1. Key to Exercise XXII

2. I. Discuss the following questions with your partner and then come up with your answers.
1.Of the other varieties of Chinese, which is the most influential dialect?
Of the other varieties of Chinese, Cantonese (the prestige variety of Yue) is influential in Guangdong province and Cantonese-speaking overseas communities and remains one of the official languages of Hong Kong (together with English) and of Macau (together with Portuguese). Min Nan, part of the Min group, is widely spoken in southern Fujian and in Southeast Asia (also known as Hokkien in the Philippines, Singapore, and Malaysia). There are also sizeable Hakka and Shanghainese diasporas.

3. 2.Why the relations between Chinese and other Sino-Tibetan languages remain an controversy?
The relations between Chinese and other Sino-Tibetan languages are an area of active research and controversy, as is the attempt to reconstruct Proto-Sino-Tibetan. The main difficulty in this effort is that, while there is very good documentation that allows us to reconstruct the ancient sounds of Chinese, there is no written documentation of the division between Proto-Sino-Tibetan and Chinese.

4. However this is a common problem in historical linguistics, and one which perhaps can be overcome with the use of the comparative method. Unfortunately the use of this technique for Sino-Tibetan languages has not as yet yielded satisfactory results, perhaps because many of the languages that would allow us to reconstruct Proto-Sino-Tibetan are very poorly documented or understood. Therefore, despite their affinity, the common ancestry of the Chinese and Tibeto-Burman languages remains an unproven hypothesis.

5. 3. How much do you know about Kangxi Dictionary
3.How much do you know about Kangxi Dictionary? Search for more information about it and then share it with your partner.
(omitted)

6. II. Fill in each of the following blanks with an appropriate word or phrase chosen from the text.
1.language family; Sino-Tibetan
2.Standard Chinese; official; United Nations
3. Chinese characters
4.cursive; traditional characters
5. 6,000; 3,000
6. 40,000; quarter
7.Cantonese; Hong-Kongers
8.Zhou; Shujing
9.Sui; 10th
10.southern; Qing