The Chinese Language: The Fiery Story of the World’s Biggest Language

🇨🇳 From dragon bones, to burnt books, to labor camps, Chinese has a wild origin story you don't want to miss!
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Huge thanks to the great @StuartJayRaj for contributing his expertise to this video. Subscribe to his channel here: / stuartjayraj
📖 LEARN CHINESE THROUGH THE POWER OF STORY!
Stories are the best way I have found to learn ANY language, even tricky ones like Chinese. Forget the boring textbooks and time-wasting apps and learn Mandarin the natural, effective way with my beginner Chinese Uncovered course.
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📺 WATCH NEXT:
How This Guy Learned Fluent Chinese by Age 21
👉🏼 • How This Guy Learned F...
📚 RESOURCES:
7 Steps To Learn Chinese Characters With Ease
storylearning.com/learn/chine...
9 Amazing Podcasts In Chinese Guaranteed To Improve Your Chinese Listening Skills
storylearning.com/learn/chine...
A Comprehensive Guide To Chinese Pronunciation
storylearning.com/learn/chine...
21 Greetings In Chinese To Start Connecting With Chinese Speakers
storylearning.com/learn/chine...
Debate on traditional and simplified Chinese characters
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debate_...
⏱ TIMESTAMPS:
0:00 - Chinese's Wild Origin Story
0:22 - Dragon Bones?
0:54 - Oracle Bones
2:20 - Bronze & Bamboo
3:07 - The Emperor Who Burned Books
4:26 - Old Chinese
7:15 - Middle Chinese
8:04 - Enter Mandarin
10:32 - Chinese Writing Reforms
12:49 - Learning Chinese Characters
16:53 - Writing in Chinese
18:07 - Pinyin
18:44 - Language Features
21:01 - Where is Chinese Spoken?
21:34 - Migrations
22:06 - Why Learn Chinese?
26:42 - Learn Chinese Today
📜 SOURCES & ATTRIBUTIONS:
“Henan in China (+all claims hatched).svg” by TUBS is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi...
“Oracle bones pit.jpg” by Chez Cåsver (Xuan Che) is licensed under CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi...
“Shang dynasty inscribed scapula.jpg” by BabelStone is licensed under CC BY 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Sh...
“Shang dynasty inscribed tortoise plastron.jpg” by the National Museum of China is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi...
jacobkatzart.wordpress.com
“Zhu Gou Bronze spearhead.jpg” by the British Museum is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0 FR via Wikimedia Commons commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi...
WIKITONGUES: Wanyu speaking Mandarin • WIKITONGUES: Wanyu spe...
“Zhou dynasty 1000 BC.png” by Ian Kiu is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi...
“Beijing in China (+all claims hatched).svg” by TUBS is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi...
“List of the 214 Kangxi Radicals - old style.svg” by LiliCharlie is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi...
“Sword of Goujian, Hubei Provincial Museum, 2015-04-06 09.jpg” by Siyuwj is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi...
“Hong Kong in China (zoomed) (+all claims hatched).svg” by TUBS is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi...
“Island of Taiwan (orthographic projection).svg” by Svenskbygderna is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi...
“Bamboo book - unfolded - UCR.jpg” by vlasta2 (bluefootedbooby on flickr.com) is licensed under CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi...
“Zhouyouguang2012 (portrait crop).JPG” by Fong C is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi...
www.ethnologue.com

[@storylearning]

📚 Learn Chinese through the power of story 👉🏼 bit.ly/chineseuncoveredlive

[@sooniecantalk]

Whoa 😳 don’t let anyone tell you that tones are difficult? 😄 that’s a real brain buzz you’re right Amazing!

[@kieselzusammen]

It seems your course uses Simplified characters. Would you add Traditional characters later? I'd have bought it by now if your course included them but now I'm in two minds.

[@j3ah0o]

I thought your latest video might be the best way to get a question answered. I just signed up for RU Uncovered. Is there an app that I can download to make that more convenient? Also, where is the video like this one and the Turkish about Russian?? I found these both interesting, but I'm dreaming of a Kazakhstan hunt this autumn, so I've been working on Russian. Duo is most certainly not helping me on my journey. Incidentally, I had already bought your Stories in Russian book a few days before KZbin ever suggested your channel. I guess i found you the old fashioned way!

[@kieselzusammen]

@@j3ah0o About the app, if you use Android you can use Hermit to create lite apps for any site you want. I don't know an alternative for iOS though.

[@1969mmoldovan]

The youtube algorithm has been recommending your channel for a while now and I kept hesitating about watching your videos until I stumbled upon this one. I have been studying Chinese for 23 years and I am more than familiar with the concepts mentioned in the video. Unfortunately the vid is quite the letdown. You have managed to spin these concepts into an nondescript mishmash. This video is truly a missed opportunity.

[@tangdexian3323]

Native chinese here, the interesting thing is, I grow up learning simplified version, but somehow everyone I know can read the traditional character without been taught specifically, even if it's a word you never saw before, but somehow you just "get" it. At least that's how it was for me.

[@romangonzalezadrianmaurici6302]

@@1969mmoldovan First of all, a native has spoken so your argument is invalid. Second, who talked about writte? Of course writting is impossible if you havent learn the tradicional characters. My friend here is talking about READING something you should probably practice more from time to time.

[@kukupalad3444]

malaysian chinese here, we all learn simplified chinese and i can guarantee at least 90% of the popularity knows how to read traditional chinese, probably because of multimedia (personally i was forced to read newspaper since young lol, which is fully covered with traditional texts and i just magically pick up them, until now

[@hillmanhung3846]

Where are you from? Im from Singapore, we learn simplified chinese as well, but since my parents watch hong kong tv, i've gotten used to some traditional characters

[@lees7340]

I am older Malaysian Chinese who learned the traditional scripts in primary school then switched to simplified scripts in secondary school. So I can read both. I used to read books printed in Taiwan and HK, but in recent years more from mainland China.

