Talk:Standard Chinese/Archive 1

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Would it be correct to call putonghua a dialect? Or what's the proper way to refer to it? See Shantou for an example. - Fuzheado 03:04, 1 Aug 2003 (UTC)

The third tone

Here the contour is marked 214. Nevertheless it's the whole third tone (quan2san1sheng1) which is less popular than half thid tone (ban4san1sheng1). Should the contour of the half thid tone be included? Is it 21 by the way? -- 10:21, January 27, 2005, UTC

The bansansheng is a result of tone sandhi, not the original tone itself. -- ran (talk) 13:35, Jan 27, 2005 (UTC)

Should the bansansheng be mentioned in the article? By the way I don't agree the ban4san1sheng1 is a tone sandhi, but an alternative pronunciation to third tone, together with the quan2san1sheng1. -- 17:57, January 28, 2005, UTC

Yeah, we can put that interpretation in too. -- ran (talk) 02:08, Jan 29, 2005 (UTC)

I don’t think half third tone (ban4san1sheng1) is tone sandhi, it’s how the third tone is commonly pronounced in continuous speech. LDHan 14:15, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

Romanization

During the 1950s, there were plans for Pinyin to supersede the Chinese characters. These plans, however, proved to be impractical due to the large number of homonyms in the Chinese language.

This is doubtful. It didn't occur to them to use diacritics, the way the Vietnamese had been doing since the 19th century? Wasn't it more the attachment to the traditional writing system? --Erauch 18:34, Mar 7, 2005 (UTC)

While I can't judge the accuracy of the claim that there were plans to replace Chinese characters, using tone marks wouldn't come close to disambiguating all the homophones of Chinese. There are probably 20+ common characters with the pronunciation shi4, for example, and I wouldn't be surprised if there are (say) ~5 common characters on average for each syllable. (You can calculate this, I think -- about 1600 possible syllables, tones counted; and about 4000-5000 common characters. Also, not all possible syllables occur; for example we have ding1, ding3, and ding4, but not ding2.)

Besides, pinyin already uses tone marks, they're an intrinsic part of pinyin. Not using them (as is done in English) is an absolute nightmare... and results in clunky workarounds like Shanxi/Shaanxi. -- ran (talk) 18:52, Mar 7, 2005 (UTC)

The claim is true. I came across a 1960s' textbook on Chinese language when I was back in China this February, in which I read a quote by Mao Zedong: The written language must be revolutionized, it must follow the common trend of pinyinization of all world's languages. ("文字必须改革，要走世界文字共同的拼音方向") along others. There were no doubt attempts during that period, although not necessarily serious in today's sense. -- Alaz (talk) 22:41, 18 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Yes, but speakers have no problem dealing with the same ambiguity in the spoken language that's found in Pinyin. It seems more likely that they didn't want to get rid of something culturally so important as the writing system. --Erauch 23:03, Mar 7, 2005 (UTC)

The written language, especially formal written language, is a lot more tolerant of homophones than the spoken language. In general, written language is much closer to Classical Chinese, adopting abbreviations and structures that would be odd (if not incomprehensible) in spoken Chinese.

And there's Classical Chinese itself too, which would be completely indecipherable without a logographic writing system.

It is absolutely true that people didn't want to ditch the logographic system because it is too culturally important — and practically important, as well. This is because ditching it would render incomprehensible anything that was written before the 1900's (i.e. anything in Classical Chinese or early Vernacular), plus a good deal of what was written after, too. -- ran (talk) 23:19, Mar 7, 2005 (UTC)

In addition, I think what was more influential was that most of southern China could not speak Mandarin (this has changed only in the past few decades, though there are still many places in the south where less than a majority know Mandarin). Completely pinyinifying spoken Chinese would essentially make southern Chinese people illiterate. It was already controversial enough when Mandarin was adopted as the national language... many southern Chinese were afraid they would end up being second-class citizens because of that, but they were eventually overruled. With a logographic writing system at least, those who didn't know how to speak Mandarin could at least read and write. --Umofomia 23:47, 7 Mar 2005 (UTC)

"With a logographic writing system at least, those who didn't know how to speak Mandarin could at least read and write" - This is mostly untrue, since learning Written Chinese from only knowing Cantonese is almost equivalent to learning a new language (Mandarin). Literate people in Hong Kong know two languages: Cantonese and Mandarin (though they may only be able to speak the former), whereas people in Beijing only know one. For those who disagree, then why is it much harder for a person in Northern China to learn Cantonese than for a (literate) southern Chinese person to learn Mandarin?

In regards to pinyinization, perhaps the homophone problem can be solved by having different spellings for the same phoneme, for example, in English, ph = f, or in Latin American Spanish, s = z (these are just examples, so ignore the fact that ph is derived from an original aspirated p and that L. Amer. Spanish s and z were once distinct). So we can have two characters with identical pronunciations (say "shu1") be written as "shu1" and "schu1" respectively. Of course we may run out of alternate spellings, in which case we may be forced to reuse the same spelling. I wouldn't get all too worried about this, as this occurs occasionally in English too: two words with different meanings and etymology but with an identical spelling: "groom" (as in "bridegroom") vs. "groom" (as in "to clean oneself"), or "sound" (as in "noise" - from French son) vs. "sound" (as in "healthy", related to German gesund). Worse comes to worst we can have a few exceptions where a Chinese character with multiple pronunciations is mapped to a single spelling but with the pronunciation differences still followed in speech. An English example of this is the word "read" which is pronounced differently depending on whether it is in the present or past tense. Of course these extra accomodations would occur far more commonly in a Chinese language than in English.

I can assure you that Chinese people find pinyin texts difficult to understand, especially when tones are not used in which case it would be almost incomprehensible. This applies even to people speaking only Mandarin such as myself. I don't think I'll need to cite the importance of culture to reject total pinyinization :). -- Alaz (talk) 23:02, 18 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Yes.... and considering that there is no tradition of separatism among southern Han Chinese (with the notable exception of Taiwan), it's not particularly wise to foment its creation ... -- ran (talk) 23:59, Mar 7, 2005 (UTC)

I do agree that the statement currently in the article needs to be changed though. The homonym argument is a bit of a red herring. There is no confusion in normal spoken Mandarin since formal written constructions are not normally used, and there's no reason why a pinyin writing system couldn't be the same way. However, such a system would still be impractical because of the reasons stated above: (1) texts written prior to the early twentieth century would all be unreadable, and (2) many southern Chinese do not know how to speak Mandarin. --Umofomia 00:27, 8 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Not just pre-twentieth century writing... formal and semiformal constructions pop up everywhere in writing, even today (e.g. all over the Chinese Wikipedia). Sure, a pinyin writing system would dictate a purely vernacular writing style, but the resulting loss of comprehension wouldn't just be in existing Classical Chinese texts, it would happen to some extent in written "Vernacular" Chinese as well. -- ran (talk) 00:34, Mar 8, 2005 (UTC)

Right... there's no doubt formal constructions are used everywhere today, though I was talking about the reasons for not doing it back in the 1910s-50s when they were considering it. These reasons still have not changed much though. --Umofomia 00:43, 8 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Completely pinyinifying spoken Chinese would essentially make southern Chinese people illiterate... With a logographic writing system at least, those who didn't know how to speak Mandarin could at least read and write.

I don't see how you can say this. Vernacular Chinese is a second language to a native speaker of a language of the south. It's a different language with different grammar and vocabulary. If Romanization was adopted, they would have to learn this second langauge, just as they now learn Vernacular Chinese in addition to their home language. The writing system doesn't change this fact.

One could argue that Pinyin would make literacy easier for a Cantonese speaker, because then he would only have to learn the sounds of the Mandarin-based standard language, rather than its sounds plus ideographs.

The only reason for preserving the ancient writing system that really holds up is that it was too dear to be thrown away. --Erauch 01:49, Mar 8, 2005 (UTC)

The Chinese languages aren't completely different. The grammar and vocabulary are similar enough (roughly 80% spoken vocabulary are cognates) that southerners have no trouble substituting the written form when writing. A pinyin system would require learning the sounds of Mandarin, which is much easier said than done... that essentially amounts to learning a whole new language, which is happening in schools today, but as you can see, it is still not an easy task since so many southerners still don't know Mandarin after roughly 50 years of Mandarin education. With a logographic writing system, people can continue to learn to read and write with their own local pronunciations since so much of the vocabulary and grammar are shared. Any differences between Mandarin and their own dialect are just learned as special rules or vocabulary to remember (for instance in Cantonese, one would always write 的 instead of the colloquially spoken 嘅). People have a much easier time learning new rules and conventions than learning a whole new language. --Umofomia 02:04, 8 Mar 2005 (UTC)

BTW, in case you need a source, here's a link to a paper with a table showing the percentage of shared vocabulary between the Chinese dialects/languages: [1]. As you can see, with the exception of the speech from Xiamen (part of the Min group), the vocabulary shared among them is between 70-90%. Min falls below 70% because it is considered to be the only group that did not directly decend from Middle Chinese. --Umofomia 02:24, 8 Mar 2005 (UTC)

The only reason for preserving the ancient writing system that really holds up is that it was too dear to be thrown away. You make it sound like it's purely a matter of sentimentality. But it's a matter of practicality too. Pinyinifying would render incomprehensible all writing done in Classical Chinese, and create a lot of ambiguity even in writing done in "Vernacular" Chinese. -- ran (talk) 03:07, Mar 8, 2005 (UTC)

As you can see, with the exception of the speech from Xiamen (part of the Min group), the vocabulary shared among them is between 70-90%.

That's about the level of the Romance or Germanic languages.

People have a much easier time learning new rules and conventions than learning a whole new language.

But this comes at the cost of learning several thousand ideographs.

You make it sound like it's purely a matter of sentimentality.

