Chinese

This article deals with Chinese as it relates to NationStates. For more general information, see the Wikipedia article on this subject.

The Chinese language (汉语/漢語, 华语/華語, or 中文; pinyin: hànyǔ, huáyǔ, or zhōngwén) is a member of the Sino-Tibetan family of languages. Although Chinese is often regarded as a single language, regional variations in dialect, grammar and vocabulary are comparable to those of Romance languages. All of the spoken varieties of Chinese, however, share a common formal written language, Vernacular Chinese, written using a nearly identical set of Chinese characters.

Chinese is a secondary language of NationStates, and is used by different nations in different ways. As a secondary language, it is not usually used directly in the forum or roleplay, as a significant portion of the NS players are from English-speaking countries. However, as with many other less common languages used by players, it has seen some use in a roleplaying context as an IC language that is either explicitly denoted, or assumed (often a Chinese-speaking character will speak and be understood, without the actual text being in Chinese).

Use of Chinese, and most non-English languages, is sometimes indicated by using a different colour for the spoken text when players do not want to assume away the language barrier but still want other players to understand what their characters are saying.

Chinese Speaking Nations in NationStates