[@liefuho2807]

Boys know traditional characters better than girls among my friends. Boys are more likely to be sent to handwriting classes (really popular 20 years ago), and we watched tons of anime/cartoons that translated by ROC(Taiwan), which has traditional Chinese subtitles. And Yu Gi Oh! cards were also very popular back then, i even brought those cards to ask my great grandpa(he was a private teacher, also a KMT member). It’s not deeply hidden in your vein, it’s just we share too much things culturally.

[@unstoppablezone4980]

Here's one thing he failed to mention, which is really cool about learning Chinese. In general, Chinese people are astounded when a non-Chinese speaks Mandarin to them...they usually believe it's impossible. And, even when you are speaking baby talk, making silly mistakes with tones and pronunciation...they will happily accommodate you and come to your level...you speak baby talk, they speak baby talk. They do this automatically out of courtesy and to honor your efforts. If ANY Chinese comes out of your mouth, however flawed, they will tell you how great your Chinese is...and that is hugely encouraging for the learning. Just don't believe them and think your Chinese is amazing...another ego trap that learners can fall into. Having said that, if you spend 6 months trying to learn French and go to France and try to speak it you will be shamed and laughed off the stage...you could starve to death if you had to depend on your fluency in French. But in Chinese speaking countries you will get along famously and thrive because the locals will come to your level and encourage you.

[@lisanarramore222]

That's encouraging!

[@Hideyoshi1991]

it's ok at first, but it does get mildly annoying when people are astounded that you can say thank you or hello correctly despite having lived there for years.

[@ZelowSoft]

at this point "your chinese is great" is basically "nice to meet you" used to greet foreigners

[@unstoppablezone4980]

@Summer When I was studying Chinese I wanted to learn as much as a drowning man wants oxygen. I put in a lot of effort and in time it paid off. I do want to say that Chinese is not 'difficult.' It just requires that you put in the time...especially if you want to learn to read and write Chinese. It turned out to be an amazing gift that has blessed my life in so many ways.

[@jessicarebekah504]

@Unstoppable Zone, That’s really great to know! Unlike most English speakers who just assume you are fluent in English when they hear a foreigner asking a simple question and answer with great detail at full speed. Lol

[@olbiomoiros]

As a Greek it was fascinating to learn how the very Greek alphabet borrowed consonants from Phoenician which itself borrowed from demotic Egyptian, but this is even the more interesting- how different strokes of existing meanings are put together to form a word. Now I want to learn Chinese

[@icebearisicebear]

Native Chinese speaker here. The difference between traditional and simplified Chinese writing systems are not as significant as people may think, and it is not like they are mutually unintelligible. Most of the cases the characters are either left unchanged or with only minor modifications , and a lot of the recurring components have a "simplified" variant (say, 貝 vs. 贝). In most cases if you know one of the system, you would most likely be able to read the other with little effort. Sure, there are some more extreme ones that requires some learning, but one could always infer what the character might be from the context. There's also this whole 异体字 rabbit hole, basically before the attempts to standardize the writing system, there were often multiple variants of the same characters and in the process of standardization they had to choose one of them. One example is 强(Simp.) vs. 強(Trad.), the traditional variant actually has less strokes than the simplified due to different variants of the same character are chosen to be the official variant during standardization. Also, the "Simplified" Chinese writing system was only intended to be the first step to a big reform of the writing of Chinese. There were a lot of proposals to eventually get rid of Chinese characters all together in favor of the Romanized script or simplify the characters enough so they become mostly phonetic, like Hiragana and Katakana. In fact, there was a "Second Generation" Simplified Chinese that was implemented in the 70s and later retracted. If you go search up 二简字 you could see a lot of examples of its use and how it made chinese characters a lot closer to a syllabary rather than a logograph.

[@Wann-zo7rn2qn4i]

Yes !!

[@30803080308030803081]

Further simplification of the writing system into a syllabary would let everyone spend less time learning the characters (and more time learning/doing anything else). There could be perhaps a hundred or so base characters plus four tone markers. But, it won’t happen any time soon.

[@jonathanlee5520]

To alphabetize Chinese Characters, is like Eating Turkey ham instead of savouring Authentic ham *It sucks !*

[@ADeeSHUPA]

@@jonathanlee5520 죠な딴 李

[@tony5422]

Some are very similar and mutually intelligible, while others are completely not. Eg, 無 vs 无 which still baffles me how these are the same word.

[@aaa-jg4je]

As a native Chinese and sinology major, it’s so funny to hear what I have known for long in a second language like English. When you mention about bones and change of straws, almost all the grammatology stuff came back and brought my memory to the college.

[@reptarhouse]

Stuart Jay Raj is probably the reason I'm learning Chinese. I already speak Thai and his excitement for Chinese and all of the dialects made me want to learn Mandarin.

[@echelon2k8]

Why Mandarin? Isn't he more excited for Cantonese?

[@abhinavchauhan7864]

Who is that ?

[@echelon2k8]

@@abhinavchauhan7864 You'd know if you actually watched the video.

[@abhinavchauhan7864]

@@echelon2k8 good point. Sorry

[@zhugeliangkongming479]

@@echelon2k8 Cantonese is chinese

[@Nusrich_06]

I knew of oracle bone script before watching this, but wasn’t fully sure of how the bones were used. Thanks so much for explaining this in the video!

[@storylearning]

👍🏻

[@marinmilevoj4829]

I'd love to see a video like this on Arabic, specifically because of the differences in the dialects.

[@gabriellawrence6598]

Yes. I've been insisting Olly make more Arabic content.

