mandarin

shrub or small tree having flattened globose fruit with very sweet aromatic pulp and thin yellow-orange to flame-orange rind that is loose and easily removed

native to southeastern Asia a member of an elite intellectual or cultural group any high government official or bureaucrat a high public official of imperial China a somewhat flat reddish-orange loose skinned citrus of China the dialect of Chinese spoken in Beijing and adopted as the official language for all of China

This article is on all of the Northern Chinese dialects. For the standardized official spoken Chinese language (Putonghua/Guoyu), see Standard Mandarin.''Mandarin!nativename=北方 5805;? familycolor=tomato states=China (the People's Republic of China and the Republic of China), Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, and other Chinese communities around the world region=Most of northern and southwestern China; widely understood in the rest of China speakers=867.2 millionrank=1 family=Sino-Tibetan
 Chinese languageChinese
  Mandarin nation=in Standard Mandarinstandardized form: People's Republic of ChinaPRC, Republic of ChinaROC, Singapore agency=in the PRC: china-language.gov.cn - various agencies
in the ROC: Mandarin Promotion Council
in Singapore: Promote Mandarin Council/Speak Mandarin Campaign mandarin.org.sg iso1=zhiso2=chi (B) / zho (T)sil=CHN Mandarin (Traditional Chinese charactersTraditional: 北方話, Simplified: 北方话, Hanyu Pinyin: Běifānghuà Audiozh-Beifanghua.ogglisten , lit. "Northern speech" or !北方方෌ 8;? Hanyu Pinyin: ''Běifāng Fāngyán,'' lit. "Northern dialects"), is a category of related Chinese dialects spoken across most of northern and southwestern China. ''Mandarin'' can also refer to Standard Mandarin, which is based on the Beijing dialectMandarin dialect spoken in Beijing. Standard Mandarin is the official spoken language of the People's Republic of China—where it is known as ''Putonghua'' (literally, "the common tongue") —and the Republic of China (Taiwan)—where it is known as ''Guoyu'' (''Kuo-yü'', literally, "the national tongue"). It is also one of the official spoken languages of Singapore. When taken as an independent language, as is often done in academic literature, Mandarin has more speakers than any other language."Mandarin" usually refers to only standard Mandarin in everyday usage. The broad academic concept of "Mandarin" encompasses a large number of linguistically related dialects, some less mutually intelligible than others, and is very rarely 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 Mandarin will describe the variant that they are speaking, for example Sichuan dialect or Northeast China dialect, and may not recognize that it is in fact classified by linguists as a form of "Mandarin". Nor is there a common "Mandarin" identity based on language—due to the wide geographical distribution of speakers—though there are strong regional identities centered around individual Mandarin dialects.Like all other varieties of Chinese languageChinese, there is significant dispute as to whether Mandarin is a language or a dialect. (''See !Chinese_language#Is_Chinese_a_ Language_or_a_Family_of_Langua ges?Is Chinese a Language or a Family of Languages for the issues surrounding this issue.'')

History - The present main divisions of the Chinese language developed out of Old ChineseOld Chinese and Middle Chinese. Most Chinese living in a broad arc, from the north-east (Manchuria) to the south-west (Yunnan), use various Mandarin dialects as their home language. The prevalence of linguistic homogeneity (i.e. Mandarin) throughout northern China is largely the result of geography, namely the plains of north China. By contrast, the mountains and rivers of southern China have promoted linguistic diversity. The presence of Mandarin in southwest China is largely due to a plague in the 12th century in Sichuan. This plague, which may have been related to the black death, depopulated the area, leading to later settlement from north China.There is no clear dividing line where Middle Chinese ends and Mandarin begins; however, the Zhongyuan Yinyun !(中原音ƅ 01;),? a rhyme book from the Yuan Dynasty, is widely regarded as an important 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 tonal languagetones.

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Media:Chinese_langua ge_tree.pngClick here for uncropped version

Until the mid-20th century, most Chinese living in southern China did not speak any Mandarin. However, despite the mix of officials and commoners speaking various Chinese dialects, Beijingese Mandarin became dominant at least during the officially Manchu-speaking Qing Empire. Since the 17th century, the Empire had set up Orthoepy Academies !(正音書ƀ 98;? Zhengyin Shuyuan) in an attempt to make pronunciation conform to the Beijing standard. But these attempts had little success.This situation changed with the creation (in both the PRC and the ROC) of an elementary school education system committed to teaching Mandarin. As a result, Mandarin is now spoken fluently by most people in Mainland China and in Taiwan. In Hong Kong, the language of education and formal speech remains Cantonese (linguistics)Cantonese but Mandarin is becoming increasingly influential.

Name and classification - The English languageEnglish term comes from the Portuguese languagePortuguese ''mandarim'' (from Malay languageMalay ''menteri'' bartleby.comdictionary.bhanot.net from Sanskrit ''mantrin-'', meaning Political ministerminister); it is a translation of the Chinese term ''Guānhuà'' (官話; simplified: 官话), 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'' (北方話, simplified: 北方话), or the dialect(s) of the North.

