1. What Is a Language?

The Chinese linguistic terminology for languages and dialects is to some degree incommensurable with the usual foreign translations. Yǔyán 語言, usually translated as ‘language’, actually corresponds to what is better called macrolanguage; this is due to the fact that Chinese itself, with its shared history, culture, logographic writing system and its millennia of divergence, is regarded as one yǔyán in China, whereas the normal ling…