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History of Standard Mandarin

*** Shopping-Tip: History of Standard Mandarin
Standard Mandarin is the official Chinese spoken language used by the People's Republic of China, the Republic of China on Taiwan, Malaysia and Singapore. The '''history of Standard Mandarin''' as the standardized version of Chinese, however, is relatively recent.

Before Mandarin
Since ancient history, the Chinese language has always consisted of a wide variety of dialects; hence prestige dialects and lingua francas have always been needed. Confucius, for example, used ''yÇŽyán'' (雅言), or "elegant speech", rather than colloquial regional dialects; text during the Han Dynasty also referred to ''tÅ?ngyÇ”'' (通語), or "common language". Rime books, which were written since the Southern and Northern Dynasties, may also have reflected one or more systems of standard pronunciation during those times. However, all of these standard dialects were probably unknown outside the educated elite; even among the elite, pronunciations may have been very different, as the unifying factor of all Chinese dialects, Classical Chinese, was a written standard, not a spoken one.

Adoption of Mandarin
The Ming Dynasty (1368 - 1644) and the Qing Dynasty (1644 - 1912) began to use the term ''guÄ?nhuà'' (官話), or "official speech", to refer to the speech used at the noble court courts. It seems that during the early part of this period, the standard 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. In the 17th century, the Empire had set up Orthoepy Academies (正音書院, ZhèngyÄ«n ShÅ«yuàn) in an attempt to make pronunciation conform to the Beijing standard. But these attempts had little success. As late as the 19th century the emperor had difficulty understanding some of his own ministers in court, who did not always try to follow any standard pronunciation. Nevertheless, by 1909, the dying Qing Dynasty had established the Beijing dialect as ''guóyÇ”'' (國語), or the "national language"; After the Republic of China was established in 1912, there was more success in promoting a common national language. At first there was an attempt to introduce elements from other Chinese dialects into the national language, in addition to those existing in Beijing dialect. But this was deemed too difficult, and in 1924 this attempt was abandoned and the Beijing dialect became the major source of standard national pronunciation, due to the status of that dialect as a prestigious dialect since the Qing Dynasty. Elements from other dialects continue to exist in the standard language, but as exceptions rather than the rule. The People's Republic of China, established in 1949, continued the effort. In 1955, standard Mandarin was renamed ''pÇ”tÅ?nghuà'' (普通話), or "common speech". (The name change was not recognized by the Republic of China which has governed only Taiwan and some surrounding islands since 1949.) Since then, the standards used in mainland China and Taiwan have diverged somewhat, though they continue to remain essentially identical. After the handovers of Hong Kong and Macau, the term Putonghua is used in those Special Administrative Regions of the People's Republic of China. And the pinyin system is widely used for teaching of Putonghua. In both mainland China and Taiwan, the use of Standard Mandarin as the medium of instruction in the educational system and in the media has contributed to the spread of standard Mandarin. As a result, Standard Mandarin is now spoken fluently by most people in Mainland China and on Taiwan. However in Hong Kong, due to historical and linguistic reasons, the language of education and both formal and informal speech remains the local Cantonese (linguistics) Cantonese but standard Mandarin is becoming increasingly influential.

Modern Standard Mandarin vs. historical Mandarin
Historically, and properly speaking, the word "Mandarin" (官話) refers to the language spoken in the 19th century by the upper classes of Beijing as well as by the higher civil servants and military officers of the imperial regime serving in Beijing or in the provinces. This Mandarin language is quite close to modern-day Standard Mandarin (普通� / 普通話/ 國語), but there exist some differences. The Mandarin language used many polite and humble words which have almost entirely disappeared in daily conversation in modern-day Standard Mandarin, such as jiàn (賤 "my humble"), guì (貴 "your honorable"), bì (� "my humble"), etc. The grammar of the Mandarin language was almost identical to the grammar of modern-day Standard Mandarin, with sometimes very slight differences in the choice of grammatical words or the positioning of words in the sentence. The vocabulary of the Mandarin language was also largely the same as the vocabulary of modern-day Standard Mandarin, although some vocabulary items used in the Mandarin language have now disappeared from modern-day Standard Mandarin. In order to allow comparisons, here are four dialogues in the Mandarin language with their equivalent below in modern-day Standard Mandarin. These are authentic dialogues extracted from the ''Compass of the Mandarin language'' (官話指�), a phrasebook published by the Japanese legation in Beijing in the 1880s and translated into several western languages. Please note: the dialogues are written in simplified Chinese characters, followed by traditional Chinese character traditional characters.

