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Extensive Reading 泛 读

Lesson 5
Hàn
Hàn shì hàn mín de yán , shì zhōng guó de zhǔ yào yán .
Xiàn dài hàn de biāo zhǔn shì tōng huà . tōng huà běi jīing
yīn wéi biāo zhǔn , běi fāng huà wéi chǔ fāng yán , diăn fàn
de xiàn dài bái huà wén zhù zuò wéi guī fàn . běi jīng huà běi
fāng huà děng tōng huà . Xué tōng huà yīng shǒu xiān xué
hàn pīn yīn fāng àn , shì gěi hàn zhù yīn pīn xiě
tōng huà yīn de fāng àn . Zhè fāng àn căi yòng dīng
, bìng yòng jiā hào biăo shì shēng diào , shì bāng zhù xué
hàn tuī guăng tōng huà de gōng . Chú tōng huà wài ,
广
hái yǒu hàn fāng yán , zài měi fāng yán nèi , hái
cún zài zhe xiē fāng yán . wài , zhōng guó jìng nèi de shí
liù mín zhōng , hàn , huí , măn shē tōng
yòng hàn , mín jūn yòu zi de yán .
Mandarin
Mandarin is the language of the Han ethnic group and the main language of China; the lingua franca, if you will. Standard spoken Mandarin is called putonghua. Based on the northern dialect, putonghua uses Beijing phonetics as the standard, and the modern vernacular works as the grammatical norm. However, this does not mean that the Beijing and northern dialects equal putonghua. If one wants to study putonghua, he must first learn the scheme for Chinese phonetics. This scheme uses the Latin alphabet and additional symbols above each word that represent the four intonations. In addition to putonghua, there are eight dialects, each with sub-dialects. Among the 56 ethnic groups in China, the Han, Hui, Man and She communicate in Mandarin, and the others communicate in their own languages.