Celebrating Chinese Language Day
22nd April 2022
Language Days are the United Nations’ way to celebrate multilingualism and cultural diversity as well as to promote equal use of all six official languages throughout the Organization.
Under the initiative, UN duty stations around the world celebrate six separate days, each dedicated to one of the UN’s six official languages. These are Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian and Spanish. You can read about French, Arabic, Russian, Chinese and English Language Days in our blog. This article focuses on Chinese Language Day, celebrated on the 20th of April, every year since 2020.
The date was selected from Guyu (“Rain of Millet”), which is the 6th of 24 solar terms in the traditional East Asian calendars, to pay tribute to ‘Cāngjié’, a legendary figure in ancient China who is reported to have created Chinese characters about 5,000 years ago, when the Yellow Emperor first began his reign. The legend says that when Cāngjié finished, the gods rained grain upon the earth.
History of the Chinese Language
Let’s take a look at the history of the Chinese Language.
- 2650 BC – Cāngjié invented the written Chinese language.
- 1911 – China adopted Mandarin as a national language after Dr. Sun Yat Sen overthrew the Qing Dynasty.
- 1946 – The UN established Chinese as an official language, although it wasn’t commonly used to begin with, not until the People’s Republic of China regained lawful rights in the UN 25 years later.
- 1973 – The UN General Assembly adopted Chinese and made it its working language the following year.
- 2022 – Around 1.3 billion people speak some form of Chinese, making it the world’s widest spoken language. Standard Mandarin remains the official language in the largest part of mainland China and Taiwan.
How to Celebrate Chinese Language Day
The best way to celebrate Chinese Language Day is by trying to learn Chinese. Online courses, mobile apps and college courses offer plenty of opportunities.
If learning languages isn’t for you, why not visit a Chinese restaurant, read a Chinese book or watch a Chinese movie? A Chinese actress Michelle Yeoh played in Tomorrow Never Dies and the famous martial artist Jet Li can be seen in Kiss of the Dragon, Fearless or the recent Mulan.
