Cactus Language Blog

Mandarin Chinese: A History of the Language

Posted by Sarah under Cactus Languages Abroad

Mandarin speaker Simon Ager looks at the making Mandarin Chinese

Mandarin Chinese is a member of the Chinese branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family. It is closely related to the varieties of Chinese spoken in soutern China, such as Cantonese and Shanghainese, though mutually unitelligible with them.

The English name for the language, Mandarin, comes from the Portuguese word mandarim. The name referred just to Chinese officials and the language they used. They called their language guanhua (speech of officials).

Mandarin originated in Northern China and was the main language used by administrators and scholars during the Ming (1312-1644) and Qing Dynasties (1644-1912). At first the standard language was based on the Nanjing dialect. Later the Beijing dialect became more influential and the basis for the standard language. During the 17th century, academies were set up throughout China to teach the pronunciation of Beijing. They met with little success. The Nanjing dialect continued to be considered more prestigious by some until the early 20th century however, and was the basis of the Chinese Postal romanization system, which gave us such names as Nanking, Peking and Tientsin.

The language used by officials, guanhua, contained many polite and humble terms and formulas which have almost completely disappeared from modern spoken Mandarin. Some of them are still used in formal written Chinese though. There are also some differences in vocabulary and word order between guanhua and modern Mandarin.

The Beijing dialect of Mandarin was established as China’s national language (guoyu) in 1909. Promotion of this dialect met with more success at the establishment of the Republic of China in 1912. Attempts made to incorporate elements of other dialects were abandoned by 1924 as it was considered too difficult to do so.

In 1955 the name of the language was changed to putonghua (common speech) in China, while in Taiwan they continued to call the language guoyu. In south east Asia the language is generally known as Huayu (Chinese language).

Until the 1920s, the main written language in China was Classical Chinese. It differs as much from spoken forms of Chinese as Latin does from Italian and other Romance languages. During the 1920s, Chinese scholars set up a movement, known as the Baihua Movement, to create a new form of written Chinese based on spoken Mandarin, particularly the Mandarin of educated speakers in Beijing. This written form has been used ever since, though many writers continue to use turns of phrases and vocabulary from Classical Chinese in their writing.

Today Mandarin is used as the main language of government, education and the media in China and Taiwan, and is one of the official languages in Singapore and Malaysia. Over 800 million people currently speak Mandarin as a first or second language.

About the author

Simon Ager studied Chinese and Japanese at university, and worked in Taiwan for over five years. He currently runs a company that provides information and advice about languages mainly via the website www.omniglot.com, and also writes about languages on a freelance basis.

Tags:china, chinese, Mandarin