Section One - Grammar and Spelling

1. Gender: Only two genders refer to human and animals in Chinese and they can be easily recognised by the characters, e.g. for human, 她= she, 他 = he; if for animals: 雌＝female and 雄=male. This is something similar in English. As for other things. All of them are of neutral gender.

2. Plurals: The plural form is usually recognised by the numbers and units before the noun, e.g. 3個人＝ three persons, here “3” is number and “個”is the unit for man; again, 2條魚，here “2” is number and “條”is the unit for fish. But for human, we have a special character to show the plural form, e.g. 他們= they (men), 她們= they (women), 孩子們= children.

This is different with that in English and sometimes difficult, particularly for the units of things because different things have their different units. For example, in English we say “a piece of paper” or “a piece of bread”, while in Chinese we say “一張紙” or “一片面包” etc.
We have many one character words, such as: 天= sky, 我= I, 茶= tea etc.

Section Two - Punctuation

1. Listing: When listing something like A, B, C, and D. In Chinese, we do it in this way: 甲、乙、丙和丁。Chinese do not use comma to list things.

2. Full stops: Full stops are larger than those used in English and can sometimes appear hollow. They appear at a central height on the line as a hyphen would in English.
In most cases, the full stop is used when a sentence is completed. At the end of headings, titles, subtitles, bullet points, addresses, dates, no. of pages etc, we normally do not use any punctuation. Sometimes we just use a point ”.”

3. Commas: There are two types of comma in Chinese. The one similar to the English one is used for separating clauses (i.e. a similar usage to the English comma). The other one, which is backwards, is for separating items in a list.

4. Dashes: Dashes in Chinese text are longer than those used in English so that they are not confused with the character for the number 1 which is similar to a dash.

5. Speech marks: These are used in a similar way to English, e.g.

6. Ellipsis: For ellipsis, it is six “……” instead of “…” in English.

7. Brackets: These are used in a similar way to English.

8. Capitalisation: We don’t have capitalisation. If we want to highlight something, we can use bold fonts/characters.

1. Measurements: In most cases we use metric systems. But for the size of computer monitors, TV screens, computer disks we use imperial measurements.

There are some measurements which are specific to Chinese, i.e.

“Chi (尺)” for length，one meter = 3尺; It is usually used for garment making. And we also have “MU(畝)” for land area, one hectare = 15 畝. It is usually used in the countryside.

Time: The times 10.30 am / noon / 4.30 pm / midnight would be written in the following way:

上午10點30分／中午／下午4點30分／午夜

Date: For the date formats for 20 February 2004, 20th February 2004 and 20/02/2004, both 2004年2月20日and 二00四年二月二十日are applicable. But if it is on a commercial invoice or a check it will be like this: 貳零零肆年貳月貳拾日

For February 20, use: 2月20日, or 二月二十日

In Chinese, we just use a point to indicate decimals like π = 3.14156. and we use a comma for 4-digit numbers and numbers of more than 4 digits, such as: 1,000; 1,258,740 etc.

Currency: For Chinese yuan, we have CNY that stands for Chinese Yuan, and RMB that stands for (Ren Min Bi that means People’s money) and symbol is ¥. e.g. ¥50.00 per piece etc.

Spacing before measurements is not always necessary, i.e. 30°C will do.

2. Abbreviations:

N/a
No. (nos.)
e.g.
WxLxHxD
1st / 2nd / 3rd / 4th
Mr. / Mrs.
Messrs.
Miss
Dear Sir / Madam
m (for metre)
cm (for centimetre)
lb (for pound weight)
g (for gram)
km (for kilometre)
yr (for year)
k (for 1000)
EMEA (Europe, Middle-East & Asia)
Days of the week: Mon, Tues, Wed, Thurs, Fri, Sat, Sun.

Months: Jan, Feb, Mar, Apr, May, Jun, Jul, Aug, Sep, Oct, Nov, Dec
Seasons: Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter (not normally abbreviated in
English)

As a matter of fact, in Chinese we usually do not have abbreviations for the above. As for weight, length and measurements we sometimes use English, such as: m, cm, kg, g etc.

