1、在中国，现在有多少语言语系？ How many language families are there now in China?  
       The languages used by ethnic nationalities in China belong to several different language families. 29 ethnic nationalities use languages that fall into the category of the Sino-Tibetan language family (汉藏语系). They include the Han (Chinese) language, the Zhuang language (壮语), the Tai language (傣语), the Tibetan language (藏语) and some others. The language of the Altay family (阿尔泰语系) are used by another 17 ethnic groups, including Uygur (维吾尔语), Ozbek (乌兹别克语), Kazak (哈萨克语), Mongolian (蒙古语), and Hezhen (赫哲语). The language of the South Asian family (南亚语系) is used by three ethnic groups, the language of the Indo-European family (印欧语系) by two ethnic groups, and the language of the South Island family (南岛语系) by the Gaoshan people (高山族人). It is not uncommon that several ethnic nationalities speak the same tongue.    
      2、汉字的起源有哪些传说？ Is there any legend related to the origin of Chinese characters?  
       Chinese script (书写体) has at least a history of four thousand years. We are not certain of the date of its invention. There have been various stories about the origin of the Chinese characters. In remote antiquity (古代的), ancient people made records by tying knots with a rope. Another story says that there was an ancient legendary figure whose name was Cangjie (仓颉). He worked as Emperor Huangdi’s historiographer (历史学家). It was said that Cangjie had four eyes, and he was good at observation. He often watched the footprints of birds and beasts as well as the appearance of stars. His long-term observation (观察) inspired him to create the earliest written characters.    
      3、汉字起源于图画吗？ Did Chinese characters come from drawings?  
       Those legendary stories cannot be accepted as the truth. However, in ancient China, characters began as simple drawings of natural objects—tress, water, mountains, horses, and humans. The earliest characters are thus “pictographic (绘画文字的)” in quality. In Banpo Village (半坡) in Xi’an and other places, archeologists (考古学家) discovered symbols engraved on the unearthed potteries which date to the period of the Yangshao Culture (仰韶文化), a matriarchal (母系氏族的) culture of the early Neolithic (新石器时代) Age. More than 4,000 years ago, ancient people in the present Tai’an (泰安) area of Shandong Province engraved symbols on pottery (陶器) which belong to a late period of the Dawenkou Culture (大汶口文化). Experts believe that these pictographic symbols may be the earliest forms of Chinese written characters.   
       At present, philologists (语言学家) think that symbols engraved on Yangshao pottery are not a written language. However, the symbols engraved on the Dawenkou pottery unearthed in the Tai’an area may be the earliest forms of Chinese written characters. In this view, Chinese characters have existed for more than 4,500 year.    
      4、甲骨文是怎样发现的？ How were ancient inscriptions on bones or tortoise shells discovered?  
       The ancient inscriptions (铭文) on bones or tortoise shells were characters used for divination (占卜) practice during the Shang and Zhou dynasties (商周时代). Up to the present time, 4,600 characters have been discovered on unearthed bones or tortoise shells. Toward the end of the Qing Dynasty, peasants in Xiaotun (小屯) in Anyang County (安阳县), Henan Province kept finding fragments (碎片) of the bones and shells of ancient animals as they ploughed their fields. They thought that they were “dragon bones” which could be used for medical treatment. Therefore, more and more peasants went into the fields and they turned up the soil, hoping that they could pick up more bones of this kind and sell them to medicinal herb stores.   
       Several decades later, in 1899, a man by the name of Wang Yirong (王懿荣) was sick and was about to take some Chinese herb medicine from a herb store. Wang saw some bone fragments and discerned (分辨) some inscribed figures which looked very much like ancient writing. Wang was the president of a college in Beijing under the Qing government, and being well-learned scholar, he knew that these fragments were not “dragon bones”. He went back to the store and purchased some more bones for his study. At the same time, he was informed that these bones were all from Henan. Through his careful study, Wang came to realize that the symbols engraved on the bones were script used before the Qin Dynasty. At a considerable price, he bought the whole lot of bones and shells that bore inscribed figures and designs. He named these symbols “Tortoise Shell Characters (龟版文字)”. This important discovery opened up the way to the study of the Shang and Zhou dynasties in the fields of socio-politics (社会政治), economics and culture.   5、汉字是怎样演变的？ How did Chinese characters evolve?  
