http://www.pinyinplaces.com/

China
Anhui Capital: Hefei

安徽
Ānhuī
Fujian Capital: Fuzhou

福建
Fújiàn
Gansu Capital: Lanzhou

甘肃
Gānsù
Guangdong Capital: Guangzhou

广东
Guǎngdóng
Guangxi Capital: Nanning

广西
Guǎngxī
Guizhou Capital: Guiyang

贵州
Guìzhōu
Hainan Capital: Haikou

海南
Hǎinán
Hebei Capital: Shijiazhuang

河北
Héběi
Heilongjiang Capital: Harbin

黑龙江
Hēilóngjiāng
Henan Capital: Zhengzhou

河南
Hénán
Hubei Capital: Wuhan

湖北
Húběi
Hunan Capital: Changsha

湖南
Húnán
Inner Mongolia Capital: Hohhot

内蒙古
Nèi Měnggù
Jiangsu Capital: Nanjing

江苏
Jiāngsū
Jiangxi Capital: Nanchang

江西
Jiāngxī
Jilin Capital: Changchun

吉林
Jílín
Liaoning Capital: Shenyang

辽宁
Liáoníng
Ningxia Capital: Yinchuan

宁夏回族
Níngxià Huízú
Qinghai Capital: Xining

青海
Qīnghǎi
Shaanxi Capital: Xi'an

陕西
Shǎnxī
Shandong Capital: Jinan

山东
Shāndōng
Shanxi Capital: Taiyuan

山西
Shānxī
Sichuan Capital: Chengdu

四川
Sìchuān
Taiwan Capital: Taipei

台湾
Táiwān
Tibet Capital: Lhasa

西藏
Xīzàng
Xinjiang Uygur Capital: Urumqi

新疆维吾尔
Xīnjiāng Wéiwú'ěr
Yunnan Capital: Kunming

云南
Yúnnán
Zhejiang Capital: Hangzhou

浙江
Zhèjiāng

http://www.pinyinplaces.com/states-f.cfm

Japanese grammatical terms

http://thejapanesepage.com/w/index.php?title=Grammatical_terms

Parts of speech
名詞 meishi -　noun (猫 neko cat, 本 hon book, 飛行機 hikouki plane)

動詞 doushi - verb (食べる taberu to eat, 考える kangaeru to think, 話す hanasu to speak)

形容詞 keiyoushi - i-adjective (青い aoi blue, 可愛い kawaii cute)

形容動詞 keiyoudoushi - na-adjective (きれい kirei beautiful, 歴史的 rekishiteki historical)

副詞 fukushi - adverb (脱兎の如く　dattou no gotoku quick[as fast as lightening], 早く　hayaku quickly, きれいに　kirei ni cleanly, ゆっくり　yukkuri slowly)

代名詞 daimeishi -pronoun (私 watashi I, 我が　waga my, 此処　koko here, 其れ　sore that, ああ　aa that way, 誰　dare who, 何処も　dokomo everywhere)

人称代名詞 ninshou daimeishi - personal pronoun (彼 kare he, 彼ら karera they, 貴方 anata you, わ (old)　wa I)

助詞 joshi - particle

助数詞 josuushi - counter

Different types of verbs
自動詞 jidoushi - intransitive verb (始まる hajimaru sth. starts,　開く aku sth. opens)

他動詞 tadoushi - transitive verb (始める　hajimeru to start sth., 開ける akeru to open sth.)

可能動詞 kanou doushi - potential verb (~rareru, ~reru, ~eru, ~reru, 出来る　dekiru can, 行かれる ikareru to be able to go,　行ける ikeru can go,　食べられる taberareru to be able to eat,　食べれる (colloq.) tabereru can eat)

状態動詞 joutai doushi - stative verbu

使役 shieki - causative (~seru, ~saseru, ~su (old), ~sasu (old), eg 開かせる　開けさせる　咲かす 食べさす)

受け身 ukemi - passive (~reru or ~rareru, eg 下さられる　kudasarareru to be given, 搾られる　shiborareru to be squeezed)

助動詞 jodoushi - auxiliary verb (ず/ぬ　negation, つ　affirmative, き/し past, む/ん future, 得る　eru/uru passive/potenital/honorific, ます　polite)

指定詞　shiteishi - copula (なり　である　だ　です...) 　

