HOME
Local Directory
Class Schedules
Outreach Hours
Cultural Events
Volunteering
Membership
Asians in Quincy
In the News
About Us
There are over 1500 recorded dialects in China. The most frequently used forms of spoken Chinese are Cantonese and Mandarin. Chinese language has an interesting and far reaching history. Like the differences in American accents in the United States, the dialect that a person from China speaks is a representation of the region that their family originated from. However, the similarity between American accents and Chinese dialects stops at that. Spoken english is the same almost everywhere that you go. The spoken dialects of Chinese on the other hand are dissimilar and unintelligible from each other from region to region.
Dialects and Regional location:
In english, we use an alphabet and string together consonants and vowels to produce a word. In Chinese, Chinese characters are used to represent one word each. Some of the earliest recorded characters were inscribed on the backs of turtle shells used for royal divination. Since that time, the usage and writing of Chinese characters have evolved a great deal from its recorded 2000 year old origins. 1
The form of a character can sometimes be broken down like english words to represent the actual meaning of a character. For example the character ming 
is made up of a sun radical ri 
and a moon radical yue 
. Together the radicals form which can mean bright, clear, or evident. Words like ming, however, are exceptions to the rule. Most of the time it just takes memorization and repetition for someone to learn the meaning and how to say each of the chinese characters. A fluent speaker and reader most likely has a grasp of at least 3000+ chinese characters.
In addition, to this there are actually two forms of Chinese characters a simplified version and a traditional version. Mainland China has converted most of its writing to a simplified format, which basically takes shortcuts in the way they write more complicated and common radical characters. Here is a comparison. (show picture) Countries like Taiwan, Hong Kong, and many publications in the United States (along with this website) still use the traditional form of Chinese.
^Back to Top
Dialects
Vietnamese is a tonal language spoken in a majority of Vietnam. There are three regional dialect distinctions: North, Central, and Southern Vietnamese. Vietnamese has often been mis-associated with Chinese but is more often classified as a Austroasiatic language. Vietnamese was originally written using modified Chinese characters. However, the already spoken form of Vietnamese, had closer linguistic connections to Southeast Asian languages such as Khmer (spoken in Cambodia) and Mon (spoken in Burma).
Written Form
The current written form of Vietnamese uses roman letters with different accents and tone markings. The romanized form is called chu quoc ngu. Here is an example. The first line says "Homework Assistance," and the second line says "Conversational English."
Tones
There are seven distinct tones in spoken Vietnamese: mid-level, low falling, high rising, low, rising after an initial dip, high broken, and low broken.
More Information
See "Language Links" below for more information about the Vietnamese Language.
Chinese
Learn Cantonese!
http://www.cantonese.ca/
Practice some common Cantonese phrases and vocabulary
Shanghainese Introduction and Development
http://www.zanhe.com
Background on the Shanghainese language and culture
Chinese Taishan Web
http://www.taishan.com/english/
Web connection site for Taishanese speakers, share regional background and information.
Chinese Languages
http://www.chinalanguage.com/Language/chinese.html
Short description of the make-up of Chinese language and its history of development.
Vietnamese
UCLA: Vietnamese Language Profile
http://www.lmp.ucla.edu/profiles/profv01.htm
In depth overview of Vietnamese language, dialects, history, and linguistics.
Vietnamese Language and Culture
http://www.saigon.com/%7Enguyent/language.html
Personal website with good coverage of Vietnamese language, culture, and literature.