[@redlotus2805]

Me too, and I would also appreciate if he does video about the czech language because it's my native language

[@georginatoland]

Absolutely! Me too.

[@Nili_S]

Arabic and Persian videos and their overlaps.

[@liguobu229]

So would many I’m sure. The problem, with Arabic, is often that the reference to the language consists of passages and versets from the Coran or the Sunna or hadiths (sayings). That type of Arabic -except for its writing- has little to do with the modern Arabic you wish to learn to be understood everywhere in the Arab speaking countries. Reading exclusively from the Coran is no way to acquire mastery of the everyday conversational language. Writing Arabic, while it may prove challenging, is after a while a highly rewarding exercice in pure calligraphy, so very much like Chinese.

[@le-my4032]

This was absolutely fascinating, thank you so much for putting this video together and explaining everything so clearly! I grew up speaking Mandarin with my Mum and Cantonese with my Dad but didn't know much about the languages' rich history. As a child, I also attended a Taiwanese Mandarin school so learnt how to write in traditional characters (and later in life, simplified characters) but was never taught that Chinese characters essentially fell into 6 different categories like 象形字 or 指事字. I'm sure that would've been an absolute game-changer for 6-year-old me 😂but it will definitely be useful from here on out! So happy I accidentally discovered your channel - you've got a new fan! 😃

[@believeingood5875]

指示字

[@MATTierial]

Wonderful video! Thanks for putting these breakdown videos together! They work like such a great introduction to the language from a learner's perspective :)

[@storylearning]

Thanks, that’s what we’re trying to accomplish!

[@jessicarebekah504]

A very well made video of the Chinese language. Absolutely fascinating. I am really inspired to learn the language. Thank you for creating this video, Olly.

[@user-ed9qu5im2y]

I feel the Baihuawen Movement ("Colloquial Language Movement") in the early 20th century has an even bigger impact on the Chinese language than the CCP creating the simplified script and doing their education programs. It's the reason we don't all write in literary Chinese anymore, and it also strengthened Mandarin's position as the lingua franca of China. Without the Baihuawen Movement, what the CCP did later wouldn't even have been possible. And unlike the CCP's reforms, the Baihuawen Movement permanently changed the Chinese language everywhere in the world, and not just within Mainland China or Singapore. Just surprised that wasn't talked about!

[@user-do7td8ms8j]

I have to say that the work on simplified script was actually set by ROC government before 1949, the party just keep going on it, and after ROC lost control on mainland, they gave up the simplified script due to the political reasons

[@riza-2396]

The simplified Chinese was also invented during the Baihuawen movement, it's just CCP decided to use it as official language.

[@user-ed9qu5im2y]

@@user-do7td8ms8j Ohh I didn't know that!

[@loop3357]

@@user-ed9qu5im2y He's right and the ROC government moved to Taiwan but they refused to continue the movement because their rival CCP was continuing the movement in Mainland. Samething as the Pinyin system.

[@Wann-zo7rn2qn4i]

@@user-do7td8ms8j Exactly. So many people didn't even know this and then they make a lot of political noises that Taiwan is preserving Chinese while Mainland is not. To me, the language is just evolving, just as it has evolved in the last 3 or 4 thousand years from the first pictograms. Many people also doesn't seem to realize that many of the simplified characters harked back to earlier scripts before they became more complicated.

[@dr.gaosclassroom]

What a wonderful video! Thank you very much. As a fellow KZbin promoting learning Chinese and Chinese culture, I admire your appreciation of the Chinese language and amazing history associated with the language.

[@pon00050]

Great work putting this video together!

[@squeezyjohn1]

I was worried watching your other videos that your approach was too simplistic ... but this is amazing. Thank you.

[@rafaelespinola3597]

IA year ago, for the first time in my life I listened to a young Chinese pop singer named 黄霄云, I was amazed at the beautiful sound of the Chinese language sung by her, and obviously her voice. Since then I have been motivated to learn it just for fun, it is a wonderful language starting with the pictograms which I consider to be small masterpieces.

[@97ANX]

This video was amazing. Thank you !!

[@lynntfuzz]

This video is insanely interesting!!! Thank you!

[@garden2356]

Liked, sub, saved, shared, listened to your whole video. Thank you

[@storylearning]

Awesome, thank you!

[@julianarocha9370]

very interesting, appreciate the research that goes into your videos

[@storylearning]

Thank you, it is substantial :)

[@jennifermckeithen1498]

So excited about this new course! I've really enjoyed your French short stories books and after reading them I can read almost any book I want in French!

[@storylearning]

That’s a wonderful thing to hear!

[@harrisonchinese1120]

thanks for your sharing, very informative

[@Sakura-zu4rz]

❤Your channel is literally my comfort place. You make me so happy. Love you❤

[@Eruptor1000]

The Chinese languages are vastly different, however we found ways to understand each other by learn each other's languages. Nowadays it's a lot easier with all the resources and the internet but back then it must have been so complicated to learn Chinese or vice-versa. The languages indeed evolved so differently from ours and are in completely different language families. Massive respect to anyone that has achieved a high level of mastery in these languages.

[@storylearning]

Thanks for your comment

[@Ultimecea90]

the problem is putonghua aka mandarin is imported by people from the north, or more accurately Manchunians when the so called Qing emperor makes mandarin as the official language when the emperor unable to understand the various dialects of southerners. be aware that what manchurian speaks are still one of the dialects for people in zhong yuan. where southerners are the true descendants of Chinese people, as we're known as Han Ren, 漢人 where we have a plethora of dialects which varies from our origins. although, nowadays it seems to be a dying breed where many youngsters grew up speaking putonghua rather than their mother tongue!!

[@Eruptor1000]

@@Ultimecea90 interesting!

