Chinese Han. Belonging to the Sino-Tibetan language family, Chinese Han is the principal language group of East Asia. Around the tenth century, Modern Chinese developed from Ancient or Middle Chinese. The scholar Sima Guang noted this transition in several studies published in the eleventh century.

Vernacular. The letters of Western alphabets simply show distinctions of sound. Although the Chinese characters had the same purpose in their development, the earlier forms were produced to stand for individual material objects or actions, or simple abstract concepts. Vernacular language began to develop in the Tang dynasty (618-907). Partially because of changes of pronunciation in the medieval age, by the late Ming era (1368-1644) it was difficult to identify the correct pronunciation of a given character, which varied in different regions of China, in reference to local dialect. By the late Ming period, hundreds of dialects had...