Standard Mandarin - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Standard Chinese or Modern Standard Chinese, also known as Mandarin or Putonghua, is the official language

Official language

An official language is a language that is given a special legal status in a particular country, state, or other jurisdiction. Typically a nation's official language will be the one used in that nation's courts, parliament and administration. However, official status can also be used to give a...

of the People's Republic of China

People's Republic of China

China , officially the People's Republic of China , is the most populous country in the world, with over 1.3 billion citizens. Located in East Asia, the country covers approximately 9.6 million square kilometres...

and Republic of China

Republic of China

The Republic of China , commonly known as Taiwan , is a unitary sovereign state located in East Asia. Originally based in mainland China, the Republic of China currently governs the island of Taiwan , which forms over 99% of its current territory, as well as Penghu, Kinmen, Matsu and other minor...

(Taiwan

Taiwan

Taiwan , also known, especially in the past, as Formosa , is the largest island of the same-named island group of East Asia in the western Pacific Ocean and located off the southeastern coast of mainland China. The island forms over 99% of the current territory of the Republic of China following...

), and is one of the four official languages of Singapore

Singapore

Singapore , officially the Republic of Singapore, is a Southeast Asian city-state off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, north of the equator. An island country made up of 63 islands, it is separated from Malaysia by the Straits of Johor to its north and from Indonesia's Riau Islands by the...

.

The phonology

Phonology

Phonology is, broadly speaking, the subdiscipline of linguistics concerned with the sounds of language. That is, it is the systematic use of sound to encode meaning in any spoken human language, or the field of linguistics studying this use...

is based on the Beijing dialect

Beijing dialect

Beijing dialect, or Pekingese , is the dialect of Mandarin spoken in the urban area of Beijing, China. It is the phonological basis of Standard Chinese, which is used by the People's Republic of China, the Republic of China , and Singapore....

, but the vocabulary

Vocabulary

A person's vocabulary is the set of words within a language that are familiar to that person. A vocabulary usually develops with age, and serves as a useful and fundamental tool for communication and acquiring knowledge...

is drawn from the large and diverse group of Chinese dialect

Dialect

The term dialect is used in two distinct ways, even by linguists. One usage refers to a variety of a language that is a characteristic of a particular group of the language's speakers. The term is applied most often to regional speech patterns, but a dialect may also be defined by other factors,...

s spoken across northern, central and southwestern China

China

Chinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...

, which is also known as Mandarin Chinese. The grammar

Grammar

In linguistics, grammar is the set of structural rules that govern the composition of clauses, phrases, and words in any given natural language. The term refers also to the study of such rules, and this field includes morphology, syntax, and phonology, often complemented by phonetics, semantics,...

is standardized to the body of modern literary works that define written vernacular Chinese, the colloquial alternative to Classical Chinese

Classical Chinese

Classical Chinese or Literary Chinese is a traditional style of written Chinese based on the grammar and vocabulary of ancient Chinese, making it different from any modern spoken form of Chinese...

. The name "Mandarin" originally referred to the language of the imperial court in Beijing, and as such was a synonym for Modern Standard Chinese in the 20th century, but it became ambiguous as use was extended to the various Northern dialects of Chinese. This article will use the phrase "Mandarin dialects" for this broader usage.

Names

Standard Chinese is officially known,

in the People's Republic of China (including the SARs of Hong Kong
Hong Kong
Hong Kong is one of two Special Administrative Regions of the People's Republic of China , the other being Macau. A city-state situated on China's south coast and enclosed by the Pearl River Delta and South China Sea, it is renowned for its expansive skyline and deep natural harbour...

and Macau
Macau
Macau , also spelled Macao , is, along with Hong Kong, one of the two special administrative regions of the People's Republic of China...

) as Putonghua .
in Taiwan
Taiwan
Taiwan , also known, especially in the past, as Formosa , is the largest island of the same-named island group of East Asia in the western Pacific Ocean and located off the southeastern coast of mainland China. The island forms over 99% of the current territory of the Republic of China following...

as Guoyu .
in Malaysia , Phillippines and Singapore
Singapore
Singapore , officially the Republic of Singapore, is a Southeast Asian city-state off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, north of the equator. An island country made up of 63 islands, it is separated from Malaysia by the Straits of Johor to its north and from Indonesia's Riau Islands by the...

as Huayu . In other parts of the world, the three names are used interchangeably to varying degrees, Putonghua being the most common.

The name Guoyu received official recognition in 1909, when the Qing Dynasty

Qing Dynasty

The Qing Dynasty was the last dynasty of China, ruling from 1644 to 1912 with a brief, abortive restoration in 1917. It was preceded by the Ming Dynasty and followed by the Republic of China....

proclaimed Mandarin as the "national language". The name Putonghua also has a long, albeit unofficial, pedigree. It was used as early as 1906 in writings by Zhu Wenxiong (朱文熊) to differentiate a modern standard language from classical Chinese

Classical Chinese

Classical Chinese or Literary Chinese is a traditional style of written Chinese based on the grammar and vocabulary of ancient Chinese, making it different from any modern spoken form of Chinese...

and other varieties of Chinese

Varieties of Chinese

Chinese comprises many regional language varieties sometimes grouped together as the Chinese dialects, the primary ones being Mandarin, Wu, Cantonese, and Min. These are not mutually intelligible, and even many of the regional varieties are themselves composed of a number of...

.

For some linguists of the early 20th century, the Putonghua, or "common tongue", was conceptually different from the Guoyu, or "national language". The former was a national prestige dialect or language, while the latter was the legal standard. Based on common understandings of the time, the two were, in fact, different. Guoyu was understood as formal vernacular Chinese, which is close to classical Chinese

Classical Chinese

Classical Chinese or Literary Chinese is a traditional style of written Chinese based on the grammar and vocabulary of ancient Chinese, making it different from any modern spoken form of Chinese...

