A Billion Voices Chinas Search For A Common Language Penguin Specials

Author : David Moser
Publisher : Penguin Australia
ISBN 13 : 9780734399595
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.96/5 ( download)

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Download or read book A Billion Voices written by David Moser and published by Penguin Australia. This book was released on 2016 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Mandarin, Guoyu or Putonghua? "Chinese" is a language known by many names, and China is a country home to many languages. Since the turn of the century linguists and politicians have been on a mission to create a common language for China. From the radical intellectuals of the May Fourth Movement, to leaders such as Chiang Kai-shek, and Mao Zedong, all fought to push the boundaries of language reform. Now, Internet users take the Chinese language in new and unpredictable directions. David Moser tells the remarkable story of China's language unification agenda and its controversial relationship with modern politics, challenging our conceptions of what it means to speak and be Chinese." -- Publisher's description

Author : David Moser
Publisher : Penguin Group Australia
ISBN 13 : 1760143308
Total Pages : 89 pages
Book Rating : 4.05/5 ( download)

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Download or read book A Billion Voices written by David Moser and published by Penguin Group Australia. This book was released on 2016-05-23 with total page 89 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Mandarin, Guoyu or Putonghua? 'Chinese' is a language known by many names, and China is a country home to many languages. Since the turn of the twentieth century linguists and politicians have been on a mission to create a common language for China. From the radical intellectuals of the May Fourth Movement, to leaders such as Chiang Kai-shek and Mao Zedong, all fought linguistic wars to push the boundaries of language reform. Now, Internet users take the Chinese language in new and unpredictable directions. David Moser tells the remarkable story of China's language unification agenda and its controversial relationship with modern politics, challenging our conceptions of what it means to speak and be Chinese. 'If you want to know what the language situation of China is on the ground and in the trenches, and you only have time to read one book, this is it. A veritable tour de force, in just a little over a hundred pages, David Moser has filled this brilliant volume with linguistic, political, historical, and cultural data that are both reliable and enlightening. Written with captivating wit and exacting expertise, A Billion Voices is a masterpiece of clear thinking and incisive exposition.' Victor H. Mair, American sinologist, professor of Chinese language and literature at the University of Pennsylvania and author of The Columbia History of Chinese Literature 'David Moser explains the complex aspects of Putonghua against the backdrop of history, delivering the information with authority and simplicity in a style accessible both to speakers of Chinese and those who are simply fascinated by the language. All of the questions that people have asked me about Chinese over the years, and more, are answered in this book. The history of Putonghua and the vital importance of creating a common language is a story David Moser brings to life in an enjoyable way.' Laszlo Montgomery, The China History Podcast

Author : Linda Jaivin
Publisher : The Experiment
ISBN 13 : 1615198202
Total Pages : 287 pages
Book Rating : 4.07/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Shortest History of China written by Linda Jaivin and published by The Experiment. This book was released on 2021-09-28 with total page 287 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Journey at a thrilling clip across the epic history of China-through millennia of early innovation to modern dominance"--

Author : Zak Dychtwald
Publisher : St. Martin's Press
ISBN 13 : 1250078814
Total Pages : 304 pages
Book Rating : 4.10/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Young China written by Zak Dychtwald and published by St. Martin's Press. This book was released on 2018-02-13 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The author, who is in his twenties and fluent in Chinese, intimately examines the future of China through the lens of the Jiu Ling Hou—the generation born after 1990—exploring through personal encounters how his Chinese peers feel about everything from money and marriage to their government and the West

Author : Tom Clark
Publisher : John Benjamins Publishing Company
ISBN 13 : 9027256993
Total Pages : 258 pages
Book Rating : 4.97/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Beyond Babel written by Tom Clark and published by John Benjamins Publishing Company. This book was released on 2022-10-20 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The contribution that scholarly organizations make to the study of languages and literatures is a service to the value of systematically learning and using meaning—understanding that meaning operates in systems. Constructively speaking, these organizations support the teaching and research of our world’s experts in grammar, genre, medium, production, reception, exchange, critique, appreciation, and so on. More defensively, they are bulwarks against systems of misinformation, against the empowerment of misrepresentation and distrust between people. The chapters in this volume range from the Old Testament to Facebook and from East Asia to West Africa via Australia, the Americas, and Europe. The scholarly strength forged across that range speaks to similar strengths that so many scholarly organizations devoted to studies in languages and literatures have cultivated and maintained—often in the face of government indifference or hostility towards the Humanities. Beyond Babel makes a powerful case for their potential.

Author : William S.-Y. Wang
Publisher : World Scientific Publishing Company Incorporated
ISBN 13 : 9789814287722
Total Pages : 250 pages
Book Rating : 4.25/5 ( download)

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Download or read book A Billion Voices written by William S.-Y. Wang and published by World Scientific Publishing Company Incorporated. This book was released on 2010 with total page 250 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book gives an overview and discussion of the languages and peoples of China. The emphasis of this book is on Putonghua (i.e., Common Speech) which is the most wide spread varieties of the Chinese languages. It also provides discussions on other major dialects related to Putonghua, as well as some of the minority languages that belong to other language families, such as Altaic and Austric. Typically a Chinese community is characterized by several forms of speech: a local vernacular, a regional standard, and also variants with these two overlaid by a variety of national standards. The book offers some insightful remarks on the endangered languages of China, which are the inevitable victims of globalization. This observation is given an in-depth coverage on both the spoken languages, distinguished by their lexical tones, and written languages, well-known for their morphosyllabic orthography. This orthography has the unique distinction of being the oldest one currently in use in the world.

