What is meant by 'Mandarin'? -- a study

Language Learning Chinese
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Another back issue of Sino-Platonic Papers has been released: The Four Languages of “Mandarin”, by Robert M. Sanders of the University of Hawaii.

Here’s how it begins:

Sanders goes on to indentify and discuss what he calls [ol][li]Idealized Mandarin[/li]
[li]Imperial Mandarin[/li]
[li]Geographical Mandarin[/li]
[li]Local Mandarin[/li][/ol]
The entire text is now online for free in both HTML and PDF (875 KB) formats.

Professor Sanders is also one of the associate editors of the excellent ABC Chinese-English Comprehensive Dictionary.

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Whatever gets them to not put too much salt on my french fries is kay wit me. :smiley:

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What is Robert Sanders hoping to accomplish? I mean, a non-Chinese writing an article in English about “Mandarin”. So what?

The most difficult part about learning Chinese is not the tones or the characters but how amazingly unstandardized the language is in China.

But hey, Chinese isn’t standardized for a reason. It’s cultural. Still, I have every confidence that by the end of the 21st century Mandarin will be a fairly well standardized language :laughing:

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Academics are pedantic by definition. Someday, I’ll work my way up to be one as well. :wink:

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[quote=“um”]
The most difficult part about learning Chinese is not the tones or the characters but how amazingly unstandardized the language is in China.[/quote]

Compared to what? English?

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English or Japanese. Many other languages, too, from what I am told, but I’ll only vouch for those two.

I should note that Chinese in Taiwan is pretty good for standardization. In China (since the summary Cranky gave us talks about geography) it’s anyone’s guess. I have frequently seen Chinese not understand other Chinese in China; it is not an urban legend (and neither are Chinese fire drills or Chinese whispers).

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[quote=“um”]English or Japanese. Many other languages, too, from what I am told, but I’ll only vouch for those two.

I should note that Chinese in Taiwan is pretty good for standardization. In China (since the summary Cranky gave us talks about geography) it’s anyone’s guess. I have frequently seen Chinese not understand other Chinese in China; it is not an urban legend (and neither are Chinese fire drills or Chinese whispers).[/quote]
But presumably this is because they weren’t speaking Mandarin. They’re all supposed to learn it in school, but given the state of the school system and the wide variety of languages/dialects spoken in China, don’t be too surprised if they can’t speak Mandarin well.
Japanese isn’t standardized either, for that matter. A foreigner can get by with standard Japanese, but that doesn’t mean that is what the people are speaking amongst themselves outside of Tokyo.

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[quote=“bababa”][quote=“um”]English or Japanese. Many other languages, too, from what I am told, but I’ll only vouch for those two.

I should note that Chinese in Taiwan is pretty good for standardization. In China (since the summary Cranky gave us talks about geography) it’s anyone’s guess. I have frequently seen Chinese not understand other Chinese in China; it is not an urban legend (and neither are Chinese fire drills or Chinese whispers).[/quote]
But presumably this is because they weren’t speaking Mandarin.[/quote]
You say potaeto, I say potahto. Just what is and isn’t Mandarin? I guess this is the reason the paper was written in the first place, n’est pas?