. By contrast, Putonghua was called "the common speech of the modern man", which is the spoken language adopted as a national lingua franca

Lingua franca

A lingua franca is a language systematically used to make communication possible between people not sharing a mother tongue, in particular when it is a third language, distinct from both mother tongues.-Characteristics:"Lingua franca" is a functionally defined term, independent of the linguistic...

by conventional usage. The use of the term Putonghua by left-leaning intellectuals such as Qu Qiubai

Qu Qiubai

Qu Qiubai was born in Changzhou, Jiangsu, China. He was a leader of the Communist Party of China in the late 1920s.-Early life:...

and Lu Xun

Lu Xun

Lu Xun or Lu Hsün , was the pen name of Zhou Shuren , one of the major Chinese writers of the 20th century. Considered by many to be the leading figure of modern Chinese literature, he wrote in baihua as well as classical Chinese...

influenced the People's Republic of China

People's Republic of China

government to adopt that term to describe Mandarin in 1956. Prior to this, the government used both terms interchangeably.

Huayu, or "language of the Chinese nation

Zhonghua minzu

Zhonghua minzu , usually translated as Chinese ethnic groups or Chinese nationality, refers to the modern notion of a Chinese nationality transcending ethnic divisions, with a central identity for China as a whole...

", originally simply meant "Chinese language

Chinese language

The Chinese language is a language or language family consisting of varieties which are mutually intelligible to varying degrees. Originally the indigenous languages spoken by the Han Chinese in China, it forms one of the branches of Sino-Tibetan family of languages...

", and was used in overseas communities to contrast Chinese dialects against foreign languages. Over time, the desire to standardise the variety of Chinese spoken in these communities led to the adoption of the name "Huayu" to refer to Mandarin. This name also avoids choosing a side between the alternative names of Putonghua and Guoyu, which came to have political significance after their usages diverged along political lines between the PRC

People's Republic of China

and the ROC

Republic of China

. It also incorporates the notion that Mandarin is usually not the national or common language of the areas in which overseas Chinese

Overseas Chinese

Overseas Chinese are people of Chinese birth or descent who live outside the Greater China Area . People of partial Chinese ancestry living outside the Greater China Area may also consider themselves Overseas Chinese....

live.

In English, (Modern) Standard Chinese tends to be used when contrasting with non-Chinese languages, while Mandarin tends to be used for both this standard and for Northern Chinese when there is a contrast with other varieties of Chinese. However, in both English and Chinese, Mandarin (官话) has largely taken over the latter meaning, so phrases like Standard Mandarin (Chinese) have become more common.

History

Chinese language

s have always had dialects; hence prestige dialect

Prestige dialect

In sociolinguistics, prestige describes the level of respect accorded to a language or dialect as compared to that of other languages or dialects in a speech community. The concept of prestige in sociolinguistics is closely related to that of prestige or class within a society...

s have always existed, and linguae francae have always been needed. Confucius

Confucius

Confucius , literally "Master Kong", was a Chinese thinker and social philosopher of the Spring and Autumn Period....

, for example, used yǎyán (雅言), or "elegant speech", rather than colloquial regional dialects; text during the Han Dynasty

Han Dynasty

The Han Dynasty was the second imperial dynasty of China, preceded by the Qin Dynasty and succeeded by the Three Kingdoms . It was founded by the rebel leader Liu Bang, known posthumously as Emperor Gaozu of Han. It was briefly interrupted by the Xin Dynasty of the former regent Wang Mang...

also referred to tōngyǔ (通语), or "common language". Rime books, which were written since the Southern and Northern Dynasties

Southern and Northern Dynasties

The Southern and Northern Dynasties was a period in the history of China that lasted from 420 to 589 AD. Though an age of civil war and political chaos, it was also a time of flourishing arts and culture, advancement in technology, and the spreading of Mahayana Buddhism and Daoism...

, may also have reflected one or more systems of standard pronunciation

Pronunciation

Pronunciation refers to the way a word or a language is spoken, or the manner in which someone utters a word. If one is said to have "correct pronunciation", then it refers to both within a particular dialect....

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

Classical Chinese

Classical Chinese or Literary Chinese is a traditional style of written Chinese based on the grammar and vocabulary of ancient Chinese, making it different from any modern spoken form of Chinese...

, was a written standard, not a spoken one.
The Ming Dynasty

Ming Dynasty

The Ming Dynasty, also Empire of the Great Ming, was the ruling dynasty of China from 1368 to 1644, following the collapse of the Mongol-led Yuan Dynasty. The Ming, "one of the greatest eras of orderly government and social stability in human history", was the last dynasty in China ruled by ethnic...

(1368–1644) and the Qing Dynasty

Qing Dynasty

The Qing Dynasty was the last dynasty of China, ruling from 1644 to 1912 with a brief, abortive restoration in 1917. It was preceded by the Ming Dynasty and followed by the Republic of China....

(1644–1912) began to use the term guānhuà (官话/官話), or "official speech", to refer to the speech used at the courts

Noble court

The court of a monarch, or at some periods an important nobleman, is a term for the extended household and all those who regularly attended on the ruler or central figure...

. The term "Mandarin" is borrowed directly from Portuguese

Portuguese language

Portuguese is a Romance language that arose in the medieval Kingdom of Galicia, nowadays Galicia and Northern Portugal. The southern part of the Kingdom of Galicia became independent as the County of Portugal in 1095...

. The word mandarim was first used to name the Chinese bureaucratic officials (i.e., the mandarins), because the Portuguese

Portugal

Portugal , officially the Portuguese Republic is a country situated in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula. Portugal is the westernmost country of Europe, and is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the West and South and by Spain to the North and East. The Atlantic archipelagos of the...

