Standard Mandarin
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Standard Mandarin is the official Chinese spoken language used by the People's Republic of China and Republic of China (Taiwan).
The phonology of Standard Mandarin is based on that of the Beijing dialect, which belongs to Mandarin, a large and very diverse group of Chinese dialects spoken across northern and southwestern China. The vocabulary is largely drawn from this group of dialects. The grammar of Standard Mandarin is standardized to the body of modern works written in Vernacular Chinese, which in practice follows the tradition of the Mandarin group of dialects most closely with some notable exceptions. As a result, Standard Mandarin itself is usually called "Mandarin" in non-academic, everyday usage. However, linguists use "Mandarin" to refer to the entire group of dialects. This convention will be adopted by the rest of this article.
Standard Mandarin is officially known in the People's Republic of China as Pǔtōnghuà (Simplified Chinese: }}}; Traditional Chinese: , literally "common speech" or "ordinary speech"), in the Republic of China (Taiwan) as Guóyǔ (Traditional Chinese: ; Simplified Chinese: }}}, literally "national language"), and in Malaysia and Singapore as Huáyǔ (Traditional Chinese: ; Simplified Chinese: }}}, literally "the Chinese (in a cultural sense) language"). All three terms are used interchangeably in Chinese communities around the world where different groups have come into contact. Mandarin is the world's most widely spoken language.
History
Since ancient history, the Chinese language has always consisted of a wide variety of dialects; hence prestige dialects and lingua francas have always been needed. Confucius, for example, used yǎyán (), or "elegant speech", rather than colloquial regional dialects; text during the Han Dynasty also referred to tōngyǔ (), or "common language". Rime books, which were written since the Southern and Northern Dynasties, may also have reflected one or more systems of standard pronunciation during those times. However, all of these standard dialects were probably unknown outside the educated elite; even among the elite, pronunciations may have been very different, as the unifying factor of all Chinese dialects, Classical Chinese, was a written standard, not a spoken one.
The Ming Dynasty (1368 - 1644) and the Qing Dynasty (1644 - 1912) began to use the term guānhuà (官话), or "official speech", to refer to the speech used at the courts. The term Mandarin comes directly from the Portuguese. The word mandarin was first used to name the Chinese bureaucratic officials (i.e., the mandarins), because the Portuguese, under the misapprehension that the Sanskrit word (mantri or mentri) that was used throughout Asia to denote "an offical" had some connexion with the Portuguese word mandar (to order somebody to do something), and having obverved that these officials all "issued orders", chose to call them mandarins. From this, the immediately started calling the special language that these officials spoke amongst themselves (i.e., Guanhua) "the language of the mandarins", "the mandarin language" or, simply, "Mandarin". The fact that Guanhua was, to a certain extent, an artificial language, based upon a set of conventions (i.e., Northern Chinese family of languages for grammar and meaning, and the specific pronunciation of the Imperial Court's locale for its utterance), is precisely what makes it such an appropriate term for Modern Standard Chinese (i.e., Northern Chinese family of languages for grammar and meaning, and the specific pronunciation of Beijing for its utterance).
It seems that during the early part of this period, the standard was based on the Nanjing dialect, but later the Beijing dialect became increasingly influential, despite the mix of officials and commoners speaking various dialects in the capital, Beijing. In the 17th century, the Empire had set up Orthoepy Academies (正音書院, Zhèngyīn Shūyuàn) in an attempt to make pronunciation conform to the Beijing standard. But these attempts had little success. As late as the 19th century the emperor had difficulty understanding some of his own ministers in court, who did not always try to follow any standard pronunciation. Nevertheless, by 1909, the dying Qing Dynasty had established the Beijing dialect as guóyǔ (国语), or the "national language".
After the Republic of China was established in 1912, there was more success in promoting a common national language. A Commission on the Unification of Pronunciation was convened with delegates from the entire country. At first there was an attempt to introduce a standard pronunciation with elements from regional dialects. But this was deemed too difficult to promote, and in 1924 this attempt was abandoned and the Beijing dialect became the major source of standard national pronunciation, due to the status of that dialect as a prestigious dialect since the Qing Dynasty. Elements from other dialects continue to exist in the standard language, but as exceptions rather than the rule.
