Place names
Mandarin is the official language of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and also of Taiwan, being spoken by over 70% of the population. But Mandarin and dialects of Chinese are also spoken by millions of ethnic Chinese living in, Singapore, Malaysia and many other countries around the globe. More than 20% of the world’s population speak Chinese!
All Chinese is written using a system of characters, called Hanzi (汉字). Unlike the roman alphabet, Hanzi do not represent sounds, but ideas.
Look at these 4 place names.
(běi) |
(jīng) |
Beijing |
(shàng) |
(hǎi) |
Shanghai |
(xī) |
(ān) |
Xi’an |
(xiāng) |
(gǎng) |
Hong Kong |