[@Ultimecea90]

@@Eruptor1000 still it's a sad thing that most chinese now speaks an invaders language as compared to their own mother tongue due to what happened in the about 300 years of manchurian ruling during qing dynasty. Its even worst when CCP treats mandarin as the common tongue and kids nowadays grew up speaking more mandarin than their own mother tongue. This is especially true for those who lives in the city.

[@Eruptor1000]

@@Ultimecea90 that's a shame man😪

[@averywight]

Very interesting and informative. Thanks Oly

[@thorsday5505]

Don't worry, I'm a Mandarin native speaker and despite 1 year's exposure to Cantonese, I still make mistakes on the tones (Cantonese has 6 tones comparing with 4 in Mandarin). To be precise, I speak the Sichuanese variant of Standard Mandarin (which is usually associated with comedy), and there is an interesting difference between it and the standard mandarin. In my local variaty, people don't distinguish between Retro­flex consnants and Alveolar consnants, so basically, 'sh zh ch' will sound the same as 's z c'. Though I can pronounce 'sh zh ch' individually, I will completely ignore them in a continous speech, which occasionally causes some confusion when I talk to people who speak standard mandarin.

[@nevreiha]

I have classmates who have parents from Sichuan, i am native to england and I would describe my chinese as basic but the differrence is noticeable

[@jt4369]

Cantonese speaker here. I can say that the sounds of Mandarin, specifically the proper order of tones, still defeats me from time to time. Even the equivalents in Mandarin still sound peculiar to me because my brain has so gotten used to hearing them in Cantonese. My parents spoke Shanghainese and I can barely understand a darned thing, lol.

[@loop3357]

Correction: Cantonese has 9 tones

[@loop3357]

@@jt4369 Shanghainese is nice to hear especially old Shanghainese

[@misssiddle5023]

I like this channel. I’ve always been fascinated by languages though only learnt French and German at school.

[@earnestlanguage4242]

i love traditional characters because i love etymology and all the stories contained inside. BUT i absolutely use some simplified characters when taking notes in Chinese class because they are just faster to write, like 號 vs 号. i use traditional more when typing, so learning traditional, picking up simplified as i go for ease of use!

[@AugustdeChriox]

Wise choice. In fact, there is no such deep gap between simplified and traditional Chinese. What matters is whether the occasion of use requires formality or historical connection.

[@julia_dias_]

Really loved this video. I'm learning chinese, just did HSK 1. I'm also learning french and spanish, and already know english although is not my mother tough. The fact that the traslation of chinese was first to portuguese, my language, it was really good for me learning specially because my portuguese is from Brazil that have a portuguese more close to the one that was first traslated the chinese.

[@LukeLainey]

Tones are a challenge indeed but I think the difference between jī_qī_xī is also an interesting one to be mentioned!

[@user-zu3wq3lf3h]

I always hear about that, but I just never encountered such a problem. To me, they are all different and distinct sounds, and I just don't understand how can one have problem with hearing/pronouncing/distinguishing them.

[@CalvinLimuel]

If you've learned Chinese pronunciation using "bopomofo", you've probably learned that the first two consonants of each line (B/P, D/T, G/K, Ji/Qi, ZH/CH/, Z/C) are pairs of non-aspirated and aspirated consonants. You already know "xi" sounds like the English word "she", and "qi" is already a word in English often spelled as "chi", now just try to make that consonant not aspirated, in other words, don't blow air before you pronounce the vowel.

[@xxluo5232]

@@user-zu3wq3lf3h When other people haven't trained these pronunciations, naturally they don't have these muscle memory.

[@mglee1431]

Fantastic content! As an ethnic Chinese in Singapore, I learned Chinese language solely to pass my GCE exam and once out of school it is English all the way. Interestingly I spoke mandarin at home and not dialect because my mum spoke only hokkien and mandarin and my dad Thai and mandarin so in short Mandarin became an "official" language at home. Still the Chinese I spoke at home is very very basic. If there is anything we need to confide in, we talked to our peers in English. My Chinese vocab built up is mainly gained from reading Chinese newspapers where i approximately figure out what the meaning is by the character, and most of the time I didn't bother to check out the pronunciations. Till I met the Mandarin speakers I won't have realize how many words I have mispronounced.

[@julbombning4204]

Yes another linguistics video I’m so happy!心

[@walkcn]

Brother, your knowledge of China is amazing.

[@sinlim2915]

i am always very amazed by ancient chinese characters writings, they look so mystic and in each single character i always see in it a animal, a plant, a man, a emperor, a object..., eg the 夏禹，商湯 are two different emperors persons

[@Ibrahim666ss]

谢谢您。我在大学学习汉语。我很喜欢这个视频

[@leoclement7141]

Thus Cantonese has “書面語” & “口語” (the letter for writing and the letter for speaking) so is fun Go check it out

[@williamedwardhackman4695]

There's a lot of Mandarin speakers in my home state California but not as much as Spanish and English. Mandarin is one of the languages I'm thinking about learning after Spanish.

[@zyctc000]

Regarding traditional vs simplified, it does not matter that much anymore since most of people types in Pinyin and the input software can switch between simplified and traditional for you based on the pinyin

[@OVXX666]

i find traditional way easier to learn. with your example 聼 i connected the dots in an instant, while i struggled to remember the simplified version for years. same goes with characters like 書 which has a component at the top of a writing brush. the word means book.

[@jacobnewmanlim2470]

I am Chinese and I don’t even know the stroke order. Heck, nobody care about it unless they saw me writing then they would criticise me for writing with wrong stroke.

[@Wann-zo7rn2qn4i]

To a person who knows how to write it, your mistakes would immediately be obvious. But they won't care about it just as long as they get what you want to convey.