Inflection
活用語 katsuyougo - inflected form (verbs, adjectives...)

無活用語 mukatsuyougo - uninflected form (nouns, pronouns, conjunctions...)

複数形　fukusuukei plural

シク活用 shiki katsuyou - shiku inflection of i-adjectives (美味し [終止形] oishi 美味しく oishiku [連用形] delicious )

ク活用 ku katsuyou - ku inflection of i-adjectives (無し nashi [終止形] 無く [連用形] naku [shuushikei] not)

NOTE: The only difference is that shiku inflecting adjectives do not gain an additional し in their 終止形 predicative form.

規則動詞 kisokudoushi - regular verb

不規則動詞 fukisokudoushi - irregular verb (する くる くださる ござる いらっしゃる おっしゃる なさる ある だ です いく)

五段(活用動詞) godan (katsuyou doushi) - five row inflecting verb (modern 四段, 著ろう ikou let's wear)

四段(活用動詞) yodan (katsuyou doushi) - four row inflecting verb

上一段 kamiichidan - upper one row inflecting verb (似る niru to resemble, 見る miru to see ...)

下一段 shimoichidan - lower one row inflecting verb (蹴る keru to kick)

上二段 kaminidan - upper two rows inflecting verb

下二段 shimonidan - lower two rows inflecting verb

ラ変 rahen - ra column irregularly inflecting verb (有り ari to be)

サ変 sahen - sa column irregularly inflecting verb (為 su to do)

ナ変 nahen - na column irregularly inflecting verb (死ぬ shinu to die)

カ変 kahen - ka column irregularly inflecting verb (来 ku to come)

~形 ~kei - ~form 　


The examples below include usages of the verbal form, which is marked in bold.

未然形 mizenkei - imperfective form (~a, -ru, 行かない ikanai not go, 消えられる　kierareru to be able to disappear)

連用形 renyoukei - conjunctive/continuative form (~i, -ru, 歩きやすい arukiyasui to be easy to walk, 信じます shinjimasu to believe (polite))

連体形 rentaikei - attributative form (~u, ~ru, 死なぬ男 shinanu otoko man who does not die, 落つる石 otsuru ishi stone that falls)

終止形 shuushikei - predicative form (~u, ~uru, ~eru,　九性有り　kyuusei ari to have nine lives, 勉強す　benkyou su to do study)

已然形 izenkei (old name) - perfective form (~e, ~re, 読めば yomeba when I read, 水飲めば midzu nomeba had I drunken water )

仮定形 kateikei - hypothetical form (same as above 已然形)

命令形 meireikei - commanding form (~e, -ru, 生きろ/よ ikiro/yo Live!,　行け　ike Go!, 来い koi Come!) Note that 命令形 refers to both the grammatical inflected form of a verb (生き） and the final commanding form of the verb as used in speech（生きろ/生きよ）.

テ形　te kei (1) also te-stem, same as 連用形　 (2) て　affixed to the 連用形, which may cause sound changes, conjunctive/continuative form (行って来ます ittekimasu Go and come back!、　食べて tabete Please eat!)