, under the misapprehension that the Sanskrit word (mantri

Mantri

Mantri is a word of Sanskrit origin , used in Asian cultures with a Hindu tradition . It is used for a variety of public offices, from fairly humble to ministerial in rank. The term also forms part of a number of compounds...

or mentri) that was used throughout Asia to denote "an official" had some connection with the Portuguese word mandar (to order somebody to do something), and having observed that these officials all "issued orders", chose to call them mandarins. The use of the word mandarin by the Portuguese

Portugal

for the Chinese officials, as well as its putative connection with the Portuguese verb mandar is attested already in De Christiana expeditione apud Sinas suscepta ab Societate Jesu (1617) by Matteo Ricci

Matteo Ricci

Matteo Ricci, SJ was an Italian Jesuit priest, and one of the founding figures of the Jesuit China Mission, as it existed in the 17th-18th centuries. His current title is Servant of God....

and Nicolas Trigault

Nicolas Trigault

Nicolas Trigault was a Flemish Jesuit, and a missionary to China. He was also known by his latinised name Trigautius or Trigaultius, and his Chinese name Jīn Nígé .-Life and work:...

.

From this, the Portuguese 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 (that is, the various Mandarin dialects for grammar and meaning, and the specific dialect of the Imperial Court's locale for its pronunciation), is precisely what makes it such an appropriate term for Modern Standard Chinese (also the various Mandarin dialects for grammar and meaning, and their dialect of Beijing for its pronunciation).

It seems that during the early part of this period, the standard was based on the Nanjing dialect, but later the Beijing dialect

Beijing dialect

became increasingly influential, despite the mix of officials and commoners speaking various dialects in the capital, Beijing

Beijing

Beijing , also known as Peking , is the capital of the People's Republic of China and one of the most populous cities in the world, with a population of 19,612,368 as of 2010. The city is the country's political, cultural, and educational center, and home to the headquarters for most of China's...

. In the 17th century, the Empire had set up Orthoepy

Orthoepy

Orthoepy means the doctrine of correct pronunciation within a specific oral tradition. The term is from the Greek ὀρθοέπεια, from ὀρθός orthos "correct" and ἔπος epos "speech." The antonym is cacoepy "bad or wrong pronunciation"...

Academies (正音书院/正音書院 Zhèngyīn Shūyuàn) in an attempt to make pronunciation conform to the Beijing standard. But these attempts had little success since 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. Although by some account, as late as the early 20th century, the position of Nanjing Mandarin was considered to be higher than that of Beijing by some and the Chinese Postal Map Romanization standards set in 1906 included spellings with elements of Nanjing pronunciation. Nevertheless, by 1909, the dying Qing Dynasty

Qing Dynasty

The Qing Dynasty was the last dynasty of China, ruling from 1644 to 1912 with a brief, abortive restoration in 1917. It was preceded by the Ming Dynasty and followed by the Republic of China....

had established the Beijing dialect as guóyǔ (国语/國語), or the "national language".

After the Republic of China

Republic of China

was established in 1912, there was more success in promoting a common national language. A Commission on the Unification of Pronunciation

Commission on the Unification of Pronunciation

The Commission on the Unification of Pronunciation was established in the Republic of China from 1912 to 1913 to select ancillary phonetic symbols for Mandarin, and set the standard Guoyu pronunciation of basic Chinese characters.- History :It was decided in a draft on August 7, 1912, a month...

was convened with delegates from the entire country, who were chosen as often due to political considerations as they were for their linguistic expertise. A Dictionary of National Pronunciation (国音字典/國音字典) was published, which was based on the Beijing dialect. Meanwhile colloquial literature continued to develop apace written vernacular Chinese, despite the lack of a standardized pronunciation. Gradually, the members of the National Language Commission came to settle upon the Beijing dialect, which became the major source of standard national pronunciation due to the prestigious status of that dialect. In 1932, the commission published the Vocabulary of National Pronunciation for Everyday Use (国音常用. 字汇/字國音常用. 字彙), with little fanfare or official pronunciation. This dictionary was similar to the previous published one except that it normalized the pronunciations for all characters into the pronunciation of the Beijing dialect. Elements from other dialects continue to exist in the standard language, but as exceptions rather than the rule.

After the Chinese Civil War

Chinese Civil War

The Chinese Civil War was a civil war fought between the Kuomintang , the governing party of the Republic of China, and the Communist Party of China , for the control of China which eventually led to China's division into two Chinas, Republic of China and People's Republic of...

, the People's Republic of China

People's Republic of China

continued the effort. In 1955, the name guóyǔ was replaced by pǔtōnghuà (普通话/普通话), or "common speech". By contrast, the name guóyǔ continued to be used by the Republic of China which, after the 1949 loss in the Chinese Civil War, had a territory consisting of Taiwan

Taiwan

and some smaller islands. Since then, the standards used in the PRC and Taiwan have diverged somewhat, especially in newer vocabulary

Vocabulary

terms, and a little in pronunciation.

The advent of the 20th century has seen many profound changes in Mandarin. Many formal, polite and humble words

Chinese honorifics

Chinese honorifics were developed due to class consciousness and Confucian principles of order and respect in Ancient and Imperial China. The Chinese polite language also affects Japanese honorifics conceptually; both emphasized the idea of classes and in-group vs. out-group. So the language used...

that were in use in imperial China have not been used in daily conversation in modern-day Mandarin, such as jiàn (贱/賤 "my humble") and guì (贵/貴 "your honorable").

The word 'Putonghua' was defined in October 1955 by the Minister of Education Department in mainland China as follows: "Putonghua is the common spoken language of the modern Han

Han Chinese

Han Chinese are an ethnic group native to China and are the largest single ethnic group in the world.Han Chinese constitute about 92% of the population of the People's Republic of China , 98% of the population of the Republic of China , 78% of the population of Singapore, and about 20% of the...

group, the lingua franca

Lingua franca

of all ethnic groups in the country. The standard pronunciation of Putonghua is based on the Beijing dialect, Putonghua is based on the Northern dialects [i.e. the Mandarin dialects], and the grammar policy is modeled after the vernacular

Baihua

Baihua can refer to:*Written vernacular Chinese*Bai language*Pe̍h-ōe-jī...

used in modern Chinese literary classics."

In both mainland China and Taiwan, the use of Mandarin as the medium of instruction in the educational system and in the media has contributed to the spread of Mandarin. As a result, Mandarin is now spoken fluently by most people in mainland China and Taiwan.

