Mandarin Chinese

Mandarin is the largest group of Chinese languages. It is spoken by many people in China. It is used in places from Yunnan in the southwest to Xinjiang in the northwest and Heilongjiang in the northeast. Some Mandarin varieties, such as those of the Southwest and the Lower Yangtze, are not easy to understand with the Beijing dialect. Mandarin is often placed high in lists of languages by number of native speakers.

Most Mandarin varieties have four tones. The historical capitals of China have been in the Mandarin-speaking area for a long time, making these dialects very prestigious. Some form of Mandarin has been used for government and courts since the 14th century.

In the early 20th century, a standard language based on the Beijing dialect was chosen as the national language. Today, Standard Chinese is the official language of China and Taiwan, one of four official languages of Singapore, and one of six official languages of the United Nations. It is also the most commonly taught form of Chinese as a foreign language.

Name

The word "mandarin" comes from Portuguese. Long ago, officials in China used a special language to talk to each other. When European explorers learned about this language, they called it "Mandarin" because it was used by officials.

Today, when people say "Mandarin," they usually mean Standard Chinese. This is based on the dialect spoken in Beijing. It is the main language in China, Taiwan, and one of the official languages in Singapore. It is also used to teach students in schools in China and Taiwan and is one of the official languages of the United Nations.

History

Further information: History of the Chinese language

Many local varieties of Chinese started from older forms of Old Chinese and Middle Chinese. There are seven main groups of dialects. Besides Mandarin, the others are Wu, Gan, and Xiang in central China and Min, Hakka, and Yue on the southeast coast. The Language Atlas of China lists three more groups: Jin, which came from Mandarin, and Huizhou in the Huizhou region of Anhui and Zhejiang, and Pinghua in Guangxi and Yunnan.

Old Mandarin

Main article: Old Mandarin

After the Northern Song fell, a common way of speaking grew in northern China during the Jin and Yuan dynasties. This language was called Old Mandarin. New kinds of everyday literature used this language, like verses, plays, and stories, such as qu and sanqu poetry.

Rules for rhyming in these verses were written in a rime dictionary called the Zhongyuan Yinyun (1324). This book showed features of modern Mandarin, like sound changes. Another source was the 'Phags-pa script, based on Tibetan writing, used in the Mongol empire.

Vernacular literature

Until the early 1900s, formal writing was done in Literary Chinese, based on old classics from the Warring States period and the Han dynasty. Over time, spoken language changed a lot. The formal writing was not good for stories or plays. From the Yuan dynasty to the Qing dynasty, a new kind of writing called written vernacular Chinese developed. This writing showed Mandarin speech and helped unite Mandarin speakers.

Hu Shih wrote an important study about this new style.

Late imperial koiné

Main article: Mandarin (late imperial lingua franca)

Until the mid-1900s, many people in South China only spoke their local language. Leaders of the Ming and Qing dynasties used a common language based on Mandarin, called Guānhuà, to help with government work. Knowing this language was important for government jobs, but it was never clearly defined.

Leaders saw that people from different places spoke very differently. In 1728, the Yongzheng Emperor asked leaders from Guangdong and Fujian to teach proper speaking. This led to books showing the ideal way to speak. These books had common sound and tone changes.

Standard Chinese

Main article: Standard Chinese

The form of Mandarin spoken by educated people in Beijing became China’s official language in the early 1900s. Leaders wanted to replace old formal writing with a new way based on northern speech. After talks, they chose the Beijing dialect in 1932. The People’s Republic, starting in 1949, kept this standard and called it pǔtōnghuà.

This standard language is used in schools, news, and formal events in mainland China and Taiwan, and among the Chinese community of Singapore. In Hong Kong and Macau, the local Cantonese is still used. Since the 2000s, China has worked to teach Standard Mandarin widely to reduce regional differences.

Geographic distribution

Mandarin is spoken in northern and southwestern China, and also in some nearby countries. Until the late 20th century, few Mandarin speakers moved overseas, but now many live in cities around the world.

Most Han Chinese in northern and southwestern China speak a form of Mandarin. The North China Plain made it easier for people to move, so the language stayed quite the same across this large area. In southern China, mountains and rivers created many different language groups, especially in Fujian.

Mandarin covers a huge area with nearly a billion people, so there are big differences in pronunciation, vocabulary, and grammar. Many types of Mandarin are not easy to understand from one another.

Standard Mandarin is an official language of Taiwan. The Mandarin used there is almost the same as in mainland China, with just a few differences in technical words.

Mandarin is one of the four official languages of Singapore, along with English, Malay, and Tamil. In the past, most Chinese people in Singapore spoke other languages like Hokkien, Teochew, Cantonese, or Hakka. In 1979, the government started the Speak Mandarin Campaign to encourage using Mandarin. This has made Mandarin much more common in Singapore, while other Chinese languages are used less.

In Malaysia, Mandarin is used in Chinese schools, following the Singapore style. But in everyday life, it is not used as much, as many Chinese people still speak Hokkien or Cantonese. However, in the state of Johor, Mandarin is used more, partly because of influence from Singapore.

In northern Myanmar, a type of Southwestern Mandarin is spoken by local Chinese and other groups. In some areas controlled by rebel groups, Mandarin is also used as a common language.

The Dungan people of Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan are descendants of Hui people who moved to the Russian Empire from Dzungaria. About 500 speakers live in Rovensky District, Saratov Oblast in Russia. The Dungan speak two dialects from Central Plains Mandarin and write their language using the Cyrillic script.

