ProCSL is a language center. Our goal is to help our students learn a language (Mandarin Chinese) like a native speaker. To accomplish this mission we believe that some background knowledge of Mandarin Chinese will help in the language learning process. This is the reason that we set up a blog--Some thoughts about CSL…
January 15, 2013
A brief introduction to the language you are going to learn:
Q1: Who uses Mandarin Chinese?
Mandarin Chinese, like English, is used in many different countries and societies. It is the official language of Mainland China (the People’s Republic of China, including Hong Kong and Macau), and of Taiwan (the Republic of China). It is also one of the four official languages of Singapore. In addition, it’s spoken by many ethnic Chinese in Malaysia, and other ethnic Chinese people around the world. Today, Mandarin Chinese is the native language of more people than any other language in the world. About a fifth of the world’s population speaks Chinese. Also, it is one of the six official languages of the United Nations, under the name "Chinese".
Q2: What is Standard Chinese?
Standard Chinese is also known as Mandarin (speech of officials, 官話), Putonghua (common language, 普通話, the term used in China), Guoyu (national language, 國語, the term used in Taiwan), Huayu (language spoken by ethnic Chinese people, 華語, the term used in Malaysia and Singapore) and Hanyu (the language of the Han Chinese ethnic group, which makes up more than 90% of the population of China.漢語).
It is a member of the Sino-Tibetan language family, and not related to the Indo-European language family like English and most of other European languages. It is also not related to Japanese or Korean.
The grammar, vocabulary, and phonology of Mandarin Chinese
The phonology: in 1912 the Ministry of Education of the Republic of China (ROC) held a conference on the Unification of Pronunciation of the Guoyu /national language of China. The phonology is based on the Beijing dialect without some of the features that characterize the Beijing dialect.
The vocabulary was drawn from the large and diverse group of Mandarin varieties spoken across China.
The grammar is adopt the body of modern literary works that define written vernacular Chinese to replace Classical Chinese (文言文/古文) as it was developed around 1917 by Hu Shih (胡適) and other scholars as part of the so called New Literature Movement (新文學運動).
In a word, Standard Chinese, Putonghua, Guoyu, and Huayu are not wholly identical to the Beijing dialect in use of phonology, vocabulary, and grammar.
Q3: Why there are so many names for Standard Chinese?
The English word “Mandarin” is from Portuguese and originally meant an official of the Ming(明) or Qing(清) Dynasties. These officials communicated using a language based on various northern varieties, later on “Mandarin” implied to the speech of court officials (Guanhu,官話).
Around 1920, the government of the Republic of China (ROC) began to strongly promote the national language (Guoyu, 國語) as part of the so called Language Movement (國語運動). Even after the civil war, the government of the newly founded People’s Republic of China (PRC, 1949) continued the previous government’s policy of promoting Guoyu in China, but referred to it as Putonghua (普通話, common language). PRC government reformed many traditional characters into simplified characters (簡體字), and developed Hanyu pinyin(漢語拼音) in the 1950s. Meanwhile, after relocating to Taiwan in 1949, The ROC government continued to promote the national language (Guoyu, 國語) in Taiwan.
Q4 How many languages were in use in China before the government of the Republic of China (ROC) began to promote (Guoyu, 國語) in the 1920s?
Chinese Language in China: We can divide the Chinese language in China into the Guanhua (Mandarin) areas, Chinese Dialect areas, Non-Chinese Language areas. Each area can be further subdivided into four major Guanhua, six main Chinese Dialect, and Non-Chinese areas--
Guanhua area is subdivide in four regions --1) Northern Mandarin (Beifang Guanhua, 北方官話), including Beijing (北京), Hebei(河北), Henan(河南), Shandong(山東), Liaoning(遼寧), Jilin(吉林), and Heilongjiang(黑龍江). 2) Northwestern Mandarin (Xibei Guanhua, 西北官話): Shanxi(山西), Shanxi(陝西), Ningxia(寧夏), and Gansu(甘肅). 3）Southwest Mandarin (西南官話), including Sichuan(四川), Guizhou(貴州), Yunnan(雲南), and northern Guangxi(廣西). 4) Lower Yangtze Mandarin/ Jiang-Huai Mandarin (Xia jiang/Jiang-Huai Guanhua, 下江／江淮官話), including Anhui(安徽) and most of Hubei(湖北) and Jiangsu(江蘇). The differences among these four areas of Guanhua are analogous to the differences among British, American, Canadian, and Australian English.