The People's Republic of China, established in 1949, continued the effort. In 1955, standard Mandarin was renamed pǔtōnghuà (普通话), or "common speech". (The name change was not recognized by the Republic of China which has governed only Taiwan and some surrounding islands since 1949.) Since then, the standards used in mainland China and Taiwan have diverged somewhat.
After the handovers of Hong Kong [link] and Macau, the term pǔtōnghuà is used in those Special Administrative Regions of the People's Republic of China, and the pinyin system is widely used.
In both mainland China and Taiwan, the use of Standard Mandarin as the medium of instruction in the educational system and in the media has contributed to the spread of standard Mandarin. As a result, Standard Mandarin is now spoken fluently by most people in Mainland China and on Taiwan. However in Hong Kong, due to historical and linguistic reasons, the language of education and both formal and informal speech remains the local Standard Cantonese but standard Mandarin is becoming increasingly influential.
The advent of the 20th century has seen many profound changes in Standard Mandarin. Many polite and humble words that were in use in imperial China have almost entirely disappeared in daily conversation in modern-day Standard Mandarin, such as jiàn (贱 "my humble") and guì (贵 "your honorable").
Phonology
Initials
The following is the initial inventory of Standard Mandarin as represented in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA):
| Bilabial | Labio- dental | Alveolar | Retroflex | Alveolo- palatal | Velar | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Plosives | ||||||||||||
| Nasals | m | n | ||||||||||
| Fricatives | 1 | |||||||||||
| Affricates | ||||||||||||
| Lateral approximant | l | |||||||||||
| Approximants | ɻ1 | |||||||||||
1 /ɻ/ is often transcribed as [ʐ] (a voiced retroflex fricative). This represents a variation in pronunciation among different speakers, rather than two different phonemes.
Corresponding chart in:
- Pinyin
- Zhuyin
- Gwoyeu Romatzyh
The alveolo-palatal consonants /tɕ tɕʰ ɕ/ are in complementary distribution (see minimal pair) with the alveolar consonants /ts tsʰ s/, retroflex consonants /tʂ tʂʰ ʂ/ and velar consonants /k kʰ x/. As a result, linguists prefer to classify /tɕ tɕʰ ɕ/ as allophones of one of the three other sets. The Yale and Wade-Giles systems, for example, treat the palatals as allophones of the retroflex consonants, and Chinese Braille treats them as allophones of the velars.
/w/ is commonly pronounced [ʋ] (a labiodental approximant) by speakers around Beijing; this may be considered substandard, but it nevertheless occurs frequently.
/tɕ tɕʰ ɕ/ may be pronounced as [tsj tsʰj sj], which is characteristic of the speech of young women, and also of some men. This is usually considered rather effeminate and may also be considered substandard.
Finals
The final, or rime, of a syllable, in Standard Mandarin, is the part after the initial consonant. A Mandarin final can be structurally described as (Vm)V(Cf). In other words, it consists of an optionalmedial, a nucleus, and an optional coda. The medial can be absent, or it can be one of the three glides: -i-, -u-, -y-. The coda can be absent; it can be one of two glides: -i, -u; or it can be one of two nasals: -n, -ŋ.Not counting tone distinctions, there are only about 35 distinct finals in Mandarin. Nonetheless, it's quite difficult to say with assurance exactly how many nuclear vocalic phonemes exist, because the restrictions on possible finals appear quite unsystematic on the surface.
