The Chinese Language_节选

国际学院 大学英语教学部 大一”三个五千工程“ 背诵

Chinese is the most important language inChina and also one of the five official working languages of the UnitedNations. It is also one of the richest and highly developed languages in theworld. Chinese is also spoken by many overseas Chinese: it is the common language of more than 10 million overseas Chinese and persons of Chinese descent in Southeast Asia alone. At present, more than one billion people,approximately 1/5 of the world’s population, speak Chinese as their mothertongue. A written form of the language was developed as early as 6,000 yearsago.  From the point of view of its origin, it belongs to the $ino-Tib8tan languages family (汉藏语系).