       Chinese characters have a long history and wide circulation (传播). The characters in use today have evolved (使逐步形成) from oracle inscriptions dating back to the Shang Dynasty. The oracle bone script (甲骨文) was used during the Shang or Yin Dynasty. Towards the end of the Shang Dynasty, people tended to engrave (雕刻) inscriptions on bronze (青铜) ware, and this became the popular practice during the Zhou Dynasty. It was called the bronze script (金文). The large seal script (大篆) developed on the basis of the bronze script was used during the Zhou Dynasty. During the Qin Dynasty, the first Qin emperor standardized (使标准化) written script with the small seal script (小楷). The clerical (办事员的) script (隶书) and the standard script (楷书) first appeared during the Han Dynasty, and the standard script is still in use today. It is called the traditional Chinese script. There are some other styled Chinese scripts, including the running script (行书), used for handwritten (手写的) Chinese since the Han Dynasty, and the grass script (草书), which is executed swiftly in a cursive (草写的) manner. Since 1949, the simplified script (简体字) has been used in China.    
      6、什么是“六书”？ What are the “Six Categories of Chinese Characters”?  
       In ancient times, Chinese characters fall into the “Six Categories”. The first four categories include “pictographs (象形),” “self-explanatory characters (指事)”, “complex ideograms (会意)” and “semantic-phonetic characters (形声)”. The first four categories indicate the methods of forming the characters. The final two are “associative transformations (转注)” and “phonetic loan characters (假借)”. These two categories refer to the usage of characters.    
      7、为什么要了解汉字？Why do we need to understand Chinese characters?  
       The Chinese language is an institution (习俗), rather than a tool, of society. With their unusual (独特的) script, Chinese characters developed a unique culture. The acquaintance (了解) with Chinese characters will bring interest, pleasure and a lifelong reward. Learning the characters will help you open up a door through which you are able to appreciate (欣赏) the most enduring (持久的) cultural achievements of China.    
      8、学习汉字难吗？ Is it difficult to learn Chinese characters?  
       Chinese characters are not an alphabet (字母表) as Western languages used. Each character represents a separate word, and Chinese characters indicate (指出) both the meaning and the sound for a whole word. The writing system is not a convenient device lying ready at hand for overseas learners to pick up and use. In English, there are 26 alphabetic symbols. English native speakers can make tens of thousands of words with comparative (比较的) ease. In Chinese, each character must be laboriously (费力地) memorized. Language learners often wonder how many characters they need to learn in order to have a reading knowledge of Chinese materials other than classic literature. Various estimates (估计) have been given, ranging from 3,000 to 5,000. Statistics (统计) show that the majority of the 50,000-60,000 existing characters are not in common use.    
      9、汉字改革的大致情况是怎样的？ What can be said about the reform of Chinese characters?  
       The 1919 May Fourth Movement spurred a “literary renaissance (复活)” which supplanted (取代) the language of classical (古典的) literature with the vernacular (白话) Chinese (白话). The vernacular literature movement succeeded because so many of the best writers of that period experimented (实验) with baihua poetry. Demands for character simplification were increasingly heard as the Qing Dynasty  came to an end. But it progressed very slowly. When the New China was founded, the committee for reforming the Chinese written language was set up. Thousands of character forms underwent (经历)drastic simplification (简单化). Since 1956, four groups of simplified characters, which amount to a total of 2,238, have been published successively (连续地) in China. These characters are now in use as the standard forms in schools and society at large. The main objective (客观的) is to reduce the number of strokes (笔画) and ease the difficult task of achieving literacy (读写能力).    
      10、你对方言了解多少？ How much do you know about dialects in China?  
       China has seven major dialect (方言) groups. Each group subdivides into many dialects. The people of each province have a special dialect; the people of each city, each town, and each village have their own special dialect as well. In many countries, a person using a southern vernacular can understand a person with a northern dialect. However, two people who speak Chinese even within the same dialect group do not necessarily (必然地) completely understand each other. The general situation is that one can understand perfectly people speaking the same local dialect, but intelligibility (可理解性) decreases as the speakers come from more and more distant regions.   
       Mandarin, or Putonghua, is referred to as the common spoken Chinese, and it is spoken mainly in Northeast and Southwest of China. This widespread spoken Chinese is based on the Beijing dialect. Putonghua is usually considered more formal and is required when speaking to a person who does not understand local dialect.   
       Over 90% of Chinese people speak Mandarin, but they may very likely also speak another dialect. The local dialect is generally considered more intimate (熟悉的) and is used among close family members and friends and in everyday conversation within the local area. Chinese speakers will frequently code switch between Putonghua and local dialects. Parents generally speak to their children in dialect, and the relationship between a dialect and Putonghua appears to be mostly stable. Most Chinese know that  local dialects are of considerable (相当大的) social benefit; and when they permanently (永久地) move to a new area, they will attempt to pick up the local dialect. Usually learning a new dialect is done informally through a process of immersion (沉浸) and recognizing (认可) sound shifts.