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109-1254: The Standard Chinese word for Imam ( Chinese : 阿訇 ; pinyin : āhōng ), used in particular by the Hui people , also derives from this term. Other similar Chinese terms ( Chinese : 阿衡 ; pinyin : āhéng and Chinese : 阿洪 ; pinyin : āhóng ) also exist. Akhunds are religious and spiritual leaders. They lead the prayers in the mosques , deliver religious sermons, perform religious ceremonies such as marriage rituals, birth rituals etc. Many of them were magistrates or justices of Sharia courts who also exercised extrajudicial functions, such as mediation, guardianship over orphans and minors, and supervision and auditing of public works. They also often teach in Islamic schools known in Iran as hawzas and in other countries as madrasas . Akhunds will usually have completed higher studies on Islamic subjects such as Sharia , Fiqh (Islamic jurisprudence), Quran etc. They commonly dress in religious attire. In Iran , they are also called mullah , molavi, sheikh , haj-agha , or ruhani. The word ruhani means "spiritual, holy". Ruhani

218-542: A koiné language based on various northern varieties. When Jesuit missionaries learned this standard language in the 16th century, they called it "Mandarin", from its Chinese name Guānhuà ( 官话 ; 官話 ; 'language of the officials'). In everyday English, "Mandarin" refers to Standard Chinese , which is often called simply "Chinese". Standard Mandarin Chinese is based on Beijing dialect , with some lexical and syntactic influence from other Mandarin dialects. It

327-432: A lingua franca to facilitate communication between speakers of mutually unintelligible varieties of Chinese and non-Sinitic languages . The name Putonghua , or 'common speech', reinforces this idea. However, due to Standard Chinese being a "public" lingua franca, other Chinese varieties and even non-Sinitic languages have shown signs of losing ground to the standard dialect. In many areas, especially in southern China, it

436-541: A combination of any of these is also common. In Malaysia , Mandarin has been adopted by local Chinese-language schools as the medium of instruction with the standard based on that of Singapore. However, it is not as widespread in daily life among the Malaysian Chinese community, as Hokkien speakers continue to form a plurality among the ethnic Chinese population and Cantonese serves as the common language (especially in commerce and local media). An exception

545-565: A common form of speech developed based on the dialects of the North China Plain around the capital, a language referred to as Old Mandarin. New genres of vernacular literature were based on this language, including verse, drama and story forms, such as the qu and sanqu poetry. The rhyming conventions of the new verse were codified in a rime dictionary called the Zhongyuan Yinyun (1324). A radical departure from

654-565: A few hours each week in Taiwan starting in the mid-1990s. With an increase in internal migration in China , the official Putonghua Proficiency Test (PSC) has become popular. Employers often require a level of Standard Chinese proficiency from applicants depending on the position, and many university graduates on the mainland take the PSC before looking for a job. The pronunciation of Standard Chinese

763-536: A final glottal stop . Many Mandarin varieties, including the Beijing dialect, retain retroflex initial consonants, which have been lost in southern varieties of Chinese. The Chinese capital has been within the Mandarin-speaking area for most of the last millennium, making these dialects very influential. Some form of Mandarin has served as a lingua franca for government officials and the courts since

872-579: A form of the Japanese language dubbed kokugo ( 国語 ). Reformers in the Qing bureaucracy took inspiration and borrowed the term into Chinese, and in 1909 the Qing education ministry officially proclaimed imperial Mandarin as Guoyu ( 国语 ; 國語 ), the 'national language'. After the Republic of China was established in 1912, there was more success in promoting a common national language. A Commission on

981-509: A greater vocabulary scheme and a more archaic and "proper-sounding" pronunciation and vocabulary. Distinctive features of the Beijing dialect are more extensive use of erhua in vocabulary items that are left unadorned in descriptions of the standard such as the Xiandai Hanyu Cidian , as well as more neutral tones. An example of standard versus Beijing dialect would be the standard mén (door) and Beijing ménr . While

1090-579: A large geographical area that stretches from Yunnan in the southwest to Xinjiang in the northwest and Heilongjiang in the northeast. This is generally attributed to the greater ease of travel and communication in the North China Plain compared to the more mountainous south, combined with the relatively recent spread of Mandarin to frontier areas. Most Mandarin varieties have four tones . The final stops of Middle Chinese have disappeared in most of these varieties, but some have merged them as

1199-697: A lesser extent. Much of the Taiwanese Aboriginal population spoke their native Formosan languages . During the period of martial law between 1949 and 1987, the Taiwanese government revived the Mandarin Promotion Council , discouraging or in some cases forbidding the use of Hokkien and other non-standard varieties. This resulted in Standard Chinese replacing Hokkien as the country's lingua franca, and ultimately,

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1308-455: A lower pitch and by the late Tang dynasty , each of the tones had split into two registers conditioned by the initials. When voicing was lost in all languages except the Wu subfamily, this distinction became phonemic and the system of initials and tones was rearranged differently in each of the major groups. The Zhongyuan Yinyun shows the typical Mandarin four-tone system resulting from a split of

1417-464: A political backlash in the 1990s. Starting in the 2000s during the administration of President Chen Shui-Bian , the Taiwanese government began making efforts to recognize the country's other languages. They began being taught in schools, and their use increased in media, though Standard Chinese remains the country's lingua franca. Chen often used Hokkien in his speeches; later Taiwanese President Lee Teng-hui also openly spoke Hokkien. In an amendment to

