[LINK] The State of the Mandarin Language
May. 24th, 2005 06:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rfmcdonaldYesterday, the Taipei Times carried a brief AFP report on China's language situation.
The article goes on to note that the need for fluency in Mandarin is a product of the recent integration of China's diverse provinces. Mandarin is widespread mainly in eastern China and in major cities. It will be worthwhile to watch how quickly the Mandarin language spreads within the People's Republic, and the way in which it spreads. Judging by the Taiwanese experience, if the Mandarin language is seen as threatening the Chinese regiolects and other minority languages there is a decided potential for a backlash. The political and other consequences of this can be easily imagined.
A recent survey has revealed that nearly half of China's population cannot speak the official language, Mandarin, despite decades of efforts by the communist government, state media said yesterday.
The National Language Commission's survey also found that many of the 53 percent of China's 1.3 billion people who can speak Mandarin are not frequent Mandarin users, preferring their local dialect, the Xinhua news agency said.
Mandarin -- known as putonghua in China -- is just one of the hundreds of dialects in the Chinese language. Cantonese and Shanghainese are other major Chinese dialects.
In addition to Chinese, people living in China also speak other languages such as Tibetan, Uighur, Fujianese and even Korean.
The article goes on to note that the need for fluency in Mandarin is a product of the recent integration of China's diverse provinces. Mandarin is widespread mainly in eastern China and in major cities. It will be worthwhile to watch how quickly the Mandarin language spreads within the People's Republic, and the way in which it spreads. Judging by the Taiwanese experience, if the Mandarin language is seen as threatening the Chinese regiolects and other minority languages there is a decided potential for a backlash. The political and other consequences of this can be easily imagined.
