April 20 the International Chinese Language Day was celebrated around the world. On this occasion, the Confucius Institute of Vilnius University (VU) invited everyone interested to get acquainted with the Chinese language and organized two remote lectures.
In the first lecture "Let's get acquainted: her majesty is Chinese", Onutė Jankauskaitė, Director of the VU Confucius Institute and Lecturer at the VU Institute of Asian and Transcultural Studies, explained how language affects the understanding and superstitions of the Chinese world, why it is called "Chinese Mandarin", how and from what compiled script and how the Chinese collect hieroglyphs on a computer. The lecturer demonstrated how to translate Lithuanian names into Chinese and explained how the names of international trademarks are formed.
In the second lecture "Chinese Dialects and Subtleties of the Language" we continued our acquaintance with the Chinese language. Cui Lan, a lecturer at VU, not only introduced Chinese dialects, but also revealed the reasons why the most common Cantonese language and northern dialects were formed in the southern region, and emphasized their main characteristics. We now know that there are 7 major dialects in China, and dozens of others, which sometimes lead to various misunderstandings. For example, the Chinese sometimes talk while writing because they just don’t understand each other’s dialect. In this lecture, it was interesting to hear the relationship prevailing between Cantonese and Old Chinese.
You can listen to the recordings of the lectures on the Youtube channel of the VU Confucius Institute https://bit.ly/33lhe1S