I am not criticizing it, just trying to get at the real reason. That the writing system has been associated with a great literature for so long is a good reason. --Erauch 04:48, Mar 8, 2005 (UTC)

That was my point... it's not just a "great literature" that needs to be thrown out and replaced — it's the entire written language that I'm talking about. To make an analogy (perhaps not the most apt but it illustrates my point): it's not just Shakespeare at stake, it's also the U.S. Constitution. My point is that practicality and sentimentality are both important reasons for keeping the system. -- ran (talk) 05:17, Mar 8, 2005 (UTC)

That's about the level of the Romance or Germanic languages.

Exactly my point... you wouldn't expect, for instance, a modern-day Spanish speaker to be forced to read and write only in Latin, right? This is why Latin fell into disuse in favor of the vernacular Romance Languages. The speakers would basically have to learn how to speak Latin in order to be able to write as well since Latin spelling relies mostly on sounds. This is not necessarily so with a logographically written language. Because southern Chinese speakers can rely on the large proportion of cognates in a logographically written system, they don't need to learn a whole other language in order to be able to read and write. They can continue to learn to read and write in their own language while remembering that special rules need to be applied in certain cases to correct for the differences between their dialect and Standard Written Chinese.

But this comes at the cost of learning several thousand ideographs.

You make it sound like it's an impossible feat to accomplish. The ~95% literacy rates in Hong Kong show this not to be the case. Basically the entire population there speaks Cantonese, and many of them don't know or even care to learn Mandarin. Yet they all read and write Standard Written Chinese and can communicate with Mandarin speakers. It is true that the Chinese writing system is not entirely systematic, but it gives enough semantic and phonetic cues such that learners don't find it to be a big problem. I doubt Hong Kong's handover back to China would have been as easy if the logographic writing system were no longer in place (imagine Spain being returned to Italy... the difference in writing systems had basically severed many cultural ties to the point that Spanish speakers don't feel any connection with Rome). --Umofomia 08:24, 8 Mar 2005 (UTC)

You haven't demonstrated the practical advantage of the ideographic system. My point is that for the purposes of literacy of non-Mandarin speakers, it's no easier to learn a written language with thousands of symbols than to learn a written language with a phonetic alphabet that has sounds different from your own. Sure, under the ideographic system you could pronounce the words in Cantonese, but you could do this with Pinyin too.

I never said anything about "sentimentality". I think it was wise to preserve the traditional writing system. --Erauch 01:59, Mar 9, 2005 (UTC)

I'm not really using "sentimentality" in a disparaging sense. What I'm saying is that it's not purely a matter of trying to "preserve culture and tradition". -- ran (talk) 02:12, Mar 9, 2005 (UTC)

Sure, under the ideographic system you could pronounce the words in Cantonese, but you could do this with Pinyin too.

How would it be possible to do this? Even though a large percentage of the vocabulary are cognates, the phonological differences between Mandarin and Cantonese are radically different. Many of the tones and sounds that still exist in Cantonese have merged in Mandarin. In addition, Mandarin also has retroflex sounds that Cantonese doesn't. Learning how to spell in a pinyin system for someone who knows only Cantonese would be nigh impossible. With a logographic system at least, there are more cues as to what pronunciation is the correct one because there are more variations in phonetic components. Take the following characters, which are all pronounced xī in Mandarin but pronounced differently in Cantonese:

• 稀 hei1 - the phonetic shows that it's pronounced the same as or similar to 希 hei1
• 吸 kap1 - the phonetic shows that it's pronounced the same as or similar to 及 kap6
• 惜 sik1 - the phonetic shows that it's pronounced the same as or similar to 昔 sik1

Forcing a Cantonese speaker to figure out which pronunciation he/she is supposed to use when they encounter xī would be terribly confusing. Having them learn how to write it as well would be even harder. This is only one example... there are many more.

I guess you could argue that they can learn which context under which they would use alternate pronunciations, just like there are numerous exceptions in English spelling rules; however when you have to make exceptions for almost every single instance (since Cantonese pronunciation is so different), it no longer becomes practical. --Umofomia 02:48, 9 Mar 2005 (UTC)

it's no easier to learn a written language with thousands of symbols than to learn a written language with a phonetic alphabet that has sounds different from your own

I would argue that because the Chinese writing system incorporates phonetics like I illustrated above, learning the symbols is actually easier than learning a phonetic alphabet. With the phonetics in the Chinese characters, in conjunction with the semantic information from the radicals, you can make a pretty good guess as to how characters are pronounced. With a phonetic alphabet that has little correlation with your own language, it is extremely difficult to do that because the semantic information and distinguishing phonetics are lost. --Umofomia 02:56, 9 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I took a look at the current update of the passage:

These plans, however, were abandoned, due to the prevalence of homonymic morphemes in Chinese (as well as the reliance of written Chinese forms, especially Classical Chinese, on disambiguation of homonyms via different logographs)...

As I said before, I think homonyms are a non-issue. No one said anything about pinyinifying all old works verbatim. Of course all old works will have too many homonyms, but they can be translated with modern-day spoken words that aren't homonyms (just like Chaucer was translated from Middle English to Modern English). Any new writing would also avoid homonyms. In any case, I've stated above why pinyin is still impractical. --Umofomia 03:20, 9 Mar 2005 (UTC)

That's retarded. why would one want to read literature in translation when one can read it in the original? A deeper issue is, why MUST writing be the encoding of spoken sounds? We have tape recorders for that. Besides, writing has never worked that way save for a short period of history -- at first writing was pictographic, then it was phonetic. Logographic is what all written languages become -- unless you can somehow arrest speech changes OR keep updating the writing system. Those are both social engineering projects requiring government intervention in the educational system. Writing can stand perfectly well as its own (and universal) language in the extreme case. But I find the existing compromise for Chinese just fine.

The homonym issue is not a non-issue, but it's not a reasonable argument for keeping the characters; it would be possible to design a Romanization system that allowed for distinction of homonyms if/when this was necessary, e.g. by attaching a suffix of some sort (superscripted, subscripted, hyphenated, whatever). One way, for example, would be to attach either the numeric ID or pronunciation of the "meaning" radical of the associated character. In practice, it's not clear how much of an issue this really is; but there should be formal studies done into what extent Pinyinization of written works would cause understanding problems and how much written homonym disambiguity is necessary.

It is a fact, however, that a complex logographic writing system slows down reading speeds; studies in Japan have shown about 15% slowdown compared to an alphabetic system. Benwing 02:49, 10 August 2005 (UTC)

Comment I would like to point out that in the above discussion, statements such as Completely pinyinifying spoken Chinese would essentially make southern Chinese people illiterate, ...many southern Chinese do not know how to speak Mandarin, ...many southerners still don't know Mandarin after roughly 50 years of Mandarin education are highly misleading if not completely wrong. Virtually all people in southern China speak Mandarin (putonghua) perfectly well. In fact the majority of Cantonese speakers also speak putonghua, it is only non-putonghua speaking Hong Kong people who have to learn standard written Chinese as a distinct written language that is very different to the way they speak. The real (and valid) reason for the objection by non-putonghua speaking HK people to pinyin repacing characters is because they would not be able to use pinyin as they do not speak putonghua; pinyin is effectively a written version of putonghua. LDHan 03:22, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

Efforts to phase out (Zhuyin Fuhao) in favor of Tongyong Pinyin have stalled due to disagreements over which form of "Pinyin" to use, and the massive effort needed to produce new educational materials and to completely retrain teachers.

I don't believe there were ever plans in Taiwan to "phase out" zhuyin in favor of Tongyong or any other Romanization system. Citation?

Terminology

The Chinese official language should be called as " Standard Chinese ", but not " mandarin ", because mandarin is a insult at peoples of Han .- Xuanyan.She, Tianjin, China, Mar 28, 2004.

I am a 汉族人 (Han Chinese) and I don't feel insulted at all. The Qing Dynasty is over and I have Manchu friends (I'm sure you do too). The etymology of the word is past, what matters is that when we use it today we don't mean anything demeaning. So get over it! -- ran (talk) 00:56, Jun 8, 2005 (UTC)

Actually, the word "Mandarin" doesn't have anything to do with the Manchu people, at least according to most people who have researched the origin of the word. (I know there is one explanation that says it is a distortion of "man da ren", but that seems to have been a fanciful invention or a wild guess.) My dictionary traces it back to Sanskrit and then to an Indo-European root. The only problem I would have with it is that it's a little like calling Yu4 Shan1 in Taiwan "Mt. McKinley," or how about calling Taiwanese "Formosan." I always feel a little weird about the English names for some countries that are totally different from what those countries put on their own maps. To me it smacks of a certain kind of ethnocentrism -- but I suspect that in many cases there are good historical reasons for what is said in English and it's just that we're a few centuries out of date. P0M 01:52, 14 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Even "Chinese" or "China" is what English people called us, and we, Chinese (or should be Central Nation Men), called our nation Central and Flower (or splendid) Nation. Just as we converted in Chinese Seoul from ?? (Han City) to ?? (a pronuciation approximation), English should do the same thing, I guess. Let ourselves decide our names in other languages. Xiaojeng 01:48, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

The term "Mandarin" is anachronistic. During the Qing and earlier dynasties the Mandarins (bureaucrats) standardized a form of Chinese, hence the origin of the western name for the language. That world came to an end in 1911.

The common sense thing to do is to call the language Chinese or standard Chinese. (Putonghua is not a practical alternative.) We can refer to dialects or non-standard forms as Cantonese, Shanghainese, Sichuanese etc without any problem. Kleinzach 20:31, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

"Mandarin" is a very common term, and it's not "anachronistic".-- ran (talk) 21:23, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

Since 1911 there have been no mandarins in China, therefore the term is anachronistic. It's as simple as that. Kleinzach 22:08, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

By that logic, the term "China" is also anachronistic. The Qin Dynasty, which gave its name to the English word "China", ended in 206 BC. Hence, all references in any language to China as "China" after 206 BC is anachronistic. -- ran (talk) 22:15, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure the origin of the term "China" is not exactly clear. In any case, please don't make 4 edits for a single post on the talk page. That's kind of annoying for someone watching the page. :)

Regardless of what the origins of the word "China" were, my point is that a term can have an original meaning, and then acquire additional meanings. When the original meaning dies out or becomes obsolete, that does not mean that the additional meanings no longer apply. "Mandarin", for example, continues to be an extremely common term among both laypeople and linguists, so there is no reason to call it "anachronistic". Do you agree? -- ran (talk) 00:05, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

Oh, I wasn't disagreeing with your point. I primarily just wanted to point out my annoyance at four edits for a talk post. Sorry about that.

