Mandarin
Mandarin is the standard dialect of spoken Chinese. It is referred to as Pǔtōnghuà in China, Guóyǔ in Taiwan, and Huáyǔ in Singapore. In its modern form, Mandarin is based on the dialect of Beijing. Localisms, such as the final r sound favored by Beijing residents, are not part of the standard form. Although each city in China has a distinct accent, the language in the northern and central regions is of a single language type, or "regional speech" (fāngyán). In the South, Cantonese is spoken. This is a separate fāngyán, and in many ways it is a different language than Mandarin.
| Mandarin | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Traditional Chinese | 普通話 | ||||||||
| Simplified Chinese | 普通话 | ||||||||
| Literal meaning | common speech | ||||||||
| |||||||||
In imperial times, people in different parts of the empire communicated with each other using written Classical Chinese (wényán wén). By the Tang dynasty (618–907), spoken and written Chinese had diverged into separate languages. At the end of the Tang, China was divided into northern and southern states. The Mongols conquered both states in the thirteenth century. They treated North China and South China as two units within their larger empire. For example, Marco Polo writes of "Cathay" (North China) and "Manzi" (South China). He does not use any expression that corresponds to the modern concept of "China." By the time China was reunited by the Ming dynasty in 1368, North and South had drifted far apart.
The first Ming emperor selected the Lower Yangtse dialect of Nanjing to serve as the basis of an imperial lingua franca. This dialect was referred to as Guānhuà, or "officials' speech". The word "Mandarin," first recorded in Portuguese in 1524, refers to a Chinese official. The Chinese word guān was translated into English as "Mandarin," so the word refers to the dialect as well.
Classical Chinese continued to be used for formal writing. But various works of popular literature, such as the novel The Golden Lotus (1610), were written in the Lower Yangtse dialect. In the late nineteenth century, the dialect of Beijing displaced that of Nanjing. Although the dialects of the two cities are mutually intelligible, there is considerable divergence.
Regional language differences mainly concern pronunciation. They are far less noticeable in written form. Written Chinese is classified as either Classical or vernacular (báihuà). In the 1920s, Classical Chinese was displaced by a writing system based on Mandarin. Speakers of other dialects can read generally read Mandarin báihuà without difficulty, even if they do not speak Mandarin.
In the twentieth century, both the Nationalists and the Communists promoted the use of Mandarin. This policy has been resisted occasionally by speakers of other dialects. The popularity of Hong Kong-based pop culture has allowed the Cantonese-speaking South to resist the advance of Mandarin.
References
- Coblin, W. South, "A brief history of Mandarin", Journal of the American Oriental Society, vol. 120, issue 4, pp. 537–552.