Talk:Standard Chinese

Disambiguation page a little confusing after the move

Check out Standard Chinese (disambiguation) :

Standard Chinese can refer to the following:

• Mandarin, sometimes referring specifically to the spoken form
• Vernacular written Chinese, referring to the written form

See also

• Cantonese, the semi-standard form of Yue Chinese.

notice how the word mandarin points to this page. Should the disambiguation page be deleted? if not surely a line should be added for Mandarin Chinese and the Mandarin line adjusted to fit with the somewhat confusing consensus we have now about naming of this and related articles. Metal.lunchbox (talk) 08:21, 7 July 2011 (UTC)

I've had a go at revising it in line with WP:DABSTYLE. I'm not sure mentioning Mandarin Chinese is needed here. Kanguole 08:46, 7 July 2011 (UTC)

Consistency in lede

This is a continuation of the strand at Talk: Mandarin Chinese, where I said:

The article Standard Chinese starts out with

"Standard Chinese or Modern Standard Chinese, also known as Mandarin....The phonology is based on the Beijing dialect of Mandarin Chinese,...."

So the phonology of Mandarin Chinese is based on its own Beijing dialect?! No, the phonology of Mandarin Chinese (in its narrower sense) is based on the phonology of the Beijing dialect of Mandarin Chinese (in its broader sense).

I have a (perhaps) better suggestion than my previous one for dealing succinctly with the dual use of the word "Mandarin": Maybe we could change the opening of the lede to

"Standard Chinese or Modern Standard Chinese, also known as Mandarin, the Beijing dialect of Mandarin, or Putonghua...." Duoduoduo (talk) 18:08, 16 July 2011 (UTC)

It would be sufficient to say "the Beijing dialect of Chinese" or even just "the Beijing dialect" or "Beijing speech".

Beijinghua is not synonymous with the national language; it has peculiarities that are not found in the standard.

There is no legitimate dual use of "Mandarin" - the standard language is the primary referent and the proposed dialect area is a derived sense that requires qualification or context. --JWB (talk) 20:07, 16 July 2011 (UTC)

I would write the lede as: The official language of China was known as guanhua in the late Imperial period, and the English term Mandarin is a translation of guanhua. Today's versions are the PRC's official language putonghua, Taiwan's official language guoyu, and Singapore's standard version of Chinese huayu, which all still refer to the same language with minor variations.

I would avoid excessive mention and especially bolding of Standard Chinese which is a disambiguating description or a Wikipedia standard and by far not the most common term actually used, as bolding would misleadingly suggest. --JWB (talk) 20:25, 16 July 2011 (UTC)

The vocabulary is drawn from the large and diverse group of Chinese dialects spoken across northern, central and southwestern China

This is yet another example of thoughtlessly giving unwarranted primacy to the (unsettled) partition of Chinese into major dialect areas. Does anyone think that words are more likely to be adopted into standard national speech from Sichuanese than from Shanghainese or Cantonese, much less have evidence for it? --JWB (talk) 20:17, 16 July 2011 (UTC)

No Need for Minority Presence

We don't need to list every single country where there is a Chinese-speaking minority. We should simply list those countries where Chinese is in the majority or an official language--ROC, PRC, and Singapore. --Taivo (talk) 02:08, 18 July 2011 (UTC)

Disagree. Look at the Cantonese article. That one, on the other hand, broaches the opposite extreme, where every major single city worldwide is mentioned (and not referenced), which I don't think is warranted, either. Note that Mandarin has spread, but does not have as widespread an overseas diaspora as Cantonese - yet. A happy medium or compromise would be ideal, namely selective mention of overseas Mandarin-speaking locales, solidly referenced and accompanied by informative content. However, the fact is that the United States carries by far the largest Mandarin-speaking diaspora population in the Western Hemisphere, and with a highly disproportionate and growing number of the Mandarin-speaking immigrants destined for and living in New York City, for reasons that are not relevant to this discussion. To simply ignore this phenomenon and pretend it doesn't exist would be remiss, especially when the numerical presence and cultural impact are significant and increasing. The New York Times reference quoted is also an absolutely excellent, insightful, informative, and obviously reliable reference.

So in fact, there are two aspects of content in contention: the first being the infobox listing, as discussed above, which by the way already has a subgouping for countries with official Mandarin status; but the second of which I believe to be actually even more important, Taivo (talk) has apparently chosen to ignore completely and deleted without explanation, namely the fact I noted in the History section that Cantonese is being supplanted by Mandarin as a lingua franca in New York City, an issue of extraordinary significance, which carries future implications worldwide across Chinese diasporas, as this will likely happen worldwide, perhaps with a several year time lag after NYC. 96.242.217.91 (talk) 03:00, 18 July 2011 (UTC)

If you want to add that paragraph, I won't object, but I still object to adding the entry in the template without a consensus. --Taivo (talk) 06:15, 18 July 2011 (UTC)

Yet another name debate- Mandarin Chinese

Some of you probably can't get enough of naming debates about Chinese language related articles. If that's you then head on over to talk:Mandarin Chinese#Requested move where there is a proposal to move that article to Mandarin dialects. That debate is highly relevant to this article and the proposal is based on the idea that most readers searching for "Mandarin Chinese" are probably hoping to find "Standard Chinese". The current article is about the dialect group and should be named more descriptively -> "Mandarin dialects" while "Mandarin Chinese" will be made a redirect to "Standard Chinese". Since so many of you here have experience with this naming topic. I'm inviting you to participate in the debate, try to read existing debate above the proposal first though, to avoid kicking dead horses. Metal.lunchbox (talk) 23:48, 26 July 2011 (UTC)

1955 and 1956, definition of putonghua

the history section says "The word 'Putonghua' was defined in October 1955 by the Minister of Education Department in mainland China as follows: "Putonghua is the common spoken language of the modern Han group, the lingua franca of all ethnic groups in the country. The standard pronunciation of Putonghua is based on the Beijing dialect, Putonghua is based on the Northern dialects [i.e. the Mandarin dialects], and the grammar policy is modeled after the vernacular used in modern Chinese literary classics."[10]"

I think the last part was not added until the next year. Compare article from People's Daily in 1955 (has no mention of grammar and literary classics) with decree issued by State Council in 1956 (has mention of grammar and literary classics):

http://www.cssn.cn/news/175394.htm http://www.gov.cn/test/2005-08/02/content_19132.htm

Since there were two conferences in 1955 and the People's Daily article was apparently published between them it is possible the definition with literary classics was used at the second conference, but there is no source for this! And in any case, it was not the Ministry of Education that called the second conference, it was the Chinese Academy of Science (中国科学院). — Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.170.234.239 (talk) 03:50, 29 August 2011 (UTC)