There are at least the following phones:
- [a] (only in finals [ia], [ua], [ya], [ai], [uai], [au], [iau], [uan])
- [ɑ] (only in finals [ɑŋ], [iɑŋ], [uɑŋ], [yɑŋ])
- [e] (only in finals [ei] and [uei])
- [ε] (only in finals [iε], [yε], [iεn], [yεn] and in the isolated word [ε])
- [o] (only in finals [ou] and [iou])
- [ɔ] (only in final [uɔ] and in the isolated word [ɔ])
- [ə] (only in finals [ən], [uən], [əŋ], [uəŋ])
- [ɤ] (only in final [ɤ])
- [z̩] (only in final [z̩], which occurs only after palatal sounds; sometimes pronounced as [ɨ])
- [ʐ̩] (only in final [ʐ̩̩], which occurs only after retroflex sounds; sometimes pronounced as [ɨ])
- [i] (only in finals [i], [in], [iŋ])
- [ʊ] (only in finals [ʊŋ], [yʊŋ])
- [u] (only in final [u])
- [y] (only in final [y], [yn])
Further reduction can be achieved by noticing that /e/, /o/, and /ə/ are in complementary distribution, and can be treated as a single phoneme /ə/ (except in the isolated words [ε] and [ɔ], which function only as exclamations and can be treated as outside of the core system, similar to the normal treatment of "hmm", "unh-unh", "shhh!" and other English exclamations that violate usual syllabic constraints). Note also that the finals [iεn] and [yεn] can be considered to be phonemically either /iən/ or /ian/; likewise for /uən/ or /uan/. It would also be possible to merge /z̩/ and /i/, provided that the palatal and retroflex series are not themselves merged, since /i/ does not occur after retroflex or velar sounds or after dental fricatives and affricates. If all of these suggestions are followed, and [iεn] and [yεn] considered to be /ian/ and /uan/, the resulting system of /a/, /ə/, /i/, /u/, and /y/ is much like the standard Pinyin romanization scheme (except that Pinyin does not merge /ə/ with /o/ and uses a certain number of shortcut spellings).
An even more reduced system results from considering main vowel /i/, /u/ and /y/ to be the surface results of the respective glides combined with a null meta-phoneme. This system, shown below, analyzes the final part of a syllable as a combination of a glide slot (/i/, /u/, /y/ or null), a main vowel slot (/a/, /ə/ or null), and a coda slot (/i/, /u/, /n/, /ŋ/ or null). (The minimal vowel /z̩/ ([z̩]/[ʐ̩] or [ɨ]) is considered to be the surface manifestation when all three slots are null, rather than an allophone of main vowel /i/.)
When the medial, nucleus, and coda combine into a final, their pronunciations may be affected. The following is the full table of finals of Standard Mandarin in IPA:
| Nucleus | Coda | Medial | |||
| Ø | i | u | y | ||
| a | Ø | ||||
| i | |||||
| u | |||||
| n | |||||
| ŋ | |||||
| ə | Ø | 1 | |||
| i | |||||
| u | |||||
| n | |||||
| ŋ | |||||
| Ø | |||||
² Another way to represent the four finals of this line is: [ɯʌ iɛ uɔ yœ], which reflects Beijing pronunciation.
³ /uɤŋ/ is pronounced [ʊŋ] when it follows an initial.
Corresponding chart in:
- Pinyin
- Zhuyin
- Gwoyeu Romatzyh
Retroflex Finals
Standard Mandarin also uses a rhotic consonant, /ɻ/. There are two cases in which it is used:
- In a small number of words, such as 二 "two", 耳 "ear", etc. All of these words are pronounced as [ɑɻ] with no initial consonant.
- As a noun suffix (Traditional: -兒, Simplified: -儿). The suffix combines with the final, and regular but complex changes occur as a result.
- Coda [i] and [n] are deleted.
- Coda [ŋ] is deleted, but the syllable becomes nasalized.
- Main vowels [i] and [y] become glides and have a [ə] added.
- Certain vowels are changed: [a] becomes [ɑ]; [e], [z̩] and [ʐ̩] become [ə]; [ε] in the finals [iεn] and [yεn] becomes [ɑ] (but it remains in the finals [iε] and [yε]).
| Nucleus | Coda (+rhotic) | Medial | |||
| Ø | i | u | y | ||
| a | Ø | ||||
| i | |||||
| u | |||||
| n | |||||
| ŋ | |||||
| ə | Ø | ||||
| i | |||||
| u | |||||
| n | |||||
| ŋ | |||||
| Ø | |||||
The behavior of retroflexed finals provides some evidence for the phonemic analysis of main vowels. The fact that [iεn] and [yεn] become [iɑɻ] and [yɑɻ] confirms their analysis as /ian/ and /yan/ (rather than /iən/ and /yən/), and the differing behavior of [z̩]/[ʐ̩] and [i] suggests that these should not be merged (contrary to Pinyin). The behavior of [ə] and [ɤ], however, is problematic, since it suggests that they should not be merged, contrary to most analyses. (An alternative, consistent with retroflex behavior, would be to merge [ə] and [z̩]/[ʐ̩] as a single /ə/ phoneme and maintain [ɤ] as a separate phoneme occurring only in a single /ɤ/ final. Some evidence for this comes from standard Beijing pronunciation, where [ə] and [z̩]/[ʐ̩] are simple vowels but "[ɤ]" is actually a complex diphthong, pronounced approximately as [ɯʌ] -- a combination of the vowels in Standard American "put" and "putt"}}.)