In Hong Kong

Hong Kong

Hong Kong is one of two Special Administrative Regions of the People's Republic of China , the other being Macau. A city-state situated on China's south coast and enclosed by the Pearl River Delta and South China Sea, it is renowned for its expansive skyline and deep natural harbour...

and Macau

Macau

Macau , also spelled Macao , is, along with Hong Kong, one of the two special administrative regions of the People's Republic of China...

, which are now special administrative regions of the People's Republic of China, Cantonese

Standard Cantonese

Cantonese, or Standard Cantonese, is a language that originated in the vicinity of Canton in southern China, and is often regarded as the prestige dialect of Yue Chinese....

has been the primary language spoken by the majority of the population, for historical and linguistic reasons. Cantonese remains the official government language of Hong Kong and Macau. After Hong Kong's handover from Britain and Macau's handover from Portugal

Transfer of sovereignty of Macau

The transfer of sovereignty of Macau from the Portuguese Republic to the People's Republic of China occurred on 20 December 1999. Portuguese merchants settled in Macau and governed themselves since the time of the Ming Dynasty , first establishing a foothold in 1535, though Portugal's involvement...

, Putonghua is the language used by the governments of the two territories to communicate with the Central People's Government

Central People's Government

The Central People's Government is the central government of the People's Republic of China in Beijing. According to the 1982 Constitution, "Central People's Government" is synonymous with the State Council.-History:...

of the PRC. There have been widespread efforts to promote usage of Putonghua in Hong Kong since the handover, with specific efforts to train police and teachers.

Mandarin is now spreading overseas beyond East Asia

East Asia

East Asia or Eastern Asia is a subregion of Asia that can be defined in either geographical or cultural terms...

and Southeast Asia

Southeast Asia

Southeast Asia, South-East Asia, South East Asia or Southeastern Asia is a subregion of Asia, consisting of the countries that are geographically south of China, east of India, west of New Guinea and north of Australia. The region lies on the intersection of geological plates, with heavy seismic...

as well. In New York City

New York City

New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

, USA, the Cantonese dialect that dominated the Manhattan Chinatown for decades is being rapidly swept aside by Mandarin, the lingua franca

Lingua franca

of most of the latest Chinese immigrants.

Phonology

The phoneme

Phoneme

In a language or dialect, a phoneme is the smallest segmental unit of sound employed to form meaningful contrasts between utterances....

inventory of Standard Chinese consists of about two dozen consonants, of which only /n/, /ŋ/, and under certain circumstances /ɻ/ can occur in the syllable coda

Syllable coda

In phonology, a syllable coda comprises the consonant sounds of a syllable that follow the nucleus, which is usually a vowel. The combination of a nucleus and a coda is called a rime. Some syllables consist only of a nucleus with no coda...

; about half a dozen vowels, some of which form diphthong

Diphthong

A diphthong , also known as a gliding vowel, refers to two adjacent vowel sounds occurring within the same syllable. Technically, a diphthong is a vowel with two different targets: That is, the tongue moves during the pronunciation of the vowel...

s; and four tones

Tone (linguistics)

Tone is the use of pitch in language to distinguish lexical or grammatical meaning—that is, to distinguish or inflect words. All verbal languages use pitch to express emotional and other paralinguistic information, and to convey emphasis, contrast, and other such features in what is called...

. Statistically, vowels and tones are of similar importance in the language.

Syntax

Chinese is similar to English in many of its syntactic characteristics. It frequently forms sentences by stating a subject and following it by a predicate. The predicate can be an intransitive verb, a transitive verb followed by a direct object, a linking verb followed by a predicate nominative, etc.

Chinese differs from English in distinguishing between names of things, which can stand as predicate nominatives, and names of characteristics. Names of characteristics (e.g., green) cannot follow linking verbs. There is not an equivalent to the English predicate adjective. Instead, abstract characterizations such as "green," "angry," "hot," etc., stand as complete predicates in their own right

Stative verb

A stative verb is one that asserts that one of its arguments has a particular property . Statives differ from other aspectual classes of verbs in that they are static; that is, they have undefined duration...

. For example, 我不累. Wǒ bù lèi. The word-for-word version in English would be, "I not tired."

Chinese additionally differs from English in that it forms another kind of sentence by stating a topic and following it by a comment

Topic-prominent language

A topic-prominent language is a language that organizes its syntax to emphasize the topic–comment structure of the sentence. The term is best known in American linguistics from Charles N...

. To do this in English, speakers generally flag the topic of a sentence by prefacing it with "as for." For instance, one might say, "As for the money that Mama gave us, I have already bought candy with it." Note that the comment in this case is itself a complete sentence with subject, verb, and object. The Chinese version is simply, 妈妈给我们的钱,我已经买了糖了. Māma gěi wǒmen de qián, wǒ yǐjīng mǎile táng le. This is translated somewhat directly as, "The money Mom gave us, I already bought candy," lacking a preface as in English.

Chinese does not have tense. Instead it uses a combination of aspect markers and markers of modality. In other words, it employs single syllables that indicate such things as (1) that the subject of the sentence did something that was expected or anticipated, (2) that the subject of the sentence has gone through some experience within a stated or implicit time period, (3) that a statement that was formerly not the case has now become true, i.e., that there has been a change of status, (4) that there still has not been a change in a condition previously noted, etc.

The time that something happened can be given by an explicit term such as "yesterday," by relative terms such as "formerly," etc.

Another major difference between the syntax of Chinese and languages like English lies in the stacking order of modifying clauses

Head directionality parameter

In linguistics, the head directionality parameter is a proposed parameter that classifies word order accordingly to the placement of the head stem, which can be either:* Head-final : Heads follow phrases in forming larger phrases...

. 昨天发脾气的外交警察取消了沒有交钱的那些人的入境证. Zuótiān fāpíqì de wàijiāo jǐngchá qǔxiāole méiyǒu jiāoqián de nàxiē rén de rùjìngzhèng. Using the Chinese order in English, that sentence would be:

"[Yesterday got angry] --> foreign affairs policeman canceled [did not pay] --> [those people]'s visas."

In more ordinary English order, that would be:

"The foreign affairs policeman who got angry yesterday canceled the visas of those people who did not pay."