マス形 (1) also masu-stem, same as 連用形　 (2) ます　affixed to the 連用形, polite form

ナイ形 (1) also nai-stem, same as 未然形　 (2) 無い　affixed to the 未然形, negation, negative form

Politeness
敬語 keigo - polite language, as opposed to neutral language (multiple levels, see below for examples)

丁寧語 teineigo - (simple-,neutral-) polite language (本を買います hon wo kaimasu someone buys a book, 寒いです samui desu it's cold [outside])

謙譲語 kenjougo - humble language (呼び致す yobi itasu to call, 居(お)る oru be/exist)

尊敬語 sonkeigo - honorific language (呼びに成る yobi ni naru to call, 亡く成りに成る naku nari ni naru to die)

美化語 bikago - beautified language (御 prefixing, change of vocabulary) (御茶 ocha tea, 飯 meshi -> 御飯 gohan cooked rice/meal)

呼捨て yobisute - speech ommitting honorific suffixes

Kanji
Forming Kanji
形声 keisei - (lit. "form-sound")　character formed of meaning-indicating and pronunciation-indicating element, most characters fall under this category

象形 shoukei - (lit. "image-form") pictograph, representing an actual object (日,目,月)

指事 shiji - (lit. "finger-thing") logogramm, using lines and dots to represent and abstract idea (一,二,上,下)

会意 kaii - (lit. "assembled-meaning") combining the meanings of two characters to one character (eg 林,姦)

転注 tenchuu - using the character with an extended meaning (and different pronunciation)

仮借 kasha - (lit. provisionally-borrowing) phonetic loan character, using it for its sound with no respect to its meaning

(Note: The last two are rare.)

Reading Kanji
音読 onyomi - Japanese reading

訓読 kunyomi - Chinese reading

呉音 goon - Chinese reading borrowed during the 5th/6th centuries

漢音 kanon - Chinese reading borrowed during the 7th/8th centuries

唐音 touon - Chinese reading borrowed during later centuries

慣用音 kanyouon - "wrong" Chinese reading commonly accepted and used

Kana
平仮名 - hiragana (いろはにほへとちりぬるをわかよたれそつねならむ[ん])

片仮名 - katakana (ウヰノオクヤマケフコエテアサキユメミシヱヒモセ ス )

振仮名 - furigana (small kana above or next to kanji indicating pronunciation)

送仮名 - okurigana (kana used for indicating inflection, particles &c.)

万葉仮名 - manyougana (chinese characters used purely phonetically as an early syllabic "alphabet")

Chinese Language and Script
Mandarin Language and Script

Mandarin originally refers to the language spoken by Chinese officials who were mainly from Beijing. This language was called Guan-Yu 官語 Official-Language. The Sanskrit word Mandari comes through Portuguese and means commander related to English Mand-ate The early Portuguese referred to these people and their language as Mandarin. The BeiJingHua 北京話 Beijing-Talk Spoken in Beijing PuTongHua 普通話 Common Talk spoken in Canton, the HuaYu 華語 Chinese Language spoken in South East Asia and the GuoYu 國語 National Language spoken in Taipei are the same language with only very minor differences.

PoTongHua is spoken by almost all Chinese although 80% of them will speak some other dialect at home. When speaking of Chinese Dialects we usually mean different languages. Often although the dialects will be closely related, If you have not had experience with it, you will understand almost nothing.

Modern written Chinese is a direct rendition of spoken Mandarin. In English we always refer to it as Chinese.In Chinese it is usually called HanYu 漢語 Chinese Language This is Mandarin as defined in the dictionary. Almost No one speaks exactly like the Dictionary. But most well educated Chinese have studied tones, and pinying and can pronounce correctly if reading from the dictionary. See Cantonese, Taiwanese.

Taiwanese Language and Script

Taiwanese is an important language as far as Chinese Etymology is concerned and as far as China is concerned.