1526-617: A separate top-level group, but this remains controversial. The Language Atlas of China calls the remainder of Mandarin a "supergroup", divided into eight dialect groups distinguished by their treatment of the Middle Chinese entering tone (see Tones below): The Atlas also includes several unclassified Mandarin dialects spoken in scattered pockets across southeastern China, such as Nanping in Fujian and Dongfang on Hainan . Another Mandarin variety of uncertain classification

1635-493: Is a form of Standard Chinese that is read aloud with the Cantonese reading of characters. Like other Sinitic languages , Standard Chinese is a tonal language with topic-prominent organization and subject–verb–object (SVO) word order. Compared with southern varieties, the language has fewer vowels, final consonants and tones, but more initial consonants. It is an analytic language , albeit with many compound words . In

1744-714: Is a group of Chinese language dialects that are natively spoken across most of northern and southwestern China and Taiwan. The group includes the Beijing dialect , the basis of the phonology of Standard Chinese , the official language of China and Taiwan. Because Mandarin originated in North China and most Mandarin dialects are found in the north, the group is sometimes referred to as Northern Chinese ( simplified Chinese : 北方话 ; traditional Chinese : 北方話 ; pinyin : Běifānghuà ; lit. 'northern speech'). Many varieties of Mandarin, such as those of

1853-653: Is a modern standard form of Mandarin Chinese that was first codified during the republican era (1912–1949). It is designated as the official language of mainland China and a major language in the United Nations , Singapore , and Taiwan . It is largely based on the Beijing dialect . Standard Chinese is a pluricentric language with local standards in mainland China, Taiwan and Singapore that mainly differ in their lexicon . Hong Kong written Chinese , used for formal written communication in Hong Kong and Macau,

1962-518: Is apparently Gyami , recorded in the 19th century in the Tibetan foothills, who the Chinese apparently did not recognize as Chinese. Some northwestern Mandarin varieties in the Qinghai–Gansu sprachbund have undergone drastic changes in phonology, lexicon and grammar. A syllable consists maximally of an initial consonant, a medial glide , a vowel, a coda, and tone . In the traditional analysis,

2071-518: Is colloquially referred to as simply Mandarin , though this term may also refer to the Mandarin dialect group as a whole, or the late imperial form used as a lingua franca . "Mandarin" is a translation of Guanhua ( 官話 ; 官话 ; 'bureaucrat speech'), which referred to the late imperial lingua franca. The term Modern Standard Mandarin is used to distinguish it from older forms. The word Guoyu ( 国语 ; 國語 ; 'national language')

2180-504: Is common, as the majority of the population continues to also speak the latter as a native language. The stereotypical "southern Chinese" accent does not distinguish between retroflex and alveolar consonants , pronouncing pinyin zh [tʂ], ch [tʂʰ], and sh [ʂ] in the same way as z [ts], c [tsʰ], and s [s] respectively. Southern-accented Standard Chinese may also interchange l and n , final n and ng , and vowels i and ü [y]. Attitudes towards southern accents, particularly

2289-468: Is commonly used for practical reasons, as linguistic diversity is so great that residents of neighboring cities may have difficulties communicating with each other without a lingua franca. The Chinese government's language policy been largely successful, with over 80% of the Chinese population able to speak Standard Chinese as of 2020. The Chinese government's current goal is to have 85% of the country's population speak Standard Chinese by 2025, and virtually

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2398-575: Is considered a more polite term for Muslim clerics, used by Iranian national television and radio and by devout Muslim families. Akhund is increasingly outmoded in Iran, usually with only the older clerics having the title as part of their name. It has not been used widely as a title since the Qajar dynasty . In Afghanistan , and among the Pashtuns of the Afghan-Pakistan border region, the term

2507-449: Is defined as that of the Beijing dialect . The usual unit of analysis is the syllable, consisting of an optional initial consonant , an optional medial glide , a main vowel and an optional coda, and further distinguished by a tone . The palatal initials [tɕ] , [tɕʰ] and [ɕ] pose a classic problem of phonemic analysis. Since they occur only before high front vowels, they are in complementary distribution with three other series,

2616-567: Is in the state of Johor , where Mandarin is increasingly used alongside Cantonese as a lingua franca in part due to Singaporean influence. As in Singapore, the local colloquial variant of Mandarin exhibits influences from Cantonese and Malay. In northern Myanmar , a Southwestern Mandarin variant close to the Yunnanese dialect is spoken by local Chinese and other ethnic groups. In some rebel group -controlled regions, Mandarin also serves as

2725-820: Is lost after apical initials in several areas. Thus Southwestern Mandarin has /tei/ "correct" where the standard language has dui /twei/ . Southwestern Mandarin also has /kai kʰai xai/ in some words where the standard has jie qie xie /tɕjɛ tɕʰjɛ ɕjɛ/ . This is a stereotypical feature of southwestern Mandarin, since it is so easily noticeable. E.g. hai "shoe" for standard xie , gai "street" for standard jie . Mandarin dialects typically have relatively few vowels. Syllabic fricatives , as in standard zi and zhi , are common in Mandarin dialects, though they also occur elsewhere. The Middle Chinese off-glides /j/ and /w/ are generally preserved in Mandarin dialects, yielding several diphthongs and triphthongs in contrast to

