On 20 April, 1 in 6 people around the globe celebrate UN Chinese Language Day. Chinese is one of the 6 official languages of the United Nations and the most spoken mother tongue in the world, with 1.2 billion people speaking a variation of Chinese as their first language. According to myth, Cangjie, a figure from traditional Chinese folklore, invented the Chinese characters 5 000 years ago. When this happened, the gods and ghosts cried, and millet rained down from the sky. This is the reason why Chinese Language Day takes place on the day of Guyu, which means “Rain of Millet” in Chinese. In the Gregorian calendar, this day corresponds to 20 April.
The earliest form of Chinese characters was found in the oracle-bone inscriptions, and they were inscribed on the carapaces of tortoises and mammals between 1 600 and 1 046 BC. In the Kangxi Dictionary, the standard dictionary, there are 47 035 characters, but don’t worry, you can successfully read a newspaper if you manage to learn 3 000 of them!
If you decide to learn Chinese, you should also know that it is a tonal language: it has five tones. Therefore, the way that a word is pronounced can drastically change its meaning: for instance, the syllable ma can have different meanings depending on the tone that is used. This phenomenon can be difficult for Chinese language learners and sometimes leads to funny situations: for example, wǒ xiǎng wèn nǐ, in which “wen” is spoken with a falling pitch, means “I want to ask you”, while wǒ xiǎng wěn nǐ, in which “wen” rises and falls in pitch, means “I want to kiss you”!
But don’t be discouraged by this! You can practise your Chinese interpreting skills by checking out the Cantonese and Mandarin sections of the Speech Repository. And remember, pay attention to the pitch of the words. In addition, if you are interested in learning more about the Chinese languages, you should take a look at these speeches:
[DE] Mandarin, die chinesische Hochsprache | Speech Repository (europa.eu)
[ZH] The importance of preserving the Cantonese language | Speech Repository (europa.eu)
[EN] Changing popularity of language learning | Speech Repository (europa.eu)