Classification

Further information: List of varieties of Chinese

The way people group Chinese dialects has changed a lot over time. In 1936, a scientist named Wang Li made the first grouping based on sounds. He included dialects from northern and southwestern China, as well as Hunan and northern Jiangxi in his Mandarin group.

Later, other scientists made new groupings. By 1960, Yuan Jiahua had a popular way to group them into seven types. He kept some groups separate and split Mandarin into four parts: Northern, Northwestern, Southwestern, and Jiang–Huai.

Mandarin Chinese has many different types, or subgroups. One big group is called Northeastern Mandarin, spoken in northeast China. It is very close to the standard form of Chinese. Beijing Mandarin is spoken in and around Beijing and is the basis for standard Chinese. Jilu Mandarin is spoken in Hebei and Shandong provinces. Jiaoliao Mandarin is found in parts of Shandong and Liaodong Peninsulas.

Other groups include Central Plains Mandarin, spoken in Henan and parts of Shaanxi, and Lanyin Mandarin in Gansu and Ningxia. Jianghuai Mandarin is spoken along the north side of the Yangtze River. Southwestern Mandarin is the most widely spoken, covering Hubei, Sichuan, Guizhou, Yunnan, and parts of other provinces.

Phonology

See also: Standard Chinese phonology

A syllable in Mandarin can have up to five parts: a starting consonant, a glide, a vowel, an ending sound, and a tone. In simple terms, the glide, vowel, and ending are grouped together as a "final." Not all possible combinations are used. For example, Standard Chinese, based on the Beijing dialect, has about 1,200 different syllables.

Mandarin dialects share some key features:

• The palatalization of velar consonants and alveolar sibilants when they come before palatal glides;
• One syllable can hold at most four sound units (up to three vowels and no cluster of consonants)
• The loss of final stop consonants and /-m/ (though in some Jianghuai Mandarin and Jin Chinese dialects, a hint of the final stops remains as a glottal stop);
• The use of retroflex consonants (though these are missing in many Southwestern and Northeastern Mandarin dialects);
• The historical devoicing of stops and sibilants (also common in most non-Mandarin varieties).

Most Mandarin areas tell apart the retroflex sounds /ʈʂ ʈʂʰ ʂ/ from the similar sounds /ts tsʰ s/, though they often use different sounds than in standard language.

Mandarin dialects usually have few vowel sounds. Syllabic fricatives, like in standard zi and zhi, are common in Mandarin dialects.

The old ending sounds have changed in different ways across Mandarin dialects.

In general, no two Mandarin-speaking areas have exactly the same set of tone sounds, but most have very similar tone patterns.

Middle Chinese stopping and affricate sounds had a three-way difference between plain, aspirated, and voiced consonants. In Mandarin dialects the voicing is usually lost, leaving aspirated sounds in syllables with an old high pitch and non-aspirated sounds in other syllables.

In old Chinese sound study, syllables that ended in a stop in Middle Chinese were considered a special group called the "entering tone". These stopping endings have mostly disappeared in most Mandarin dialects.

Though the tone system is common across Mandarin dialects, how the tones are actually said tone contours varies widely.

Vocabulary

Mandarin has many words made from more than one sound. This happened because Mandarin changed sounds more over time. To solve this, new words were created by adding small parts like lao- 老 or -zi 子, or by joining two words together, like cōngmáng 匆忙, which means "hurried" or "busy".

One special feature in southwest Mandarin is repeating nouns, like saying bāobāo 包包 for "handbag" instead of just bāor. Mandarin also has special words for "I", "you", and "he/she/it", and can change these to talk about groups of people. Most dialects of Mandarin share these pronoun words.

Because of history with Mongolian and Manchurian peoples, Mandarin includes some words from these languages, like hútòng 胡同 for "alley". Mandarin also borrows words from other languages, such as gāo'ěrfū 高尔夫 for "golf" and bǐjīní 比基尼 for "bikini".

The biggest differences between Mandarin dialects are in everyday words and slang, while more formal words, like those used in science or government, stay mostly the same.

Grammar

Further information: Chinese grammar

Chinese languages, including Mandarin, have a simple structure. They use the order of words and small words called particles instead of changing words with endings.

In Mandarin, sentences usually follow the order of "subject–verb–object," like "I give you a book."

Mandarin uses special small words, called particles, after the main verb to show when something happened. For example, "le" (了) shows something is finished.

Mandarin also has a special particle "de" (的) that connects ideas in a sentence.

In everyday speech, Chinese speakers often add small words at the end of sentences to change the meaning slightly.

Some Mandarin words are made by combining characters together. For example, the character 師 combines with 教 (to teach) to make the word for "teacher."

Example text

From Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Chinese (Mandarin):

人人

Rénrén

生

shēng

而

ér

自由,

zìyóu,

在

zài

尊嚴

zūnyán

和

hé

權利

quánlì

上

shàng

一律

yīlù

平等。

píngděng.

他們

Tāmen

賦有

fùyǒu

理性

lǐxìng

和

hé

良心,

liángxīn,

並

bìng

應

yīng

以

yǐ

兄弟

xiōngdì

關係

guānxì

的

de

精神

jīngshén

互相

hùxiāng

對待。

duìdài.

人人 生 而 自由, 在 尊嚴 和 權利 上 一律 平等。 他們 賦有 理性 和 良心, 並 應 以 兄弟 關係 的 精神 互相 對待。

Rénrén shēng ér zìyóu, zài zūnyán hé quánlì shàng yīlù píngděng. Tāmen fùyǒu lǐxìng hé liángxīn, bìng yīng yǐ xiōngdì guānxì de jīngshén hùxiāng duìdài.

All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.