2834-450: Is one of the official languages of Taiwan . The Taiwanese standard of Mandarin differs very little from that of mainland China, with differences largely in some technical vocabulary developed from the 1950s onwards. While the spoken standard of Taiwanese Mandarin is nearly identical to that of mainland China, the colloquial form has been heavily influenced by other local languages, especially Taiwanese Hokkien . Notable differences include:

2943-573: Is still current in its original sense as an honorific. The Azerbaijani surname Akhundov (as in e.g. Mirza Fatali Akhundov ) is formed from the word akhund. Akhand is used as a surname among Bengalis . Zeeshan Akhwand Khattak also uses this title with their personal name. Zeeshan Akhwand is a journalist and social worker from Karak, Pakistan. Standard Chinese Standard Chinese ( simplified Chinese : 现代标准汉语 ; traditional Chinese : 現代標準漢語 ; pinyin : Xiàndài biāozhǔn hànyǔ ; lit. 'modern standard Han speech')

3052-420: Is the official language of the mandarins and of the court; it is among them like Latin among ourselves.... Two of our fathers [Michele Ruggieri and Matteo Ricci] have been learning this mandarin language... During the 17th century, the state had set up orthoepy academies ( 正音書院 ; zhèngyīn shūyuàn ) in an attempt to conform the speech of bureaucrats to the standard. These attempts had little success: as late as

3161-533: Is the official spoken language of the People's Republic of China (PRC) and Taiwan (Republic of China, ROC), as well as one of the four official languages of Singapore , and a high-prestige minority language in Malaysia . It also functions as the language of instruction in mainland China and Taiwan. It is one of the six official languages of the United Nations , under the name "Chinese". Chinese speakers refer to

3270-500: Is the primary lingua franca of more recent Chinese immigrants , is rapidly increasing. While Standard Chinese was made China's official language in the early 20th century, local languages continue to be the main form of everyday communication in much of the country. The language policy adopted by the Chinese government promotes the use of Standard Chinese while also making allowances for the use and preservation of local varieties. From an official point of view, Standard Chinese serves as

3379-573: Is thought to have used a dialect known as yayan rather than regional dialects; during the Han dynasty , texts also referred to tōngyǔ ( 通語 ; 'common language'). The rime books that were written starting in the Northern and Southern period may have reflected standard systems of pronunciation. However, these standard dialects were mostly used by the educated elite, whose pronunciation may still have possessed great variation. For these elites,

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3488-542: Is used by linguists to refer to the northern dialects recorded in materials from the Yuan dynasty. Native speakers who are not academic linguists may not recognize that the variants they speak are classified in linguistics as members of "Mandarin" (or so-called "Northern dialects") in a broader sense. Within Chinese social or cultural discourse, there is not a "Mandarin" identity based on language; rather, there are strong regional identities centred on individual dialects because of

3597-610: Is used in informal daily life and is heavily influenced in terms of both grammar and vocabulary by local languages such as Cantonese, Hokkien, and Malay. Instances of code-switching with English, Hokkien, Cantonese, Malay, or a combination thereof are also common. In Singapore, the government has heavily promoted a " Speak Mandarin Campaign " since the late 1970s, with the use of other Chinese varieties in broadcast media being prohibited and their use in any context officially discouraged until recently. This has led to some resentment amongst

3706-530: Is used in most official contexts, as well as the media and educational system, contributing to its proliferation. As a result, it is now spoken by most people in both countries, though often with some regional or personal variation in vocabulary and pronunciation. In overseas Chinese communities outside Asia where Cantonese once dominated, such as the Chinatown in Manhattan , the use of Standard Chinese, which

3815-492: Is wholly identical to the Beijing dialect . The written forms of Standard Chinese are also essentially equivalent, although simplified characters are used in mainland China and Singapore, while traditional characters remain in use in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau. Singapore has followed mainland China in officially adopting simplified characters. Mandarin is spoken across northern and southwestern China, with some pockets in neighbouring countries. Unlike their compatriots on

3924-607: The Cyrillic script . The classification of Chinese dialects evolved during the 20th century, and many points remain unsettled. Early classifications tended to follow provincial boundaries or major geographical features. In 1936, Wang Li produced the first classification based on phonetic criteria, principally the evolution of Middle Chinese voiced initials. His Mandarin group included dialects of northern and southwestern China, as well as those of Hunan and northern Jiangxi . Li Fang-Kuei 's classification of 1937 distinguished

4033-524: The National Language Unification Commission finally settled on the Beijing dialect in 1932. The People's Republic, founded in 1949, retained this standard, calling it pǔtōnghuà ( simplified Chinese : 普通话 ; traditional Chinese : 普通話 ; lit. 'common speech'). Some 54% of speakers of Mandarin varieties could understand the standard language in the early 1950s, rising to 91% in 1984. Nationally,

4142-462: The Sanskrit word mantrin ('minister')—and was initially used to refer to Chinese scholar-officials . The Portuguese then began referring to Guanhua as "the language of the mandarins". The Chinese have different languages in different provinces, to such an extent that they cannot understand each other.... [They] also have another language which is like a universal and common language; this

4251-558: The rime table tradition that had evolved over the previous centuries, this dictionary contains a wealth of information on the phonology of Old Mandarin. Further sources are the 'Phags-pa script based on the Tibetan alphabet, which was used to write several of the languages of the Mongol empire, including Chinese and the Menggu Ziyun , a rime dictionary based on 'Phags-pa. The rime books differ in some details, but overall show many of