In Chinese it is referred to technically as MinNanHua 閩南話 Southern Min Language It is spoken in Southern FuJian 福建 province and in Taiwan. It is often referred to as TaiWanHua 台灣話 Taiwanese Language or XiaMenHua 厦門話 Amoy Language. Amoy (XiaMen) is the main Chinese costal city in FuJian where this language is spoken. It is also called TaiYu 台語 Taiwanese. It is not understandable by Mandarin speakers who have never been exposed to it. I estimates that about 80% of Taiwanese has the same etymology as Mandarin, but with very significant phonetic shifts. Written Mandarin can be read in Taiwanese, but it is a very stilted and does not reflect the grammatical structure of real spoken Taiwanese. Unlike Cantonese, Taiwanese in most cases did not invent new characters. When there is a Taiwanese word which has no Mandarin equivalent, they usually took Mandarin characters which when pronounced in Taiwanese would sounded like the Taiwanese word in question. Some characters will be used in places with the usual Mandarin meaning and other characters will be used for the sound. The average Mandarin will not understand written Taiwanese. MinBeiHua 閩北話 Northern Min Language is the other dialect spoken in FuJian, and is quite different from MinNan. FuZhouHua 福州話 is spoken in FuZhou and is also very different. Many of the Chinese emigrants to South east Asia came from ChaoZhou in southern Fukin and speak a language called ChaoJouHua 潮州話 CaoJou is similar to and for the most part understandable by Taiwanese.

Taiwanese is important etymologically because when we compare the pronunciation of character phonetics in Taiwanese we sometimes find that they are closer than in Mandarin.

Taiwanese has 7 tones. The teaching materials say 8, but this is so that the saying of all the tones will sound more fluent. There are 2337 unique syllabic utterances in Taiwanese. The database of syllabic utterances was done by Sharry Wu

Book References:

台灣話大詞典 閩南話漳泉二腔系部份 by ChenShou 陳修 主編
Probably the most extensive Taiwanese to Chinese dictionary
used for my Taiwanese syllabic database.

Cantonese Language and Characters

GuangDongHua (GongDongWa) 廣東話 Cantonese is the most common dialect spoken by over-seas Chinese. Its formal name is YehYu (YutYu) 粤語 It is in fact a different language from Manderin, although closely related to it. A person who has grown up in BeiJing and has never heard Cantonese, would understand almost nothing. About 80% of Cantonese words have the same root as Mandarin although the pronunciation may be shifted quite drastically. The other 20 percent is strictly Cantonese and has no Mandarin equivalent. These words are called JukJi Cantonese is spoken in GuangDong province, HongKong, Macao and all around the world. The TaiShanHua (HoiSanWa) 台山話 TaiShan dialect of Cantonese is spoken in SanFrancisco the largest collection of JukJi is a set of about 4500 characters published by the city government of HongKong, The average Cantonese probably only uses a few hundred. These characters can not be found in a HanYuDaZiDian dictionary.

Book References:

A Practical Cantonese-English Dictionary 實用粤英詞典 by Sidney Lao 劉緆祥
The Cantonese to English dictionary which I used for my Cantonese syllabic database.

Shanghaiese Language and Script

Japanese Language and Script

The Chinese word HanZi 漢字 means “Chinese Character”. When borrowed by the Japanese the pronunciation became KanJi. 漢字 The Japanese borrowed the Chinese writing system starting in the Tang dynasty about 1400 years ago. Japanese grammar is quite different from Chinese. Japanese is a Ural Altaic language more closely related to Turkish than to Chinese, The Chinese writing did not fit well with Japanese. As a result, several things happened. (1) They borrowed the Chinese characters and used them to represent Japanese words and gave them the Japanese pronunciations called Kunyomi 訓読, (2) In many cases they borrowed the Chinese pronunciation too in this case they used the Onyomi 音読 pronunciation which corresponds to the original Chinese pronunciation. (3) Some Chinese characters were used as phonetics for Japanese words. Originally these phonetics were used mainly by women and other semi literate Japanese. Ultimately the cursive form of these phonetics developed into two precise phonetic alphabets. One called Hiragana ひうがな which is used to write the Japanese words which have no Chinese or other foreign etymology. The Kai forms of these phonetics developed into a precise phonetic alphabet called Katakana カタカナ which was used to write the words in Japanese which are derived from languages other than Japanese or Chinese, mostly English. (4) Since the kanji was borrowed so long ago, in many cases the written form has changed somewhat, the meaning has changed, sometimes a lot. One example is the 読 in Onyomi which in Chinese is 讀 (5) In modern Japanese there has been a move to reduce the number of Chinese characters to around 2200 and some of those characters are rare or non existent in modern Chinese. As a rough eye ball estimate, I would say 80% of kanji is pronounced similar to and has a similar meaning to the Chinese.