[@jacobnewmanlim2470]

@@Wann-zo7rn2qn4iI went through 12 years of Chinese schooling with the wrong stroke orders and turned out just fine

[@eoghancasserly3626]

Chinese is my target language. Literally haven't even started yet, so busy with college. But I want to move to Taiwan in about 2-3 years time. Gonna be tough but I've loved Chinese culture for years and I'm determined to do more than just "get by" when I'm there. I want to have the language as a skill

[@storylearning]

With that attitude, I know you’ll be fine!

[@eoghancasserly3626]

@@storylearning my old goal was to move to mainland China for years (my dream at 15 I'm now 20), but when their attitude to foreigners changed I abandoned it. After I realised Taiwan was cheaper than I had thought, my goal was rediscovered! Thank you for your confidence in me

[@qwkl2450]

@@eoghancasserly3626 wdym "attitude to foreigners changed"?

[@junizhao]

@@qwkl2450 obviously the MSM told him that.

[@newkid7]

As a local Chinese which is nobody I assure you we have no problem with foreigners, but a foreigner with taiwan accent we might have a second thought, we mainland Chinese have a very negative view against that small island because of political reasons at least for now, who knows how long it lasts.

[@liujack3577]

Thank you for sharing the story of China

[@shankewang5802]

As a Chinese (or Taiwanese), well done on explaining Mandarin and yes, understanding simplified chinese is quite difficult if you never learned them.

[@milagrosaliendo101]

Olly ! Tu diseñas tus camisetas ? Veo que son singulares 🤩 .. saludos desde brasil. Gracias por compartir tu trabajo con nosotros!

[@leoclement7141]

Hongkonger here, hope can have a video to introduce Cantonese a beautiful language with 9/6 tones

[@CultureDTCTV]

21:16 Cantonese is actually also spoken in Southern China in general, in the provinces Guangdong and Guangxi even though it is a different dialect than "standard" Cantonese of Hong Kong. Toishanese and Nanninghua for example, are dialects of Cantonese

[@leezhieng]

The zhaoqing cantonese dialect spoken by my grandma can hardly be understood by most cantonese.

[@__koaaa_9619]

16:20 A quick note (please do point it out if there is a mistake!): A more formal word for "mother" is 母, while 妈 is more of something like "mom" rather than "mother". The latter can be thought of as the colloquial version of the former, written differently to reflect the pronunciation. The pronunciation of the latter is in some way "more antique" compared to the former: As a frequent word, its colloquial form underwent less phonetic shifts and eventually became a separate word to be considered, while the formal form needed to maintain consistency with the shifting pronunciations.

[@user-zk9nd4fz2h]

林 is not foreset，森 is. 林 is more like a groove ,a smaller scale of woods (which is obviously by its shape)

[@slimytoad1447]

Mentri in malay means an official title. My wife is from Melaka and speaks both Hokkien chinese and Malay,indonesian has many words from Sanskrit as their ancestor

[@leonhardeuler7647]

Yeah, mantri in Sanskrit means Minister. In fact, the Hindi word for Prime minister is Pradhān Mantri, literally meaning Main or Most important Minister.

[@DustinSchermaul]

Wow very interesting :D. Stop with those videos, how should I ever learn all those interesting languages ;). Need more time! Thanks mate :).

[@onewhoisanonymous]

I am conversational in Mandarin Chinese. I was in Thailand staying in a hostel. There was a Frenchman who was sharing the room with me. He didn't speak English and I didn't speak French. For 3 days we just used hand gestures and didn't interact much. On my last day, I found out he was studying Mandarin. We could have used Mandarin to communicate. A couple years back, I was in Costa Rica and I walked into a restaurant. My Spanish is really broken but I was determined to order something. The waitress saw me and had this look of "oh no a tourist". After fumbling around in Spanish, she realized I was determined to speak Spanish. Her attitude changed. Found out later she was of Chinese descent and understood Chinese. I could've spoken to her in Chinese, but I didn't realize that until after I paid for my meal.

[@Turrican]

It is interesting how Chinese and say, European languages evolved so differently and are so different.

[@storylearning]

Indeed!

[@KuraSourTakanHour]

In online dictionaries the history of each of the 1000s of characters is catalogued to the best of current knowledge according to how they were written in each age... although quite a few are lost to time

[@RaymondHng]

0:04 Looking east on Jackson Street between Stockton and Grant in San Francisco.

[@lc4jlc4j]

First of all, just wanted to say great video! I'm Chinese American and I speak Mandarin fairly well, but read very poorly. I'd like to improve my reading, but I don't wanna bother with learning to write. Do you know of any apps or courses that are designed to teach reading without writing? Thanks!

[@CloudLightify]

I grew up with the Simplified version but learnt to read the Traditional characters independently. I love the Traditional characters because they have a certain beauty and charm, visually and historically. However, I also fully appreciate the Simplified characters because as beautiful as Traditional is, I cannot imagine writing them. There are just too many strokes (which increases the difficulty in writing them correctly), would take me forever to finish writing an essay and my wrist would hurt so much. Thankfully we use computers these days, so I use Traditional only when typing is possible. I may switch between Simplified and Traditional depending on who I am communicating to. If it's Mainland Chinese I use Simplified, if Hong Konger or Taiwanese I use Traditional. But by default I use Simplified. In any case, most people who know the language may actually be able to read both Simplified and Traditional scripts anyway.

[@nulnoh219]

10:21 Oh Portuguese and Malay. It'll be great to have an episode on Kristang.