Qin may well be the origin of the word China, but we shouldn't confuse etymology with anachronism. Qin like China is a proper name. We normally use proper names to identify languages. Mandarin is not a proper name.

There is another very important factor to consider. The People's Republic of China officially uses the word China not Zhongguo in English. It does not use the word Mandarin, so Mandarin referring to the language has no official status. Kleinzach 16:01, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

"Mandarin" in its modern sense is the name of a language, so it is a proper noun. Just because its original sense wasn't a proper noun doesn't mean it can't gain another sense that is a proper noun. Why do you think it's capitalized? See [2]: the first and original sense is not a proper noun, so it's not capitalized. The second and modern sense is a proper noun; that's why it's marked explicitly as capitalized.

"Mandarin", in its modern sense, does not mean "the language spoken by mandarins". Mandarin in its modern sense refers to the northern varieties of Chinese, especially the standardized acrolect. -- ran (talk) 16:40, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

When you refer to "Mandarin in its modern sense" the only authority you cite is your own judgement. You declare that Mandarin is a proper name, ergo it is a proper name. You declare that Mandarin "refers to the northern varieties (sic) of Chinese", ergo it is the correct way to refer to putonghua in English. This is hardly acceptable.

One further reason why Mandarin is an anachronistic term hasn't been mentioned before. There is a considerable difference between the official language at the end of the Qing and putonghua today. Language reform movements, notably in the 1920s and 1930s, have transformed the written language while the spoken language has also changed. This is why the Chinese have used new terms for the language such as putonghua and guoyu.

Finally, as a humble westerner, I would like to say that I am not setting myself up as any kind of expert on this. In my view we should defer to the Chinese government which has now taken over (from westerner sinologists) the responsibility of standardizing the interfaces between Chinese and other foreign languages. We should respect their rules on romanization and usage. -- Kleinzach 11:23, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

Look, why don't you start talking to actual Chinese people or reading Chinese linguistics for a change rather than surmising about the situation in your own head? You say that I'm relying "just on my judgment", well, I'm a native speaker of Mandarin who've lived in multilingual English / Mandarin / southern Chinese environments my entire life, and I know what people mean when they say Mandarin, and they don't mean "the language that was spoken by mandarins but isn't spoken any more". They refer to what we speak now. That's why I say it's a proper noun --- because it is used as such, and I use it as such, and Chinese communities all around the world use it as such, and linguists use it as such too. Why, for example, does Singapore have a Speak Mandarin Campaign?

You declare that Mandarin "refers to the northern varieties (sic) of Chinese", -- that's exactly what linguists use. Where does the "sic" come from? The articles Mandarin (linguistics) and Standard Mandarin explain quite clearly that "Mandarin" can be used, and are used to refer to either concept.

As I've said again and again, Mandarin is used to refer to putonghua and guoyu by linguists and laypeople. If you feel that this is anachronistic, you can campaign against it, but until the day you succeed and people actually start using some other term, Wikipedia will stick to "Mandarin". -- ran (talk) 18:40, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

You ask why Singapore has a "Speak Mandarin Campaign". That is because (amongst other things) "Mandarin" is a Singaporean usage. Why not start a new article entitled Singaporean Mandarin? I'm sure it would be very interesting. - Kleinzach 23:08, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

Mandarin is a lot more than a Singaporean usage. It's also a Taiwanese usage (why else would they call it Mandarin Phonetic Symbols II? - also note that MPS II is a translation for ????????? guoyu zhuyin fuhao di'ershi). Here in Canada we use it too -- in fact, since there're so many Cantonese people here, sometimes "Cantonese" is simply called "Chinese", and "Mandarin" is called "Mandarin".

In Hong Kong, "Putonghua" appears to be more prevalent in English than "Mandarin", but I doubt that two Hong Kongers speaking English to each other would suddenly say "Putonghua" as opposed to "Mandarin" (certainly none of the Cantonese people I know talks in this way). Since this page is attempting to be NPOV, it's better to call it something that's not either "Putonghua" or "Guoyu", something more neutral.

Finally and most importantly for mainland China - I don't think there's an official translation for Putonghua / Mandarin. -- ran (talk) 02:45, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

I just checked with the websites of the Chinese Embassy and found a sort of FAC page about China. It says:

11. Languages: Standard Chinese or Mandarin (Putonghua, based on the Beijing dialect), Yue (Cantonese), Wu (Shanghainese), Minbei (Fuzhou), Minnan (Hokkien-Taiwanese), Xiang, Gan, and Hakka dialects, as well as minority languages. In 1958, the First National People's Congress approved, at its Fifth Session, the adoption of the Pinyin (Scheme for the Chinese Phonetic Alphabet) for spelling Chinese names and places in Roman letters, but the Pinyin system was not popularly used until the late 1970s. Pinyin is now widely seen in China, and it replaces earlier Romanization spelling systems.

Also, in an official announcement:

China Radio International will cover the ceremony from 8:55 a.m. in Chinese Mandarin and Cantonese, and English, Russian, Spanish, French, Japanese, Korean and Mongolian, among others. In addition, the opening ceremony will also be covered real-time by www.xinhuanet.com, www.people.com.cn and www.china.com.cn.

Copyright by People's Daily Online, all rights reserved

From http://english.people.com.cn/200211/07/eng20021107_106445.shtml

I think the Chinese government is being pragmatic -- recognizing that "Standard Chinese" may not communicate clearly to the general reader of their websites. P0M 04:14, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

Good. Thank you. I suggest that we adopt the formula "Standard Chinese or Mandarin (Putonghua, based on the Beijing dialect)" as given by the Chinese Embassy (which Chinese Embassy?) with suitable redirects.

The word Mandarin appears in old books and is still used on the fringes of the Chinese world. Clearly that should be recognized. I discovered yesterday that 'Putonghua' redirects to this 'Standard Mandarin' article. There should be a separate article for 'Putonghua' explaining the history and usage of the term, also a similar one for 'Mandarin', but with the main information under 'Standard Chinese'. That arrangement should suit everyone and avoid further contention. - Kleinzach 08:37, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

No no, don't split up this article. I merged Putonghua and Guoyu a long time ago just to get this unified Standard Mandarin article so that we don't have multiple nearly identical articles talking about nearly identical things. You're welcome to suggest moving this article to another title (e.g. Standardized Chinese) or suggesting sub-articles (e.g. History of Standardized Chinese or History of Putonghua) but please don't split it into "Mandarin" and "Putonghua", which are often used as alternate translations of the same concept anyways. -- ran (talk) 16:40, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

No, I am not suggesting any duplication of material or splitting it up, merely short entries explaining the different terms. Obviously the main article on Standard Chinese should stand as it is. What I think should be avoided is the implication that Mandarin, putonghua, guoyu etc are all equal and interchangeable terms, without historical and political nuance. - Kleinzach 17:04, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

Mandarin is not just "used on the fringes of the Chinese world," and to put it that way trivializes the term.

Historically, the language for which we are seeking a suitable name was called "guan hua," i.e., the language designated for use in official verbal communications. The term "guan hua qu" is still used to refer to the geographical region wherein this language is the common tongue. When the Republic of China came into being, there was a need to stress to individuals their belonging to a nation, and to change the enculturation of individuals so that their primary allegiance would be to the nation rather than to family and clan. The term "guan" suggested individuals whose allegiance had been to the Chinese emperor rather than to a democracy. So terms like "guo yu" (national language), "guo shu" (national martial arts traditions), etc. were invented, and the term "guo yu" was associated with the "ruling Guo Min Dang" regime. The CCP did not choose to continue speaking of "guo yu," perhaps because "guo yu" served to remind people of the "guo min dang." They changed the name to a third term, "putonghua," which has utility to them both in its denotation (language to be used by people all over the country}, and its connotation (language of the ordinary man). So to call this language either "guo yu" or "putonghua" would support one or the other side of a political and ideological struggle, and to call it "guan hua" who sound like support for a reactionary monarchist political view.

Calling the spoken language "Chinese" or even "Standard Chinese" risks confusing readers regarding the kind of relationship it bears to the standard written language. Its use also may raise the question in the minds of some people: "Is there a Standard Chinese that applies to what is spoken by each of the other regional language groups? If they are all 'Standard Chinese', then what is going on?"

The interesting thing about "Mandarin" is that is a loan word both as regards the English speaking world and also as regards the Chinese world. It does seem to have originally been chosen as a way of refering to the officials of the Chinese government of the time, but I don't think it has any strong past or present-day connotation of connections to the Manchu Qing empire. In fact, Zhou En-lai has probably been referred to more than once as a "mandarin" because of his high government status, elegance, erudition, etc.

In English we refer to the German city of Cologne (and even the German shortwave stations will speak of the city by its English name when broadcasting to an English language), we use "Hungary" rather than "Magyar", etc. Forcing us to call the German city K?ln would deprive us of the opportunity for a couple of jokes, but depriving us of "Mandarin" might lessen the specificity and power of our language. P0M 21:52, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

The first sentence of the article says "Standard Mandarin is the official Chinese spoken language used by the People's Republic of China . . . ".

Can anyone tell me where this appears in the Chinese constitution? I can't find it. China does not have an official spoken language called Mandarin. It does not have an official spoken language. Very few countries have official spoken languages.