Author : Jing Tsu
Publisher : Penguin
ISBN 13 : 0735214735
Total Pages : 337 pages
Book Rating : 4.36/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Kingdom of Characters (Pulitzer Prize Finalist) written by Jing Tsu and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2023-01-17 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: PULITZER PRIZE FINALIST A New York Times Notable Book of 2022 What does it take to reinvent a language? After a meteoric rise, China today is one of the world’s most powerful nations. Just a century ago, it was a crumbling empire with literacy reserved for the elite few, as the world underwent a massive technological transformation that threatened to leave them behind. In Kingdom of Characters, Jing Tsu argues that China’s most daunting challenge was a linguistic one: the century-long fight to make the formidable Chinese language accessible to the modern world of global trade and digital technology. Kingdom of Characters follows the bold innovators who reinvented the Chinese language, among them an exiled reformer who risked a death sentence to advocate for Mandarin as a national language, a Chinese-Muslim poet who laid the groundwork for Chairman Mao's phonetic writing system, and a computer engineer who devised input codes for Chinese characters on the lid of a teacup from the floor of a jail cell. Without their advances, China might never have become the dominating force we know today. With larger-than-life characters and an unexpected perspective on the major events of China’s tumultuous twentieth century, Tsu reveals how language is both a technology to be perfected and a subtle, yet potent, power to be exercised and expanded.

Author : Martin Jacques
Publisher : Penguin
ISBN 13 : 1101151455
Total Pages : 631 pages
Book Rating : 4.57/5 ( download)

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Download or read book When China Rules the World written by Martin Jacques and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2009-11-12 with total page 631 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Greatly revised and expanded, with a new afterword, this update to Martin Jacques’s global bestseller is an essential guide to understanding a world increasingly shaped by Chinese power Soon, China will rule the world. But in doing so, it will not become more Western. Since the first publication of When China Rules the World, the landscape of world power has shifted dramatically. In the three years since the first edition was published, When China Rules the World has proved to be a remarkably prescient book, transforming the nature of the debate on China. Now, in this greatly expanded and fully updated edition, boasting nearly 300 pages of new material, and backed up by the latest statistical data, Martin Jacques renews his assault on conventional thinking about China’s ascendancy, showing how its impact will be as much political and cultural as economic, changing the world as we know it. First published in 2009 to widespread critical acclaim - and controversy - When China Rules the World: The End of the Western World and the Birth of a New Global Order has sold a quarter of a million copies, been translated into eleven languages, nominated for two major literary awards, and is the subject of an immensely popular TED talk.

Author : Yan Ge
Publisher : Melville House
ISBN 13 : 1612199100
Total Pages : 256 pages
Book Rating : 4.08/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Strange Beasts of China written by Yan Ge and published by Melville House. This book was released on 2021-07-13 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A New York Times Editors' Choice and Notable Book of 2021 "Best Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror of 2021"—The Washington Post From one of the most exciting voices in contemporary Chinese literature, an uncanny and playful novel that blurs the line between human and beast… In the fictional Chinese city of Yong’an, an amateur cryptozoologist is commissioned to uncover the stories of its fabled beasts. These creatures live alongside humans in near-inconspicuousness—save their greenish skin, serrated earlobes, and strange birthmarks. Aided by her elusive former professor and his enigmatic assistant, our narrator sets off to document each beast, and is slowly drawn deeper into a mystery that threatens her very sense of self. Part detective story, part metaphysical enquiry, Strange Beasts of China engages existential questions of identity, humanity, love and morality with whimsy and stylistic verve.

Author : Jeffrey Gil
Publisher : Springer Nature
ISBN 13 : 3030761711
Total Pages : 188 pages
Book Rating : 4.14/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Rise of Chinese as a Global Language written by Jeffrey Gil and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2021-06-07 with total page 188 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book investigates the macroacquisition of Chinese – its large-scale acquisition and adoption for various purposes by individuals, governments and organisations – and the implications of this process for the future of English as a global language. The author contextualises the macroacquisition of Chinese within the global ecology of languages, then analyses the factors responsible for the macroacquisition of Chinese, showing, in contrast to most academic and popular commentary, that a character-based writing system will not stop Chinese from becoming a global language. He then articulates three possible future scenarios: English remaining a dominant global language, English and Chinese both being global languages, and Chinese becoming a global language instead of English. The book concludes by outlining directions for further research on the acquisition and use of Chinese around the world. It will be of interest to students and scholars with an interest in English as a global language, Chinese as a second/foreign language, language education policy, and applied linguistics more generally.