4360-480: The "even" tone and loss of the entering tone, with its syllables distributed across the other tones (though their different origin is marked in the dictionary). Similarly, voiced plosives and affricates have become voiceless aspirates in the "even" tone and voiceless non-aspirates in others, another distinctive Mandarin development. However, the language still retained a final -m , which has merged with -n in modern dialects and initial voiced fricatives. It also retained

4469-479: The 14th century. In the early 20th century, a standard form based on the Beijing dialect, with elements from other Mandarin dialects, was adopted as the national language . Standard Chinese is the official language of China and Taiwan , as well as one of the four official languages of Singapore . It is also used as one of the official languages of the United Nations . Recent increased migration from Mandarin-speaking regions of China and Taiwan has now resulted in

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4578-475: The 18th century, and as a result the Northeastern Mandarin dialects spoken there differ little from the Beijing dialect . The Manchu people of the area now speak these dialects exclusively; their native language is only maintained in northwestern Xinjiang , where Xibe , a modern dialect, is spoken. The frontier areas of northwest China were colonized by speakers of Mandarin dialects at

4687-473: The 19th century, the emperor had difficulty understanding some of his ministers in court, who did not always follow a standard pronunciation. Before the 19th century, the lingua franca was based on the Nanjing dialect , but later the Beijing dialect became increasingly influential, despite the mix of officials and commoners speaking various dialects in the capital, Beijing . By some accounts, as late as 1900

4796-424: The Beijing accent, and also take some elements from other sources, and deviate from the Beijing dialect in vocabulary, grammar, and pragmatics . Comparison of dictionaries produced in the two areas will show that there are few substantial differences. However, both versions of "school-standard" Chinese are often quite different from the Mandarin varieties that are spoken in accordance with regional habits, and neither

4905-833: The Cantonese accent, range from disdain to admiration. Chinese is a strongly analytic language , having almost no inflectional morphemes , and relying on word order and particles to express relationships between the parts of a sentence. Nouns are not marked for case and rarely marked for number . Verbs are not marked for agreement or grammatical tense , but aspect is marked using post-verbal particles. Mandarin Chinese Transcriptions: Mandarin ( / ˈ m æ n d ər ɪ n / MAN -dər-in ; simplified Chinese : 官话 ; traditional Chinese : 官話 ; pinyin : Guānhuà ; lit. 'officials' speech')

5014-956: The Chinese government has not stated its intent to replace regional varieties with Standard Chinese. However, regulations enacted by local governments to implement the national law−such as the Guangdong National Language Regulations —have included coercive measures to control the public's use of both spoken dialects and traditional characters in writing. Some Chinese speakers who are older or from rural areas cannot speak Standard Chinese fluently or at all—though most are able to understand it. Meanwhile, those from urban areas—as well as younger speakers, who have received their education primarily in Standard Chinese—are almost all fluent in it, with some being unable to speak their local dialect. The Chinese government has disseminated public service announcements promoting

5123-587: The Chinese language was unified in Literary Chinese , a form that was primarily written, as opposed to spoken. The term Guanhua ( 官話 ; 官话 ; 'official speech') was used during the Ming (1368–1644) and Qing (1644–1912) dynasties to refer to the lingua franca spoken within the imperial courts. The term "Mandarin" is borrowed directly from the Portuguese word mandarim , in turn derived from

5232-597: The Enforcement Rules of the Passport Act ( 護照條例施行細則 ) passed on 9 August 2019, Taiwan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced that romanized spellings of names in Hoklo , Hakka and Aboriginal languages may be used in Taiwanese passports. Previously, only Mandarin names could be romanized. Mandarin is one of the four official languages of Singapore, along with English, Malay , and Tamil . Historically, it

5341-517: The Mandarin group, pointing out that the Lower Yangtze dialects also retain the glottal stop. The southern boundary of the Mandarin area, with the central Wu , Gan and Xiang groups, is weakly defined due to centuries of diffusion of northern features. Many border varieties have a mixture of features that make them difficult to classify. The boundary between Southwestern Mandarin and Xiang is particularly weak, and in many early classifications

5450-596: The Northwestern dialects are the most diverse, particularly in the province of Shanxi . The linguist Li Rong proposed that the northwestern dialects of Shanxi and neighbouring areas that retain a final glottal stop in the Middle Chinese entering tone (plosive-final) category should constitute a separate top-level group called Jin . He used this classification in the Language Atlas of China (1987). Many other linguists continue to include these dialects in

5559-475: The Qing dynasty novel Dream of the Red Chamber and beyond, there developed a literature in written vernacular Chinese ( 白话 ; 白話 ; báihuà ). In many cases, this written language reflected Mandarin varieties 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. Hu Shih , a pivotal figure of

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5668-592: The Southwest (including Sichuanese ) and the Lower Yangtze , are not mutually intelligible with the standard language (or are only partially intelligible). Nevertheless, Mandarin as a group is often placed first in lists of languages by number of native speakers (with nearly one billion). Mandarin is by far the largest of the Chinese dialect groups ; it is spoken by 70 percent of all Chinese speakers over

5777-455: The Standard Chinese spoken in Taiwan is nearly identical to that of mainland China, the colloquial form has been heavily influenced by other local languages, especially Taiwanese Hokkien. Notable differences include: the merger of retroflex sounds (zh, ch, sh, r) with the alveolar series (z, c, s), frequent mergers of the "neutral tone" with a word's original tone, and absence of erhua . Code-switching between Mandarin and Taiwanese Hokkien