The issue probably isn't discussed directly in the Chinese constitution. The constitutions of the PRC and of the ROC both establish a Ministry of Education, and the Ministry of Education then sets policy as to what the official language of instruction is. The governments probably also have something to say about what language(s) may be used in court, etc. None of those areas need a change in the constitution to permit policy changes, as far as I know. I can ask our Chinese Politics professor if needed. I know that recently in Taiwan there has been much discussion about whether Guo yu should be the language of instruction. Similar questions of policy have come up in mainland China, which has been more liberal in permitting regional literary forms, plays, radio broadcasts, etc. to not use the language of instruction.

POM, you write: "Calling the spoken language "Chinese" or even "Standard Chinese" risks confusing readers regarding the kind of relationship it bears to the standard written language." I would guess they are confused already, but you are raising an important and serious point. What is the relationship between the spoken and written language? As we know the Baihua (vernacular) movement of the 1920s aimed at closing the gap between the spoken and written languages based on standard Chinese. Can we now say that there has now been a convergence, bearing in mind that in all languages the written and the spoken have some differences.

Actually, representing some of the regional languages such as Taiwanese and Cantonese in characters is a problem because those vernacular languages have for so long not been written in characters. It used to be that educated Taiwanese, for instance, would write in classical Chinese. The same was true of educated norther Chinese. For most people the point of being educated was to get a job as an official, and to be an official you had to speak the language of the emperors, so there was a kind of connection between written Chinese and guan1 hua4. Written fiction was strongly influenced by the tradition of storytellers because written fiction started out as what were basically prompt books for storytellers. They could read a hua4 ben3 and thus learn the outline of a story they could embelish in their own ways and tell on the street to make their living. That was the way that spoken Chinese (re-)established a connection with written Chinese. One of the greatest books in world literature is Cao Xue-qin's Hong2 Lou2 Meng4 also called Shi2tou Ji4 (i.e., Dream of the Red Chamber or Story of the Stone). The writing in this long novel is very close to modern spoken Chinese. It closely reflects the spoken Mandarin of its time. In order to write spoken Chinese down, writers had to find characters for the things people said in daily life, and in several cases there was nothing that sounded remotely like these words in written Chinese. For instance, "this" is "ci3" in classical Chinese, but it is "zhei4ge" or "zhe4ge" in spoken Chinese. Not only is there no suitable character for zhe, you can't even "borrow" ci3 to write it because ci3 is still used in spoken Chinese in two-character compounds such as "ci3 di4" (this place). So they borrowed a rarely used character that happens to be pronounced zhe4 and has an entirely different meaning. There are a fair number of other characters like this in Mandarin. But if you want to write Taiwanese you will find that hardly any of this groundwork was done before the 20th century -- and not much was done while Taiwan was under Japanese control. So sometimes people write a character that has the right meaning but whose pronunciation suggests that there must have been some other word to begin with. Let me try to make that a little clearer. In English, Americans use the word "gasoline" (usually shortened to "gas") and the British use the word "petrol". If we wrote characters for English, and ? was the character originally chosen for "petrol," Americans might look at it and read it as "gas." In writing Taiwanese and Cantonese, this kind of thing comes up fairly frequently. In some cases, particularly in Cantonese, they have invented new Chinese characters to fill in some of the gaps.

There has been a convergence between Mandarin and written Chinese, and it's called bai2 hua4 or vernacular Chinese. There has also been a convergence between Taiwanese and written Chinese, another kind of vernacular Chinese. But in both cases, and in the case of Cantonese, the spoken regional languages tend to distort the written language. Probably something happens to make Taiwanese speakers or Cantonese speakers more accustomed to sentence patterns and vocabular items used in (Mandarin) vernacular Chinese, but that doesn't mean that their ways of spoken communication necessarily change any more than reading English novels makes Americans likely to refer to pencil erasers as rubbers.

You write "to call this language either "guo yu" or "putonghua" would support one or the other side." Exactly, but Mandarin is not neutral either.

I guess it depends on "neutral to whom". Just this evening I listened to a man who grew up in Taiwan tell a Filipino that he spoke Mandarin but not Taiwanese, so I still think that Chinese people in general are pretty pragmatic about calling Han4 zi4 "Chinese characters" -- when some Western sinologists don't much approve of "characters." If somebody says my ancestors came from Ireland I don't insist that the person say Eire, either. Among people whose native language is English, the word "Mandarin" seems to me to have a neutral connotation, too.

You suggest that I was "trivializing the term" Mandarin when I said it was "used on the fringes of the Chinese world". Not so, I was merely putting the term 'Mandarin' in context. I first studied Chinese in the 1960s. I've subsequently lived half my life in Asia - and I've never used the term Mandarin - except to refer to high ranking officials.

Were you speaking in Chinese? If you were, you surely wouldn't use Mandarin under ordinary circumstances. If you were speaking in Chinese to a mainland official you probablly wouldn't have been very PC to use "guo2 yu3," and vice-versa if you were speaking to an official in Taiwan. If you happened to be speaking to one mainland official and one Taiwan official at the same time, the politic thing to do might have been to use "Mandarin" just to avoid appearing to take sides with one or the other of them.

POM, you write, "I don't think it has any strong past or present-day connotation of connections to the Manchu Qing empire." Au contraire, that's what it means - the language spoken by Qing officials.

Who says? That's not the correct derivation of the term. It may have been applied to Qing officials, but "guan" and "officials" have also been applied to Qing officials.

POM, you write, " . . . depriving us of "Mandarin" might lessen the specificity and power of our language." Really? You can still have mandarin ducks and mandarin oranges. You can also visit western capitals like London and Paris where mandarins run the governments for the politicians. It's a living word in the language. No-one is going to take it away from you. Let's use it correctly!

When pu3 tong1 hua4 and guo2 yu3 won't work because the person you are speaking to does not know the meaning of the Chinese terms, you've got a problem. When "Standard Chinese" is used, it suggests that there is one language spoken as the mother tongue of all Chinese and that there are sloppy ways (fer them as ain't bin larned yit) and proper or standard ways. So if you are going to use that term you risk people misunderstanding -- even if you define it on page one they may have forgotten it when it comes up on page 30.

Your reference to Cologne/Köln has me puzzled. Are you suggesting we should revert to calling the Chinese capital Peking?

Kleinzach 03:13, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

Not at all. I pointed out a couple examples that came to mind where we use a term for a foreign entity that may have a better word in the language where that entity exists or comes from. We get along fine with Cologne. I never heard any Germans object to it. We could do just as well with Köln if we could teach Americans the "ö" sound. But several decades ago if the West Germans had called it Kolony and the East Germans had called it Köln, then somebody who wanted to remain neutral might call it Cologne. (And if one wanted to remain neutral between the ROC and the PRC on the identity of the city you mention we would call it not Peking but Yan Jing 燕京, as in Yan Jing Da Xue.) P0M 07:12, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

Interwiki

Some of the interwiki links are linked to articles that are actually about Mandarin as a Chinese dialect. If you go to the German article and click the English link over there, you wind up at Mandarin (linguistics). I'm guessing a lot of the other articles are the same.

Is this proper or should articles only link to proper counterparts? Peter Isotalo 22:19, Mar 18, 2005 (UTC)

No, this is not proper at all. But we have to wait for the other Wikipedias to figure out that Mandarin (big group) and Mnadarin (standard) are different things and separate them, before we can do anything. (The Chinese Wikipedia did this from the outset, not surprisingly, so the interwikis with zh: are fine.) -- ran (talk) 00:55, Jun 8, 2005 (UTC)

Terminology II

It is strongly suggested for purposes of disambiguation to change all references of "Standard Mandarin" to "standard Chinese," "standardized Chinese," "standard spoken Chinese," "standard Chinese speech" or variations such as these. This is a descriptive term, since the original terms putonghua/guoyu are Chinese terms. Mandarin is what it is called in English, but it has many meanings. The best way is to say "Mandarin refers to X, Y, Z, and a form of standardized Chinese speech known as putonghua/guoyu." There is no such thing as "Standard Mandarin" and it is highly misleading. - anon June 6, 2005

You have a good point, and in fact I think Standard Chinese was one of the terms suggested when we decided to separate the concept of putonghua/guoyu out of Mandarin. There are pros and cons to both names (Cantonese speakers might not like to call Mandarin "Standard Chinese", for example; and we might want to keep the "Mandarin" in the name to make it clear to readers that this is what is usually referred to as "Mandarin".) Certainly more discussion with other participants would be helpful. -- ran (talk) 00:58, Jun 8, 2005 (UTC)

[Cantonese speakers might not like to call Mandarin "Standard Chinese", for example]

Well, you see, that's exactly the problem created by calling "standard Chinese" "Mandarin." The "standard" happens to be chosen with aspects from Mandarin (the dialect group), but it is meant to be a form of Chinese, not a form of Mandarin (the dialect group). Standard Chinese is standard Chinese. People should be able to say, "I speak Cantonese and standard Chinese" as well as "I speak Mandarin and standard Chinese" without drawing strange looks.

The trouble with this suggestion, as Ran suggests, is that "Chinese" has a much broader meaning than does putonghua or guoyu. Both putonghua and guoyu are artificial constructs, i.e., they are standards for pronunciation and grammar that have been imposed by two different ministries of education. So there are political sensitivities involved. Technically, a native speaker of Chinese from Siquan probably does not speak "guoyu" any more than I speak "the Queen's English." In dealing with these departures from the artificial standard, speakers of Chinese in Taiwan refer to some of their compatriots as speaking "Siquan guoyu," "Taiwan guoyu," etc.

"Standard Chinese" is too broad and "putonghua" or "guoyu" is too narrow to use as a term for a tongue that is spoken from Yunnan in the SW to Manchuria in the NE, but "Mandarin" is fortunately sufficiently flexible and fuzzy to cover the whole ground. One way or another, it probably was chosen as a translation for the term "guan1 hua4" which is still used to cover the whole area mentioned above but which most people regard as rather archaic.

