Mandarin

Mandarin Chinese is the official and national language of China. Mandarin is a group of related Chinese dialects spoken across the country but mutually unintelligible. It  is a member of the Sino-Tibetan family of languages. It is commonly known as the ‘Beijing Dialect’ which is the standard language of Mainland China. However, there is contradiction whether Mandarin Chinese is a Dialect or Language. The word ‘Mandarin’ has originated from the Sanskrit word ‘Mantarin’, from Hindi word ‘Mantri and from Portuguese Word ‘Mandarim’ all of which mean ‘Minister’, ‘Counsellor’ or ‘High Official’. The Portuguese used the term to refer both to the Chinese people and their language though it originally meant an official of the Chinese empire. In 16th century Jesuit missionaries learned this standard language and called it Mandarin, from its Chinese name ‘GuÄ�nhuà’. Mandarin Chinese is also referred as ‘Simplified Chinese’, ‘Traditional Chinese (pinyin) and GuÄ�nhuà (speech of officials). Mandarin Chinese is often divided into 4 subgroups: 1) Northern Mandarin, centring on Beijing and spoken in northern China and the North-east provinces (Manchuria); 2) North-western Mandarin, extending northward from the city of Baoji and through most of north-western China; 3) South-western Mandarin, centring on the area around Chongqing and spoken in Sichuan and adjoining parts of south-western China; and 4) Southern, or Lower Yangtze, Mandarin, in an area centred on Nanjing. Mandarin is spoken in all of China north of the Yangtze River and in much of the rest of the country. It is the native language of two-thirds of the population. Mandarin is the main language of government, the media and education in China and Taiwan, and one of the four official languages in Singapore. It is mostly spoken in China, Taiwan, Singapore, and Malaysia. Mandarin is known as ‘PÅ­tÅ�nghuà’ (common language) or ‘BÄ�ijÄ«nghuà’ (Beijing language) in China. It is known as common language because it is the common language spoken by the Chinese people. It is known as ‘GuóyÅ­’ (national language) in Taiwan and ‘HuáyÅ­’ (Chinese language) in Singapore and Malaysia. It is also widely used in the many Chinese communities (Chinatowns) around the globe. Mandarin Chinese is also one of the 6 official languages used by the United Nations.

Around 1 billion people speak Mandarin Chinese around the world. The Mandarin language has more native speakers than any other language. Just over 53% of the population of China or 690 million people are able to speak Mandarin, according to the Xinhua news agency. In China's cities, about 66% speak Mandarin, while only 45% speak it in the countryside. Around 70% of people between the ages of 15 and 29 speak the language, while only 30% of those over 60 can speak it. About one-fifth of the world speaks some form of Chinese as its native language, making it the language with the most native speakers. There are at least a further 25 million or so Mandarin speakers elsewhere, especially in Taiwan (20 million) and Singapore (1.5 million), and also in Malaysia, Indonesia, Mongolia, Brunei, Thailand, the Philippines, Russia, the USA, Vietnam, Laos, UK and Mauritius. There are a variety of spoken Chinese, the most prominent of which is Mandarin. There is however only one uniform written script. Written Chinese is based on spoken Mandarin and is known as ‘HànyÅ­’ or ‘ZhÅ�ngwén’. Speakers of other varieties of Chinese have to learn the grammar and vocabulary of Mandarin in order to read and write in Chinese.

Varieties or Dialects of Mandarin

Manadrin Chinese languages are known variously as ‘FÄ�ngyán’ (regional languages), dialects of Chinese or varieties of Chinese. In all over 1.2 billion people speak one or more varieties of Chinese. There are further sub-dialects as well, which are more or less mutually intelligible. It is contentious whether  these languages are dialects or languages as they are not mutually understandable. There may be some similarities due to the common root of these languages and due to similarity of Chinese characters. But speakers of Taiwanese and those of Cantonese may not be able to easily communicate with each other. Majority of the population in China and Taiwan which doesn’t speak Mandarin as their first language, can speak or at least understand it a bit. But in Hong Kong and Macau few people speak Mandarin, so they use English for communication with people from other parts of China or Taiwan. There are various classifications based on various division schemes developed by various Linguists.

As per Traditional Chinese classification, there are 7 Groups:

Gan - Jiangxinese.
Guan - Mandarin or Beifanghua.
Kejia – Hakka.
Min - Includes the Hokkien and Taiwanese variant.
Wu - Includes Shanghainese variant.
Xiang - Hunanese.
Yue - Includes the Cantonese and Taishanese variants.

As per Ethnologue, there are 14 Language Groups:

Ethnologue is a web and print publication of SIL International, a Christian linguistic service organization, which studies lesser-known languages, primarily to provide the speakers with Bibles in their native language.

