Modern Chinese: History and Sociolinguistics

by Ping Chen

The Chinese language, spoken by over one billion people, has undergone drastic changes over the past century. This book presents a comprehensive, up-to-date account of the development of Modern Chinese from the late nineteenth century to the 1990s. It describes and analyzes in detail, from historical and sociolinguistic perspectives, the establishment and promotion of Modern Spoken Chinese and Modern Written Chinese, and the reform of the Chinese script, and reveals the interaction of linguistic, historical and social factors in the recent development of the language.

Genres: Linguistics, China

244 pages, Paperback

First published March 31, 1995

Reviews

[André · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this book in preparation for my oral exam in Chinese with the topic "The history of the Chinese language" and I ought to say it's a really remarkable book, stating accurately and in (socio)linguistical exactness the process of reforming the Chinese language step-by-step from the use of Classical Chinese in the past up to the stage we're in now (with simplified characters, Northern Mandarin as the standard dialect, Pinyin as the main romanization scheme etc.). It's not only an overview, it's a very detailed description and I didn't find any shortcomings. Sometimes, however, I wish the author would have used more Chinese characters for the Chinese words in the text. It's a bit tedious to always look into a dictionary to know how to actually write "Qièyùn" and the like. I recommend this book to everyone interested in the (especially more modern part of the) history of the Chinese language. By the way, I'm amazed that it only took me 11 days to finish it. Whoo!