There is another term, "biaozhun guoyu" (standard guoyu), which might be translated as "standard Chinese national language." Maybe "standardized spoken Chinese" would work. P0M 03:21, 8 Jun 2005 (UTC)

No, you see, Mandarin IS the term for a tongue that is spoken from Yunnan to Manchuria and "standard Chinese" IS "putonghua" and "guoyu." "Standardized spoken Chinese" is good. If it weren't for the whole other can of worms of the "putonghua"/"guoyu" politics, I would say even just use "Putonghua Chinese" in the fine English loanword tradition. In fact, Putonghua really hits it right on the spot to call itself literally the "common interchange speech." "Putonghua" isn't "simple speech" you see -- this is the beauty of multi-level parsing in Chinese.

I think you may want to re-read the paragraph before the paragraph you have criticized.

Even though I think "Mandarin" is "sufficiently flexible and fuzzy to cover the whole [guan hua qu]," I would prefer not to be dogmatic about what "Mandarin" means. My Webster's New World Dictionary of the American Languagehas a definition: "the dialect of Chinese spoken by officials and the educated classes," which is certainly different from your definition. I think that the dictionary definition has serious problems with it. On the other hand it probably reflects the general level of (mis)understanding of the average well-informed reader on what "the Chinese language" is. "Mandarin" is problematical for two reasons: (1) It may be regarded as offensive, a Western kluge stretched to fit Chinese things. (2) Being flexible and fuzzy suggests that "Mandarin" may have so many different meanings for the general public that we risk confusing folks by using it. I think that was perhaps the motivation for suggesting that the article be re-titled.P0M 01:38, 14 Jun 2005 (UTC)

By the way, please sign your postings. Otherwise you risk arguing with yourself at some later date. ;-) (Besides, the rest of us get confused and don't know how many people are saying inconsistent things.) You sign by adding four tilde symbols (upper left corner of your keyboard, usually) P0M 01:56, 14 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Phonology

The section that currently claims to be a phonology could use some standardizing. Like with any other language, the section should be separated into Consonants/Vowels rather than Initials/Medials/Finals. Also, the tables should be restricted to actual phonemes with the various allophones described in separate comments.

Peter ^Isotalo 21:06, 23 July 2005 (UTC)

Initials / medials / finals is how Chinese phonology is traditionally analyzed. Linguists can't even agree on what the phonemes of Mandarin are or what sounds should be considered allophones of each other, so a consonant / vowel analysis would simply be a mess. -- ran (talk) 01:53, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

The initial/medial/final analysis is one of phonotactics, not of phonemes. Certainly very relevant, but not moreso than the phonotactics of any other language. That Mandarin is an isolating language does not make it unique in any way. See Vietnamese for example. I don't see any reference to any work on Mandarin phonology in this article. What are you basing your assumptions of disagreement among linguists on? Even the most generous phoneme count would net fewer unique phonems than in probably any Indo-Europan language and certainly a lot less complicated than Vietnamese, so I don't see how it would be any messier than the full initial/medial/final-chart business.

Peter ^Isotalo 10:12, 21 October 2005 (UTC)

Huh? Did I say anything at all about how Mandarin is an isolating language? "Isolating" is a description of Mandarin's grammar, so what does that have to do with phonology? Nor did I say that Mandarin would have more phonemes than other languages — how would that be relevant? Where are you getting these assumptions from? Please don't put quotes into my mouth. -- ran (talk) 15:15, 21 October 2005 (UTC)

Isolating languages tend to be monosyllabic which affects grammar as well as phonology. I made a comparison to another isolating language (Vietnamese) as well as less isolating languages, where the phonology is more complex and yet there has been no problem in making phoneme analyses. It was just an attempt to make a comparison, so don't mind it if you don't want to discuss it. In any case, on what do you base your statement that the phonological analysis of Mandarin is disputed? Who's disputing what and why?

Peter ^Isotalo 18:31, 21 October 2005 (UTC)

Rhotic vowels

I've observed that mandarin rhotic vowels (ones that end in -r) sound close to Hiberno-English rhotic vowels, because they both differentiate "ar" "er" "or", unlike American English. Is there a resource that can back me up on this? It should probably go under phonology to give english speakers an idea of what mandarin sounds like, but I won't do anything till it's verified.--ikiroid | (talk) 19:05, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

I'm not entirely sure what you mean. There are sound recordings of Chinese that should establish clearly what some typical speakers do. There are several related systems of sound notation that are for the most part consistent and that indicate the differences in sound that dictionary writers think ought to be there. I mentioned a similar question/problem on a list-serve devoted to Chinese language teachers, my feeling that many speakers of English muddy vowel pronunciations. A resident of GB responded that he remembered hearing an old Scots lady who had a distinct variation in her pronunciation for every spelling difference, but that he agreed that many present-day speakers of English do not make many distinctions. One reason may be that in Celtic languages some slight vowel changes make big differences in meaning. A similar thing happens in Taiwanese, which uses an initial totally unvoiced "b" (not a slight mmbee sound) that non-Taiwanese speakers would probably never notice. Getting it wrong can make you say some rather interesting things sometimes, so speakers of that language learn to make a clear distinction.

I doubt that many people are even qualified to make the comparison you suggest. You might try checking Chinese language teaching websites in Ireland or Scotland. Maybe teachers do something along the lines you suggest for the benefit of their students. P0M 06:38, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

Well, here's the info from the Hiberno-English article:

1. The distinction between /ɔːɹ/ and /oʊɹ/ in horse and hoarse is preserved.
2. The distinction between [ɛɹ]-[ɪɹ]-[ʌɹ] in herd-bird-curd is preserved.

I'm teaching myself mandarin, and I've heard this sort of distinction made on the mandarin chinese tapes made by "Pimsleur" series and the ones made by the "Teach Yourself" series, so when I read this wiki article for more info on pronounciation, I was surprised to find no mention it. Since I don't live in Ireland or Scotland, or that side of the Atlantic for that matter, I'm kinda wary about adding it into the article.--ikiroid | (talk) 23:20, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

Could you please supply the pinyin pronunciations where you hear these distinctions? Thanks. P0M 08:19, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

I say [ɛɹ] in -ier, [oɹ] in -uor, [ɤɹ] in -er, [əɹ] in -eir / -enr, [ɑɹ] in -ar, [uɹ] in -ur. Pretty much the same as the system described in the article.

Incidentally, if Beijing dialect = Hiberno-English, then Sichuan dialect is probably American English, since it seems to merge all vowels before /r/. =) -- ran (talk) 15:15, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

comments about phonology

(I made the same comment in Pinyin:) The pronunciation listed for the 'ing' final seems wrong. The listed pronunciation is [iɤŋ] but it seems to me that it should be [iŋ]. The former would sound like English "young", but when I've heard words like "Yingwen" pronounced, the first part sounds like English "ing". Can a native speaker verify this?

Also, this doesn't seem right:

[j] and [w] appear when a final starting with a close vowel, like /i/ or /u/, begins a syllable without an initial.

The syllables 'yi', 'yin', 'ying' sound to me like [i], [in], [iŋ], not [ji], [jin], [jiŋ]. This is consistent with the pronunciations given in Comrie, "The World's Major Languages". Can a native speaker verify this? If so, it should be written

[j] and [w] replace /i/ and /u/ when they appear at the beginning of a syllable, followed by another vowel.

Benwing 02:38, 10 August 2005 (UTC)

Firstly, "ing" can sound like [iɤŋ] or [iŋ]. The former is more of a northern accent and the latter is more neutral.

Second, I'm a native speaker and I've always pronounced 'yi', 'yin', 'ying' as [ji], [jin], [jiŋ]. The other way (without /j/) sounds slightly accented. -- ran (talk) 01:56, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

Accented with what sort of accent? I never hear the glide except from non-natives... anyway, does anyone think the phonology table I co-edited on the German Wikipedia (here) is of any use? I could adapt it for the English article, if the wish is there. JREL 23:27, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

The way without /j/ sounds like some sort of accent - it might be southern, it might be foreign. As for the charts on the German Wikipedia... they're full of mistakes though:

• there are no postalveolar consonants... those are supposed to be retroflex.
• the palatal consonants should be alveolo-palatal
• the vowel section is just completely and utterly messed up... I can't even see what system it's trying to explain. What do you mean "uo" can only occur in an "open syllable" while "ie" can occur in both "open and close syllables"? So you can have both "ien" and "ian"? (?! Certainly not the Mandarin I know.) What about "un", pronounced as "uen"? And what happened to the distinction between -n and -ng?
• finally and most importantly, the German article is called "Hochchinesisch", yet half the time it's talking about all the Mandarin dialects! -- ran (talk)

I'm certainly not in a position to distinguish accents in Mandarin. I'll take your native-speaker intuitions as given. As for your other points:

• the consonant table is from the Journal of the International Phonetic Association, Volume 33, and designed by two native speaking phoneticians.
• research, they say, has shown that there are no retroflex consonants in Beijing Mandarin (note that I found that strange too, Pinyin r sounds extremely retroflex to me).
• I grant that /ɕ/ is palato-alveolar, but who am I to question those experts' classification. Besides, as there is only a two-way phonemic distinction in place of articulation, specifying the precise location would do, in my view.
• an open syllable is one where the vowel is not followed (or closed) by a consonant. You certainly can have /ien/, as in 天, 面, etc, but you're quite right, /ian/ does not occur -- not that I mentionned it. The only closed syllable in which /ia/ can occur is /iaŋ/, as in 两, 呛, etc.
• I fear you fail to realise that the sounds represented in that table are in IPA, and not in Pinyin: "un" is /yen/. As for /n/ vs /ŋ/, they are clearly presented in the table as two separate phonemes.
• I don't want to go into the "Hochchinesisch" vs "Mandarin" debate -- it's been a long one on the German talk page and it's frankly beyond me. The phonetic description I have is for Standard Beijing Mandarin. JREL 11:13, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

I do realize they're in IPA, what I'm wondering is, why this really strange way of organizing things?

