The Hanzi are ideograms: one character means one "idea". The various concepts are derived from the ideograms by combining them. Mandarin can be also written phonetically (that is: written as it is spoken) with the Latin alphabet as you really cannot see the spelling from Hanzi characters. That is called transliteration. The most popular transliteration system is called Pinyin.
Some Chinese characters were originally fairly concrete pictures of the things they represent. As time went on, people chose to write simpler versions that are easier to write but do not look so much like the real thing, just as people sometimes draw stick men rather than drawing people with real-looking bodies, arms, legs, etc. Here are some examples:
Most characters, however, are made by combining pictures, using one to give a general meaning, and the other to represent a sound. For instance, "媽 mā" (mom) is made by adding 女 (nǚ, human female) to 馬 (mǎ, horse). The "ma" part is only there to represent the sound.
In most dialects of ancient Chinese, one character was generally enough for one word, but modern spoken Mandarin uses mostly compounds like "媽媽 māma," which is just "mama,"
Other examples show different ways of combining components:
Just as the English used in Great Britain favors "petrol" but the English used in the United States almost always uses "gasoline," different regional languages in China may use different compound words to name the same thing.
In Spoken Mandarin, most words are character compounds because over time Mandarin lost many sounds that existed in earlier forms of Chinese. Due to the loss of sounds, many Chinese words ended up becoming homophones, thus more characters were added to words to tell them apart. For example, the Chinese title of the poem "Lion-Eating Poet in the Stone Den" 施氏食狮史 is pronounced ""Shī Shì Shí Shī Shǐ"", and every character in the poem is pronounced with the same syllable, but with different tones. In older forms of Chinese, one could have been to tell apart the different characters making up the title, as they could have sounded noticeably different from each other.
Thus, one-character words in Classical Chinese like
became the Mandarin compound words
to clearly distinguish such words from their homophones, otherwise the already mentioned characters could be mistaken for similar sounding characters like
thus making spoken language difficult to understand without the compound words.
Mandarin is defined and designed based on Beijing accent. In China, there are over 600,000 dialects and more accents although they all use Chinese language and characters, but their pronunciation and some expressions are totally different. China must find a standard pronunciation to allow all people to understand each other and communicate. Beijing has been the capital city of China for more than 1,000 years, so China defined Beijing Accent as standard Mandarin.
Beijing also has some local dialects that are not included by Mandarin or standard Chinese language yet. But with Beijing being the capital city as well as the political, economic, cultural and education center of China, more and more new Beijing dialects have been or will be accepted as Mandarin or standard Chinese language. The other dialects, such as Shanghainese, Cantonese, Hakka etc., have few opportunities to be included into Mandarin or standard Chinese language or be accepted by the whole of China.
The following samples are some Beijing dialects which are not yet accepted as standard Mandarin. 倍儿: bèi'ér means 'very much'; 拌蒜: bànsuàn means 'stagger'; 不吝: bùlìn means 'do not worry about'; 撮: cuò means 'eat'; 出溜: chūliū means 'slip'; 大老爷儿们儿: dàlǎoyérmenr means 'men, males';
The following samples are some Beijing dialects which have been already accepted as Mandarin in recent years. 二把刀: èrbǎdāo means 'not very skillful'; 哥们儿: gēmenr means 'good male friends'; 抠门儿: kōuménr means 'parsimony'; 打小儿: dǎxiǎo'ér means 'since childhood'
Algeria
Algeria ( or ), officially the People's Democratic Republic of Algeria, is a former French colony and the largest country in Africa. It is part of the Maghreb region of Northwest Africa. Algiers is the capital. It is bordered by the Mediterranean Sea in the north, Tunisia in the northeast, Libya in the east, Niger in the southeast, Mauritania and Mali in the southwest, Western Sahara in the west and Morocco in the northwest. It is also the largest country in the Arab world.
People have lived in Algeria for thousands of years, which can be seen in the cave paintings at Tassili National Park that date to around 7000BC. By 600 BC, Phoenicians were in Hippo Regius (now called Annaba), Rusicade (now Skikda), and Tipasa in the central coastal part of the country. The Romans would annex (take over) the region by the conclusion of the Punic Wars in 146BC, with what is now modern day Algeria staying in Roman hands till the fall of the Roman Empire in the 5th century and the region being taken over by the Germanic Vandals.
Algeria would become part of the islamic world when the first Muslim Arabs came to Algeria in the mid-7th century, resulting in many people converting to the new religion of islam. In the 11th century, the Arab tribes of Banu Hilal and Banu Sulaym were living between Tunisia and eastern Algeria (Constantois). The famous mathematician, Fibonacci (1170—1250) lived in Algeria as a teenager. This is where he learned the Hindu–Arabic numeral system. Algeria was made part of the Ottoman Empire in 1517. Enslavement of black people was practiced there as it was throughout the empire.
In the 1500s and 1700s, the Spanish Empire ruled a lot of Algeria. France colonized Algeria starting in 1830. In 1954, the National Liberation Front (Front de Libération Nationale or FLN) wanted freedom from France. They fought a war. It became independent from France in July 5, 1962.
In 1963 Ahmed Ben Bella became the first President of Algeria.
The Algerian Civil War started in 1991. It ended in 2002. the government stopped the state of emergency on 24 February 2011.
A large part of southern Algeria is the Sahara Desert. The Aures and Nememcha mountain ranges are in the north. The highest point is Mount Tahat (3,003 m).
The official languages of the country are Arabic as a first language and Berber as a second language. Many people speak French, too.
Algeria's population is about 45 million people. There are over 40 cities with more than 100,000 people.
The Parliament of Algeria is made up of two chambers:
There are 48 provinces (since 1983) in Algeria, they are:
There are several UNESCO World Heritage Sites in Algeria including Al Qal'a of Beni Hammad, the first capital of the Hammadid empire; Tipasa, a Phoenician and later Roman town; and Djémila and Timgad, both Roman ruins; M'Zab Valley, a limestone valley containing a large urbanized oasis; also the Casbah of Algiers is an important citadel. The only natural World Heritage Sites is the Tassili n'Ajjer, a mountain range.
Notes
Plymouth, Devon
Plymouth is a city in Devon, South West England. It is on the south coast. It has a large port at Devonport used by the Royal Navy. Nearly 250,000 people live in Plymouth and it is the largest place in Devon. West of Plymouth is the mouth of the River Tamar which is called the Hamoaze. Plymouth means mouth of the River Plym.
The Roman Catholic Bishop of Plymouth has his cathedral here. Plymouth was badly affected by German bombing during the Second World War, when many buildings were destroyed. The Plymouth Fathers and the Plymouth Brethren were both named after Plymouth. Plymouth is linked to Saltash in Cornwall by two bridges across the River Tamar: the Royal Albert Bridge (built in 1859) carries the railway line to Penzance and the Tamar Bridge the A38 main road. On Plymouth Hoe is the third lighthouse which formerly stood on the Eddystone Rock in the English Channel.
It has a football team called Plymouth Argyle and a rugby football team called Plymouth Albion.