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Chinese Mandarin - De La Salle Language College China (simplified Chinese; traditional Chinese; Hanyu Pinyin;Tongyong Pinyin: Jhongguó; Wade-Giles) is a cultural region, an ancient civilization, and, depending on perspective, a national or multinational entity extending over a large area in East Asia. The last Chinese Civil War has resulted in two political entities:
  • The People's Republic of China (PRC), commonly known as China, has control over mainland China and the largely self-governing territories of Hong Kong (since 1997) and Macau (since 1999).
  • The Republic of China, commonly known as Taiwan, has control over the islands of Taiwan, Penghu, Kinmen, and Matsu.
China has one of the world's oldest civilizations and has the oldest continuous civilization. It has archaeological evidence dating back over 5,000 years. It also has one of the world's oldest written language systems, and is viewed as the source of many major inventions. Historically, China's cultural sphere has extended across East Asia as a whole, with Chinese religion, customs, and writing systems being adopted to varying degrees by neighbors such as Japan, Korea and Vietnam. The first evidence of human presence in the region was found at the Zhoukoudian cave and is one of the first known specimens of Homo erectus, now commonly known as the Peking Man, estimated to have lived from 300,000 to 550,000 years ago.


Chinese Mandarin is the 1st spoken language in the world.


Chinese is either an official language or is spoken by a significant portion of the population in the following countries:

  • Republic of China in Taiwan (Mandarin, Taiwanese, and Hakka are spoken, Traditional Chinese is written; Mandarin is designated as national language)
  • People's Republic of China (varieties of Chinese languages are spoken, Simplified Chinese is written, Mandarin is designated as national language)
    • Hong Kong (The Sino-British Joint Declaration and Hong Kong Basic Law do not explicitly specify the standard for "Chinese" but de facto Cantonese is spoken and Traditional Chinese is written; co-official with English)
    • Macau (Cantonese is spoken de facto, Traditional Chinese is written; co-official with Portuguese)
  • Singapore (Mandarin, Hokkien, Teochew, and other varieties are spoken, Simplified Chinese is written. Mandarin is taught as "Chinese"; co-official with English, Malay and Tamil)



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AdministratorN 		Latest page update: made by AdministratorN , Oct 13 2009, 9:47 AM EDT (about this update About This Update AdministratorN Edited by AdministratorN

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