I've taken a second look.. and I see that, the vowels section does indeed describe all the rhymes of Putonghua, except that it:

1. Ignores the -n/-ŋ distinction. For example, -ia- can end in -iaŋ, while -ie- can end in -ien, while -uə- can end in both -uən and -uəŋ (-uɤŋ actually) -- but this is not evident from the chart.
2. Ignores the open/closed situation of the monophthongs: -u- can end in -uŋ, -y- can end in -yn, and -a- can end in -an or -aŋ, but this information is not given at all...

So a complete one would look like this:

• Monophthongs
  • i, y (open, or closed in -n)
  • ɤ, u (open, or closed in -ŋ)
  • a (open, or closed in either -n or -ŋ)
  • ə (closed in -n only)
• Diphthongs
  • ai, au, ou, uo, ei (open only)
  • ie, ye (open, or closed in -n)
  • ia (open, or closed in -ŋ)
  • ua (open, or closed in either -n or -ŋ)
  • uə (closed in either -n or -ŋ)
  • iu (closed in -ŋ only)
• Triphthongs
  • iau, uai, iou, uei (open only)

I think this would cover every single final in Putonghua... -- ran (talk) 14:22, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

I see your point. The monophtongs indeed need more precision. The question is, however, whether we want to cover all syllables -- it's a phonemic inventory, not more. Maybe a separate section on phonotactics would be a good idea, though, I agree. I guess what you'd be aiming at in that case is a syllabary listing all possible combinations... wouldn't be too bad an idea I guess. JREL 18:41, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

Well, but if you're just listing phonemes, then why are /i/, /ai/, and /uai/ all single phonemes, while /an/ and /uan/ are combinations? Why is /uan/ a combination of the /ua/ phoneme and the /n/ phoneme, and not (say) the /u/ phoneme and the /an/ phoneme, or the /u/, /a/, and /n/ phonemes?

Maybe it's pinyin and zhuyin interfering with my mind, but personally I find /uan/ = /u/ + /an/ a lot more intuitive than /uan/ = /ua/ + /n/. And I also find /ai/ and /an/ to be parallel to each other -- i.e. either they're both analyzed as diphthongs or they're both analyzed as combinations of two phonemes. -- ran (talk) 19:06, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

Your question is a very pertinent one. To decide on whether triphtongs or indeed diphtongs are single phonemes or a combination of three resp. two individual phonemes is an issue which is generally disputed (as for instance with the English affricate tʃ). The issue is primarily phonemic, since phonetically, it is pretty clear that /uan/, for example, consists of three phones (or many more depending on how narrow you want to analyse the vowels). My impression, and I might be grossly wrong, is that the Mandarin syllable consists of three components: an initial (which may be null), a nucleus, and a final (either null, /n/ or /ŋ/). Under this assumption, I am pretty confident that all vowels within one syllable fall in the nucleus part, and therefore an analysis of chuan would yield /tʃ/+/ua/+/n/, which would also allow to discriminate it from chu'an, being /tʃ/+/u/+/a/+/n/ (disregarding the fact that there would probably be a non-phonemic glottal stop in between the two syllables)JREL 20:15, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

But here's the thing... if you simply recognize /ai/, /au/, /ia/, /ua/ as diphthongs, then there's no way to explain why /ai/ and /au/ can't take /n/ behind them, while /ia/ and /ua/ can. (Well, /ian/ > [ien]) But if you explain /ai/ as /a/ + /j/ and /ia/ as /j/ + /a/, then it becomes clear immediately. Chinese allows no more than one coda per syllable. So if /ai/ is /a/ + /j/, /j/ is already the coda, so you can't add /n/ again. But /ia/ doesn't have a coda, so you can still stick an /n/ or /N/ after it.

It's also easier to explain how final /j/ (/ai/, /ei/) and final /n/ (/an/, /@n/) behave in the exact same way when /r/ is added to the end, if they're both codas. -- ran (talk) 20:20, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

Sounds pretty convincing, but with that analysis, how would you treat triphtongs? We then have to consider the nucleus or the coda as a diphtong... That said, I don't see much of a rule regulating final n and ŋ: it just seems that /ye, ie, ia, ua/ can take a final nasal but don't have to, while /ue and iu/ must take one. A rule would have to take into account for every single instance where a final nasal is possible/impossible; so /a/+/j/ may be correct, but what do you do of /uo/, which doesn't allow a coda either? Again, I guess it's down to a syllabary as the one here [[3]], which would show possible phonotactical combinations. There's already quite a bit of that in the Pinyin article, though... JREL 22:12, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

We can treat triphthongs in the exact same way as we treat other glide + nucleus + coda combinations. For example, /uai/ is /u/ (glide) + /a/ (nucleus) + /i/ (coda); /uan/ is /u/ (glide) + /a/ (nucleus) + /n/ (coda).

As for the rule regulating final n and ŋ and problem with /uo/, that's because you're looking at it very weirdly. In fact, notice that /uo/ is in complementary distribution with /uə/, so why do you keep them separate? We can have:

• /u/ + /@/ = [uo]
• /u/ + /@/ + /n/ = [u@n]
• /u/ + /@/ + /N/ = [uVN] in isolation; [UN] in combination

In short... the way you arrange it right now at Hochchinesisch is really messy, it looks like a whole bunch of random mono/di/triphthongs, some beginning on a high vowel and some on a low vowel, some that can take nasals and some that can't, all for apparently no reason whatsoever and with no apparent pattern. But by merging allophones carefully, we can get the neat chart we have here at Standard Mandarin. It reduces the inventory to just three glides, two nucleuses, and four codas, and they all fit together nicely in a grid, with no overlaps and not too many gaps either. -- ran (talk) 22:33, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

I agree that the classification of vowels given by Lee&Zee is somewhat untidy. If you don't mind, I'll copy-paste the table from here into the German wiki, if that's acceptable. I guess you being the native speaker, I must accept your way of looking at Chinese syllable-structure, however counterintuitive it may appear to me. At least we seem to agree on the onsets :) JREL 22:52, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

Go ahead and copy it... everything is GFDL. =)

But don't simply take a native speaker's word for it... when I was in elementary school, I learned pinyin by repeating formulas like "te wu an = tuan!" (That's pretty much how Zhuyin was designed too.) So it might all be pinyin and zhuyin messing with my mind. =)

I've seen some very interesting analyses of Chinese phonology... even one that analyzed the retroflexes as palatals + /j/. If I can find time, I'll look some of them up and see what all the linguists say. -- ran (talk) 23:01, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, I heard about that too. Lee&Zee also claim there are no retroflexes in Beijing, which I find really hard to believe, but there you go. It is interesting that a language spoken by so many people and with such a history is still that little analysed. There's a long way to go until its phonology is totally unveiled I guess -- lots of space for more research, good for numbers of linguistics students! :) By the way, 新年快乐！ JREL 23:15, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, and the same to you =D -- ran (talk) 23:26, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

Title change

Having read some of the postings above, I wonder if we shouldn't change the title of this article for a Chinese name instead, in order to avoid ambiguities. This article would be renamed Putonghua, while the Mandarin (linguistics) article would be renamed Beifanghua, and we could created an extra article called Guanhua for the historical variety of Mandarin. This would clearly remove all ambiguities, and it would also conform to the practice of academic circles, who use putonghua, beifanghua, but never Mandarin. Check this academic book for instance: [4]. Hardouin 11:32, 26 August 2005 (UTC)

Yes. That's a good compromise, if Standard Chinese is not practical. Xiaojeng 02:35, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

What would we call Standard Mandarin though? Putonghua or Guoyu? -- ran (talk) 02:40, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

I was kinda wondering then...what about usage in Malaysia/Singapore etc? It would be kinda strange if we say Putonghua or Guoyu is Singapore's official language, for example.--Huaiwei 14:54, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

What about the Standard Cantonese article? Should it be moved too? The naming/ambiguities parallels this one. --Jiang 08:06, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

Don't think the articles have to be renamed. This is an English-language Wikipedia. The official names Putonghua (in mainland China), Kuo-yü (in the ROC), Mandarin (as according to Singapore's constitution) has been sufficiently mentioned in the article; and the fact that Mandarin refers to the broader group of dialects has been clearly illustrated. — Instantnood 15:54, 29 September 2005 (UTC) (modified 15:56, 29 September 2005 (UTC))

If we are to then say Putonghua is an English loan-word, the above statement would be invalidated. Mannwhile, Putonghua is an official term in the whole of the PRC, and not just the mainland. The Singapore constitution states that "Malay, Mandarin, Tamil and English shall be the 4 official languages in Singapore. The national language shall be the Malay language and shall be in the Roman script" But this needs to be taken with a pinch of salt, because Mandarin translates as Huayu in Chinese, with the presumption that Mandarin superceeds all Chinese dialects, representing the official position of the Singapore government.--Huaiwei 16:42, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

Right.. Putonghua is already a loanword in English vocabularies.. But Mandarin has not yet been displaced by Putonghua. It is still in active use, either to refer to the language/group of dialects, or the specified dialect standardised for official use and use as a lingua franca. By using Standard Mandarin as the title we are i) using one of the popular names in English, ii) using the name which sounds more English, and iii) avoiding the politics behind Putonghua vs. Kuo-yü.
Meanwhile, Putonghua does not have any official status in Hong Kong and Macao, although it is de facto official together with Cantonese (according to the basic laws Chinese is official, without mentioning any spoken variants). The name Putonghua itself, similarly, is not official, although it is the name used in official purposes by the governments. The situation in Hong Kong and Macao is actually quite different from the mainland. — Instantnood 17:07, 29 September 2005 (UTC) (modified 17:25, 29 September 2005 (UTC))

If one may appreciate the discussions above better, the issue was over the fact that the English loanword "Mandarin" has its technical problems which are difficult to resolve without causing confusion to readers. It is not just an issue over whether "Putonghua" has replaced "Mandarin" in everyday speech. As we know from the way wikipedia works, not all conventions are to be applied across the board in all instances. While the need to use the most common English word is preferred, other considerations may prevent this. I would think instantnood is fully aware of the debate surrounding Taiwan and Republic of China. Yes, I agree that Putonghua/Guoyu has political underpinnings, but should they be thrown out irrespective of current inaccuracies? Can we find a way to accommodate these concerns?

