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:''This article is on all of the Northern and Southwestern Chinese dialects. For the standardized official spoken Chinese language (Putonghua/Guoyu), see 'Standard Mandarin'.''
'Mandarin' (), or 'Beifanghua' (), is a category of related Chinese dialects spoken across most of northern and south-western China. When taken as a separate language, as is often done in academic literature, the Mandarin dialects have more speakers than any other language.
In English, Mandarin can refer to two distinct concepts:

★ to Standard Chinese or Standard Mandarin (''Putonghua/Guoyu/Huayu''), which is based on the particular Mandarin dialect spoken in Beijing. Standard Mandarin functions as the official spoken language of the People's Republic of China, the official language of the Republic of China (Taiwan), and one of the four official languages of Singapore. ‘Chinese’ — in practice Standard Mandarin — is one of the six official languages of the United Nations.

★ to all of the Mandarin dialects spoken in northern and south-western China. This group of dialects is the focus of this article.
In everyday use, ‘Mandarin’ refers usually to just Standard Mandarin (''Putonghua''/''Guoyu''). In its broader sense, Mandarin is a diverse group of related dialects, some less mutually intelligible than others. It is a grouping defined and used mainly by linguists, and is not commonly used outside of academic circles as a self-description. Instead, when asked to describe the spoken form they are using, Chinese speaking a form of non-Standard Mandarin will describe the variant that they are speaking, for example Sichuan dialect or Northeast China dialect, and consider it distinct from ‘Standard Mandarin’ ''(putonghua)''; they may not recognize that it is in fact classified by linguists as a form of ‘Mandarin’ in a broader sense. Nor is there a common ‘Mandarin’ identity based on language; rather, there are strong regional identities centred on individual dialects, because of the wide geographical distribution and cultural diversity of its speakers.
Like all other varieties of Chinese, there is significant dispute as to whether Mandarin is a language or a dialect. See Identification of the varieties of Chinese for more on this issue.

Contents

History

Name and classification

Standard Mandarin

Dialects

Phonology

Vocabulary

Writing system

Mandarin literature

References

See also

History

The present divisions of the Chinese language developed out of the different ways in which dialects of Old Chinese and Middle Chinese evolved.
Most Chinese living in northern and south-western China are native speakers of a dialect of Mandarin. The prevalence of this linguistic homogeneity in northern China is largely the result of geography: much of northern China is covered by plains and is flat. In contrast to this, the mountains and rivers of southern China have promoted linguistic diversity.
Chronologically, there is no clear line to mark where Middle Chinese ends and Mandarin begins;
For a long period of time, Nanjing Mandarin had been China's main standard Mandarin language. During the age of fragmentation (period of disunion from eastern Jin till Sui dynasty), the central plain Middle Chinese tone (Zhong Yuan Ya Yin 中原雅音) began to shift itself southwards and the official "Mandarin" was gradually divided into northern and southern branch. After Ming dynasty was established with Nanjing as its first capital, Nanjing Mandarin was chosen as its official tongue, with Nanjing dialect tone as its basic phonology. The Nanjing dialect tone was evolved from a combination of central plain Middle Chinese tone with the Middle Wu tone. From Ming till mid Qing period, the court officials in China generally spoke Nanjing Mandarin as the court language. Even the Western Jesuit who came to China during Ming and Qing period was actually speaking the Nanjing Mandarin. It wasn't until late Qing and early Republican period that Beijing Mandarin gradually replace Nanjing Mandarin as the standard Mandarin and official tongue of China.
It seem plausible that today's Beijing Mandarin was evolved from the dialect spoken by Beijing during Yuan dynasty period.
Zhōngyuán Yīnyùn (中原音韵), a rhyme book from the Yuan Dynasty, is widely regarded as a milestone in the history of Mandarin. In this rhyme book we see many characteristic features of Mandarin, such as the reduction and disappearance of final stop consonants and the reorganization of the Middle Chinese tones. This was near towards today's Beijing Mandarin.
The disappearance of final characterized during Yuan dynasty in Beijing could be due to the fact that Yuan dynasty was ruled by the Mongols and there were many other ethnicity besides the Han, such as Khitan, Muslims, Jurchen living in Beijing. Mongol and other northern non-sinitic languages such as Khitan, Jurchen had showered some degree of influence on the spoken dialect in Beijing.
The Ming dynasty saw the adoption of Nanjing Mandarin as official tongue. But during Emperor Yongle's time, he shifted the capital from Nanjing to Beijing and moved 400,000 Nanjing population (who spoke Nanjing Dialect) to Beijing. This exceeded the native Beijing's population at that time and Nanjing dialect came to influence Beijing dialect. After Qing dynasty was founded by the Manchu, large number of Manchu began to reside in Beijing and the Beijing dialect was influenced by the Manchu language.It seemed that today's Beijing dialect was a result of Manchu trying to emulate the Nanjing Mandarin but with their own Manchu accent and changes in pronunciation. This influence on the old Beijing dialect later evolved into today's Beijing Mandarin. During the 6th year reign of Emperor Yong Zheng, the orthoepy academies was established with Beijing Mandarin as standard tongue and promoted throughout the empire, which then gradually replaced Nanjing Mandarin as the standard tongue for Mandarin. Beijing Mandarin was sometimes referred to as the Northern Mandarin, which contrasted with the Nanjing Mandarin, often referred to as the Southern Mandarin.
During the ROC times, Beijing Mandarin became the official tongue and standard Mandarin of China and with the widespread of education, media, it soon permeated throughout every chinese sector.