5886-545: The Taiwanese government introduced two laws explicitly recognizing the indigenous Formosan languages and Hakka as "Languages of the nation" ( 國家語言 ) alongside Standard Chinese. Since then, there have been efforts to redefine Guoyu as encompassing all "languages of the nation", rather than exclusively referring to Standard Chinese. Among Chinese people, Hanyu ( 汉语 ; 漢語 ; 'Han language') refers to spoken varieties of Chinese . Zhongwen ( 中文 ; 'written Chinese') refers to written Chinese. Among foreigners,

5995-464: The Unification of Pronunciation was convened with delegates from the entire country. A Dictionary of National Pronunciation ( 國音字典 ; 国音字典 ) was published in 1919, defining a hybrid pronunciation that did not match any existing speech. Meanwhile, despite the lack of a workable standardized pronunciation, colloquial literature in written vernacular Chinese continued to develop. Gradually,

6104-533: The United Kingdom and Macau's handover from Portugal, their governments use Putonghua to communicate with the PRC's Central People's Government . There has been significant effort to promote use of Putonghua in Hong Kong since the handover, including the training of police and teachers. Standard Chinese is the official language of Taiwan . Standard Chinese started being widely spoken in Taiwan following

6213-414: The capital moved to Beijing in 1421, though the speech of the new capital emerged as a rival standard. As late as 1815, Robert Morrison based the first English–Chinese dictionary on this koiné as the standard of the time, though he conceded that the Beijing dialect was gaining in influence. By the middle of the 19th century, the Beijing dialect had become dominant and was essential for any business with

6322-558: The citizenry was originally borrowed from Japan in the early 20th century. In 1902, the Japanese Diet had formed the National Language Research Council to standardize a form of the Japanese language dubbed kokugo ( 国語 ). Reformers in the Qing bureaucracy took inspiration and borrowed the term into Chinese, and in 1909 the Qing education ministry officially proclaimed imperial Mandarin to be

6431-425: The coda of the base syllable in a rhotacizing process called erhua . Each full syllable is pronounced with a phonemically distinctive pitch contour. There are four tonal categories, marked in pinyin with diacritics, as in the words mā ( 媽 ; 妈 ; 'mother'), má ( 麻 ; 'hemp'), mǎ ( 馬 ; 马 ; 'horse') and mà ( 罵 ; 骂 ; 'curse'). The tonal categories also have secondary characteristics. For example,

6540-406: The context of linguistics , the dialect has been labeled Standard Northern Mandarin or Standard Beijing Mandarin , and in common speech simply Mandarin , more specifically qualified as Standard Mandarin , Modern Standard Mandarin , or Standard Mandarin Chinese . Among linguists, Standard Chinese has been referred to as Standard Northern Mandarin or Standard Beijing Mandarin . It

6649-556: The country, coupled with a strong decline in usage of other Chinese variants. Standard Singaporean Mandarin is nearly identical to the standards of China and Taiwan, with minor vocabulary differences. It is the Mandarin variant used in education, media, and official settings. Meanwhile, a colloquial form called Singdarin is used in informal daily life and is heavily influenced in terms of both grammar and vocabulary by local languages such as Cantonese, Hokkien, and Malay. Instances of code-switching with English, Hokkien, Cantonese, Malay, or

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6758-431: The dental sibilants, retroflexes and velars, which never occur in this position. The [ɹ̩] final, which occurs only after dental sibilant and retroflex initials, is a syllabic approximant , prolonging the initial. The rhotacized vowel [ɚ] forms a complete syllable. A reduced form of this syllable occurs as a sub-syllabic suffix, spelled -r in pinyin and often with a diminutive connotation. The suffix modifies

6867-469: The distinction between velars and alveolar sibilants in palatal environments, which later merged in most Mandarin dialects to yield a palatal series (rendered j- , q- and x- in pinyin ). The flourishing vernacular literature of the period also shows distinctively Mandarin vocabulary and syntax, though some, such as the third-person pronoun tā ( 他 ), can be traced back to the Tang dynasty. Until

6976-493: The early 20th century, formal writing and even much poetry and fiction was done in Literary Chinese , which was modeled on the classics of the Warring States period and the Han dynasty . Over time, the various spoken varieties diverged greatly from Literary Chinese, which was learned and composed as a special language. Preserved from the sound changes that affected the various spoken varieties, its economy of expression

7085-506: The early Communist leader Qu Qiubai in 1931. His concern echoed within the Communist Party, which adopted the term Putonghua in 1955. Since 1949, usage of the word Guoyu was phased out in the PRC, only surviving in established compound nouns, e.g. ' Mandopop ' ( 国语流行音乐 ; Guóyǔ liúxíng yīnyuè ), or 'Chinese cinema' ( 国语电影 ; Guóyǔ diànyǐng ). In Taiwan, Guoyu is the colloquial term for Standard Chinese. In 2017 and 2018,

7194-491: The empire using a common language based on Mandarin varieties, known as Guānhuà . Knowledge of this language was thus essential for an official career, but it was never formally defined. Officials varied widely in their pronunciation; in 1728, the Yongzheng Emperor , unable to understand the accents of officials from Guangdong and Fujian , issued a decree requiring the governors of those provinces to provide for