Tones
Mandarin, like most Chinese dialects, is a tonal language. This means that tone, just like consonants and vowels, are used to distinguish words from each other. Many foreigners have difficulties mastering the tones of each character, but correct tonal pronunciation is essential for intelligibility because of the vast number of homophones in the language. The following are the 4 tones of Standard Mandarin:
| Tone name | Yin Ping | Yang Ping | Shang | Qu |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tone contour | 55 | 35 | 21 (4) | 51 |
| Tone number | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 |
- First tone, or high-level tone (陰平/阴平 yīnpíng, literal meaning: yin-level):
- : a steady high sound, as if it were being sung instead of spoken.
- Second tone, or rising tone (陽平/阳平 yángpíng, literal meaning: yang-level), or linguistically, high-rising:
- : is a sound that rises from mid-level tone to high (e.g., What?!)
- Third tone (low tone, or low-falling-raising, 上聲/上声 shǎngshēng or shàngshēng, literal meaning: "up tone"):
- : has a mid-low to low descent, if at the end of a sentence or before a pause, it is then followed by a rising pitch.
- Fourth tone, falling tone (去聲/去声 qùshēng, literal meaning: "away tone"), or high-falling:
- : features a sharp downward accent ("dipping") from high to low, and is a shorter tone, similar to curt commands. (e.g., Stop!)
- Fifth tone, neutral tone, or zeroth tone (輕聲/轻声 qīng shēng, literal meaning: "light tone"):
- : All unstressed syllables are pronounced with this "tone", which is sometimes considered as a lack of tone. In most varieties of Mandarin, the second syllable in two-syllable compounds is weaker in tonal prominence than the first character, and is sometimes called a "neutral" tone. On the other hand, if a very unemphasized incorrect tone is produced, its presence may be noted by the careful listener.
To listen to the tones, see [http://www.wku.edu/~shizhen.gao/Chinese101/pinyin/tones.htm] (click on the blue-red yin yang symbol).
Pronunciation also varies with context according to the rules of tone sandhi. The most prominent phenomenon of this kind is when there are two third tones in immediate sequence, in which case the first of them changes to a second tone. If there are three third tones in series, the first may or may not be converted to a second tone, depending on the preference of the speaker and the dialect area.
Relationship between Middle Chinese and modern tones:
V- = unvoiced initial consonant
L = sonorant initial consonant
V+ = voiced initial consonant (not sonorant)
| Middle Chinese Tone | Ping (平) | Shang (上) | Qu (去) | Ru (入) | ||||||||
| Middle Chinese Initial | V- | L | V+ | V- | L | V+ | V- | L | V+ | V- | L | V+ |
| Standard Mandarin Tone name | Yin Ping (陰平, 1) | Yang Ping (陽平, 2) | Shang (上, 3) | Qu (去, 4) | redistributed with no pattern | to Qu | to Yang Ping | |||||
| Standard Mandarin Tone contour | 55 | 35 | 214 | 51 | to 51 | to 35 | ||||||
It is known that if the two morphemes of a compound word cannot be ordered by grammar, the order of the two is usually determined by tones — Yin Ping (1), Yang Ping (2), Shang (3), Qu (4), and Ru, which is the plosive-ending tone that has already disappeared. Below are some compound words that show this rule. Tones are shown in parentheses, and R indicates Ru.