[@-impossible-7983]

intresting enough is that not just all Chinese agrees on one writing system, other countries like Japan and Korea could also understand the written language in the old days. Even now we can understand a part of Japanese Kanji.(sorry if i miss spelling it)

[@rengirl94]

Hi Olly I would love it if you did a similar video about Arabic! 😊

[@arwenanarion84]

I’m learning Thai now after I learn Chinese because I think is fascinating

[@maru3906]

I've studied the language for 3 years already and thank god for simplified script. I like learning by writing and the fewer strokes the neater and faster my writing is. I think learning characters is the easiest part of learning chinese.

[@30803080308030803081]

Yeah, I think simplification of characters is a natural, normal thing to do when writing by hand. People do this in some way with all written languages.

[@Khgffhk]

As someone who has studied both simplified and traditional I agree that simplified can be harder because of the few visual cues.

[@petepan3991]

very cool vid! Do you speak cantonese as well?

[@bcskqc]

I remember seeing this example in an old dictionary, 夫,苦,富,褔, 扶,婦,負,復,法 are 9 words with the same base sound demonstrating the 9 possible tones/pitches in Cantonese. A couple of those can be quite subtle even for native speakers. Were it not for the tones and that basically there's little relation between how a word is written and sounded with relatively few exceptions, I'd argue Chinese is a very easy language. Also to get a better rhyme reciting Tang poems for instance, use Cantonese, as it seems to preserve more ancient characteristics.

[@slymarbo4868]

not sure how old ur dictionary is, but modern cantonese only 6 tones :P also, 夫,苦,富,婦,負, 扶 are Fu, 褔,復, are Fok, 法 is Fat.

[@bcskqc]

@@slymarbo4868 I suppose if I wrote 9 "sounds", it would be less confusing. There's certainly the saying "九聲六調" , the closest literal translations I can come up with is "9 sounds and 6 accents". And the dictionary was from the 60's. In English, due to the lost in translation, there's some ambiguity or leeway as to how you want to express different audible qualities, as tone, pitch, or some other terms, sometimes interchangeably, sometimes mixed up. It is facinating. Most of the time I suppose we just loosely call them 'tones' in a *casual* context/discussion, without caring too much about the precise sementic (that of translating between Chinese and English terms) and accounting. That was why I also made sure I put a slash and added 'pitch' and hope the readers would catch my intention to mean etc or so on. As for the sounds of 褔,復,法, precisely, they correspond to the 入 聲 as in 平,上,去, 入, the 4 *primary* "tones" (feel free to replace it with another word) , which is the sound with the tail chopped off basically. btw this last one reminds me of Russell Peters jokes poking fun at Cantonese. He was very perceptive in describing the '去'and '入' sounds.

[@Aznbomb3r]

@@bcskqc If we're going by sounds, there are 11-13 depending on how you see it. Due to tone warping there are some 入聲 that doesn't officially exist but can be heard in daily speech.

[@bcskqc]

@@Aznbomb3r essentially it is much to do with the English translation of these terms, sementics and accounting. Though 九聲六調 is a classical assessment (i.e., i didn't come up with it) which is worth investigating and understood. Even as a native speaker but not a linguist, these all are endlessly facinating to me. btw another interesting one in day to day speeches is about the tone/pitch/etc being different depending on the context of use, even it is for the same word and same meaning, e.g., the 'box' in just "a box" is pronounced differently from the 'box' in "a box of chocolates" .

[@vampyricon7026]

@@bcskqc I would say "9 syllable types and 6 tones". This is because 平上去入 were already there before tones developed, so we can tell that the 四聲 did not refer to tones. However, the process of sound changes since Old Chinese caused 平上去 to develop into different tones, while 入 simply retained its syllable final stop consonants (except in Mandarin, which is basically the French to Chinese's Romance).

[@hongruicui2806]

Just to add my two cents to the Simplified vs. Traditional debate (reminds me of so many other cliches like the holy war of editors lol) I would say that resolution is a very important aspect that one needs to consider. Some traditional characters have too many strokes and would need to be properly displayed, especially on some old 80-90 digital screens. Nowadays high-res screens are now so common that this is no longer a problem. I have never systematically learned tranditional characters, but I image that writing them using a thick pen should be a non-trivial task if one wants to write as small characters as possible (just to add to the point on resolution). Anyway, personally I think one major perk of non-phonetic written language including both versions of written chinese is that information can be acquired much faster while reading. I often feel that my brain can transform visual images directly into their meanings while when reading english I sometimes find myself first reading them aloud in my brain and only then getting the meaning. But that could be due to my lack of reading skills though.

[@firdauskhalid4466]

I hope you almost finish with FSI and can finish the 3 letters school series.

[@jukebox1209]

Fantastic work, very informative! If I may, one piece of advice here, it would be more appropriate to use B.C.E. instead.

[@hyeung1]

I grew up in Hong Kong but read a lot of books in simplified characters while visiting grandparents when I was a kid so I have no trouble understanding both. Though I've always questioned the design of those characters since the simplified versions don't make sense once you've learned the traditional ones. Some of them look down right ugly IMO. That being said, I really like pinyin compared to the bpmf in taiwan and the ridiculous romanization system in Hong Kong.

[@Lokk09]

To be fair, traditional also “doesnt make sense” or appears “too simplified” if you compare them to earlier chinese…. Its all about perspective. Also, the earlier you go the more cumbersome it becomes to write / draw, simplicity does have it’s benefits.

[@hyeung1]

@@Lokk09 That's not true. The constructs of the traditional characters haven't changed much over time even if you compare them with the oracle bone scripts. The problem with some simplified characters is that some essential components of a character are either removed or replaced. A couple of examples that you might have heard about are 愛/爱 (where is love when you don't have the heart) and 陰/阴 (fundamental meaning of the word is changed when you reference moon for a cloudy day and tie it to yinyang instead). At least the essence of a character needs to be retained when simplifying it.