There are a few other features of Chinese that would be unfamiliar to speakers of English, but the features mentioned above are generally the most noticeable.

Writing system

The writing system for almost all the varieties of Chinese is based on a set of written logograms that has been passed down with little change for more than two thousand years. Each of these varieties of Chinese has developed some new words during this time, words for which there are no matching characters in the original set. While it is possible to invent new characters (as was done to represent many elements in the periodic table), a more common course of development has been to borrow old characters that have fallen into disuse on the basis of their pronunciations. Chinese Characters were traditionally read from top to bottom, right to left, but in modern usage it is more common to read from left to right.

In the original set of characters and definitions (containing more than 40,000 items) there were the demonstrative pronouns

Demonstrative

In linguistics, demonstratives are deictic words that indicate which entities a speaker refers to and distinguishes those entities from others...

"this" (此, cǐ) and "that" (彼, bǐ). But these terms were rare in spoken Mandarin, where "zhè" and "nà" (or regional variants of them) were used instead. There are no components in the original set that have those meanings associated with those pronunciations, so a word pronounced "zhè" (这／這) was borrowed to write "this", and a word pronounced "nà" (那) was borrowed to write "that". Originally, 這 meant "to go forward to meet someone", and 那 was the name of a country (and later became a rare surname).

The government of the PRC (as well as some other governments and institutions) has promulgated a set of simplified forms. Under this system, the forms of the words zhèlǐ ("here") and nàlǐ ("there") changed from 這裏/這裡 and 那裏/那裡 to 这里 and 那里.

Standard Chinese and Beijing dialect

Due to evolution and standardization, Mandarin, although based on the Beijing dialect

Beijing dialect

, is no longer synonymous with it. Part of this was due to the standardization to reflect a greater vocabulary scheme and a more archaic and "proper-sounding" pronunciation and vocabulary. The areas near Beijing, especially the cities of Chengde

Chengde

Chengde , previously known as Jehol or Re He , is a prefecture-level city in Hebei province, People's Republic of China, situated northeast of Beijing. It is best known as the site of the Mountain Resort, a vast imperial garden and palace formerly used by the Qing emperors as summer residence...

and Shijiazhuang

Shijiazhuang

Shijiazhuang is the capital and largest city of North China's Hebei province. Administratively a prefecture-level city, it is about south of Beijing...

in neighbouring Hebei

Hebei

' is a province of the People's Republic of China in the North China region. Its one-character abbreviation is "" , named after Ji Province, a Han Dynasty province that included what is now southern Hebei...

province, speak a dialect closest to the standardized pronunciation; this form is generally heard on national and local television and radio.

By the official definition of the People's Republic of China, Standard Chinese uses:

The phonology
Phonology
Phonology is, broadly speaking, the subdiscipline of linguistics concerned with the sounds of language. That is, it is the systematic use of sound to encode meaning in any spoken human language, or the field of linguistics studying this use...

or sound system of Beijing
Beijing
Beijing , also known as Peking , is the capital of the People's Republic of China and one of the most populous cities in the world, with a population of 19,612,368 as of 2010. The city is the country's political, cultural, and educational center, and home to the headquarters for most of China's...

. 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 the standardized language do not necessarily reproduce all of 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
Guoyu
Guoyu may mean or refer to:Language* the common term in Taiwan and Hong Kong for Standard Chinese, based on Mandarin Chinese* the Xianbei language during the Northern Wei Dynasty before its sinicization...

, for example.
The vocabulary
Vocabulary
A person's vocabulary is the set of words within a language that are familiar to that person. A vocabulary usually develops with age, and serves as a useful and fundamental tool for communication and acquiring knowledge...

of Mandarin dialects in general. This means that all slang
Slang
Slang is the use of informal words and expressions that are not considered standard in the speaker's language or dialect but are considered more acceptable when used socially. Slang is often to be found in areas of the lexicon that refer to things considered taboo...

and other elements deemed "regionalisms" are excluded. On the one hand, the vocabulary of all Chinese dialects, especially in more technical fields like science
Science
Science is a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe...

, law
Law
Law is a system of rules and guidelines which are enforced through social institutions to govern behavior, wherever possible. It shapes politics, economics and society in numerous ways and serves as a social mediator of relations between people. Contract law regulates everything from buying a bus...

, and government
Government
Government refers to the legislators, administrators, and arbitrators in the administrative bureaucracy who control a state at a given time, and to the system of government by which they are organized...

, are very similar. (This is similar to the profusion of Latin
Latin
Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...

and Greek
Greek language
Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history;...

words in European languages.) This means that much of the vocabulary of Standard Chinese is shared with all varieties of Chinese. On the other hand, much of the colloquial
Colloquialism
A colloquialism is a word or phrase that is common in everyday, unconstrained conversation rather than in formal speech, academic writing, or paralinguistics. Dictionaries often display colloquial words and phrases with the abbreviation colloq. as an identifier...

vocabulary and slang
Slang
Slang is the use of informal words and expressions that are not considered standard in the speaker's language or dialect but are considered more acceptable when used socially. Slang is often to be found in areas of the lexicon that refer to things considered taboo...

found in Beijing dialect is not found in Standard Chinese, and may not be understood by people outside Beijing.
The grammar
Grammar
In linguistics, grammar is the set of structural rules that govern the composition of clauses, phrases, and words in any given natural language. The term refers also to the study of such rules, and this field includes morphology, syntax, and phonology, often complemented by phonetics, semantics,...

and idiom of exemplary modern Chinese literature
Chinese literature
Chinese literature extends thousands of years, from the earliest recorded dynastic court archives to the mature fictional novels that arose during the Ming Dynasty to entertain the masses of literate Chinese...

, such as the work of Lu Xun
Lu Xun
Lu Xun or Lu Hsün , was the pen name of Zhou Shuren , one of the major Chinese writers of the 20th century. Considered by many to be the leading figure of modern Chinese literature, he wrote in baihua as well as classical Chinese...