左右 (34)
南北 (2R)
輕重 (14)
貧富 (24)
凹凸 (1R)
喜怒 (34)
哀樂 (1R)
生死 (13)
死活 (3R)
陰陽 (12)
明暗 (24)
毀譽 (34)
褒貶 (13)
離合 (2R)
Romanization
| Chinese language romanization |
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Chinese language
General Chinese
For Standard Mandarin
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Cantonese
For Standard Cantonese
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Wu
For Shanghainese
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Min Nan For Min Nan dialects in Fujian and Taiwan Pe view] • [ talk] • [ edit] |
Ever since the first Westerners entered China and tried to learn Mandarin, the need for a phonetic transcription system to record the pronunciation of Chinese characters became apparent. Over the years, many such systems have been proposed. The first to be widely accepted was the Wade-Giles system, named after its 19th century inventors. Postal System Pinyin, standardized in 1906, is a similar and somewhat irregular system used predominantly for place names. These two systems are still in use today, but they are rapidly losing ground to Hanyu Pinyin. They are now mostly encountered in older materials such as textbooks and histories.
In the 20th century, Chinese linguists proposed various transcription systems, one of which even introduced a whole new syllabic alphabet: the Zhuyin system (Bopomofo). The most successful of these transcription systems was Hanyu Pinyin, which was accepted as the official transcription system for the Chinese language by the PRC in 1958 and later by the United Nations and other international organizations.
During the 1950s, there were plans for Gwoyeu Romatzyh, which was written in the Latin alphabet, to supersede the Chinese written characters. These plans, however, were abandoned, due to the prevalence of homonymic morphemes in Chinese (as well as the reliance of written Chinese forms, especially Classical Chinese, on disambiguation of homonyms via different logographs), the link between the various Chinese languages provided by the logographic system, and the long and close association between the writing system and the literature and culture of China.
A variety of transcription systems are used on Taiwan, in a situation that has often been politicised. The ROC central government adopted Tongyong Pinyin in 2002, but has permitted local governments to override that decision in favor of their own preferred romanization systems, e.g., Taipei City's mayor and current leader of the mildly pro-unification opposition party Kuomintang, Ma Ying-jeou, adopted Hanyu Pinyin in the street names of Taipei, as well as on the Taipei Rapid Transit System, which extends into the Taipei County controlled by the ruling party, the Democratic Progressive Party. This has resulted in protests accusing Ma of failing to consult and showing disrespect to the Taipei County Government, as well as disregarding central language policies. Zhuyin is used as the method for teaching pronunciation of characters and compounds in schools. Efforts to phase out this system in favor of Tongyong Pinyin have stalled due to disagreements over which form of pinyin to use, and the massive effort needed to produce new educational materials and to completely retrain teachers.
A less popular and outdated Romanization is the Yale Romanization. The Yale system is notable because it is a more direct representation of the phonemes of Mandarin than the other systems: It avoids the orthographic alternations between 'y' and 'i', 'w' and 'u', 'wei' and 'ui', 'o' and 'uo', etc. that are part of Pinyin and Wade-Giles.
Standard Mandarin and Beijing dialect
By the official definition of the People's Republic of China, standard Mandarin uses:- The phonology or sound system of Beijing. A distinction should be made between the sound system of a dialect or language and the actual pronunciation of words in it. The pronunciations of words chosen for Standard Mandarin -- a standardized speech -- do not necessarily reproduce those of the Beijing dialect. The pronunciation of words is a standardization choice and occasional standardization differences (not accents) do exist, between putonghua and guoyu, for example.
- The vocabulary of Mandarin dialects in general. This means that all slang and other elements deemed "regionalisms" are excluded. On the one hand, the vocabulary of all Chinese dialects, especially in more technical fields like science, law, and government, are very similar. (This is similar to the profusion of Latin and Greek words in European languages.) This means that much of the vocabulary of standardized Mandarin is shared with all varieties of Chinese. On the other hand, many colloquial vocabulary and slang found in Beijing dialect are not found in Standard Mandarin, and may not be understood by people not from Beijing.
- The grammar and usage of exemplary modern Chinese literature, such as the work of Lu Xun, collectively known as "Vernacular Chinese". Vernacular Chinese, the standard written form of modern Chinese, is in turn based loosely upon a mixture of northern (predominant), southern, and classical grammar and usage. This gives formal standard Mandarin structure a slightly different feel from that of street Beijing dialect.