Korean Language and Script

Korean is also Ural Altaic and originally borrowed Chinese characters like the Japanese. Korean never derived special Hiragana and Katakana type alphabets. Instead in 1426 King SeJong 宗 invented an alphabet for initial central and final sounds of the Korean syllables. The letters of this alphabet are called Hangul 한글 and do not appear to have any connection to Chinese characters. The way these letters are stacked into square boxes that correspond to syllabic utterances and in Korean was obviously influenced by Chinese. These spellings were used for several hundred years for syllables of strictly Korean origin and syllables of Chinese etymology were written in Chinese called Hanja 漢字. In the past 30 years Korean news papers at least have gone completely Hangul.

VietnameseLanguage and Script

Vietnamese has a similar grammatical and morphological structure to Chinese but percentage wise very few syllables are etymologically related to Chinese. The Vietnamese took an approach similar to the Cantonese starting in about the 10th century, but they had to design a large number of new characters. These characters are called ChuNom. When you see old Vietnamese written it is obviously derived from Chinese type characters, but a Chinese literate person will understand almost none of the characters.

http://www.chineseetymology.org/CharacterASP/mandarin.aspx

1: 一 2: 丿 3: 乙 4: 丨 5: 丶 2 6: 亻 7: 讠 8: ⻏ 9: 阝 10: 刂
11: 亠 12: 人入 13: 八 14: 力 15: 冫 16: 十 17: 厂 18: 又 19: 刀 20: 勹 21: 匚 22: 儿
23: 二 24: 卜 25: 卩 26: 凵 27: 厶 28: 几 29: 冖 30: 冂 31: 廴 3 32: 氵 33: 口
34: 艹 35: 扌 36: 土 37: 纟 38: 女 39: 忄 40: 山 41: 辶 42: 犭 43: 宀 44: 马 45: 饣
46: 门 47: 巾 48: 广 49: 彳 50: 大 51: 尸 52: 囗 53: 弓 54: 孑子孓 55: 小 56: 士 57: 彡
58: 工 59: 寸 60: 廾 61: 彐 62: 夂 63: 己巳已 64: 夕 65: 丬 66: 弋 67: 乡幺 68: 尢 70: 屮
4 71: 木 72: 月 73: 王 74: 火 75: 日 76: 心 77: 车 78: 贝 79: 礻 80: 戈 81: 见
82: 牛 83: 攵 84: 欠 85: 灬 86: 歹 87: 水 88: 毛 89: 手 90: 方 91: 气 92: 殳 93: 爪
94: 户 95: 瓦 96: 曰 97: 斤 98: 文 99: 风 101: 犬 103: 止 104: 母毋 105: 片 107: 比 108: 父
110: 攴 5 111: 钅 112: 石 113: 疒 114: 鸟 115: 禾 116: 衤 117: 目 118: 田 119: 穴 120: ⺫
121: 皿 122: 白 123: 立 124: 矢 126: 示 127: 疋 128: 瓜 129: 用甩 130: 业 131: 皮 132: 矛 6
133: 虫 134: 竹 135: 页 136: 米 137: 糸 138: 舟 139: 耳 140: 羽 141: 羊 142: 衣 144: 虍 146: 西
147: 舌 148: 艮 150: 老 151: 自 152: 血 153: 臣 7 154: 足 155: 酉 156: 言 157: 走 158: 角
161: 豆 162: 辛 164: 谷 165: 身 166: 里 169: 采 8 171: 鱼 172: 雨 173: 隹 175: 金 176: 其
177: 青 9 179: 革 180: 骨 182: 食 183: 音 10 185: 斗 187: 麻 188: 黑 190: 鼻

http://www.zhongwenweb.com/diyping.html