Main Chinese Dialect areas are subdivide into six regions--1) Wuyu (Wu, 吳語): Shanghai(上海), Southern Jiangsu(江蘇), and Zhejiang(浙江). 2) Yueyu/Cantonese (Yue, 粵語): Guangdong(廣東), and most of Guangxi(廣西). 3) Xiangyu (Xiang, 湘語): Hunan(湖南). 4)Minyu (Min,閩): Fujian(福建), Hainan(海南), part of Guangdong(廣東) and Taiwan(台灣). 5)Keyu (Hakka, 客語): Jiangxi(江西), parts of Guangdong(廣東), Fujian(福建), some small parts in other provinces of China and Taiwan(台灣). 6)Ganyu (Gan, 贛語): Jiangxi(江西). The difference among Mandarin and these six Chinese dialects are as different as Spanish is from French and Italian, for example.
Non-Chinese languages areas include Uighur(維吾爾語):Xinjiang(新疆), Mongolian(蒙古語): Menggu(蒙古) and Tibetan(藏語): XiZang(西藏). The differences among Mandarin and Non-Chinese languages are like the differences among English, Japanese and Russian.
In addition to the above, there are countless minority language in China.
Chinese language in Taiwan: There are 11 tribes of Aboriginal language. Since the 17th century, Han Chinese have immigrated from the mainland to Taiwan and brought dialects such as Min and Hakka. Between 1945 and 1949, over a million military and government officials of the ROC government came to Taiwan, bringing their various languages and dialects, but also establishing Mandarin Chinese as the official language of Taiwan.
Q5: What’s the role of Mandarin Chinese in China and Taiwan?
Just imagine how the people of Taiwan and China would communicate without government promotion of Guoyu/Putonghua (國語/普通話)?
“Lingua franca” is a language to communicate between persons not sharing a native language. English is the most important “lingua franca” around the world today, but Mandarin Chinese can also be considered a “lingua franca” for the more than 1.3 billion people in mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan and overseas ethnic Chinese.
Q6: Where should a learner of Chinese as a second language study “Standard Chinese”?
In English there are many different accents -- British, American, Canadian, Australian, etc. Similarly for Mandarin Chinese there many different accents, including Taiwan Chinese, Hong Kong Chinese, Singapore Chinese; and even in mainland China you will hear many different accents due to influence of local or provincial dialects/ Guanhua. In the other word, even you’ve acquire “Standard Chinese” when you walking in Beijing city and talking to Beijing local people, the chances are you probably have a hard time of understanding their speaking, and this phenomenon will happen in other mainland parts of China, Shanghai, Guangdong, Yunnan etc. or other island of China, Hainan, Hong Kong etc. or other countries, Singapore, Malaysia and Taiwan. We are pleased that some textbook writers have noticed this appearance, so when they make the MP3 they recorded in various countries/societies.
So where and from whom should one learn Standard Chinese? The best source is a well-trained language instructor. The good news is that no matter what accent of Chinese you hear, after a short period of time it will be possible to understand all common Chinese accents. You do not have to feel any pressure what kind of Mandarin Chinese accent you should acquire. It’s up to you/your own preference.
So, as a second Chinese language learner, you do not need to be too concerned with where your instructor comes from, or whether he/she has a certain accent when speaking Mandarin. More importantly, your language instructor should be an experienced and qualified teacher, preferably with government-recognized certification. ), As we know, different pronunciations, z vs zh: 支柱vs 資助; sh vs s: 蘇軾vs舒適; en vs eng 失身vs 師生; etc.; and tones, wen4 (問), wen3 (吻), wen2 (聞), Wen1 (溫)etc. indicate different meaning, for example,
我問你（wen4: to ask, “I ask you.”)
我吻你(wen3: to kiss, “I kiss you.”)
我聞你(wen2: to smell, “I smell you.”)
我溫你(wen1: to warm, “I warm you”—it didn’t make any senses for this sentence), and “有(you3 ) + Verb sentence”, it exists in many of southern China dialect such as Min or Taiwanese etc. but it is not correct syntax in Standard Chinese. The miss pronunciations and tones not only create curtain ambiguity or people might not understand what you’re trying to said, but also will effect your ability of using phonetic input methods on a computer when you are looking for a word or writing an article.
A certified and experienced Chinese instructor will help you to focus the important parts of learning process, and prevent your language usage from becoming “fossilized” (adopting bad habits that are hard to get rid of in the future and lead you to successfully acquire your target language—Mandarin Chinese.
written by Yeh, Fang-Wen (葉芳妏)
P.S. The ROC is currently in Taiwan, while the PRC is currently in China.