Five fascinating facts about the Chinese language

• It’s the oldest written language in the world.
• Chinese has no cases, genders, tenses or plurals.
• How you say a word can change its meaning.
• There are over 80,000 Chinese characters.
• It has the most native speakers in the world.

Unique Writing System The Chinese language is the only pictographic languages still in use. For comparison, Ancient Egypts Hieroglyphics are an example of a pictographic language. This means the writing system has not evolved to include its own alphabet or syllabary.

Chinese is one of the two world languages with over a billion speakers. It is the most used mother tongue on the planet with over 900 million native speakers and more learning it as their second (or more) language.

Some characteristics of Chinese language

• Chinese is a tonal language. The meaning of a word changes according to its tone.
• All words have only one grammatical form only.
• Questions are formed by usage of particles, the word order (mostly Subject, Verb, Object) remains unchanged.
• Formal/informal address.

Why do American newscasters speak so fast and not breathe? The job of the newscaster is to give out as much information as she can in as less time as she can. This is what they are paid for. So they speak fast.

Whether you’re watching CBS News, CNN or even the satirical Onion News Network, news anchors always sound pretty much the same. Another reason why news anchors share speech patterns is that they are all taught to use standard broadcasting English, a form of pronunciation in which no letters are dropped.

This is done this because having a clear, consistent delivery makes the news easier to listen to and digest for a viewer. Most news anchors speak slightly slower than a normal cadence, fully annunciate every word, change tone throughout the sentence and have a fairly neutral, flat accent.

Conversational speech generally falls between 120 wpm at the slow end, to 160 – 200 wpm in the fast range. People who read books for radio or podcasts are often asked to speak at 150-160 wpm. Auctioneers or commentators who practice speed speech are usually in the 250 to 400 wpm range.

The problem with speaking at a pace that’s either too fast or too slow is that it interferes with communication. When you speak too quickly, you literally “blow away” your listener. He can’t mentally keep up with you and will quickly stop trying. While a small part of your message may get through, most won’t.

about 150 wpm