7303-573: The end of the Chinese Civil War in 1949, with the relocation of the Kuomintang (KMT) to the island along with an influx of refugees from the mainland. The Standard Chinese used in Taiwan differs very little from that of mainland China, with differences largely being in technical vocabulary introduced after 1949. Prior to 1949, the varieties most commonly spoken by Taiwan's Han population were Taiwanese Hokkien , as well as Hakka to

7412-494: The entire country by 2035. Throughout the country, Standard Chinese has heavily influenced local languages through diglossia , replacing them entirely in some cases, especially among younger people in urban areas. The Chinese government is keen to promote Putonghua as the national lingua franca: under the National Common Language and Writing Law , the government is required to promoted its use. Officially,

7521-510: The features characteristic of modern Mandarin dialects, such as the reduction and disappearance of final plosives and the reorganization of the Middle Chinese tones. In Middle Chinese, initial stops and affricates showed a three-way contrast between tenuis , voiceless aspirated and voiced consonants. There were four tones , with the fourth or "entering tone", a checked tone comprising syllables ending in plosives ( -p , -t or -k ). Syllables with voiced initials tended to be pronounced with

7630-464: The first half of the twentieth century, wrote an influential and perceptive study of this literary tradition, entitled "A History of Vernacular Literature" ( Báihuà Wénxuéshǐ ). Until the mid-20th century, most Chinese people living in many parts of South China spoke only their local variety. As a practical measure, officials of the Ming and Qing dynasties carried out the administration of

7739-530: The imperial court. The variant of Mandarin as spoken by educated classes in Beijing was made the official language of China by the Qing dynasty in the early 1900s and the successive Republican government. In the early years of the Republic of China , intellectuals of the New Culture Movement , such as Hu Shih and Chen Duxiu , successfully campaigned for the replacement of Literary Chinese as

7848-500: The language being one of the more frequently used varieties of Chinese among Chinese diaspora communities. It is also the most commonly taught Chinese variety . The English word "mandarin" (from Portuguese mandarim , from Malay menteri , from Sanskrit mantrī , mantrin , meaning 'minister or counsellor') originally meant an official of the Ming and Qing empires. Since their native varieties were often mutually unintelligible, these officials communicated using

7957-404: The latter two groups as Xiang and Gan , while splitting the remaining Mandarin dialects between Northern, Lower Yangtze and Southwestern Mandarin groups. The widely accepted seven-group classification of Yuan Jiahua in 1960 kept Xiang and Gan separate, with Mandarin divided into Northern, Northwestern, Southwestern and Jiang–Huai (Lower Yangtze) subgroups. Of Yuan's four Mandarin subgroups,

8066-852: The lingua franca. The Dungan people of Kyrgyzstan , Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan are descendants of Hui people who fled to the Russian Empire from Dzungaria in 1877 after the fall of Kashgaria to Qing forces and from the Ili valley after it was ceded to China in the Treaty of Saint Petersburg in 1881. About 500 speakers live in a compact area in Rovensky District, Saratov Oblast in Russia. The Dungan speak two dialects, descended from Central Plains Mandarin dialects of southeast Gansu and southwest Shaanxi, and write their language in

8175-403: The media, formal speech, and everyday life remains the local Cantonese because of their colonial and linguistic history. While Standard Mandarin is now the medium of instruction in schools throughout China, it still has yet to gain traction as a common language among the local population in areas where Mandarin dialects are not native. In these regions, people may be either diglossic or speak

8284-581: The medial, vowel and coda are combined as a final . Not all combinations occur. For example, Standard Chinese (based on the Beijing dialect) has about 1,200 distinct syllables. Phonological features that are generally shared by the Mandarin dialects include: The maximal inventory of initials of a Mandarin dialect is as follows, with bracketed pinyin spellings given for those present in the standard language: Most Mandarin dialects have three medial glides, /j/ , /w/ and /ɥ/ (spelled i , u and ü in pinyin), though their incidence varies. The medial /w/ ,

8393-581: The medium of instruction with the standard shared with Singaporean Chinese. Together influenced by the Singaporean Speak Mandarin Campaign and Chinese culture revival movement in the 1980s, Malaysian Chinese started their own promotion of Mandarin too, and similar to Singapore, but to a lesser extent, experienced language shift from other Chinese variants to Mandarin. Today, Mandarin functions as lingua franca among Malaysian Chinese, while Hokkien and Cantonese are still retained in

8502-571: The members of the National Language Commission came to settle upon the Beijing dialect, which became the major source of standard national pronunciation due to its prestigious status. In 1932, the commission published the Vocabulary of National Pronunciation for Everyday Use ( 國音常用字彙 ; 国音常用字汇 ), with little fanfare or official announcement. This dictionary was similar to the previous published one except that it normalized

8611-463: The merger of retroflex sounds (zh, ch, sh, r) with the alveolar series (z, c, s), frequent mergers of the "neutral tone" with a word's original tone, and absence of erhua . Code-switching between Mandarin and Taiwanese Hokkien is common, as the majority of the population continues to also speak the latter as a native language. Mandarin is one of the four official languages of Singapore along with English , Malay , and Tamil . Historically, it

8720-547: The mid-1960s. Gradually, the term has been re-appropriated to refer specifically to Standard Chinese. The term is mostly used in Singapore , Malaysia , Indonesia , and the Philippines . The Chinese language has had considerable dialectal variation throughout its history, including prestige dialects and linguae francae used throughout the territory controlled by the dynastic states of China. For example, Confucius

