Happy Chinese Language Day!
To celebrate multilingualism and cultural diversity, the United Nations dedicates six days to each of the organization’s six official languages: Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian, and Spanish. The purpose of these Language Days is to raise awareness and respect for the history, culture, and achievements of the UN Community’s working languages.
The celebration was first established in 2010. Since then, the UN has hosted a series of cultural events, language competitions and other activities to showcase the beauty and diversity of the Chinese language and culture.
What date is Chinese Language Day?
Chinese Language Day is celebrated on April 20 – a day that was not arbitrarily picked. On the traditional Chinese lunisolar calendar, the year is divided into 24 “solar terms” (think of them like months). Each solar term corresponds to seasonal changes in the weather and astrological events throughout the year, like the Winter Solstice and Spring Equinox. Some solar terms have ties to cultural traditions and history, like Lunar New Year, Moon Festival, and Qingming Festival.
The sixth solar term is called 谷雨(gǔ yǔ) which means “Grain Rain,” and usually falls on April 19 or 20on the Gregorian calendar. It’s a day when farmers traditionally sow their fields and when the Chinese people honor Cangjie, the mythical inventor of the Chinese language. Legend has it that he was an official historian of the Yellow Emperor (the supreme god in Ancient Chinese mythology) and had four eyes. There are many versions of the story, but it was through his efforts that the Chinese people shifted from using knots and rope to a character-based writing system.
The history of Chinese Language Day
Historically, the earliest known origins of the Chinese language date back 4,500 years, and the language has evolved through various incarnations over the centuries of different dynasties. Oracle bone inscriptions are the oldest Chinese characters discovered so far, and commonly used during the Shang Dynasty. Gradually, the pattern engraved on tortoise shells developed into the first generation of Chinese characters. Eventually, bronze replaced tortoise shells, which was later replaced by bamboo scrolls.
Until China was unified by the first emperor of the Qin Dynasty, Qin Shihuang, every kingdom had their own writing system. Under his rule, the Chinese language was standardized. However, the writing style went through many iterations during this period that effectively ended the ancient writing scripts. Chinese characters have experienced thousands of years of development and evolution, carrying the splendid civilization of China. Even after thousands of years, Chinese continues to be the oldest writing systems still used today. Some characters are pictograms, meaning they are highly stylized or simplified pictures of a physical object, while others are ideograms, which means they are a visual symbol of their meaning. Most characters now are phono-semantic compounds, which means part of the characters have symbolic meanings and other parts are clues to the character’s sounds. It can feel quite complicated when you're starting to learn Chinese, but over time, you’ll start to pick up the patterns.
Today, there are more than 100,000 Chinese characters, but only 10,000 are in use and most Chinese students graduate knowing 3,000-4,000 characters. To pass China’s official Chinese proficiency exam, HSK (汉语水平考试 hànyǔ shuǐpíng kǎoshì), you need to learn 2,663 Chinese characters.
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