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Sinophone or sinophone is a neologism that fundamentally means "Chinese-speaking", typically referring to a person who speaks at least one variety of Chinese. Academic writers use Sinophone "Chinese-speaking regions" in two ambiguous meanings: either specifically "Chinese-speaking areas where it is a minority language, excluding China and Taiwan" or generally "Chinese-speaking areas, including where it is an official language". Many authors use the collocation Sinophone world to mean the overseas Chinese regions of diaspora outside of Greater China, and some for the entire Chinese-speaking world. Mandarin Chinese is the most commonly spoken language today, with over one billion people, approximately 20% of the world population, speaking it. ==Word origins== Sinophone's etymology is from ''Sino-'' "China; Chinese" (cf. Sinology) and ''-phone'' "speaker of a certain language" (cf. Arabophone). Edward McDonald (2011) claimed the word ''sinophone'', "seems to have been coined separately and simultaneously on both sides of the Pacific" in 2005, by Geremie Barmé (Australia National University) and Shu-Mei Shih (UCLA). Barmé (2008) explained the "Sinophone world" as "one consisting of the individuals and communities who use one or another—or, indeed, a number—of China-originated languages and dialects to make meaning of and for the world, be it through speaking, reading, writing or via an engagement with various electronic media." Shih (2004:29) noted, "By "sinophone" literature I mean literature written in Chinese by Chinese-speaking writers in various parts of the world outside China, as distinguished from "Chinese literature"—literature from China." Nevertheless, there are two earlier ''sinophone'' usages. Ruth Keen (1988:231) defined "Sinophone communities" in Chinese literature as "the Mainland, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Indonesia and the U.S." Coulombe and Roberts (2001:12) compared students of French between ''anglophones'' "with English as their mother tongue" and ''allophones'' (in the Quebec English sense) "without English or French as their mother tongue", including ''sinophones'' defined as "Cantonese/Mandarin speakers." The ''Oxford English Dictionary'' does not yet include ''Sinophone'', but records 1900 as the earliest usage of the French loanwords ''Francophone'' "French-speaking" and ''Anglophone'' "English-speaking". The French language — which first used ''Sinophone'' "Chinese-speaking" in 1983 (CNRTL 2012) — differentiates ' meaning "French-speaking, especially in a region where two or more languages are spoken" and ' "French-speaking, collectively, the French-speaking world" (commonly abbreviating the Organisation internationale de la Francophonie). Haun Saussy contrasted the English lexicon lacking an inclusive term like ''Sinophonie'' or ''Sinophonia'', and thus using ''Sinophone'' to mean both "Chinese-speaking, especially in a region where it is a minority language" and "all Chinese-speaking areas, including China and Taiwan, Chinese-speaking world". "Sinophone" operates as a calque on "Francophone", as the application of the logic of Francophonie to the domain of Chinese extraterritorial speech. But that analogy is sure to hiccup, like all analogies, at certain points. Some, but not all, Francophone regions are populated by descendants of French emigrants, as virtually all of Sinophonia (I think) is populated by descendants of Chinese emigrants. Other regions, the majority in both area and population, are Francophone as a result of conquest or enslavement. That might be true of some areas of China too, but in a far more distant past. And at another level, the persistence of French had to do with the exportation of educational protocols by the Grande Nation herself, something that wasn’t obviously true of the Middle Kingdom in recent decades but now, with the Confucius Institutes, is perhaps taking form. (2012) English ''Sinophonia'' was the theme of an international conference organized by Christopher Lupke, President of the Association of Chinese and Comparative Literature, and hosted by Peng Hsiao-yen, Senior Researcher in the Institute of Chinese Literature and Philosophy, (Academia Sinica 2012) on "Global Sinophonia" – Chinese ''Quanqiu Huayu Wenhua'' 全球華語文化 (literally, "global Chinese-language culture"). 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Sinophone」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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