8829-411: The modern standard language as but not as Guānhuà . Linguists use the term "Mandarin" to refer to the diverse group of dialects spoken in northern and southwestern China, which Chinese linguists call Guānhuà . The alternative term Běifānghuà ( 北方话 ; 北方話 ; 'Northern dialects'), is used less and less among Chinese linguists. By extension, the term "Old Mandarin" or "Early Mandarin"

8938-531: The mountains and rivers of southern China have spawned the other six major groups of Chinese varieties, with great internal diversity, particularly in Fujian . However, 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 , and many Mandarin varieties are not mutually intelligible. Most of northeast China , except for Liaoning , did not receive significant settlements by Han Chinese until

9047-627: The name used in Taiwan . The forms of Standard Chinese used in China and Taiwan have diverged somewhat since the end of the Civil War, especially in newer vocabulary, and a little in pronunciation. In 1956, the PRC officially defined Standard Chinese as "the standard form of Modern Chinese with the Beijing phonological system as its norm of pronunciation, and Northern dialects as its base dialect, and looking to exemplary modern works in written vernacular Chinese for its grammatical norms." According to

9156-403: The neutral tone. It is common for Standard Chinese to be spoken with the speaker's regional accent, depending on factors such as age, level of education, and the need and frequency to speak in official or formal situations. Due to evolution and standardization, Mandarin, although based on the Beijing dialect, is no longer synonymous with it. Part of this was due to the standardization to reflect

9265-399: The new national language. The term Putonghua ( 普通话 ; 普通話 ; 'common tongue') dates back to 1906 in writings by Zhu Wenxiong to differentiate the standard vernacular Mandarin from Literary Chinese and other varieties of Chinese . Since 2000, the Chinese government has used the term "Countrywide common spoken and written language" ( 国家通用语言文字 ), while also making provisions for

9374-428: The northern part and central part of Peninsular Malaysia respectively. In some regions controlled by insurgent groups in northern Myanmar, Mandarin serves as the lingua franca. In both mainland China and Taiwan, Standard Chinese is taught by immersion starting in elementary school. After the second grade, the entire educational system is in Standard Chinese, except for local language classes that have been taught for

9483-508: The official definition, Standard Chinese uses: Proficiency in the new standard was initially limited, even among Mandarin speakers, but increased over the following decades. A 2007 survey conducted by the Chinese Ministry of Education indicated that 53.06% of the population were able to effectively communicate using Standard Chinese. By 2020, this figure had risen to over 80%. In both mainland China and Taiwan, Standard Chinese

9592-491: The older generations, as Singapore's migrant Chinese community is made up almost entirely of people of south Chinese descent. Lee Kuan Yew , the initiator of the campaign, admitted that to most Chinese Singaporeans, Mandarin was a "stepmother tongue" rather than a true mother language. Nevertheless, he saw the need for a unified language among the Chinese community not biased in favor of any existing group. In Malaysia, Mandarin has been adopted by local Chinese-language schools as

9701-686: The other six are Wu , Gan , and Xiang in central China and Min , Hakka , and Yue on the southeast coast. The Language Atlas of China (1987) distinguishes three further groups: Jin (split from Mandarin), Huizhou in the Huizhou region of Anhui and Zhejiang , and Pinghua in Guangxi and Yunnan . After the fall of the Northern Song (959–1126) and during the reign of the Jin (1115–1234) and Yuan (Mongol) dynasties in northern China,

9810-491: The position of the Nanjing dialect was considered by some to be above that of Beijing; the postal romanization standards established in 1906 included spellings that reflected elements of Nanjing pronunciation. The sense of Guoyu as a specific language variety promoted for general use by the citizenry was originally borrowed from Japan; in 1902 the Japanese Diet had formed the National Language Research Council to standardize

9919-479: The primary spoken language, alongside a local form of Standard Chinese ( 書面語 ; syu1 min6 jyu5 ; 'written language') used in schools, local government, and formal writing. Written Cantonese may also be used in informal settings such as advertisements, magazines, popular literature, and comics. Mixture of formal and informal written Chinese occurs to various degrees. After the Hong Kong's handover from

10028-457: The pronunciations for all characters into the pronunciation of the Beijing dialect. Elements from other dialects continue to exist in the standard language, but as exceptions rather than the rule. Following the end of the Chinese Civil War , the People's Republic of China (PRC) continued standardisation efforts on the mainland, and in 1955 officially began using Putonghua ( 普通话 ; 普通話 ; 'common speech') instead of Guoyu , which remains

10137-467: The proportion understanding the standard rose from 41% to 90% over the same period. This standard language is now used in education, the media, and formal occasions in both mainland China and Taiwan , as well as among the Chinese community of Singapore . However, in other parts of the Chinese-speaking world , namely Hong Kong and Macau , the standard form of Chinese used in education,

10246-501: The same time, and the dialects in those areas similarly closely resemble their relatives in the core Mandarin area. The Southwest was settled early, but the population fell dramatically for obscure reasons in the 13th century, and did not recover until the 17th century. The dialects in this area are now relatively uniform. However, long-established cities even very close to Beijing , such as Tianjin , Baoding , Shenyang , and Dalian , have markedly different dialects. Standard Mandarin

10355-442: The southeast coast, few Mandarin speakers engaged in overseas emigration until the late 20th century, but there are now significant communities of them in cities across the world. Most Han Chinese living in northern and southwestern China are native speakers of a dialect of Mandarin. The North China Plain provided few barriers to migration, leading to relative linguistic homogeneity over a wide area in northern China. In contrast,

