Imagine what China would have become if its official language was not standardized some two thousand years ago. It might have been torn apart, because of internal upheaval or invasion by foreign powers, into many small countries, perhaps even more than the number of countries now exists in Europe, or might have lost its characteristic culture for good. In the last two thousand years, China went through many periods of disintegration, and was under the rule of foreign powers for prolonged periods on at least two occasions. Nevertheless, its strong cohesive force, relating partly to its unified written language and rich culture, managed to keep the nation together. Many linguists like to restrict the meaning of language to that transmitted by vocal sounds only. For example, R.
H. Robins defines language as a form of human communication by means of a system of symbols principally transmitted by vocal sounds. In the discussion here, the definition put forward by Edward Sapir is adopted. He defines langauge as a purely human and non-instinctive method of communicating ideas, emotions, and desires by means of a system of voluntarily produced symbols. As a result, written words, or rather the graphic representation of the vocal sounds in writing, can also be considered part of the language… Since the dawn of history, any unified nations ought to have an official way of communicating, often through one or more spoken languages, which may also include written symbols (Arnold Toynbee).
The Essay on Language and Memory
Language is the medium of communication. It can be verbal or written, making use of different conventional symbols and sounds. All social creatures on Earth have their own languages such as bees, ants, and apes. Human language is the most complicated of all because of speech. It is an evolving process of signs and symbols. It consists of different elements such as phonemes, syllables, words, ...
It is apparent that such a language system is an essential element in maintaining stability and keeping the nation in one piece. For a big country, or a country formed by merging several smaller countries, it is not unusual to find that different parts of the country speak different languages. Even in China today, hundreds of languages or dialects are spoken in different parts of the country. It is a formidable task for a country as big as China to standardize the written language, let alone the spoken language, particulary in the old days, when education was an exception rather than the norm, Before the birth of modern China, many languages or dialects were spoken in different parts of the country, but the written languages were largely the same, thanks to Shi Huang Di, the emperor of the Qing Dynasty whom unified China in 221 BC. With his foresight, and also his strong desire to control the newly unified country centrally, he decided to standardize, among other things, the Chinese written language. Sadly, as a result, many books were burned and hundreds of scholars were buried alive so that this transition could have taken place without hiccups.
The standardization process took some time and the script of the written language was more or less fixed in the Han Dynasty, several decades later. However, standardization of the written language alone was inadequate for efficient administration of the country, the pronunciation of this written language was also standardized and became the official spoken language, which was spoken among government officials as the medium of communication (Lin yu tang).
The rest of the population, however, still spoke their own language or dialect.