Next, I find the text over the usage of the term "putonghua" in HK and Macau confusing. Instantnood claims that they are not official terms despite being used in official purposes by the governments. Which then leads me to wonder what happened to his endless campaign in saying "Mainland China" is an official term for precisely the same reason? Can we please have verified data for these statements?--Huaiwei 18:07, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

I won't question if the word Putonghua is official in Hong Kong and Macao, but the differences between the way it's official in Hong Kong and Macao and that in mainland China have to be acknowledged. Saying "mainland China, Hong Kong and Macao" would be better than lumping them up and saying "People's Republic of China". — Instantnood 18:56, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

If there are differences, they apparently already get some detailed mention in the History section. How would a statement like "Standard Mandarin is officially known in Mainland China, Hong Kong and Macau as Putonghua" be any better in highlighting the above mentioned differences, when the statement itself refers to the "official term" used to refer to "Mandarin"? I find it difficult to quantify the high degree of opposition expressed by one user besides the same old reasons.--Huaiwei 19:14, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

Precisely, unlike the laws applied in mainland China, the term Putonghua (or 普通話/普通话) does not appear in any law of Hong Kong or Macao. The term is official in the sense that it is used by the governments of Hong Kong and Macao in official purposes, since the governments has taken the term as something conventional (and, well, because this is the name official in mainland China, and preferred by Beijing). — Instantnood 19:31, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

Just for verification sake, could you show us the relevant laws which differentiate the two? And if I may interpret correctly, you are now claiming there are two "kinds" of official terminology: one which appears in the law books, and one which is used in official purposes? Could you tell us from where did this convention come about, because I do wonder how this would apply to the status of the term "mainland china"? You further claim that the HK govt is seemingly lax about its choice of words, deciding to use the term as something "conventional" and is used in Mainland China. Why dont they change HK to Xianggang then, since that will surely go into the good books of the Chinese officials as well? So, instead of constantly witting personal assumptions of facts, could we please have some verified and trusted sources to refer to?--Huaiwei 17:01, 30 September 2005 (UTC)

I guess speakers of other Chinese spoken languages/variants may oppose calling Standard Mandarin as Huayu, for Hua means China or Chinese. Other Chinese spoken languages/variants are equally Chinese, except that they are not the official lingua franca recognised by the central government of any sovereign state. I agree with Huaiwei that this may represents government position, which is unavoidably politics.
Another interesting thing to note is that only Mandarin, but not Chinese, is recognised in Singapore constitution as an official language. But since Mandarin always means the standardised spoken variant, or the broader group of (spoken) dialects, and never the written language, one may ask if Chinese the written language is recognised as an official language. This is associated with a debate at talk:list of official languages by country on whether Chinese the written language should be listed, together with Putonghua/Kuo-yü the spoken variant, under the entries of the PRC and the ROC. — Instantnood 17:19, 29 September 2005 (UTC) (modified 19:35, 29 September 2005 (UTC))

I have no idea what you are trying to imply by that comment on Singapore's official languages. The Singapore constitution, like that of any other country on Earth, recognises spoken languages as official, and not written scripts. Even if other sources indicate that "Chinese" is an official language in Singapore, they are actually simply referring to Mandarin if we want to be technically correct, and not the written language.--Huaiwei 18:07, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

Nobody is talking about script (i.e. traditional vs. simplified, or roman vs. cyrillic). — Instantnood 18:56, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

And your point being? Would you mind going beyond this kind of scripted talk and directly address the issues at hand?--Huaiwei 19:14, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

May I ask how the conversation can be carried on if you still think that people are talking about script? — Instantnood 19:31, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

Notice I said "written scripts" as well as "written language" in the statement? And even while we are at it, are you able to show us if this distinction is relevant to what is being discussed here?--Huaiwei 17:01, 30 September 2005 (UTC)

Title change is unnecessary. Putonghua and guoyu is useful for people who know Mandarin (ie. all of above), not people who don't. If you disambiguate into guoyu, putonghua you will only confuse the very people this encyclopedia is supposed to enlighten, those who know nothing about the language. I find this article very informative and structurally and linguistically well defined. Ran has done good maintenance work here. Mandel 11:57, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

The title should indeed be changed. The common-sense answer would be to call the language Chinese (or standard Chinese). This is how we approach the same (but usually less complicated) problem of referring to other languages in other countries. For example there are probably a lot of technical ways of referring to the particular type of Italian that has now become most popular. (If I remember correctly it is based on the dialect of Florence.) However we call the language Italian. - - Kleinzach 11:37, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

By your reasoning we would not have an article on Italian. We would have an article entitled Romance language. And we would have to find a name for "the language" of Canada. P0M 16:50, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

The paragraph above (11:37, 14 December 2005 (UTC)), which I don't believe I can make any clearer, argues for a common sense use of the word Chinese to describe the language. I do not understand why you are suggesting that "by my reasoning" we should have an article entitled "Romance language" or "a name for "the language" of Canada". That would hardly be a common sense arrangement, moreover it would misrepresent what I wrote. - Kleinzach 17:44, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

I didn't mean to misrepresent what you said. I did mean to point out some consequences of what you appeared to be arguing. What I meant is that the Romance languages are related to each other in approximately the same way that many of the regional languages of China are related to each other. We don't call Italian and Spanish the same language, so why should we call Wu (the language spoken around Shanghai) and Yue (the language spoken in Canton) the same language? Two or more languages spoken in one country do not make them the same language even if they are related languages. If Germany conquered the Netherlands, would that make Dutch into Deutsch? P0M 18:12, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

Again we seem to be at cross purposes here. I am not disagreeing with your comments about European languages. Please note that I have not been writing at all about what have been called dialects in China or indeed about the definition of the word dialect, or indeed about the relationship between political and linguistic boundaries! I have been explaining why Mandarin is an anachronistic and unsatisfactory name for putonghua. I have been arguing for this article to be re-entitled Standard Chinese. - Kleinzach 18:24, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

I guess we will just have to disagree about "Mandarin." It's not that I particularly like the term, either. I don't think the word is anachronistic. I do think that putonghua is a word that has strong political connotations (and the same applies to guoyu). On top of that, the so-called putonghua is not really "common" in the sense that "common table salt" is common, i.e., not everybody or even most people in China speak putonghua as their first language. The objective way to describe it would be "the language of instruction of the PRC" and then it would be even more obvious that it does not apply outside of the PRC even though PRC Mandarin speakers and Taiwan Mandarin speakers can understand each other perfectly well (not to mention Mandarin speakers in Malaysia and other such areas). P0M 18:47, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

As far as I know not even the PRC gov't is claiming that Standard Chinese (it's used by scholars on occasion) is everyone's (or even anyone's) first language. The point is that it's a lingua franca which is certainly more than common enough. That wide-spread standard languages still have the tendency to subdue smaller local languages in the long run is another matter altogether.

Even if I don't mind the current title, I would certainly support a move to Standard Chinese, since the term really is perfectly neutral. There simply is no other form of officially standardized Chinese to confuse it with. As long as it's not any of the transliterated Chinese terms, I'm satisfied.

Peter ^Isotalo 21:36, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

As we all know, Wikipedia policy supports a neutral point of view. However the term "Mandarin" carries a lot of inconvenient baggage. Not only is it anachronistic (my view) but some people have a strong antipathy towards the term and we should respect that. For example (quoted from above) "The Chinese official language should be called as " Standard Chinese ", but not "mandarin ", because mandarin is a insult at peoples of Han .- Xuanyan.She, Tianjin, China, Mar 28, 2004." (With all due respect, putonghua is not the problem here, nor is guoyu, as these are used in particular, well-defined contexts.) No-one is offended by the word "Chinese". - Kleinzach 22:45, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

I would support a title change to Standard Chinese, but I recognize Standard Mandarin is acceptable to many people. In general I think it would avoid a lot of confusion if Standard Chinese or even just Chinese is used instead of Standard Mandarin to refer to putonghua/guoyu, and use Mandarin for the broad range of "dialects". This is how many linguists use these terms. LDHan 12:46, 18 March 2006 (UTC)

I am broadly in agreement with LDHan's suggestions above. I am disappointed that this article still begins "Standard Mandarin is the official Chinese spoken language used by the People's Republic of China". The word official is out of place here IMO. - Kleinzach 12:37, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

Tones Again

There's something wrong with the description of the third tone. It says this: It is similar to saying "w-e-l-l" thoughtfully or as if inviting an answer.. W-e-l-l, this sounds much more like the second tone rather than the third. Don't believe me? Say "well" slowly and thoughtfully and hear which it corresponds. The third tone is especially difficult to describe because it seems foreign to any speech intonations used in English. Mandel 12:16, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

The closest usage I can think of in English is....errr................:D--Huaiwei 12:25, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

Btw, both the "tone chart" and its accompanying table also appear to assume the third tone is a non-constant one. Why is this? In all my life, I have always used the third tone as a "low frequency" version of the flat and constant first tone, and so do people around me, so is this usage different from elsewhere?--Huaiwei 12:31, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

Non-constant? What's that? Low-frequency....? Like a bat??

