"Mainland"? Which Mainland?

Like John Oliver, without being funny?

Seemed pretty bad, leaning towards chinas narrative about it being a self ruled island and avoiding saying anythig about the reality of taiwans actual reality and being a country. I expected more from them :frowning: I give it a 2/10.

1 Like

Interesting perspective.

1 Like

Most of it is pretty much the official position of the KMT from the 80s to the 90s, which the KMT has abandoned in favor of getting sweet cash from the PRC.

Except for the part where Former General Yu talked about the US’ One China Policy, and he is right on the money. One China Policy means the US recognizes the PRC as the official representative of China, but doesn’t agree Taiwan is a part of China.

1 Like

The island of Taiwan is the mainland for the country of Taiwan. Are there differences?

1 Like

I’m trying to understand what you mean by mainland and Taiwan. Is the Taiwanese mainland different from insular Taiwan? Is the mandarin on Kinmen, Matsu and Penghu different?

Oh. Just wondering why you refer to China as the Mainland. I thought you must be from Hong Kong.

Mainland Mandarin is referring to Putonghua as spoken in Mainland China. To my knowledge, in English it is not common to refer to “China Mandarin” or wording like that, which is why we say “Mainland”.

As far as Kinmen, Matsu, and other outlying islands in the ROC, it is possible there are pronunciation or other differences there, and our platform will support region tagging to that degree if the community finds it necessary.

1 Like

Why wouldn’t you just call it Chinese Mandarin then? Like American English, British English, Canadian English…

If the platform is going to imply Taiwan and China are the same country, should I be worried about censorship within the platform? I’m now suddenly sceptical. I originally thought this had to do with Taiwan as a country and the Taiwanese mainland.

1 Like

See response to Marco. Since usually people talk about simplified characters vs traditional characters, or even “simplified Chinese” vs “traditional Chinese”, it can be hard to make clear what we’re referring to. So we have said “Taiwanese Mandarin” and “Mainland Mandarin” to this point. Do you think we should say “Mainland China Mandarin”?

I think Chinese Mandarin would be clearest, because that would be referring to the Mandarin variety of China. While Taiwanese Mandarin refers to the Mandarin variety of Taiwan.

3 Likes

I’d say PRC Mandarin and Taiwanese Mandarin. Referring to the PRC as “the Mainland” is politically loaded propaganda.

5 Likes

That works too.

I’ve lived in Taiwan for 22 years, and not once have I heard someone refer to “Mandarin” as “putonghua”. Everyone in Taiwan calls it “chung wen”. And aside from the deep blues, China is never referred to as “the mainland”. It’s always “chung guo”.
It always amazes me when foreigners refer to China as “the Mainland” and Mandarin Chinese as “the common tongue”, when Taiwanese people simply say “China” and “Chinese”.

1 Like

“Mainland China” is completely redundant, unless you’re trying to distinguish continental China from Hainan island or something, which you’re presumably not trying to do.

2 Likes

That’s why I asked if he was from Hong Kong.

1 Like

And presumably Hong Kong Island in particular, as the New Territories are part of “mainland China” or whatever. It’s hard to keep all the propaganda straight.

3 Likes

I agree that calling China “Mainland” is loaded with meaning that the average user of the platform is going to roll their eyes at. Or, like me, be increasingly more annoyed about the more they think about it.

If British English vs. American English, Spanish (Spain) vs. Spanish (Latin America) is the way language platforms distinguish those languages, there should be Chinese Mandarin and Taiwanese Mandarin. And none of the CCP snowflakes and wumaos need be listened to, as that’s not the target audience of this platform. Unless this platform is being funded by the CCP, in which case, you do what you want, I’m out no matter how good the platform is

1 Like

Hello everyone, Alexander here (founder of Decode).

I understand that there seems to be some misunderstanding regarding our naming convention of different variations of Mandarin Chinese. I hope I can help to clarify.

Decode Chinese started as a university research project and I have been personally been living in Taiwan for quite some time now. When we decided our linguistic naming convention of different variations of Mandarin Chinese, we ultimately decided to follow how the Ministry of Education (MoE) in Taiwan approves how cross-strait linguistic differences on official dictionaries are represented.

Explanation
In the image below, you can see how the labeling is done in two officially supported Chinese language reference works within Taiwan. Please note the labels 臺灣 (Taiwan) and 大陸 (Mainland)

Below you can read the clarification of this naming convention.

本詞典以收釋現代漢民族共同語(臺灣現稱「國語」,大陸現稱「普通話」)[…]
Source: 首頁 | 中華語文知識庫

I want to emphasize that the website above is officially supported by several government agencies such as the MoE in Taiwan as you can see in the image below. This resource can also be seen on other official dictionaries such as this one (note the official moe.edu.tw domain).

During the past two years, we have been conducting several research projects at universites in Taiwan and we have all received the feedback that Mainland (大陸) Mandarin is completely suitable to help distinguishing between cross-strait linguistic differences.

I think it is important to understand that based on the approval and recommendations we have received it would be unreasonable to go against the public stance of the Taiwanese government and agreed opinion within the linguistic community in Taiwan. If you have an issue with the current naming convention I would recommend you to reach out to Ministry of Education directly by following this link.

With that said, although officially recognized naming convention by all authoritative linguistic and government organizations within Taiwan, we now realize that there are issues of using our Mandarin Chinese variation naming convention in English which could spark misunderstanding.

Therefore, we will explore further how we can improve our linguistic classification and provide better clarification in the future. We do appreciate your feedback and discussion so far. Please let us know what you think and if here is any other issues we should resolve.

3 Likes