, collectively known as "vernacular" (baihua). Modern written vernacular Chinese is in turn based loosely upon a mixture of northern (predominant), southern, and classical
Classical Chinese
Classical Chinese or Literary Chinese is a traditional style of written Chinese based on the grammar and vocabulary of ancient Chinese, making it different from any modern spoken form of Chinese...

grammar and usage. This gives formal Standard Chinese structure a slightly different feel from that of street Beijing dialect.

In theory the Republic of China in Taiwan defines Standard Chinese differently, though in reality the differences are minor and are concentrated mostly in the tones of a small number of words.

In fluent speech, Chinese speakers can easily tell the difference between a speaker of the Beijing dialect and a speaker of Standard Chinese. Beijingers speak Standard Chinese with elements of their own dialect just as speakers of other dialects do.
Speakers of Standard Chinese generally have little difficulty understanding the Beijing accent. Natives of Beijing commonly add a final "er" (/ɻ/) (兒音/儿音; pinyin: éryīn) — commonly used as a diminutive

Diminutive

In language structure, a diminutive, or diminutive form , is a formation of a word used to convey a slight degree of the root meaning, smallness of the object or quality named, encapsulation, intimacy, or endearment...

— to vocabulary items, as well as use more neutral tones in their speech. An example of standard versus Beijing dialect would be: standard men (door), Beijing menr. These give the Beijing dialect a somewhat distinctive lilt compared to Standard Chinese spoken elsewhere.

Although Chinese speakers make a clear distinction between Standard Chinese and the Beijing dialect, there are aspects of Beijing dialect that have made it into the official standard. Standard Chinese has a T-V distinction

T-V distinction

In sociolinguistics, a T–V distinction is a contrast, within one language, between second-person pronouns that are specialized for varying levels of politeness, social distance, courtesy, familiarity, or insult toward the addressee....

between the polite and informal versions of you that comes from Beijing dialect, but its use is quite diminished in daily speech. In addition, it also distinguishes between "zánmen" (we including the listener) and "wǒmen" (we not including the listener). In practice, neither distinction is commonly used by most Chinese, at least outside the Beijing area.

The following samples are some phrases from Beijing dialect which are not yet accepted into Standard Chinese:

倍儿 bèir means 'very much'; 拌蒜 bànsuàn means 'stagger'; 不吝 bù lìn means 'do not worry about'; 撮 cuō means 'eat'; 出溜 chūliū means 'slip'; (大)老爷儿们儿 dà lǎoyermenr means 'man, male'.

The following samples are some phrases from Beijing dialect which have been already accepted as Standard Chinese:

二把刀 èr bǎ dāo means 'not very skillful'; 哥们儿 gēménr means 'good male friend(s)', 'buddy(ies)'; 抠门儿 kōu ménr means 'parsimonious' or 'stingy'.

Standard Chinese and other varieties of Chinese

Although Standard Chinese is now firmly established as the lingua franca of China, it differs from other dialects even in the vast Mandarin dialect group, to the point of being to some extent unintelligible. For example, the word for "sky", 天 tiān, is pronounced with a high level tone in the Beijing dialect and in Standard Chinese, but with a low falling tone in the Tianjin dialect

Tianjin dialect

Tianjin dialect is a Mandarin dialect spoken in the urban area of Tianjin, China. It is comprehensible to speakers of other Mandarin dialects, though its greatest deviation from the others lies in its individual tones, and the lack of retroflex consonants...

and a high rising tone in the Chengdu dialect.

Although both mainland China and Taiwan use Standard Chinese in the official context and are keen to promote its use as a national lingua franca

Lingua franca

, there is no explicit official intent to have Standard Chinese replace the regional dialects and languages. Practically some elderly or rural Chinese-language speakers do not speak Standard Chinese fluently, if at all, but most are able to understand it. But the younger generations are almost all fluent in Standard Chinese, some to the extent of being unable to speak their local dialect.

It is common for Standard Chinese to be spoken with the speaker's regional accent, depending on factors as age, level of education, and the need and frequency to speak in official or formal situations. This appears to be changing, though, in large urban center

Urban Center

The Urban Center is a gallery on Madison Avenue in New York City , which is run by the Municipal Art Society . The gallery serves to champion the fields of urban planning and design in New York, and is also the site of MAS' community development workshops, seminars, lectures, and other educational...

s, as social changes, migrations, and urbanization

Urbanization

Urbanization, urbanisation or urban drift is the physical growth of urban areas as a result of global change. The United Nations projected that half of the world's population would live in urban areas at the end of 2008....

take place.

In the predominantly Han

Han Chinese

areas in mainland China, while the use of Standard Chinese is encouraged as the common working language, the PRC has been sensitive to the status of minority languages and has not discouraged their use. Standard Chinese is commonly used for logistic

Logistic

Logistic may refer to:* Logistics, the management of resources and their distributions** Logistic engineering, the scientific study of logistics** Military logistics, the study of logistics at the service of military units and operations...

al reasons, as in many parts of southern China the linguistic diversity is so large that neighboring city dwellers may have difficulties communicating with each other without a lingua franca.

In Taiwan, the relationship between Standard Chinese and other varieties, particularly Taiwanese Hokkien, has been more politically heated. During the martial law period under the Kuomintang

Kuomintang

The Kuomintang of China , sometimes romanized as Guomindang via the Pinyin transcription system or GMD for short, and translated as the Chinese Nationalist Party is a founding and ruling political party of the Republic of China . Its guiding ideology is the Three Principles of the People, espoused...

(KMT) between 1949 and 1987, the KMT government revived the Mandarin Promotion Council

Mandarin Promotion Council

The National Languages Committee, formerly Mandarin Promotion Council was established by the Ministry of Education of the Republic of China, commonly known as "Taiwan", with the purpose of standardizing and popularizing the usage of Mandarin in the Republic of China.It was created as the...

and discouraged or, in some cases, forbade the use of Hokkien and other dialects. This produced a political backlash in the 1990s. Under the administration of Chen Shui-Bian

Chen Shui-bian

Chen Shui-bian is a former Taiwanese politician who was the 10th and 11th-term President of the Republic of China from 2000 to 2008. Chen, whose Democratic Progressive Party has traditionally been supportive of Taiwan independence, ended more than fifty years of Kuomintang rule in Taiwan...