Dialogue #1
'''Historical Mandarin (官話 / 官�) version'''
A- 您贵姓？ / 你貴姓？ (What is your family name?)
B- 鄙姓�。 /鄙姓�。 (My family name is Wu)
A- 请教�甫？ / 請教�甫？ (Pray tell me your Chinese style name courtesy name)
B- �字资�。 / �字資�。 (My courtesy name is Zijing)
A- 贵昆仲几�？ / 貴昆仲幾�？ (How many brothers do you have?)
B- 我们弟兄三个。 / 我們弟兄三個。 (We are three brothers)
A- 贵处是哪一�？ / 貴處是那一�？ (Which province are you from?)
B- �处河��城。 / �處河��城。 (I am from the capital city of Henan province)
A- 府上在城里��？ / 府上在城��嗎？ (Is your abode inside town?)
B- 是，在城里� / 是，在城��。 (Yes, I live inside town) '''Standard Mandarin (普通�) version'''
A- 您贵姓？
B- 我姓�
A- 请问您的字�是什么？ （Not a valid question because courtesy names are no longer used)
B- 我字资�。
A- 你有几个兄弟
B- 我有两个兄弟
A- 你家在哪个�？
B- 我家在河��的�会。
A- 你家在城里�？
B- 是的，我家在城里。

Dialogue #2
Dialogue between a Chinese person (A) and a foreigner (B) who apparently learnt Chinese in Xiamen, southern China.
'''Historical Mandarin (官話) version'''
A- 你懂得中国��？ (Do you understand Chinese?)
B- 略会一点儿。那厦门的�别处�甚懂。(I understand it a little bit. But the dialect of Xiamen is hardly understood anywhere else.)
A- 中国�本难懂，�处有�处的乡谈，就是官�通行。 (Chinese is naturally difficult to understand, each region has its own dialect. However, Mandarin is found everywhere.)
B- 我��人说官�还分�北音哪。 (I heard that the pronunciation of Mandarin is not the same in the north and in the south.)
A- 官��北腔调儿��， 字音也差�多。 (The accent of Mandarin is different from north to south, but the pronunciation of characters is approximately the same.) '''Standard Mandarin (普通�) version'''
A- 你懂中国��？
B- 我懂一点，但是厦门的�对外地人�说很难懂。
A- 中国�本�就很难懂，�个地方都有自己的方言，�过普通�到处都�以用。
B- 我�说北方和�方的普通��音�一样。
A- 北方和�方的�音��，�过汉字的�音还是基本相�的。

Dialogue #3
'''Historical Mandarin (官話) version'''
A- 这个猫怎么总�管闲事？�� (Why is this cat not doing its job?!!)
B- 满地的耗�它也�拿� (There are rats everywhere, and it doesn't catch them!)
A- 明儿个�用喂它就好了。 (Tomorrow we mustn’t feed it, that'll be better.)
B- 这耗�真闹得凶，�得���觉。 (These rats make so much noise. It's impossible to sleep.)
A- 东西也咬了个稀烂。这�怎么好？� (And they also gnaw objects to pieces. How can we be happy with that?!) '''Standard Mandarin (普通�) version'''
(''Could a native Chinese speaker (preferably from Beijing) please adapt the above dialogue into putonghua''.) A- 这个猫怎么�饱��事？
B- 到处都是�鼠，它也�抓。
A- 明天我们�给它�的。
B- 那些�鼠�得好厉害，连觉都��好。
A- 它们把东西都咬碎了，这�怎么办？

Dialogue #4
'''Historical Mandarin (官話) version'''
A- �弟是解家里��？ (Young man, are you coming from home?)
B- 喳，是解家里�。 (Yes sir. I am coming from home.)
A- 怎么这几天我没�你呀？是干什么��？ (Why! These past days I haven't seen you. What were you doing?)
B- 我是出外打围去了。 (I went out of town hunting.)
A- 是��去的？ (Whom did you go with?)
B- 是��我们一个街�去的。 (I went with one of our neighbors.)
A- 是上哪儿打围去了？ (Where did you go hunting?)
B- 上东山打围去了。 (To the Eastern Mountain.)
A- 多咱回�的？ (When did you come back?)
B- 昨儿晚上回�的。 (Yesterday evening.)
A- 打了些个什么野牲��？ (What sort of game did you shoot?)
B- 打了些个野鸡�野猫，还打了个野猪。 (We shot pheasants, wild cats, and also one wild boar.) '''Standard Mandarin (普通�) version'''
A- 年轻人，你从家里出�的？
B- 是的，我从家里�。
A- 好些天没�到你了，你干什么去了？
B- 我出城打猎去了。
A- 和�去的？
B- 我和一个邻居一起去的。
A- 你们到哪里去打猎了？
B- 到东山去了。
A- 你们什么时候回�的？
B- 昨天�晚。
A- 打到了些什么？
B- 打了些野鸡，野猫，还有一个野猪。 Category:Mandarin (linguistics)

*** Shopping-Tip: History of Standard Mandarin