Until the mid-20th century, most Chinese people living in southern China spoke only their local language. Beijing Mandarin became dominant during the officially Manchu-speaking Qing period, and from the 17th century onward, the empire established orthoepy academies () in an attempt to make local pronunciations conform to the Beijing standard. These attempts, however, had little success.
This situation changed with the widespread introduction of Standard Mandarin as the national language, to be used in education, the media, and formal situations in both the PRC and the ROC (but not in Hong Kong). As a result, Standard Mandarin can now be spoken intelligibly as a second language by most younger people in Mainland China and Taiwan, with various regional accents. In Hong Kong and Macau, because of their colonial and linguistic history, the language of education, the media, formal speech and everyday life remains the local Cantonese, although Standard Mandarin is becoming increasingly influential.
Today, Mandarin is spoken throughout the Chinese Diaspora. It is mostly spoken by Overseas Chinese populations in Malaysia, Singapore, Australia, United States, Canada, United Kingdom and parts of Europe, South America, Africa and Middle East where significant Overseas Chinese populations exist. The huge usage of Mandarin in Malaysia and Singapore is helped by the existence of Chinese vernacular education systems and huge Chinese population proportions. These days, young non-ethnic Chinese are beginning to pick up Mandarin as an effort to take advantage of rising economic power in China.

Name and classification

The English term comes from the Portuguese ''mandarin'' (from Malay ''menteri'' [1], both of which are from Sanskrit ''mantrin-'', meaning minister); it is a translation of the Chinese term ''Guānhuà'' (), which literally means the language of the mandarins (imperial magistrates). The term ''Guānhuà'' is often considered archaic by Chinese speakers of today, though it is used sometimes by linguists as a collective term to refer to all varieties and dialects of Mandarin, not just standard Mandarin. Another term commonly used to refer to all varieties of Mandarin is ''Běifānghuà'' (), or the dialect(s) of the North, although speakers of south-western Mandarin would not usually consider themselves as speakers of 'northern dialects'.