, other Taiwanese varieties were taught in schools. The former President, Chen Shui-Bian, often spoke in Hokkien during speeches, while after late 1990s, former President Lee Teng-hui

Lee Teng-hui

Lee Teng-hui is a politician of the Republic of China . He was the 7th, 8th, and 9th-term President of the Republic of China and Chairman of the Kuomintang from 1988 to 2000. He presided over major advancements in democratic reforms including his own re-election which marked the first direct...

, also speaks Hokkien openly.

In Singapore, the government has heavily promoted a "Speak Mandarin Campaign

Speak Mandarin Campaign

The Speak Mandarin Campaign is an initiative by the government of Singapore to encourage the Singaporean Chinese population to speak Mandarin, one of the four official languages of Singapore...

" since the late 1970s. The use of other Chinese languages in broadcast

Broadcasting

Broadcasting is the distribution of audio and video content to a dispersed audience via any audio visual medium. Receiving parties may include the general public or a relatively large subset of thereof...

media is prohibited and their use in any context is officially discouraged. This has led to some resentment amongst the older generations, as Singapore's migrant Chinese community is made up almost entirely of south Chinese descent. Lee Kuan Yew

Lee Kuan Yew

Lee Kuan Yew, GCMG, CH is a Singaporean statesman. He was the first Prime Minister of the Republic of Singapore, governing for three decades...

, the initiator of the campaign, admitted that to most Chinese Singaporeans, Mandarin was a "stepmother tongue" rather than a true mother language. Nevertheless, he saw the need for a unified language among the Chinese community not biased in favor of any existing group.

Accents

Most Chinese (Beijingers included) speak Standard Chinese 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

Diminutive

— sound to vocabulary items that other speakers would leave unadorned (兒音/儿音 éryīn).

On the other hand, speakers from northeastern and southern China as well as Taiwan often mix up zh and z, ch and c, and sh and s because their own home dialects often do not include retroflex initial consonants. Speakers of various Chinese dialects do not distinguish initial n and l, or final n and ng. As a result, it can be difficult for people who do not have the standard pronunciation to use pinyin

Pinyin

Pinyin is the official system to transcribe Chinese characters into the Roman alphabet in China, Malaysia, Singapore and Taiwan. It is also often used to teach Mandarin Chinese and spell Chinese names in foreign publications and used as an input method to enter Chinese characters into...

for dictionary look-up or typing on a computer, because they do not distinguish these sounds.

Role of Standard Chinese

From an official point of view, Standard Chinese serves the purpose of a lingua franca

Lingua franca

— a way for speakers of the several mutually unintelligible varieties of Chinese, as well as the Chinese minorities, to communicate with each other. The very name Putonghua, or "common speech," reinforces this idea. In practice, however, due to Standard Chinese being a "public" lingua franca, other languages or dialects, both Han and non-Han, have shown signs of losing ground to the standard, to the chagrin of certain local culture proponents.

On Taiwan, Guoyu (national language) continues to be the official term for Standard Chinese. The term Guoyu is relatively rarely used in the PRC, 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 (common speech), on the contrary, implies nothing more than the notion of a lingua franca

Lingua franca

. However, the term Guoyu does persist among many older mainland Chinese, and it is common in U.S. Chinese communities. Some in Taiwan, especially proponents of Taiwan independence

Taiwan independence

Taiwan independence is a political movement whose goals are primarily to formally establish the Republic of Taiwan by renaming or replacing the Republic of China , form a Taiwanese national identity, reject unification and One country, two systems with the People's Republic of China and a Chinese...

, 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 Standard Chinese with the terms "Beijing dialect" or Zhongwen (language of China). Those holding other positions on the political spectrum in Taiwan

Politics of the Republic of China

The politics of the Republic of China ,takes place in a framework of a semi-presidential representative democratic republic, whereby the President is head of state and the premier is head of government, and of a dominant party system. Executive power is exercised by the government. Legislative...

display different views.
In December 2004, the first survey of language use in the People's Republic of China

People's Republic of China

revealed that only 53% of its population, about 700 million people, could communicate in Standard Chinese. (China Daily) A survey by South China Morning Post

South China Morning Post

The South China Morning Post , together with its Sunday edition, the Sunday Morning Post, is an English-language Hong Kong newspaper, published by the SCMP Group with a circulation of 104,000....

released in September 2006 gave the same result. This 53% is defined as a passing grade above 3-B (i.e. error rate lower than 40%) of the Evaluation Exam. Another survey in 2003 by the China National Language And Character Working Committee shows, if mastery of Mandarin is defined as Grade 1-A (an error rate lower than 3%), the percentages were as follows: Beijing 90%, Shanghai

Shanghai

Shanghai is the largest city by population in China and the largest city proper in the world. It is one of the four province-level municipalities in the People's Republic of China, with a total population of over 23 million as of 2010...

3%, Tianjin

Tianjin

' is a metropolis in northern China and one of the five national central cities of the People's Republic of China. It is governed as a direct-controlled municipality, one of four such designations, and is, thus, under direct administration of the central government...

25%, Guangzhou

Guangzhou

Guangzhou , known historically as Canton or Kwangchow, is the capital and largest city of the Guangdong province in the People's Republic of China. Located in southern China on the Pearl River, about north-northwest of Hong Kong, Guangzhou is a key national transportation hub and trading port...

0.5%, Dalian

Dalian

Dalian is a major city and seaport in the south of Liaoning province, Northeast China. It faces Shandong to the south, the Yellow Sea to the east and the Bohai Sea to the west and south. Holding sub-provincial administrative status, Dalian is the southernmost city of Northeast China and China's...

10%, Xi'an

Xi'an

Xi'an is the capital of the Shaanxi province, and a sub-provincial city in the People's Republic of China. One of the oldest cities in China, with more than 3,100 years of history, the city was known as Chang'an before the Ming Dynasty...