Although Chinese speakers make a clear distinction between Standard Mandarin and the Beijing dialect, there are aspects of Beijing dialect that have made it into the official standard. Standard Mandarin has a T-V distinction between the polite and informal versions of you that comes from Beijing dialect. In addition, there is a distinction between "zánmen" (we including the listener) and "wǒmen" (we not including the listener). In practice, the latter distinction is almost never used by most Chinese.
Standard Mandarin and other dialects
The national standard can be very different from a local Mandarin speech, to the point of being unintelligible. In addition, since standard Mandarin is spoken as a second language across most of China, it is also very common for two people who both believe themselves to be speaking Chinese to require a translator. Nevertheless, efforts by the PRC, ROC, and Singapore to promote standard Mandarin as the standard tongue have greatly boosted the number of standard Mandarin speakers.To the dismay of non-Mandarin speakers, the predominant role of standard Mandarin has led to the common misidentification of Mandarin as the only "Chinese language". Although both Mainland China and Taiwan use standard Mandarin as the official language and Mainland China is keen to promote its nationwide use as a national language of communication, there is hardly any official intent in either location to have standard Mandarin replace local dialects, and as a practical matter, standard Mandarin still does not supplant the local dialects that are in use, particularly in the southern provinces of Mainland China or on Taiwan. Speaking only standard Mandarin in these areas is sometimes regarded as a significant social handicap; some Chinese language speakers there, particularly the elderly, while having no problem understanding do not speak standard Mandarin fluently. This situation appears to be changing, though, especially in large urban centers, as social changes, migrations, and urbanization take place.
In the predominantly Han areas in Mainland China, the interaction between standard Mandarin and the local Chinese dialects has generally not been controversial. Although the use of standard Mandarin is encouraged as the common working language, the People's Republic of China has attempted to be sensitive to the status of local dialects and has not discouraged their use. One example of this is Mao Zedong himself, who often spoke in Xiang, a category of Chinese that does not even fall within the wider category of regional Mandarin dialects. Many native speakers of Chinese find Mao's spoken language to be largely incomprehensible, even when speaking in formal occasions.
Standard Mandarin, however, is used very commonly for logistical reasons in that it is often the only means of communications between people from different areas. In many parts of southern China, the linguistic diversity is so large that even people from neighboring cities find it difficult to talk to each other in the local form of Chinese, thereby requiring the use of a lingua franca such as standard Mandarin. Curiously the use of standard Mandarin in the 20th century has supplanted the use of pidgin English which was used as a common language in some parts of southern China in the 18th and 19th century.
In Taiwan, the relationship between standard Mandarin and local dialects, particularly Taiwanese has been more heated. Until the 1980s the government discouraged the use of Taiwanese and other vernaculars, even portraying them as being inferior. This is all due to the Kuomintang's control over Taiwan during the early days of their escape from losing to Mao Zedong. Kuomintang was composed of mainland Chinese people who could not speak any Taiwanese. Although they were the minority, because the mainland Chinese people were the only type of people in the early Republic of China government, they were able to setup laws and regulations to curb the speaking of Taiwanese. For example in public places or in schools, the Kuomintang forbid the speaking of Taiwanese. This produced a backlash in the 1990s. Although some more extreme supporters of Taiwan independence tend to be opposed to standard Mandarin in favor of Taiwanese, efforts to replace standard Mandarin either with Taiwanese or with a multi-lingual standard have remained stalled. However, currently in schools, Taiwanese is being taught as an individual class, with its own textbooks and course material. The president, Chen Shui-Bian breaks into Taiwanese during his speeches. The former president, Lee Teng-hui when interviewed in the media, also speaks Taiwanese when replying to interviewers.
In Singapore, the government has heavily promoted a "Speak Mandarin" campaign to adopt a common language among its diverse Chinese population. The use of non-Mandarin dialects in broadcast media is prohibited and the use of dialect in any context is officially discouraged. This has led to some resentment, as Singapore's Chinese community is almost entirely of southern Chinese descent and thus considers Mandarin a foreign language. Lee Kuan Yew, the initiator of the campaign, himself admitted that to Singaporeans, Mandarin was a "stepmother tongue" rather than a true mother language. Nevertheless, he saw the need for a unified Chinese language among the Chinese Singaporean community, and closed down the dialect-teaching Chinese schools and banned dialects from broadcast (except while he was campaigning politically).Lee Kuan Yew (2000). From Third World to First: The Singapore Story: 1965-2000. HarperCollins. ISBN 0060197765.