Standard Mandarin

Main articles: Standard Mandarin

From an official point of view, there are two versions of Standard Mandarin, since the Beijing government refers to that on the Mainland as ''Putonghua'', whereas the Taiwanese government refers to their official language as ''Kuo-yü'' (''Guoyu'' in pinyin).
Technically, both Putonghua and Guoyu base their phonology on the Beijing accent, though Putonghua also takes some elements from other sources. Comparison of dictionaries produced in the two areas will show that there are few substantial differences. However, both versions of ‘school’ Standard Mandarin are often quite different from the Mandarin dialects that are spoken in accordance with regional habits, and neither is wholly identical to the Beijing dialect. Putonghua and Guoyu also differ from the Beijing dialect in vocabulary, grammar, and usage.
It is important to note that the terms ‘Putonghua (The Common Language)’ and ‘Guoyu’ refer to speech, and hence the difference in the use of simplified characters and traditional characters is not usually considered to be a difference between these two concepts.

Dialects

Main articles: Mandarin dialects

There are regional variations in Mandarin. This is manifested in two ways:
# The varieties of Mandarin cover a huge area containing nearly a billion people. As a result, there are pronounced regional variations in pronunciation, vocabulary and grammar. These regional differences are rather more pronounced than the differences in the varieties of English found in England, Scotland, Ireland, Australia, Canada, and the United States.
# Standard Mandarin has been promoted very actively by the PRC, the ROC, and Singapore as a second language. As a result, those who are not native speakers of Standard Mandarin frequently flavour it with a strong infusion of the sounds of their native tongues.
Dialects of Mandarin can be subdivided into eight categories: Beijing Mandarin, Northeastern Mandarin, Ji Lu Mandarin, Jiao Liao Mandarin, Zhongyuan Mandarin, Lan Yin Mandarin, South-western Mandarin, and Jianghuai Mandarin. Jin is sometimes considered the ninth category of Mandarin. (Others separate it from Mandarin altogether.)

Phonology

:''See standard Mandarin for a description of Standard Mandarin phonology and dialects of Mandarin for an overview of the phonologies of Mandarin dialects.''
Mandarin, like most Chinese dialects/languages, is syllable timed, as opposed to many Western languages, including English, which are stress timed.
Syllables consist maximally of an initial consonant, a glide, a vowel, a final, and tone. Not every syllable that is possible according to this rule actually exists in Mandarin, as there are rules prohibiting certain phonemes from appearing with others, and in practice there are only a few hundred distinct syllables.
Phonological features that are generally shared by the Mandarin dialects include:

★ the palatalization of velars and alveolar sibilants when they occur before palatal glides;

★ the disappearance of final stops and /-m/ (although in many Jianghuai Mandarin and Jin dialects, the glottal stop has been preserved as a final);

★ the disappearance of the entering tone (although it has been preserved in many Jianghuai Mandarin and Jin dialects) and the presence of four tonal categories;

★ the presence of retroflex consonants (although these are absent in many dialects of Southwestern and Northeastern Mandarin);

★ the historical devoicing of plosives and sibilants.

Vocabulary

There are more polysyllabic words in Mandarin than in all other varieties of Chinese except Shanghainese. This is partly because Mandarin has undergone many more sound changes than have southern varieties of Chinese, and has needed to deal with many more homophones — usually by forming new words via compounding, or by adding affixes such as ''lao-'' (老), ''-zi'' (子), ''-(e)r'' (儿), and ''-tou'' (头). There are also a small number of words that have been polysyllabic since Old Chinese, such as ''húdié'' (蝴蝶, butterfly).
The singular pronouns in Mandarin are wǒ (我) ‘I’, nǐ (你) ‘you’, nín (您) ‘you (formal)’, and tā (他/她/它) ‘he/she/it’, with -men (们) added for the plural. Further, there is a distinction between the plural first-person pronoun zánmen (咱们/咱們), which is inclusive of the listener, and wǒmen (我们/我們), which may be exclusive of the listener. Dialects of Mandarin agree with each other quite consistently on these pronouns, but not with other varieties of Chinese (e.g., Shanghainese has 侬 ''non'' ‘you’ and 伊 ''yi'' ‘he/she’).
Other morphemes that Mandarin dialects tend to share are aspect and mood particles, such as ''-le'' (了), ''-zhe'' (着), and ''-guo'' (过/過). Other Chinese varieties tend to use different words in some of these contexts (e.g., Cantonese 咗 and 緊).
Because of contact with Central Asian cultures, Mandarin has some loanwords from Altaic languages not present in other varieties of Chinese, such as hútong (胡同) ‘alley.’ Southern Chinese varieties have borrowed more from Tai^[1], Austro-Asiatic^[2], and Austronesian languages.