Standardized Mandarin - ''Main article: Standard Mandarin''From an official point of view, there are two versions of Standard Mandarinstandardized spoken Mandarin, since the People's Republic of ChinaBeijing government refers to that on the Mainland as ''Putonghua'', whereas the Republic of ChinaTaipei government refers to their official language as ''Kuo-yü'' (''Guoyu'' in pinyin).Technically, both Putonghua and Guoyu base their phonology on the Beijing dialect, 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" Mandarin are often quite different from the Mandarin that is spoken in accordance with regional habits, and neither is identical to even 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" and "Guoyu" refer to speech, and hence the difference in the use of Simplified Chinesesimplified characters and Traditional Chinesetraditional characters is not usually considered to be a difference between these two concepts.

Variations - ''Main article: Dialects of Mandarin''There are regional variations in Mandarin. This is manifested in two ways:# Various dialects of Mandarin cover a huge area containing nearly a billion people. As a result, there are pronounced regional variations in pronunciation, vocabulary and grammar encountered as one moves from place to place. These regional differences are as pronounced as (or more so than) the regional versions of the English language found in England, Scotland, Ireland, Australia, Canada, and the United States.# Standard Mandarin has been promoted very actively by the People's Republic of ChinaPRC, the Republic of ChinaROC, and Singapore as a second language. As a result, native speakers of both Mandarin varieties and non-Mandarin Chinese varieties frequently flavor it with a strong infusion of the speech sounds of their native tongues.Dialects of Mandarin can be subdivided into eight categories: Beijing dialectBeijing Mandarin, Northeastern Mandarin, Ji Lu Mandarin, Jiao Liao Mandarin, Zhongyuan Mandarin, Lan Yin Mandarin, Southwestern Mandarin, and Jianghuai Mandarin. Jin (linguistics)Jin is sometimes considered the ninth category of Mandarin (others separate it from Mandarin altogether).In both Mainland China and Taiwan, Mandarin in predominantly Han Chinese areas is taught by immersion starting in elementary school. After the second grade, the entire educational system is in Mandarin, except for local language classes that have been taught for a few hours each week in Taiwan starting in the mid-1990s.However, the era of mass education in Mandarin has not erased these earlier regional differences. In the south, the interaction between Mandarin and local variations of Chinese has produced local versions of the "Northern" language that are rather different from that official standard Mandarin in both pronunciation and grammar.

Phonology - See standard Mandarin#Phonologystandard Mandarin for a description of Standard Mandarin phonology and dialects of Mandarin#Phonologydialects of Mandarin for an overview of the phonologies of Mandarin dialects. Mandarin, like most Chinese dialects/languages, is syllable timingsyllable timed, as opposed to many Western languages, including English, which are stress timingstress timedThe set of syllables in Chinese is very small, since each syllable has to be constructed after the pattern: "optional initial consonant followed by vowel followed by optional final consonant (which is either an glideoffglide or /n/), plus tone." Not every syllable that is possible according to this rule actually exists in Mandarin, and in practice there are only a few hundred syllables. For example, Mandarin lacks a final 'm' sound. People with a heavy Mandarin Non-native pronunciations of Englishaccent would often read 'time' as 'tie-mm', or may even pronounce the 'm' more like 'n.'

Vocabulary - There are more polysyllabic words in Mandarin than in other varieties of Chinese. 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-'', ''-zi'', ''-(e)r'', and ''-tou''. There are also a small number of words that have been polysyllabic since Old Chinese, such as ''hudie'' (butterfly).The pronouns in Mandarin are wǒ (我) "I", nǐ (你) "you", and tā (他/她) "he/she", with -men (们) added for the group. Dialects of Mandarin agree with each other quite consistently on this, but not with other varieties of Chinese (e.g. Wu (linguistics)Wu has 侬 "you").In addition, there is zánmen (咱们), a "we" that includes the listener, and nín (您), a deferential way of saying "you". A comparable example would be ''Sie'' and ''du'' in German.Other morphemes that Mandarin dialects tend to share are aspect and mood particles, such as -le (了), -zhe (着), and -guo (过). Other Chinese varieties tend to use different words in some of these contexts (e.g. Cantonese 咗 and 紧).Due to contact with Central Asian cultures, Mandarin has some loanwords from Altaic languages not present in other varieties of Chinese, for example hútong (胡同) "alley". List of Chinese dialectsSouthern Chinese varieties have borrowed more from Tai or Austronesian languages.

References -

Chao, Yuen Ren Title=A Grammar of Spoken Chinese Publisher=University of California Press Year=1968 ID=ISBN 0-520-00219-9

Norman, Jerry Title=Chinese Publisher=Cambridge University Press Year=1988 ID=ISBN 0-521-29653-6

Ramsey, S. Robert Title=The Languages of China Publisher=Princeton University Press Year=1987 ID=ISBN 0-691-01468-X

See also -

Chinese grammar

External links - book

ethnologue.com - Ethnologue report on Mandarin

chinesedc.com - Chinese language source materials used as the basis for the map and chart supplied above.

wintranslation.com - Chinese Translation Translate into Mandarin or Simplified Chinese? (article)Category:Chinese languageCategory:Tonal languagescategory:Mandarin (linguistics) bg:Мандаринda:Mandarin (sprog)de:MandarinLink FAde es:Chino !mandarínfr:Mandarinhe:מ נדרי&# 1504;יתid:Bahasa? !Mandarinla:Lingua_Sinensis_Man darinicaja:北京 5486;nl:Mandarijn? (taal)pl:Języki !mandaryńskiept:Mandarimsv :mandarin? (lingvistik)simple:Mandarin !languageth:ภาษาจี� ��กลางzh:北方话

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