[@1969mmoldovan]

@@hyeung1 Hyeung, the way you refer to Chinese writing reveals how unprofessional your approach to the issue is. I am 100% sure that you are not an expert in the evolution of Chinese writing. Otherwise you would have known from the very start that you cannot debate the issue in a 5 line comment on youtube. Your cognitively irrelevant opinion is just that, an opinion, not a fact.

[@hyeung1]

​@@1969mmoldovan I don't even know why you're dragging this "unprofessional" BS into here. We're only talking about some simplified characters that were invented in the 1950s when some vital parts of the characters were removed. And there are websites showing the evolution of many of these Chinese characters from thousands of years ago. You don't need to be an expert to tell the difference if you grew up reading and writing Chinese characters. So stop embarrassing yourself by exposing your own incompetence.

[@davidma452]

@@hyeung1 some people from Taiwan island or from Hongkong use the change of writing system as a proof that the CCP is destroying Chinese culture, but I am sure now days the best best articles/books/arts are created in mainland, and if you insist that traditional Chinese is better, you need to write in 秦篆？ 汉隶？金文？ which one is better? What’s more what is the pronunciation for the traditional Chinese should you follow? Who can tell me how to speak Chinese like 春秋？ or 战国， or 秦汉，or even in Tang Dynasty?

[@SilkenScribbles]

When I write, it is a mixture of Hangeul and simplified Chinese for my own notes. When I write formal stuff or when I am typing, I am used to traditional Chinese...

[@johnseol1663]

Interesting, what made you want to use hangeul?

[@SilkenScribbles]

@@johnseol1663 It is for transliteration purposes. It is always easier to write Hangeul (as it has fewer strokes) as compared to Chinese, e.g., 허 vs. 虚. However, this stems from laziness and the syllable I chose i always random. I am a Traditional Chinese Medicine postgrad so I usually use this to write my personal notes.

[@shrikantjamadagni430]

A correction to your comment on Mandarin - Mandarin comes from the Sanskrit word Mantrin which is the base form of a noun meaning a minister of the king. Mantra and Mantrin are related - A Mantri is one who consults/deliberates with the king, hence a minister. Mantra has several meanings like ‘instrument of thought’, speech, sacred text or speech, a prayer or song of praise, ,a Vedic hymn, consultation, counsel, advice etc.' The root sound of all of this is "mantr" meaning consult, deliberate, advice etc..

[@tedc9682]

People use the Mandarin writing system to write Mandarin, not the other languages (which use different words and different grammar. ). Mandarin (普通话) is the official language of China, taught in schools nationwide since 1955. Mandarin (including all dialects) is the native language of about 67% of Chinese people. Many of the other people can read it, but can't speak it. Olly's story method of learning Chinese (beginner to intermediate) seems excellent, and this video is very educational.

[@jameshee5075]

If you are going for a written examination of 5,000 words composition, I would personally recommend the simplified Mandarin version.

[@Pakanahymni]

StuJay is a gem.

[@alexanderarmfelt4452]

Ehdottomasti!

[@liuzh1han]

chinese calligrapher here i just want to say that simplified characters wasn't just an asspull that disregarded traditional characters in fact a lot of the characters that people say got rid of the meanings embedded in traditional characters are older than traditional characters or their cursive counterpart (e.g., 风, 爱, 云, etc.)

[@ecnivmarng7163]

I love your love for cats when you wisely demonstrate a cat in your t-shirt.

[@yap6799]

👍👍👍To me Chinese language is the difficult if you are applying the right approaches. By just mastering 3000 character you are covered almost 95% of all the common subjects written in mandarin.

[@HaraldinChina]

As a learner, I love simplified characters. Artists will still use traditional script for calligraphy, but some are just so much clearer to distinguish, such as 与 vs. traditional 與 which almost looks like public opinion 舆 / 輿 or prosper 兴 / 興 . Reading Chinese is indeed mind-boggling. Regarding literacy rate: I don't think today's PRC mainland literacy is lower than Taiwan's. It's in the high 90% for both. I do agree on the extremely successful education campaigns, though - notably under Mao Zedong, before Deng Xiaoping's Reform and Opening.

[@Aznbomb3r]

Simplified is okay for the most part, the thing I dislike the most about it is how they combined different words into one. 里 and 裡 = 里 只 and 隻 = 只 Due to mandarin being a very new chinese language, it has the fewest amount of sounds and tones, which made it have 10x more homophones than other chinese languages. As a result, these words ended up being homophones and they just combined the words together. In most older chinese languages, these words are not homophones. In Cantonese; 只 ji = only 隻 jek = measure word I bought a paper fan from China that a painting of the great wall of china, and they tried to use traditional chinese and wrote 萬裡長城. I showed it to Japanese friends and even they knew the second word was wrong, yet this mistake goes past many mainlanders.

[@30803080308030803081]

Yeah, some of the complex characters don’t look so clear in the small type people usually have to read in books and on computer displays. I really prefer the simplified characters for these uses, but the traditional characters are great for all of the uses where a few words are on something in a large format.

[@yerjohn4746]

The universality of language is a powerful symbol, a powerful embodiment of soft power

[@jungleng]

Lol halfway thru i forgot i was watching olly and thought i was watching stuart's video. Weren't chinese characters written vertically on oracle bones before bamboo scrolls? What's stopping one turning bamboo scrolls 90˚ and writing horizontally.

[@StuartJayRaj]

oops !

[@user-vt9bp2ei1w]

If you write horizontally, you need to open the bamboo scrolls vertically for reading, that's stupid.