Origin and History

China is a country with enormous geographic size and consequently there have existed many languages and dialects since ancient period. 'Phags-pa’ script, a unified script for spelling Mongolian and Chinese languages was invented in 1269. It was based on the Tibetan alphabet used to write several of the languages of the Mongol empire (Yuang Dynasty) including Chinese, and the Menggu Ziyun, a rhyme dictionary based on 'Phags-pa’. The roots of the Mandarin can be traced in a rhyme dictionary called the ‘Zhongyuan Yinyun’ during 1324. This dictionary contains a information on the phonology of Old Mandarin. The rhyme books show many of the features characteristic of modern Mandarin dialects, such as the reduction and disappearance of final stop consonants and the reorganization of the Middle Chinese tones.

Mandarin emerged as the language of the ruling class during the latter part of the Ming Dynasty (1368 – 1644 AD). Later on, during the rule of the Ming Dynasty ‘Beijing’ was made the Capital of China, its predecessor being Nanjing. The language retained its status even during the Qing Dynasty (1644 – 1912). As Mandarin is based on the Beijing dialect, it naturally became the official language of the court. But it was not the national language of the country. Officials from various parts of China spoke many dialects as they were not proficient in Mandarin which was spoken at the Chinese court. It was in 1909 that Mandarin became the ‘Guó YÇ�’ (national language) of China. In 1912, Qing Dynasty fell but the Republic of China maintained Mandarin as the official language. It was renamed PÇ� TÅ�ng Huà (common speech) in 1955.

Orthography

Mandarin Chinese doesn't have an alphabet. Mandarin Chinese Writing is Logographic, i.e. it is written with symbols. These symbols are called Chinese characters. Chinese characters represent the oldest writing system in the world.

There are two different kinds of Chinese characters: ‘Traditional’ and ‘Simplified’. Taiwan, Macau, Hong Kong, and overseas Chinese communities use traditional characters. China uses simplified characters.

Traditional characters have more strokes, and take more time to write.

Chinese characters can be written from left to right, right to left, or from top to bottom.

There are over 100,000 Chinese characters recorded in the most advanced Mandarin Chinese dictionaries. New Chinese symbols are developed all the time, so the amount of Chinese characters never stops increasing.

Pinyin

It is the Standard Romanized version of Chinese Mandarin i.e. Mandarin with Latin letters. It was developed in China in the 1950's. It is the official system to transcribe Chinese characters into the Roman alphabet to teach Mandarin Chinese in China, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore and Taiwan. In Chinese, ‘Pinyin’ literally means ‘Spelled Sound’. Pinyin is used in most Chinese language institutes to teach Mandarin as a second language. It's a way to read Chinese without having to know the characters. Many Chinese street names are written in pinyin in China and Taiwan. It is also often used to spell Chinese names in foreign publications and used as an input method to enter Chinese characters into computers. It is especially useful for children and foreigners to understand the sounds of Chinese language pronunciation. The system was published by the Chinese government in 1958. The International Organization for Standardization adopted Pinyin as the International Standard in 1982. The system was adopted as the official standard in Taiwan in 2009, where it is generally referred to as the New Phonetic System. It is not the official writing of Mandarin Chinese, nor is a system of Chinese character.

Standard Romanized version of Chinese Mandarin

Phonology

Spoken Chinese is a ‘Tonal Language’ related to Tibetan and Burmese.  It mostly has ‘Monosyllabic’ words and word elements and because there are neither markers for inflection nor markers to indicate parts of speech, it has a fixed word order. Mandarin Chinese has 4 Tones. It means that for one given syllable, or word, there are 4 different meanings. For example: the word "ma" can either mean horse, mother, hemp, or to scold. Mastering the four Chinese tones is one of the most difficult aspects of learning Mandarin Chinese.

4 Tones are:

1. Level.
2. Rising.
3. Falling
4. High-rising.

These are used to distinguish words or syllables that have the same series of consonants and vowels but different meanings; Mandarin has few words ending with a consonant.

Grammar Rules

• No  need to conjugate verbs.
• No need to master verb tenses.
• No need to distinguish between singular and plural nouns.
• No need to worry about gender-specific nouns.
• The most difficult part when studying Mandarin is getting your tones right and learning how to read and write Chinese characters.

Mandarin Chinese Phrases  

• Hello - ni hao
• How are you? - ni hao ma
• I'm great thanks, and you? - wo hen hao xie xie, ni ne?
• What's your name? - ni jao shenme mingze?
• My name is Mike - wo jio Mike
• Nice to meet you - wo hen gaoxing renshe ni
• Where are you from? - ni shi tong nali lai de
• Goodbye - zaijian
• I don't understand - wo bu mingbai
• Sorry - duibuqi