10464-584: The standard language with a notable accent. However, since the start of the 21st century, there has been an effort of mass education in Standard Mandarin Chinese and discouragement of local language usage by the Chinese government in order to erase these regional differences. From an official point of view, the mainland Chinese and the Taiwanese governments maintain their own forms of the standard under different names. The codified forms of both Pǔtōnghuà and Guóyǔ base their phonology on

10573-476: The teaching of proper pronunciation. Although the resulting Academies for Correct Pronunciation ( 正音書院 ; Zhèngyīn Shūyuàn ) were short-lived, the decree did spawn a number of textbooks that give some insight into the ideal pronunciation. Common features included: As the last two of these features indicate, this language was a koiné based on dialects spoken in the Nanjing area, though not identical to any single dialect. This form remained prestigious long after

10682-480: The term Hanyu is most commonly used in textbooks and Standard Chinese education, such as in the Hanyu Shuiping Kaoshi (HSK) test. Until the mid-1960s, Huayu ( 华语 ; 華語 ) referred to all the language varieties used among the Chinese nation . For example, Cantonese , Mandarin , and Hokkien films produced in Hong Kong were imported into Malaysia and collectively known as " Huayu cinema" until

10791-447: The third tone is long and murmured , whereas the fourth tone is relatively short. Statistically, vowels and tones are of similar importance in the language. There are also weak syllables, including grammatical particles such as the interrogative ma ( 嗎 ; 吗 ) and certain syllables in polysyllabic words. These syllables are short, with their pitch determined by the preceding syllable. Such syllables are commonly described as being in

10900-606: The two were not separated. Zhou Zhenhe and You Rujie include the New Xiang dialects within Southwestern Mandarin, treating only the more conservative Old Xiang dialects as a separate group. The Huizhou dialects have features of both Mandarin and Wu, and have been assigned to one or other of these groups or treated as separate by various authors. Li Rong and the Language Atlas of China treated it as

11009-437: The use and protection of ethnic minority languages. The term is derived from the title of a 2000 law which defines Putonghua as the "Countrywide Common Spoken and Written Language". Use of the term Putonghua ('common tongue') deliberately avoids calling the dialect a 'national language', in order to mitigate the impression of coercing minority groups to adopt the language of the majority. Such concerns were first raised by

11118-559: The use of Putonghua on television and the radio, as well as on public buses. The standardization campaign has been challenged by local dialectical and ethnic populations, who fear the loss of their cultural identity and native dialect. In the summer of 2010, reports of a planned increase in the use of the Putonghua on local television in Guangdong led to demonstrations on the streets by thousands of Cantonese -speaking citizens. While

11227-450: The use of Standard Chinese is encouraged as the common working language in predominantly Han areas on the mainland, the PRC has been more sensitive to the status of non-Sinitic minority languages, and has generally not discouraged their social use outside of education. In Hong Kong and Macau , which are special administrative regions of the PRC, there is diglossia between Cantonese ( 口語 ; hau2 jyu5 ; 'spoken language') as

11336-715: The wide geographical distribution and cultural diversity of their speakers. Speakers of forms of Mandarin other than the standard typically refer to the variety they speak by a geographic name—for example the Sichuan dialect and the Hebei dialect or Northeastern dialect , all being regarded as distinct from the standard language, with which they may not share much mutual intelligibility. The hundreds of modern local varieties of Chinese developed from regional variants of Old Chinese and Middle Chinese . Traditionally, seven major groups of dialects have been recognized. Aside from Mandarin,

11445-416: The written standard by written vernacular Chinese , which was based on northern dialects. A parallel priority was the definition of a standard national language ( traditional Chinese : 國語 ; simplified Chinese : 国语 ; pinyin : Guóyǔ ; Wade–Giles : Kuo²-yü³ ). After much dispute between proponents of northern and southern dialects and an abortive attempt at an artificial pronunciation ,

11554-559: Was greatly valued. For example, 翼 ( yì ; 'wing') is unambiguous in written Chinese, but has over 75 homophones in Standard Chinese . The literary language was less appropriate for documents that were meant to be performed or recited, such as plays or stories. From at least the Yuan dynasty plays that recounted the subversive tales of China's Robin Hoods to the Ming dynasty novels such as Water Margin , on down to

11663-541: Was initially used during the late Qing dynasty to refer to the Manchu language . The 1655 Memoir of Qing Dynasty , Volume: Emperor Nurhaci ( 清太祖實錄 ) says: "(In 1631) as Manchu ministers do not comprehend the Han language, each ministry shall create a new position to be filled up by Han official who can comprehend the national language." However, the sense of Guoyu as a specific language variety promoted for general use by

11772-658: Was seldom used by the Chinese Singaporean community , which primarily spoke the Southern Chinese languages of Hokkien , Teochew , Cantonese , or Hakka . The launch of the Speak Mandarin Campaign in 1979 by the government prioritized the language over traditional vernaculars in an attempt to create a common ethnic language and foster closer connections to China. This has led to a significant increase and presence of Mandarin usage in

11881-405: Was seldom used by the Chinese Singaporean community , which primarily spoke the Southern Chinese languages of Hokkien , Teochew , Cantonese, or Hakka . Standard Singaporean Mandarin is nearly identical to the standards of China and Taiwan, with minor vocabulary differences. It is the Mandarin variant used in education, media, and official settings. Meanwhile, a colloquial form called Singdarin

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