The word "THE" is also pronounced in the third tone (I reckon). But give a foreigner a i o u 3rd tones and they are lost. Mandel 13:07, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

lol! Anyway, can anyone please confirm if the third tone is supposed to be so "musical"? Yes it sounds nice (based on the ogg file attached) but it sounds more like an accent then a rule.--Huaiwei 15:56, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

The third tone is indeed pretty musical in Beijing... but only because a pause (e.g. end of sentence, etc.) Otherwise it's just a dip. -- ran (talk) 17:05, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

Hmm...a dip still implies there is a change in tone...whereas I have been used to a low, stable tone similar to the first tone albeit at a lower frequency? Did we over here in Singapore get it all wrong or what? :D--Huaiwei 17:29, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

Well, "dip" isn't the best word then. How about "drop"? In any case, I don't think the difference between 21 and 11 is that noticeable. -- ran (talk) 18:05, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

I have a sonogram somewhere that shows the actual frequencies involved in terms of shaded areas plotted out on a sheet of paper. One could not do the same thing with computer software. One difficulty, pointed out in the above conversation, is that different people do it different ways and the same person will even do it different ways depending on social context, context in the sentence, etc. When said slowly and distinctly, there is definitely a dip, but typically it is not like a v or even a u in contour. Instead, the falling portion occupies perhaps 1/5 of the entire stretch of time used to pronounce the word, and another 1/5 is devoted to the rising portion. The remaining 3/5 of the time is spent at approximately the same frequency. Generally speaking the falling portion occurs over a smaller range of frequencies than the rising portion. Both the falling portion and the rising portions get nibbled off or absorbed into other sounds, e.g., the rising portion of a third tone word blends seamlessly into the rising portion of a following second tone word. The end result is that if there is not "very good hearing" conditions, one tends to hear only the low and relatively flat portion of the syllable. So the whole thing looks a little like \___/ only I would need to erase about the top half of the left side, and/or extend the right side a little higher. I think in English we all know how to pronounce words correctly that we are aware we frequently fail to articulate clearly or omit something from. For language teaching you always need to teach the fully articulated version. People will take care of getting lazy and sloppy on their own. ;-) P0M 05:14, 20 October 2005 (UTC)

I see, but in that case, Chinese teachers in Singapore must be really sloppy then, coz I have been taught that the third sound is a flat tone since the earliest time in my life, and as far as I know, it still prevails today! :D

Check out the standard textbook series from either the Beijing Yuyan Xueyuan, or the several textbooks provided by the Guoli Bianyi Guan in Taiwan. The teachers in Singapore may be doing something analogous to what happened when I was discussing tones with one of my schoolmates at Taida who was a native Taiwanese speaker. He had no idea of what Mandarin qing1 sheng1 is, and imagined it to be the ru4 sheng1 (which he knows because Taiwanese has two of them). He equated the closest thing in his language to what he found in the other language. P0M 06:02, 20 October 2005 (UTC)

Hmm...at least I was still taught what qingsheng is. Interestingly, The majority of Chinese Singaporeans speak Hokkian, which is more or less equal to the so-called "Taiwanese" dialect, so the tones may be slightly more similar when speaking in Mandarin. I am so used to to flat third tone, that when I attempted to apply the dipping one in, say, "我要走了", it felt and sounded really strange somehow. Do the rest of you actually employ the dipping tone in such a sentence?--Huaiwei 07:15, 20 October 2005 (UTC)

That third tone joins seamlessly with the fourth tone of yao4 and the neutral tone of le, so its contour is less obvioous even if were used to making a more "book-normal" third tone. How about something like "Ni3 hao3 gao1!" said with great emphasis on the middle word? P0M 08:04, 20 October 2005 (UTC)

Head scratch...I have difficulty following this thread...dunno what is a flat third tone...all third tones sound the same to me. Maybe it's because my speakers are down I can't play the media file.

I've watched Standard Mandarin CCTV and Singapore news, other than the accent the correspondents sound similar. However, most Singaporean layspeakers say the third tone harder and stiffer, whereas Mainland Mandarin's third tone is really more flexible,, more like a rising and dipping. Ni3 hao3 gao1 doesn't sound idiomatic to me, it should be Ni2 hao3 gao1.

Also, no one seems to have replied to me "W-e-l-l" inquiry. It doesn't correspond to the third tone, does it? W-e-l-l? Mandel 09:10, 20 October 2005 (UTC)

Hence I wonder...how is it the third tone appears to have deviations, wheares the other three tones are fairly standard irrespective of location or accent? I would have tought tones are basics to this language and cant possibly change this much. Anyone has any clues on this? Btw Mandel, I agree the "W-e-l-l" inquiry sounds more like like the second tone. The "Ni3 hao3 gao1" thingy being pronounced as "Ni2 hao3 gao1" is actually another issue lah (concerning Tone sandhi), which also applies to usage here in Singapore of coz. I am refering more to the tone itself...--Huaiwei 10:11, 20 October 2005 (UTC)

Guess it's about the difference of bànsānshēng (半三聲) in different places. The contour of quánsānshēng (全三聲) is 214, whereas for the bànsānshēng the rising part is omitted. From what Huaiwei has mentioned, I would imagine the bànsānshēng he's been using is somewhat like 11. Such slight differences do exist among different Mandarin dialects (e.g. Beijing dialect vs. Tianjin dialect), as well as Cantonese dialects (e.g. Guangzhou vs. Macao vs. Hong Kong dialects). It wouldn't be surprising that in some places the tones of Standard Mandarin are not exactly the same. Normally in conversations, as Ran has mentioned, such differences would be not quite noticeable, until we have to compare the ways different people speak. — Instantnood 10:25, 20 October 2005 (UTC)

I think Instantnood is right. Quote from internet Chinese: 第三声的特点是先降后升。如果第三声在词语的前面，通常只念低降部分，即是半三声，如「美丽」的「美」。如果在词尾，把第三声降升部分都念出来，即是全三声，如「是我」的「我」。明白了第三声的特点后，可以多与其他声调的词语配搭练习。

How much you use "half third tone" depends on the accent and regional variations. "Full third tone" should come with dipping and rising. Mandel 10:55, 20 October 2005 (UTC)

Hua real interesting siah. Surely this is good stuff we should include in this text? I am going to try practising saying 是我 with all the musical gusto I can master. My friends are prob gonna look at me with funny looks and ask me if I just came back from China. :D--Huaiwei 11:22, 20 October 2005 (UTC)

I have a laser video copy of (probably an older) movie of Lei2 Yu3. There is one scene in which the father realizes that the daughter is getting involved with the young master. He says, "Ni3 shi4 shei/?...Ta1 shi4 shei2?" He is putting full emphasis into it, and if somebody wanted to do a graph of the frequency it would be a very exemplary "full third tone." By the way, I once knew a lady who, when she wanted to be sarcastic, would invert her third tones.

Quánsānshēng? Bànsānshēng? As a native speaker I have never heard of these terms before. This is not a complicate issue. If someone really wants to learn to pronounce Chinese correctly, you better go find a teacher in real life instead of guessing these complicate explanations on the web. Or someone with recording device can put up some audio files to make this all clear at once. -- G.S.K.Lee 11:11, 24 October 2005 (UTC)

I do not agree. First, linguists (including native Chinese) were the ones who have described tones and have gone beyond simplistic descriptions of them to try to describe what people actually do with tones under different circumstances. One of the reasons that the video segment I mentioned above is dramatically compelling is that people do not enunciate the way the father does under ordinary circumstances, so it highlights how much he wants his daughter to take cognizance of her social position. Real teachers know about tones and how to get their students to pronounce Chinese naturally, and their explanations include reference to these diminished tone contours (such as are given in standard textbooks). Their explanations can also be augmented by recordings. But the recordings would vary from the ironic precision of the father in the above-mentioned dialog to the imprecision of some of the dialog in, e.g., Lu3 Bing1 Hua1, where you hear all kinds of pronunciations, pronunciations differing both by region and (within the speech of the same speaker) influenced by haste, emotional tension, and even laughter. The student needs to hear these sounds in isolation, so that the full contour can be understood, and then needs to be led to see how the contours change when combined with other syllables and said in various social and linguistic contexts. P0M 21:16, 25 October 2005 (UTC)

Singapore diverse or not?

From the article:

In Singapore, the government has heavily promoted a "Speak Mandarin" campaign to adopt a common language among its diverse Chinese population. The use of non-Mandarin dialects in broadcast media is prohibited and the use of dialect in any context is officially discouraged. This has led to some resentment, as Singapore's Chinese community is almost entirely of southern Chinese descent and thus considers Mandarin a foreign language.

First, the article states Singapore has a diverse population, than the article states it's made up almost entirely of southern Chinese. What's correct? --Abdull 18:57, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

Look at the map of Chinese regional languages and you will understand. The southern part of China includes speakers of Wu, Min (several mutually incomprehensible subvarieties here), Hakka, Cantonese... The practical problem for not specifying Mandarin would be that none of the other regional languages would please everybody either. Some people would automatically be given favor and some would be disadvantaged. I don't know what the original writer used as proof that they regard Mandarin as a "foreign language." I think everybody there knows that Mandarin is only as "foreign" as is Cantonese. But, anyway, the practical advantages it gives for business are complemented by the advantage that it privileges only the relatively rare native speaker of Mandarin. The same selection of Mandarin as language of instruction occurs also within the Chinese community in Malaysia, perhaps for all of the above reasons. P0M 01:56, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

Identically divergent

Since then, the standards used in mainland China and Taiwan have diverged somewhat, though they continue to remain essentially identical.

So they diverged somewhat or remain essentially identical ?

They've diverged in terms of what vocabulary to use in politically sensitive areas and in areas where new compounds were made to describe new things (e.g., laser). It's the kind of situation we have with English where some people say they have gas and other people say they have petrol.

Everybody's language differs slightly from the next person's language, so I guess technically the sentence above couldn't be changed to say that two language standards remain identical. So how might the statement be improved? By saying changing the part after to the comma to "but not enough to matter"? P0M 04:59, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

Some pronunciations are different too... e.g. 期 has the first tone in mainland dictionaries and the second tone in Taiwanese dictionaries. -- ran (talk) 06:17, 14 December 2005 (UTC)