Chinese languages

What is the word for Mandarin in Chinese?

No one knows the Mandarin word for Mandarin? I thought that there are quite a couple of people in this forum intending to teach foreigner Mandarin!

Mandarin, or the national language is usually called the 'common language' or putonghua, in China, but national language guoyu in Taiwan. In HK, the latter was used until the mid to late eighties. Now everyone calls it putonghua.

Dyl.

I know the term pu3 tong1 hua4, guo2 yu which literally mean common language and national language respectively.

But this term is coined after mandarin is enforced as the "common language" or "national language" in China. How about before that?

I might suggest Jin1, but again it is called jin1 because it was the language of the capital. Is there any general term for the language which doen't change with regard to political changes?

I would like to know the origin of the english wrod "mandarin" too.

Eng Wai

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guan hua? The language of the officials? Is that what you mean?

Have a look at one of my older messages on usenet

http://groups-beta.google.com/group/sci ... ode=source

Dyl.

I think I don't have a good undestanding of the history of Mandarin. Could I ask you to answer some of my questions?

i) When did mandarin become established as a consistent spoken language?

ii) If it was formed before it became the guan1 hua4/jing1 hua4, then what was it called?

The mandarin I mean here is the language group widely spoken by northern (bei jing, ji lin etc), western (wei wu er, dungan? etc), central (he nan etc) Chinese, not the common tongue. A Bei Jing person cuold speak fluent and native mandarin but a wayward Pu Tong Hua.

I hope you can understand and please correct me if I get anything wrong.

Eng Wai

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Eng Wai wrote:

>i) When did mandarin become established as a consistent spoken language?

After the collapse of the Ching (Qing) dynasty and the establishment of the Republic of China in 1912. During the first number of years of the R.O.C, there were discussion of forming a 'national language' or 'guo2 yu3'. A proposal of a number dialects including Cantonese were proposed to Dr. Sun Yat Sen and finally adopted Mandarin.
Mandarin Chinese definition: Northern Chinese as the foundation with Beijing pronunciation as the standard (I will write more next time on this)

>ii) If it was formed before it became the guan1 hua4/jing1 hua4, then what was it called?

It was just called 'guan1 hua4' depending on where the capitals were !

To Language Learner,

I am talking about Mandarin, not Pu Tong Hua (common language)

"After the collapse of the Ching (Qing) dynasty and the establishment of the Republic of China in 1912. During the first number of years of the R.O.C, there were discussion of forming a 'national language' or 'guo2 yu3'. A proposal of a number dialects including Cantonese were proposed to Dr. Sun Yat Sen and finally adopted Mandarin.
Mandarin Chinese definition: Northern Chinese as the foundation with Beijing pronunciation as the standard (I will write more next time on this)"

Then you mean before ROC no one was speaking Mandarin? Someone must have invented Mandarin then.

"It was just called 'guan1 hua4' depending on where the capitals were !"

Mandarin is established as a dialect group roughly after Yuan dynasty. After Yuan, even from Yuan, the capital was always in Bei Jing. So Mandarin was called guan hua because it is the language of capital. If the capital was located outside Madarin strip, say in Amoy (Xia Men), then Min Nan will be the guan hua, but Min Nan is still Min Nan because the language is establsihed/spoken in Min Nan.

Some websites use the term Bei3 Fang1 Hua4, which is a more, though not entirely, convincing terminology for Mandarin in Mandarin for me.

Eng Wai

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Hi Eng Wai,

>Then you mean before ROC no one was speaking Mandarin? Someone must have invented Mandarin then.

Perhaps I should have said: Before the ROC, Mandarin existed but not as 'standard' as after the ROC, not as 'scholarly studied & gui1 fan4' as after the ROC !

Again here is the official definition of nowadays Putonghua:
Putonghua is based on Bei3 Fang1 Hua4 but with pronunciation from Beijing on individual characters
Putonghua shi4 yi3 bei3 fang1 hua4 wei2 ji1 chu3, yi3 Bei3 Jing1 yin1 wei2 zhun3 !

I hope it helps !

I am not talking about pu tong hua, but i am talking about mandarin, the language group. But from the websites I read, and the official definition of Pu Tong Hua provided by Mr. Language Learner, mandarin in mandarin should be bei3 fang3 hua4, transliterated as northern language, not guan1 hua4. But again I found some websites classifying regional mandarin into xi nan guan hua, dong bei guan hua etc. Anyone could suggest an authorative answer?

Eng Wai