Concept

Mandarin Chinese

Overview

Mandarin ( MAN-dər-in) is the largest branch of the Sinitic languages. Mandarin varieties are natively spoken by 70 percent of all Chinese speakers, spread over a large geographical area that stretches from Yunnan in the southwest to Xinjiang in the northwest and Heilongjiang in the northeast. Its spread is generally attributed to the overall greater ease of travel in the North China Plain compared to the more mountainous south, combined with the relatively recent spread of northern varieties to frontier areas.

Many varieties of Mandarin, such as those of the Southwest and the Lower Yangtze, are not mutually intelligible with the Beijing dialect. Nevertheless, Mandarin as a group is often placed first in lists of languages by number of native speakers (with nearly one billion). Because Mandarin originated in North China and most Mandarin varieties are found north of the Yangtze River, the group is sometimes referred to as Northern Chinese.

Most Mandarin varieties have four lexical tones, alongside unstressed syllables commonly described as having a neutral tone. The final stops of Middle Chinese have disappeared in most of these varieties, but some have merged them as a final glottal stop. Many Mandarin varieties, including that of Beijing, retain retroflex initial consonants, which have been lost in southern Chinese varieties.

The historical capitals of China have been within the Mandarin-speaking area for most of the last two millennia, making these dialects very prestigious. Some form of Mandarin has served as a lingua franca for government officials and the courts since at least the 14th century. In the early 20th century, a standard language based on the Beijing dialect, with elements from other Mandarin varieties, was adopted as the national language. Today, Standard Chinese is the official language of China and Taiwan, one of four official languages of Singapore, and one of six official languages of the United Nations. Recent increased migration from Mandarin-speaking regions of China and Taiwan has resulted in the language being one of the more frequently used varieties of Chinese among Chinese diaspora communities. It is also the most commonly taught form of Chinese as a foreign language.

Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).

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These languages consist of monosyllabic words which follow one another in direct succession without any intermediate inflectional elements to modify their meaning. Philologists usually call such languages 'root-languages,' because a sound complex that carries the essential meaning of a word, apart from all modifying elements, is called by their science a verbal root.
Wilhelm Max Wundt, Elements of Folk Psychology Outline of a Psychological History of the Development of Mankind
States what Mandarin Chinese is.
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This process of composition is sometimes found in its incipient stage—a stage in which the component words are temporarily united to signify some unnamed object, and do not (from lack of frequent use) permanently cohere. But in the majority of inferior languages, the process of “agglutination,” as it is called, has gone far enough to produce considerable stability in the compound words: there is a manifest…
Herbert Spencer, First Principles
States what Mandarin Chinese is.
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The division next to the primary school is the grammar school. The term is not much used in the West, but is common in the eastern states. It goes back to the time of the revival of learning—a little earlier perhaps than the conditions out of which the primary school originated, and, even when contemporaneous, having a different ideal. It had to do with the study of language in the higher sense; because, at the time…
John Dewey, The school and society
Close in meaning to Mandarin Chinese; the term itself is not named.
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Mandarin Chinese

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