Assignment 1
Readings:
Online materials for topic one
(General Introduction).
Homework:
Please type your homework.
- Identify
and explain the various factors responsible for people’s choice of the
term language or dialect to refer to some variety of speech. Illustrate with examples.
- Based
on the information you gather from the various sources (online “Chinese
Files”, maps in the reading packet, lecture notes), draw a clearer map of
the major dialect families (and sub-branches, if any) than that in the
reading packet. In labeling them,
include all the different ways they are referred to.
- Talk
about your prior exposure to the different “dialects” of Chinese, even if
it only amounts to what you hear from grandparents, friends or movies and
TV. What, if any, is your own proficiency in Chinese? What other languages
have you been exposed to? Find some
audio clips online (Youtube etc.) of the major ‘dialects’, listen to them
and provide the URLs for them.
- Name
some prominent characteristics of Chinese languages that you can think of
and contrast with those of English (and other languages if you speak
them).
5. What questions do you
have concerning the Chinese language(s)?