Chinese: First Language Learner 7–10 Sequence / Levels 9 and 10 / Understanding / Language variation and change
Content description
Research the phenomenon of language change in Chinese-speaking communities and monitor language use in a range of contemporary contexts
Elaborations
comparing the language of previous generations to their own language use and discussing the nature of the differences between them
exploring how language change reflects the values of the time, or how language use can be seen as emblematic of an era, for example, the use of respectful terms such as 老革命 and 硬骨头 in China in the 1960s
examining new words added to Chinese dictionaries or introduced to social media and considering the reasons behind their development
considering the impact of digital communication on language use, for example, that LOL in English now means ‘laugh out loud’ not ‘lots of love’, and that weibo has a 140-character word limit
