands and in some cases date back several thousand years. This single writing-system leads to the traditional classification of all Chinese languages as dialects of one language. Chinese has twice as many users as any other language in the world. See also Cantonese


Chinese

From The Columbia Encyclopedia
subfamily of the Sino-Tibetan family of languages (see Sino-Tibetan languages ), which is also sometimes grouped with the Tai, or Thai, languages in a Sinitic subfamily of the Sino-Tibetan language stock. Chinese comprises a number of variants; those that are mutually unintelligible are considered separate languages by some linguists but are classed among the many dialects of Chinese by others. The most widespread form of Chinese is Mandarin, which may be regarded as modern standard Chinese. It has several dialects and is spoken as a first language by some 835 million people in central and N China, as well as Taiwan, claiming more native speakers than any other language. An additional 100 million speak it as a second language. Originally the language of the court at Beijing during the imperial period, Mandarin was then called kuan hua [official speech]. After the Nationalists seized control in 1911, the name was changed to kuo yü [national tongue]. The Communist government adopted and…
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Full text Article Chinese

From The Columbia Encyclopedia
subfamily of the Sino-Tibetan family of languages (see Sino-Tibetan languages ), which is also sometimes grouped with the Tai, or Thai, languages in a Sinitic subfamily of the Sino-Tibetan language stock. Chinese comprises a number of variants; those that are mutually unintelligible are considered…
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Full text Article China

From The Columbia Encyclopedia
Mandarin Zhonghua Renmin Gongheguo [central glorious people's united country; i.e., people's republic], officially People's Republic of China, country (2015 est. pop. 1,397,029,000), 3,691,502 sq mi (9,561,000 sq km), E Asia. The most populous country in the world, China has a 4,000-mi (6,400-km) …
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Full text Article China

From Culture Wars in America: An Encyclopedia of Issues, Viewpoints, and Voices
China has been an evolving source of controversy for Americans since the establishment of the People's Republic of China in 1949. During the Cold War, Americans’ concerns about China were defined largely by their concerns over communism. In the 1950s and 1960s, Americans wondered if China was a…
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Full text Article China

From Encyclopedia of World Trade: From Ancient Times to the Present Full text Article A-Z Entries
The People's Bank of China—whose assets exceed...
Ancient East Asian country now officially known as the People's Republic of China (PRC). With a multiethnic population of over 1.3 billion, of which Han Chinese comprise about 92 percent and ethnic groups (Buyi, Hui, Korean, Manchu, Miao, Mongolian, Tibetan, Uyghur, Yi, Zhuang, and other…
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Full text Article China

From Worldmark Encyclopedia of Religious Practices
China
POPULATION 1,349,585,838 BUDDHIST 7.4 percent CHINESE POPULAR RELIGIONIST 2.9 percent PROTESTANT 2 percent CATHOLIC 0.3 percent MUSLIM 0.3 percent TAOIST 0.1 percent NONRELIGIOUS 86.7 percent OTHER 0.3 percent Introduction The most populous country in the world and largely nonreligious, China is…
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Full text Article China

From The Edinburgh International Encyclopaedia of Psychoanalysis
Writing in the 1920s in a period of significant social and political reform, Chinese intellectuals used Freudian notions of sexual tensions in families in calling for a change of attitude to the secrecy surrounding sex and to child education. But psychoanalytic practice in China has been slow to…
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Full text Article CHINA

From The Oxford Encyclopedia of American Military and Diplomatic History
The story of American relations with China since the mid-twentieth century is one full of dramatic twists and turns. From the late 1940s to the early 1970s, the U.S. relationship with Communist China was characterized by antagonism and confrontation. President Richard M. Nixon's trip to Beijing in…
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Full text Article China.

From The Oxford Companion to Sugar and Sweets
Chinese food encompasses a wealth of sweet dishes and sweet snacks, but no dessert course is served at the end of a typical meal, and the conceptual boundary between sweet and savory foods is much less strict than it is in Western cultures. Most meals in most parts of the country consist solely of…
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Full text Article China

From The Oxford Companion to International Relations
The People's Republic of China (PRC) is one of the world's few remaining Communist party-states. Like other regimes of this type past and present, China is ruled by a political party that proclaims ideological allegiance to Marxism-Leninism, asserts the right to exercise leadership in nearly all…
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From Encyclopedia of Islam and the Muslim World
©CENGAGE LEARNING/GALE
The Muslim population of China, which is spread throughout the nation, is estimated at about 25 million. Virtually every major city and most large towns have a Muslim community. Of China's fifty-five officially recognized minority peoples, ten are predominantly Muslim. The two largest groups are the…
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