3. Numerals: Chinese has native numerals (i.e. not recognisable in Roman terms!) but also uses Western numbering, either instead of, or in combination with its own numbering system.

In Chinese, we have two systems of native numerals, they are:

The second system here is normally used in bank notes, commercial invoices, bills etc very formal situation as they are more difficult to be changed. The above are in simplified Chinese. If in traditional Chinese, they are:

Section Four - Hyphenation

Hyphenation is not really used. An English word is represented by either one, two or sometimes more Chinese characters, and there are no spaces left between words. Characters are therefore not like letters, so it does not matter where the line break comes.

Please note that at the beginning of each sentence, a hyphen for punctuation is usually not allowed except in cases where something has to be listed like:

then the “-“ can be used at the beginning.

When we use dashes, we normally use the longer ‘M’ dashes (—).

Section Five - Miscellaneous Peculiarities

Fancy fonts are not used to stress things; instead calligraphy is occasionally used to indicate special significance.

Surnames normally given before the first name.

Section Six - Geographic Distribution

Chinese is spoken by more people than any other language in the world. Since estimates of the current population of China are only approximate, figures for the number of speakers of Chinese must likewise be approximate.
An educated guess would be about 1.1 billion in the People's Republic of China, to which must be added another 20 million on Taiwan, 5 million in Hong Kong, 4 million in Malaysia, 1¾ million in Singapore, one million in Vietnam, and lesser numbers in other countries including the United States and United Kingdom. Thus Chinese has more than twice the number of speakers of English, though of course it lacks the universality of English and is spoken by few people not of Chinese origin.

Chinese has been an official language of the United Nations since the founding of the organization in 1945. Though Chinese has many dialects, Mandarin, based on the pronunciation of Beijing[H1], is considered the standard and is spoken by about two-thirds of the population. The other major dialects are (1) Wu (50 million speakers), (2) Cantonese (45 million speakers), (3) Fukienese, or Min (45 million speakers - generally subdivided into Northern Fukienese or Foochow - 15 million, and Southern Fukienese or Amoy - 30 million), (4) Hakka (20 million speakers), (5) Ilsiang (15 million speakers). In addition the Fukienese dialects are widely spoken in Malaysia and Singapore, while Cantonese is also spoken in Hong Kong and on the Southeast Asia mainland. Nearly all Chinese in the United States speak Cantonese.

Chinese is spoken/used in the following countries:

Brunei, Cambodia, Canada, China, Guam (U.S.), Hawaii (U.S. State), Hong Kong, Laos, Macao (Portuguese), Malaysia, Mauritius, Paracel Islands, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand, United States of America, Vietnam.

Language Family
Family: Sinitic

Source: http://www.worldlanguage.com/Languages/Chinese - Copyright © Kenneth Katzner, The Languages of the World, Published by Routledge.

Section Seven – Character Set Comparison

Simplified Chinese

到1929年有声电影出现时，无声电影的时代就结束了。许多像Gilford这
样的小电影院购买不起播放电影需要的音响设备，不久就停止营业了。
电影院在1931年关门，但大厅则在后来的几十年中没有改变。在运动和
艺术基金会和文化遗产彩票基金的资助下，这幢建筑被移动到了博物馆
的城镇地区，现在正在重建之中。当电影院竣工后，将可播放博物馆保
存的电影胶片，其它地方则可用来提供游客服务。

Traditional Chinese

到1929年有聲電影出現時，無聲電影的時代就結束了。許多像Gilford這
樣的小電影院購買不起播放電影需要的音響設備，不久就停止營業了。
電影院在1931年關門，但大廳則在後來的幾十年中沒有改變。在運動和
藝術基金會和文化遺產彩票基金的資助下，這幢建築被移動到了博物館
的城鎮地區，現在正在重建之中。當電影院竣工後，將可播放博物館保
存 片，其他地方則可用來提供遊客服務。