《language语言》PPT课件.ppt

A BRIEF INTRODUCTION TO LANGUAGE,Language,INTRODUCTION,Language, the principal means used by human beings to communicate with one another. Language is primarily spoken, although it can be transferred to other media, such as writing. If the spoken means of communication is unavailable, as may be the case among the deaf, visual(视觉的) means such as sign language can be used. Languages constantly undergo changes, resulting in the development of different varieties of the languages.,Dialects,A dialect is a variety of a language spoken by a group of people. Dialects develop primarily as a result of limited communication between different parts of a community that share one language. Under such circumstances, changes that take place in the language of one part of the community do not spread elsewhere. As a result, the speech varieties become more distinct from one another. The different changes that took place in spoken Latin in different parts of the Roman Empire, for example, eventually gave rise to the distinct modern Romance languages, including French, Spanish, Portuguese（葡萄牙语）, and Italian.,Social Varieties of Language,Slang and jargon（术语） are more specialized terms for certain social language varieties usually defined by their specialized vocabularies. Slang refers to informal vocabulary, especially short-lived coinages（新造的字）, that do not belong to a languages standard vocabulary. A jargon comprises the specialized vocabulary of a particular trade or profession。,A cat may look at a king. 字面意思 猫也可以看国王。 解释 无名小卒也可以评论大人物。人皆可以为尧舜。不要因为别人的资格不够老，或经验不如你多，就不让他发表意见。 Bad news travels fast. 字面意思 坏消息传得快。 解释 好事不出门，坏事传千里。 Easy come, easy go. 字面意思 来的容易，去的快。 解释 这句话适合讲给那些把什么事都看得容易的人。尤其是对那种认为挣钱容易，不把钱当钱，对任何事情都不担心的人最适合。应该提醒这种人“钱不是长在树上的“。钱不是像树上的果实一样，今年吃光了明年还会自动长出来。有些人自己不挣钱，不知道挣钱的艰辛。,LANGUAGES OF THE WORLD,The 10 most widely spoken languages, with approximate numbers of native speakers, are as follows: Chinese, 1.3 billion; Arabic, 422 million; Hindi, 366 million; English, 341 million; Spanish, 322 to 358 million; Bengali, 207 million; Portuguese, 176 million; Russian, 167 million; Japanese, 125 million; German, 100 million. If second-language speakers are included in these figures, English is the second most widely spoken language, with 508 million speakers.,English Language,English Language, primary language of the majority of people in the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, other former colonies of Britain, and territories of the United States. It is also an official or semiofficial（半官方的） language of many countries with a colonial past, such as India, Nigeria, Pakistan, and South Africa. English is spoken in more parts of the world than any other language and by more people than any other language except Chinese. English is classified as an Indo-European language. It is part of the Germanic subfamily. Other related languages include Dutch, and Modern German.,Chinese Language,Chinese Language, language of the Han Chinese people, the majority ethnic（种族的） group of China. It is the official language of China and one of the official languages of Singapore. Of Chinas more than 1 billion people, approximately 95 percent speak Chinese.More people speak Chinese than any other language in the world. As the dominant（占优势的） language of East Asia, Chinese has greatly influenced the writing systems and vocabularies of neighboring languages, such as the Japanese language, the Korean language, and the Vietnamese language. It has been estimated（预测） that until the 18th century more than half of the worlds printed books were in Chinese.,WRITING SYSTEM,Shang Dynasty Oracle(甲骨文) Bone,The Shang dynasty (1570?-1045? BC) produced the earliest-known written record in China. The Shang inscribed animal bones with records of the kings predictions on topics such as the weather and harvests. The archaeological（考古学的） discovery of the Shang oracle-bone inscriptions（刻印） in the early 20th century proved the historical existence of this Chinese dynasty.,Chinese Script（印刷）,Done with a brush, Chinese handwriting developed into an art form in its own right. Calligraphy（书法）, artistic handrwriting or lettering, was important in China before the Tang dynasty, which began in 618. Like other scripts of ancient origin, Chinese is derived from picture writing. It grew into a word-by-word representation of language when it was discovered that words too abstract to be readily pictured could be indicated by their sound rather than their sense.,Qin Shihuangdi (Chin Shih-huang-ti), first emperor of a unified China, suppressed many regional scripts and enforced a simplified, standardized writing called the Small Seal. In the Han dynasty (206 bc-ad 220) this developed into the Clerical, Running, Draft, and Standard scripts. Printed Chinese is modeled on the Standard Script. Cursive or rapid writing (the Running and Draft scripts) introduced many abbreviated characters used in artistic calligrap