Note that while the term Hànyǔ (漢語; simplified: 汉语), or "the Han Chinese language", is sometimes used to refer to just standard Mandarin, it is more precisely used to refer to all variants of Chinese, since they are, after all, all spoken by Han Chinese. Some speakers of Hakka, for example, object that their own dialect should carry the name Hanyu, as its grammar is closer to that of ancient texts.
See also:
Accents
Most Chinese (Beijingers included) speak Standard Mandarin with elements of their own dialects (i.e. their "accents") mixed in.For example, natives of Beijing, add a final "er" (/ɻ/) — commonly used as a diminutive — sound to vocabulary items that other speakers would leave unadorned (兒音/儿音; pinyin: éryīn).
On the other hand, speakers from northeastern and southern China as well as Taiwan often mix up zh and z, ch and c, sh and s, h and f, and l and n because their own home dialects often do not make these distinctions.
See List of Chinese dialects for a list of articles on individual Chinese dialects and how their features differ from Standard Mandarin.
Role of standard Mandarin
From an official point of view, standard Mandarin is theoretically something like a lingua franca — a way for speakers of the many mutually unintelligible Han Chinese dialects/languages, as well as the Han and non-Han ethnic groups to communicate with each other. The very name of "Putonghua", or "common speech", reinforces this idea. In practice, however, due to standard Mandarin being a lingua franca and a "public" language, other languages or dialects, both Han and non-Han, have shown signs of losing ground to standard Mandarin, to the chagrin of many local culture proponents.On Taiwan, Guoyu (national language) continues to be the official term for standard Mandarin. The term Guoyu is rarely used in Mainland China, because declaring a Beijing-dialect-based standard to be the national language would be deemed unfair to other Chinese dialects and ethnic minorities. The term Putonghua (ordinary speech), on the contrary, implies nothing more than the notion of a lingua franca. However, Guoyu does persist among many older Mainland Chinese, and it is common in U.S. Chinese communities, even among Mainlanders. Some in Taiwan, especially proponents of Taiwan independence, also object to the term Guoyu to refer to standardized Mandarin, on the grounds that the "nation" referred to in the name of the language is China and that Taiwan is or should be independent. They prefer to refer to Mandarin with the terms "Beijing dialect" or Zhongwen (writing of China). As with most things political in Taiwan, some support the name for precisely the same reasons that others oppose them.
In December 2004, the first survey of language use in the People's Republic of China revealed that only 53% of its population could communicate in Standard Mandarin. [(China Daily)]
See also
- redirect
References
- Ladefoged, Peter; & Maddieson, Ian. (1996). The sounds of the world's languages. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers. ISBN 0-631-19814-8 (hbk); ISBN 0-631-19815-6 (pbk).
- Ladefoged, Peter; & Wu, Zhongji. (1984). Places of articulation: An investigation of Pekingese fricatives and affricates. Journal of Phonetics, 12, 267-278.
- San Duanmu (2000) The Phonology of Standard Chinese ISBN 0-19-824120-8
Notes
External links
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| Subcategories of Min: | Min Bei | Min Dong | Min Nan | Min Zhong | Puxian | Qiongwen | Shaojiang | |||
| Subcategories of Mandarin: | Northeastern | Beijing | Ji-Lu | Jiao-Liao | Zhongyuan | Lan-Yin | Southwestern | Jianghuai | Dungan | |||
| Note: The above is only one classification scheme among many. The categories in italics are not universally acknowledged to be independent categories. | ||||
| Comprehensive list of Chinese dialects | ||||
| Official spoken varieties: | Standard Mandarin | Standard Cantonese | |||
| Historical phonology: | Old Chinese | Middle Chinese | Proto-Min | Proto-Mandarin | Haner | |||
| Chinese: written varieties | ||||
| Official written varieties: | Classical Chinese | Vernacular Chinese | |||
| Other varieties: | Written Vernacular Cantonese | |||
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