China 中國 or Mainland 大陸

Language Learning Chinese
1

how do you say it?

  • China 中國
  • Mainland 大陸
0 voters
2

Both sometimes

3 Likes
3

This

4 
邪惡帝國
5

中國 but I’ll use 支那 when I’m being an ass. I don’t like the connotation that 大陸 holds.

6

大陸 can refer to Taiwan if you are living somewhere like Penghu, Kinmen, Matsu etc. So it will be confusing if you said that without context. It just means the mainland.

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7

Chinar

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8

本島

9

中國 or 中國大陸

10

I say 中共.

2 Likes
11

大陸 only when I am in Hong Kong. Otherwise chinar

12

“China” exclusively when speaking in English. In Mandarin, I tend to switch between the two and I’m not sure which one I say the most. I use it almost as a pejorative when speaking in Mandarin. “I heard a 大陸 accent, and she was incredibly rude,” type of thing.

13

For me it depends on who I speak to, many friends use “mainland” so naturally I use “mainland” with them

14

I used to mostly say 大陸, for many years, but understanding the connotation a little better now I say 中國 more, or sometimes 中國大陸.

15

We of course had a discussion on this subject. The usage of 大陸 and mainland was imposed on the Taiwanese sometime in the 50s. Prior to that people would use 中國, 支那, or at most 內地 by Chinese refugees.

A term that would make more linguistic sense would be 本土, which is the term used to describe similar island-mainland situation for other countires. Like you would never see mainland in a Hawaiian context translated to 美國大陸. 大陸 means continent, and when used in the context of continental, 美洲大陸 would instead be used. So it’s either 亞洲大陸, or 中國本土, or just 中國.

1 Like
16

ooh, that’s a fun one! I might start using it to throw people off.

Semi-related, I was wondering recently about the timeline for usage of different language terms: 官話、普通話、國語、中文、漢語 etc.

Obviously 國語 came with the KMT, and 普通話 is not really used in Taiwan. Nowadays most people say 中文 and 臺語 without thinking too much about it. During the Japanese or Qing eras, would Holo residents of Taiwan have called their spoken language (Taiwanese Hokkien) 臺語 or 臺灣話 or 中文? What would they have called Standard Mandarin?

Then in the modern day, did usage of the term 中文 for Mandarin come with anti-KMT (and anti-國語 terminology) sentiment, or did it come from education under the KMT (i.e. 「我們是中華民國，我們都是中國人」), or something else like the rise of China? I’ve personally noticed that the 國語/中文 divide is almost exclusively related to age, but I’ve also heard a few people specifically refer to it by the term in English ‘Mandarin’ in order to avoid ambiguity and connotation of the above terms. (Although maybe that’s just because I hang around linguists.)

17

Sort of addressed this back in a couple of threads.

During the Japanese era, Tâi-uân-uē 台灣話 was used exclusively. The exonym was already in use in late Qing-governed period by Manchu officials referring to the language Tsiang-Tsuan language mixture. For speaker of Tsiang-Tsuan languages in Southern Fujian, Taiwan, the Philippines, and SEA, there wasn’t a name to refer to the language family collectively. Hoklo/Holo was also only a derogatory exonym used by the Hakka. Speakers just referred to their own language by the place of origin, like Tsuân-tsiu-uē, Tsiang-tsiu-uē, Amoy, Teochew, Lán-lâng-uē (Filipino), and so on.
You can see this in the names of Taigi dictionaries throughout history:

Since the Japanese period, Taigi and Taiuanue were continued to be use officially, as many early dictionaries published during early KMT-occupation still referred to the language as Tâi-uân-uē 台灣話 or Tâi-gí 台語.

Really, really, early on, like back in the 16th century, the Spanish wrote dictionaries such as the 1593 Doctrina Christiana en letra y lengua china, the 1604 Dictionarium Sino Hispanicum, and the 1626 Vocabulario de la Lengua Chio Chiu, referring to the version of Tsiang-tsuan language mixture in Taiwan and Manila as just Chinese.

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18

Communist China

19

Actually, 國語 came with the Japanese. The usage of 國語 to refer to a national language was coined by the Japanese, so it is a Wasei Kango (和制漢語) term. Prior to that, 國語 referred to a collection of history books of Spring and Autumn States. It literally meant “Discourses of the States”

So back in the Japanese era, 國語 referred to the Japanese. The Chinese copied the Japanese sometime in the 1909, even before the fall of the Qing dynasty, when they were trying to cultivate a national identity in China. However, 國語 went through several iterations. The 1909 version was different from the 1918 version, which was different from the 1923 version. All 3 versions were con-langs by the way, with the 1923 version deliberately being made closer to actual Pekinese. However, enough differences existed, which went through even more changes in Taiwan.

The usage of 中文 was promoted by the KMT, since they so desperately wanted to be seen as the “real China”. Although, technically 中文 should just refer to the writing, and 國語 or 中國話 refer to the spoken language. I guess people stopped caring about making that distinction.

3 Likes
20

I use 中文 to refer to the spoken language, but I know it’s technically incorrect.

I’m curious, what would you refer to the language if you really would prefer to avoid 國語? Not sure I like 漢語 any better, but I could be persuaded to think otherwise.