[@Wann-zo7rn2qn4i]

Because, bamboo strips were rolled up and bounded as a book. When you unrolled a bamboo strip book, you can read it like a book. That's also why it was written from right to left because most right handed people would use their right hand to "unroll" a roll (excuse the pun). If you write horizontally, you would have to unroll downwards (like roller blinds) to read, which would be very inefficient

[@stevenv6463]

The etymology of Mandarin was super interesting

[@muskyoxes]

Character simplification wasn't just random, it used simplifications that people were already doing when they wanted to write fast. So if someone bemoans the semantic parts being taken out of a character, people were already doing that for years, and they were doing it on their own.

[@esphilee]

Language should evolve with time. People who insist that simplification is damaging to the language should just continue to use pictogram instead.

[@frankhooper7871]

I can get this. I studied Mandarin for a very short time back in the early '70s in California. We were taught, for instance, that the pluralising character which was 們 in our textbook was handwritten as 们.

[@foreverlearningfrench]

Bien joué Olly !

[@30803080308030803081]

When humans simplify things, we abstract them. Abstraction is a skill humans have. It allows us to save time and focus our thoughts on bigger things. 听 or 聽: which of these takes more time and ink to write?

[@dalubwikaan161]

For now, I am not studying any Chinese language but I am only memorizing Chinese characters

[@pupplemupple]

i can speak the mandarin but i heavily rely on hanyu pinyin, and i still cant get quite used to the 4 pitch tones

[@dvn.b__samu-han]

18:06 you can write chinese character what you want, except from down to up writing is very weird you can write horizontal, vertical, or from right to left like arabic too (if you not believe mandarin can write like arab, try to find: 世界大同 or 天下為公)

[@milanoxiel7853]

One interesting language / dialect within the Chinese language family is the “jin yu 晋语 “，it is spoken in the shanxi province and it retains a lot of “入声 checked tone”from Middle Chinese , it is the only northern dialect that has 入声 and people from other provincese can’t understand it

[@jesstang2779]

广东话也有入声字好不好

[@philip32276]

Actually, 'the hardest character of them all' is quite easy to write, as it is made up of eight already well known basic character parts.

[@dd-nz8ry]

Also it was purposefully made up to be complicated, like supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.

[@Svensk7119]

My cool story involving Mandarin involves a gas station in Idaho. In the Teens Chinese tourism exploded over the Aughts of this century, and I picked up a handful of words. Trying to pick up more was difficult, though, as only about one in a hundred understood my questions well enough to give an answer. I was speaking with a man once and his Einglish was ten times better than my Poo Tong Hua, which meant neither of our grasps of each others language was tall enough to reach the answer. Yet somehow he spoke Spanish, and I asked him, "¿Como se dice 'es todo en Poo Tong Hua?'" We were in America, speaking languages from Europe to ask and answer questions about an Asiatic tongue! I still remember that mind-trip feeling!

[@yin3331]

#Chinese is the most environmentally friendly language# The Chinese version of UN documents is the thinnest compared to other language versions. Using Chinese consumes less paper, consumes less printer ink... Less paper means less trees are cut!Less water is used for papermaking, and less sewage is discharged from papermaking

[@storylearning]

😱

[@iany2448]

Difference between traditional and simplified Chinese writing is far less than it appears on surface. Once learnt simplified Chinese, picking up traditional Chinese is both natural and not difficult. The reverse may be less so. I was taught simplified Chinese in school but started reading classic works that are printed in traditional format from middle school without any introduction / formal training. The initial difficult period of getting used to is not long at all. The net is that I can read both simplified and traditional Chinese but can only write in simplified format. I believe my experience is quite a common norm than exception.

[@bigboldbicycle]

16:10 interestingly the native Chinese term for mother wasn't ma, which I can only guess was derived from western languages. 母親 Is the native term. So it makes sense that a pictogram created from 馬 was used because it was derived from its sound rather than literal meaning (no one is suggesting mothers are female horses).

[@obsidianstatue]

1) Simplified Chinese didn't come out of nowhere, many were just the standardized form of the Cursive script of Chinese, originated around Song dynasty 2) The difference between simplified and tradition is not big at all, any literate Chinese can easily read traditional Chinese without any training In fact I was able to read Romance of the Three Kingdoms in traditional Chinese as a child, when my family moved overseas I have not seen many traditional characters before that, but I and my parents and friends can just read it without issue

[@SinanDemirci23]

Have mandıra in turkish means open land where cows are being fed

[@bcskqc]

Here are a couple of fun every day set phrases/terms (as opposed to contrived tongue twisters) 買賣 , 夫婦, 有夫之婦, 有婦之夫

[@dmraven]

In reality there are many different dialects in Chinese, Mandarin being the official. Although many foreigners may simply read or think that Mandarin is the hardest language to learn, it is actually not. Other dialects in Chinese such at Cantonese (and others that are harder) are much more challenging due to having more tones. Mandarin has 4 tones while Cantonese has 6. Tones are basically different sounds and pitches of your voice that are required to create certain words to mean different things. For instance: in Cantonese saying the word for the number "9" is pronounced "gáu". But when saying that it in a different tone could come out with 2 different additional meanings since there are 3 different tones for it. One of the tones means "dog" and the other tone LITERALLY means one of the 5 most insulting Cantonese words! 😆 🤣 It can be tricky to learn for some, then again easy for others. It simply depends, but usually languages/dialects with more tones are harder to get a grasp of than those with fewer or none at all.

[@simondefonseca1121]

Qín Dynasty didn’t simplify or standardize the written language, but the script or written form.

[@haohaishao4688]

Well... love to see English speakers introduce Chinese to the western world. GREAT JOB! I think there is a better explanation about why Westerner called Chinese as Mandarin at that time. After 1840, the Westerners opened the door to an ancient country. At the time, during Qing dynasty, the ruler of China, was an ethnic group called Machu. So naturally the language they speak, the Westerners called it Mandarin. Of course, it is debatable, just an opinion from a native Chinese.

[@MsOpineminded]

I wish people taught me Chinese like this