Please help me explain this term: Mandarin

Mandarin means the subject of a certain place. It is the branch of Chinese with the widest distribution and the largest number of speakers. About 70% of China's population speaks Mandarin as their native language. Mandarin is spoken as the native language in northern China, Sichuan, Chongqing, Yunnan, Guizhou, most of Hubei, northern Hunan, areas along the Yangtze River in Jiangxi, northern Anhui, and northern Jiangsu in the south.

Passage area: Mother-tongue speakers are distributed in most of northern China and about half of southern China; a considerable majority of the population in other Chinese areas use it as a second language.

Language family: Sino-Tibetan language family Chinese.

Mandarin, also known as northern dialect in academic circles in the past.

1. It is a branch of Chinese.

2. Modern Mandarin and Mandarin are derived from Mandarin. evolved. Modern Standard Chinese (i.e., Mandarin in the Republic of China and Mandarin in mainland China today) is based on the Mandarin version of Beijing dialect.

Classification of Mandarin

Mandarin is roughly divided into North China Mandarin, Northwest Mandarin, Southwest Mandarin and Jianghuai Mandarin, represented by Beijing dialect, Chengdu dialect, Xi'an dialect and Yangzhou dialect respectively. North China Mandarin and Northwest Mandarin are spoken in the east and west of northern China respectively, while Southwest Mandarin and Jianghuai Mandarin are spoken respectively in the west and east of the vast areas in southern China except for Wu, Gan, Hunan, Guangdong, Fujian, Hakka and other dialect areas.

Characteristics of Mandarin

Voice

Mandarin has a relatively large internal consistency. Except for some Mandarin in the south, most regions can communicate with each other.

Obvious features of Mandarin include: most of the medieval consonant endings have disappeared, and the "-p, -t, -k, -m, -n, -ng" in medieval Chinese now only remain " -n,-ng". There are few types of tones, and in most areas only flat tones distinguish yin and yang. Except for some areas south of the Yellow River in Henan, a small part of Shandong, all Jianghuai Mandarin, and a small area of ??Minjiang Mandarin in Southwest China, the entering tone of Middle Chinese has disappeared in most areas of Mandarin; many areas have the phenomenon of retroflexion, Erhua, and soft tones. This results in a large number of homophones and corresponding compound words appearing in Mandarin, which is relatively rare in other dialects.

The history of Mandarin

The name of Mandarin dialect evolved from the official standard dialect. Since the Han population in the north mainly uses Mandarin dialect, the non-Mandarin dialect Han population is mainly distributed in the south or in other words. Due to reasons such as the southeast area, some people used to call the entire Mandarin dialect a northern dialect. In fact, the populations of the two major Mandarin dialects, Southwest Mandarin and Jianghuai Mandarin, are distributed in the south. Moreover, Mandarin, as the standard language of China, has been divided into northern and southern branches since the Eastern Jin and Southern and Northern Dynasties. The northern Mandarin based on the northern dialect did not gradually replace the southern Mandarin of the Jianghuai dialect family until the middle of the Qing Dynasty and became China's official standard language.

"Guanhua" was the earliest name for the official standard language. In the early days, the official standard Chinese language was called Yayan, Yayin, Tongyu, and Zhengyin. It was called Guanhua in the Ming and Qing Dynasties, and it began to be called Guoyu in the Qing Dynasty. , was renamed Mandarin in 1956; and the word Mandarin evolved into the meaning of "Mandarin dialect".

History of Partitioning

Historically, there have been various methods of zoning Mandarin. The following is a brief history of division:

History of Mandarin Partition[1]

1900

Zhang Taiyan’s Mandarin and non-Mandarin areas were mixed up, and no branch of Chinese was named Mandarin. For the first time, the Chinese language was divided into different categories. The characteristics were not reflected

In 1934

Zhao Yuanren and other North China Mandarin and South China Mandarin "Mandarin" was first used in the Chinese division; including the current Jin, Xiang, and Gan dialects

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From 1937 to 1948, the northern Mandarin, Shangjiang Mandarin/Southwestern Mandarin, and Xiajiang Mandarin Hunan-Gianxi speaking areas were demarcated. The scope of the Mandarin speaking area is quite close to the current scope of the Mandarin and Jin dialect areas.

From 1955 to 1981, it was merged into one district; it was once renamed Northern dialect/Northern dialect; there are many internal division methods, one is divided into North China Mandarin, Northwest Mandarin, Jianghuai Mandarin, Southwest Mandarin Mandarin as The view of a branch of Chinese has since become deeply rooted in the hearts of the people; other names such as Northern dialect/Northern dialect have also begun to spread;

1987

Chinese Language Atlas Northeast Mandarin, Beijing Mandarin, Jiao-Liao Mandarin , Jilu Mandarin, Zhongyuan Mandarin, Lanyin Mandarin, Jianghuai Mandarin, and Southwest Mandarin Jin dialect were classified as Mandarin for the first time; it has become the de facto classification standard in the dialect academic community (outside the dialect academic community, the old division method is still mentioned)

Currently, professional books and journals on dialectology published in mainland China all adopt the Chinese Language Atlas zoning method (hereinafter referred to as the "Eight-District Method") to classify Mandarin. The Eight-District Method has actually become Zoning standards for academic circles. This article also focuses on introducing the Eight District Law.

