Wikijunior talk:Languages/Mandarin Chinese

Zhōng wén or zhōng guó huà ?

 * many English-speaking students learn to pronounce Chinese (or "Zhong-wen") using a Romanization system called Pinyin.

Isn't there a mistake ? I've learned a bit of chinese and my teacher told me that "zhōng wén" is for the written chinese and "zhōng guó huà" for the spoken chinese. --83.134.222.69 (talk) 15:25, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

Zhong wen is for written Chinese in general (i.e. both trad. and simp.). Pu tong hua, or guo yu in taiwan, or hua yu in Singapore, is the spoken mandarin. Kayau (talk) 14:20, 18 July 2009 (UTC)

zhōngwén or zhōngguó huà
There are at least six terms I can think of off the top of my head that have the same essential meaning,that is, (Mandarin) Chinese.

(1)zhōng guó huà (Chinese) this is a colloquialism or conversational word and inaccurate, implying that all of China speaks Mandarin when in fact there are over fifty ethnic minorities and thousands of dialects. Considerable populations (tens of millions)on the mainland speak the Shanghai dialect or Cantonese(although Mandarin is the 'standard' national language).

(2)pǔ tōng huà, (lit. "common") this term was adopted perhaps for the reason above and refers to the same language.

(3)hàn yǔ, (literally "the language of the Han"(ethnicity)) Over 90% of the population in China is considered to be of the Han ethnicity.

(4)guó yǔ, (lit. (the)national language). The usefulness of this term is limited at best, Japan uses the identical term with confusing results(i.e. which nation).

(5)huá yǔ,here "huá" is an extremely formal word for "China" and so "Chinese". However, I've never seen this term used outside of a dictionary, perhaps because "huá" has ethnic connotations. For example, one could change one's nationality and become a Chinese citizen (theoretically) but would have to have a father who is ethnically Chinese before they could be considered "Chinese" in the sense of "huá" or "huá rén".

(6)zhōng wén, strictly refers to written Mandarin. In conversation however this distinction is optional, a quick search over the internet reveals native speakers using this term to indicate the spoken language and even the titles of some textbooks include the term "shuō zhōng wén"(speak Chinese).

The standardized international Chinese proficiency test is known as the HSK or hànyǔ shuǐpíng kǎoshì and uses the term "hànyǔ" the major of Chinese language study in Chinese Universities and Colleges is known as "hànyǔ" (Chinese)or "hànyǔyán"(Chinese Language).

The point may be moot however, in the article, the author is in fact referring to the written language (and the romanisation thereof).

Weiming2 (talk) 03:51, 13 January 2009 (UTC)


 * I suggest 汉语 hànyǔ with a side note stating other ways of saying it (i.e.: Weiming2's suggestions) ––MathieuGPL (talk) 07:20, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

How many people speak Chinese (Mandarin)
"Mandarin Chinese is the most common language in the world. In fact, over 800 million people speak this dialect of Chinese. That's more than one out of every seven people!"

This answer is misleading. The language is spoken by the largest number of people, but the language is not necessarily as widespread as other languages. English is the official language in 55 countries, French:29, Arabic:24, Spanish:20 and Chinese:2. The Chinese mainland has a population of over 1.3 billion a great number of them speak Mandarin along with a local dialect, which accounts for the vast majority of the mammoth figure of 800 million. While immigration trends and the emergence of China as a world power may soon change this fact, it should be noted that although over 800 million speak the language, perhaps more than 90% of that 800 million are Chinese citizens conversing with each other in China and Taiwan.

I believe this statement needs to be changed or updated to reflect the above facts.

Cantonese
Cantonese is NOT Mandarin. It is a lot more complicated than Mandarin. People speak and write in completely different ways. There are nine intonations. It doesn't have the R sound. It has LOTS of glottal stops...Kayau (talk) 14:18, 18 July 2009 (UTC)

Formatting & corrections
"the character for sun (rì -which sounds like "rurr") was originally a circle with a dot in the center, an attempt to draw a sun."
 * remove "an attempt to draw a sun" it isn't necessary
 * perhaps you can replace the text describing the pictograph with the actual pictograph itself [here it is]

"The modern character is a vertical rectangle divided in half by a horizontal line. It is a 4 stroke character."
 * same theme..make the text more concise and easier to read ' That same character is now written as  日  it has 4 strokes.' ––MathieuGPL (talk) 07:20, 13 February 2010 (UTC)