Writing system

The writing system for almost all the varieties of Chinese is based on a set of written symbols 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 of course 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.
In the original set of characters and definitions (containing more than 40,000 items) there were the demonstrative pronouns ‘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’ (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).
As with other varieties of Chinese, the government of the People's Republic of China (as well as some other governments and institutions) has put a set of simplified forms into operation. Under this system, the forms of the words ‘here’ (zhèlǐ) and ‘there’ (nàlǐ) changed from 這裡 and 那裡 to 这里 and 那里. (See Simplified Chinese for more.)

Mandarin literature

Originally, written Chinese was learned and composed as a special language. It may originally have rather closely represented the way people spoke, but with time the spoken and written languages diverged rather strongly. The written language, called ‘classical Chinese’ or ‘literary Chinese,’ is much more concise than spoken Chinese, the main reason being that a single written character is often just what one wants to communicate yet its single syllable would not communicate an unambiguous meaning if spoken because of the huge number of homonyms. For instance, 翼 (yì, wing) is unambiguous in written Chinese but would be lost among its more than 75 homonyms in spoken Chinese.
For writing formal histories, for writing government documents, and even for writing poetry and fiction, the written language was adequate and economical of both printing resources and the human effort of writing things down. But to record materials that were meant to be reproduced in oral presentations, materials such as plays and grist for the professional story-teller's mill, the classical written language was not appropriate. Even written records of the words of a famous teacher like Zhu Xi (1130-1200) tend strongly to reflect his spoken language. From at least the Yuan dynasty, plays that recounted the subversive tales of China's Robin Hoods to the Ming dynasty novels, such as ''Shui Hu Zhuan'' (Outlaws of the marsh), on down to the Qing dynasty novel ''Hong Lou Meng'' (usually translated as ‘Dream of the Red Chamber’) and beyond, there developed a vernacular Chinese literature (bái hùa wén xúe). In many cases this written language reflected the Mandarin spoken language, and, since pronunciation differences were not conveyed in this written form, this tradition had a unifying force across all the Mandarin speaking regions and beyond.
A pivotal character during the first half of the twentieth century, Hu Shi, wrote an influential and perceptive study of this literary tradition, entitled ''Bái huà wén xué shǐ'' (A history of vernacular literature).

References

1. The Languages of China, , S. Robert, Ramsey, Princeton University Press, 1987, ISBN 0-691-01468-X
2. The Austroasiatics in ancient South China: some lexical evidence, , Jerry, Norman, Monumenta Serica,


★ A Grammar of Spoken Chinese, Chao, Yuen Ren, , , University of California Press, 1968, ISBN 0-520-00219-9

★ Chinese, , Jerry, Norman, Cambridge University Press, 1988, ISBN 0-521-29653-6

★ The Languages of China, , S. Robert, Ramsey, Princeton University Press, 1987, ISBN 0-691-01468-X

★ Novotná, Z., ‘Contributions to the Study of Loan-Words and Hybrid Words in Modern Chinese’, ''Archiv Orientalni'', (Prague), No.35 (1967), pp.613-648. (In English: examples of loan words and calques in Chinese)

★ Novotná, Z., ‘Contributions to the Study of Loan-Words and Hybrid Words in Modern Chinese’, ''Archiv Orientalni'', (Prague), No.36 (1968), pp.295-325.(In English: examples of loan words and calques in Chinese)

★ Novotná, Z., ‘Contributions to the Study of Loan-Words and Hybrid Words in Modern Chinese’, ''Archiv Orientalni'', (Prague), No.37 (1969), pp.48-75.(In English: examples of loan words and calques in Chinese)

See also

★ Chinese grammar

★ Confucius Institute