12%, Chengdu

Chengdu

Chengdu , formerly transliterated Chengtu, is the capital of Sichuan province in Southwest China. It holds sub-provincial administrative status...

1%, Nanjing

Nanjing

' is the capital of Jiangsu province in China and has a prominent place in Chinese history and culture, having been the capital of China on several occasions...

2%.

With the fast development of China, more Chinese people leaving rural areas for cities for job or study opportunities, and the Putonghua Evaluation Exam has quickly become popular. Many university graduates take this exam before looking for a job. Employers often require varying proficiency in Standard Chinese from applicants depending on the nature of the positions. Applicants of some positions, e.g. telephone operators, may be required to obtain a certificate. People raised in Beijing are sometimes considered inherently 1-A (Error rate: lower than 3%) and exempted from this requirement. As for the rest, the score of 1-A is rare. According to the official definition of proficiency levels, people who get 1-B (Error rate: lower than 8%) are considered qualified to work as television correspondents or in broadcasting stations. 2-A (Error rate: lower than 13%) can work as Chinese Literature Course teachers in public schools. Other levels include: 2-B (Error rate: lower than 20%), 3-A (Error rate: lower than 30%) and 3-B (Error rate: lower than 40%). In China, a proficiency of level 3-B usually cannot be achieved unless special training is received. Even if many Chinese do not speak with standard pronunciation, spoken Standard Chinese is widely understood to some degree.

The China National Language And Character Working Committee was founded in 1985. One of its important responsibilities is to promote Standard Chinese proficiency for Chinese native speakers.

Standard Chinese and the educational system

In both the PRC and Taiwan, Standard Chinese is taught by immersion starting in elementary school. After the second grade, the entire educational system is in Standard Chinese, except for local language classes that have been taught for a few hours each week in Taiwan starting in the mid-1990s.

Common Phrases

English	Traditional characters Traditional Chinese character Traditional Chinese characters refers to Chinese characters in any character set which does not contain newly created characters or character substitutions performed after 1946. It most commonly refers to characters in the standardized character sets of Taiwan, of Hong Kong, or in the Kangxi...	Simplified characters Simplified Chinese character Simplified Chinese characters are standardized Chinese characters prescribed in the Xiandai Hanyu Tongyong Zibiao for use in Mainland China. Along with traditional Chinese characters, it is one of many standard character sets of the contemporary Chinese written language...	Pinyin
Hello!	你好！	你好！	Nǐ hǎo!
What is your name?	你叫什麼名字？	你叫什么名字？	Nǐ jiào shénme míngzi?
My name is...	我叫...	我叫...	Wǒ jiào ...
How are you?	你好嗎？/ 你怎麼樣？	你好吗？/ 你怎么样？	Nǐ hǎo ma? / Nǐ zěnmeyàng?
I am fine, how about you?	我很好，你呢？	我很好，你呢？	Wǒ hěn hǎo, nǐ ne?
I don't want it / I don't want to	我不要。	我不要。	Wǒ bú yào.
Thank you!	謝謝！	谢谢！	Xièxie
Welcome! / You're welcome! (Literally: No need to thank me!) / Don't mention it! (Literally: Don't be so polite!)	歡迎！/ 不用謝！/ 不客氣！	欢迎！/ 不用谢！/ 不客气！	Huānyíng! / Búyòng xiè! / Bú kèqì!
Yes. / Correct.	是。 / 對。	是。 / 对。	Shì. / Duì.
No. / Incorrect.	不是。/ 不對。	不是。/ 不对。	Búshì. / Bú duì.
When?	什麼時候？	什么时候？	Shénme shíhou?
How much money?	多少錢？	多少钱？	Duōshǎo qián?
Can you speak a little slower?	您能說得再慢些嗎？	您能说得再慢些吗？	Nín néng shuō de zài mànxiē ma?
Good morning! / Good morning!	早上好！ / 早安！	早上好！ / 早安！	Zǎoshang hǎo! / Zǎo'ān!
Goodbye!	再見！	再见！	Zàijiàn!
How do you get to the airport?	去機場怎麼走？	去机场怎么走？	Qù jīchǎng zěnme zǒu?
I want to fly to London on the eighteenth	我想18號坐飛機到倫敦	我想18号坐飞机到伦敦	Wǒ xiǎng shíbā hào zuò fēijī dào Lúndūn.
How much will it cost to get to Munich?	到慕尼黑需要多少錢？	到慕尼黑需要多少钱？	Dào Mùníhēi xūyào duōshǎo qián?
I don't speak Chinese very well.	我的中文講得不太好.	我的中文讲得不太好.	Wǒ de Zhōngwén jiǎng de bú tài hǎo.
Do you speak English?	你會說英文嗎？	你会说英文吗？	Nǐ huì shuō yīngwén ma?
I have no money.	我沒有錢.	我没有钱.	Wǒ méiyǒu qián.

External links

Learning Chinese Language in BBC
Popup Chinese - online mp3 podcasts and lessons in mandarin. Also accompanying videos, character-writing tools, and hsk test prep materials.
Children's Chinese Audiobooks online mp3 vocabulary builders and audiobooks
Arch Chinese - Learn To Read And Write Chinese Characters - Online Chinese character stroke order animations for over 12,000 frequently used Chinese characters, simplified and traditional, with native speaker pronunciations, example phrases, writing worksheet generation and character learning flashcards.
New Asia Yale-in-China Chinese Language Center of the Chinese University of Hong Kong
Chinese University of Hong Kong
The Chinese University of Hong Kong is a research-led university in Hong Kong.CUHK is the only tertiary education institution in Hong Kong with Nobel Prize winners on its faculty, including Chen Ning Yang, James Mirrlees, Robert Alexander Mundell and Charles K. Kao...
The musical nature of the Four Tones of Chinese mandarin
Chinese for Business - vocabulary lists for business Chinese

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.

Names

History

Phonology

Syntax

Writing system

Standard Chinese and Beijing dialect

Standard Chinese and other varieties of Chinese

Accents

Role of Standard Chinese

Standard Chinese and the educational system

Common Phrases

See also

External links