Linguistic history of China

High school (ages 12+)
People & Society

Name:

Date:

Step 1 · Read the article

Open the article and read it at the level above. Then answer the questions below in your own words.

https://smallwhale.org/articles/linguistic-history-of-china

1. Where is Linguistic history of China?
2. How many people live in Linguistic history of China?
3. What is the capital of Linguistic history of China?
4. What is the oldest written records?
5. What caused many different Chinese languages to develop?
6. Why can people who speak different Chinese dialects still read the same written characters?

Write what each word means, using the article.

Do not copy the article. Write two things you learned, the way you would explain them to a friend.

Answers below are taken from the article’s stored facts, so they match what the student read.

1. Where is Linguistic history of China?East Asia, with a vast and varied topography
2. How many people live in Linguistic history of China?Exceeding 1.4 billion people, making it one of the most populous countries
3. What is the capital of Linguistic history of China?Beijing
4. What is the oldest written records?Oracle bone script dating back to the Shang Dynasty (c. 1250 BCE)
5. What caused many different Chinese languages to develop?China’s big mountains and rivers kept people in different areas apart, so each group made its own language over thousands of years.
6. Why can people who speak different Chinese dialects still read the same written characters?Chinese characters show whole words, not just sounds, so the same characters can be read by speakers of many dialects.

Logographic Writing System: A writing system where each symbol represents a word or morpheme, rather than a sound.
Sino-Tibetan Language Family: A major language family that includes the Chinese languages and the Tibeto-Burman languages.
Linguistic Hegemony: The dominance of one language or language group over others, often due to political or economic power.
Putonghua: The official standard Chinese language of mainland China, based on the Beijing dialect of Mandarin.