The eight-area method has become the standard in the academic community. One reason is that the linguistic value has made qualitative progress compared with the previous method, and it is another reason that it was released by an authoritative department. The Chinese Language Atlas is developed and released by the authoritative department of dialect scholarship in mainland China. It has a high level of authority and also plays a mandatory role in the publication and classification of books and periodicals in dialect scholarship.

Some scholars also have certain objections to the Eight-District Law. The scope of the objections ranges from the classification of languages ??in a certain township or county to the attribution of Jin dialect/Jianghuai Mandarin. However, even if there are objections, we will first introduce the "Eight-District Law" and then criticize the "Eight-District Law".

Overview

Main article: Northeastern Mandarin, Beijing Mandarin, Jiaoliao Mandarin, Hebei and Lu Mandarin, Central Plains Mandarin, Lanyin Mandarin, Jianghuai Mandarin, Southwest Mandarin

Regional Characteristics Main Distribution Provinces Main cities

Northeastern Mandarin has three tones and four tones. The ancient Ru tones are Ping, Shang, and Qu, and the Upper tones are more common in Heilongjiang, Jilin, and Liaoning. In parts of Inner Mongolia, Shenyang, Changchun, Harbin, Yanji, Jiamusi

Beijing Mandarin has three tones and four tones. The ancient tones are divided into Ping, Shang and Qi and are relatively uniform in Beijing, northern Hebei, Liaoning and parts of Inner Mongolia. Beijing, Miyun, Chengde, Chifeng, (Liaoning) Chaoyang

Jilu Mandarin has three tones and four tones. The ancient tones are in Ping, Tianjin, southern Hebei, eastern Shandong, Beijing, and parts of Shanxi such as Tianjin, Baoding, Jinan, and Cangzhou

The Jiao-Liao Mandarin has three tones, three tones or four tones. The ancient tones are divided into Ping, Shang and Go to Liaoning, Liaodong Peninsula, Shandong Jiaodong Peninsula, Qingdao, Yantai and Dalian

Zhongyuan Mandarin has three tones, three tones or four tones. The ancient Rusheng sect has spread to Jiangsu, Anhui, Shandong, Hebei, Henan, Shanxi, Shaanxi, Gansu, Ningxia, Qinghai, Xinjiang Zhengzhou, Jining, Xuzhou, Xi'an, Tongchuan, Baoji, Hanzhong, Tianshui and Turpan

Lanyin Mandarin has three tones and three tones, and the ancient Ru tones are generally used in Ping, Lanzhou, Yinchuan, and Zhangye in some areas of Gansu and Ningxia

Southwestern Mandarin has three tones, four tones, or five tones, and the ancient Ru tones are generally assigned to Yangping, some areas are still called Yunnan, Guizhou, Sichuan, Chongqing, Hubei, Hunan, Guangxi, Shaanxi, and parts of Gansu including Kunming, Guiyang, Chengdu, Enshi, Yichang, Jingzhou, Wuhan, Changde, and Guilin

< p>Jianghuai Mandarin has four tones and five tones. The ancient Ru tone is generally still the Ru tone in the areas north of the Yangtze River in Hubei, Anhui, and Jiangsu provinces, and in parts of Jiangxi and Zhejiang in Huanggang, Xiaogan, Hefei, Yangzhou, Nanjing, Zhenjiang, and Jiujiang

The basic standard for classifying Mandarin in the Chinese Language Atlas is tone type. Specifically, it is the evolution of the ancient unvoiced initial consonants into consonant characters. This is the first time in history that the zoning standards for Mandarin have been accurately summarized as linguistic features. Past zoning rules were based on administrative divisions, making it difficult to summarize the unique characteristics of Mandarin in each district.

In addition, during the formulation process of the "Eight Districts Law", more than one representative point was surveyed for each county in the Mandarin speaking area, providing a qualitative leap in the detail of linguistic data compared to the past.

Controversy

The most common debates about Mandarin are as follows:

There is controversy over whether Mandarin is a dialect or a language, with those who believe that it is a dialect It is often called "Mandarin dialect".

The issue of independence between Jin dialect and Jianghuai Mandarin.

Notes

Note 1: The name of Mandarin: there are two types: Mandarin and Northern (Hua). For those who think that Mandarin is a dialect rather than an independent language, the word dialect can be added. That is, Mandarin dialect and Northern dialect. Among them:

Historically, in the academic circle of Chinese dialects, the term "Northern Dialect" has been used much less frequently than "Northern Dialect". However, in the academic circles of non-Chinese dialects, such as general university Chinese textbooks, Modern Chinese Dictionaries are used. In addition, the term "Northern Dialect" (excluding the term "Northern Dialect") can also refer to the Mandarin spoken in parts of the North. The specific definitions of which areas in the North are different.

Since the late 1980s, journals and monographs in the field of Chinese dialect studies in mainland China have uniformly used the term "Guanhua". The terms "Northern Dialect" and "Northern Dialect" have actually withdrawn from the academic field.

Note 2: Although in theory, sub-branches of Mandarin, such as Jianghuai Mandarin, Zhongyuan Mandarin, etc., are the so-called "large dialect areas" of Chinese at the same level as Jin dialect and Cantonese, in fact, people (Including scholars in the field of Chinese dialects) often directly express Mandarin alongside Jin dialect, Cantonese, etc., without considering the "level" differences.