Putonghua
Pǔtōnghuà (Simplified Chinese: 普通话 Traditional Chinese: 普通話) was adopted by the People's Republic of China as the official pronunciation of Chinese language words. It literally means "ordinary speech." Among overseas Chinese communities, particularly in Southeast Asia, Putonghua is known as huáyǔ (華語 simplified: 华语; "the Chinese language"). Putonghua is nearly identical to Guoyu, which is the standard pronunciation of Chinese language used by the Republic of China on Taiwan.
Putonghua is based on Beijing dialect, which comes under the category of Beifanghua, a group of Chinese dialects spoken across northern and southwestern China. Both Putonghua and Beifanghua are translated as "Mandarin" into English. BambooWeb's article on Beifanghua is located at Mandarin. For the rest of this article, the word "Mandarin" will refer to Beifanghua, not Putonghua.
Standard Mandarin and Beijingese
By definition, Putonghua uses:
- The phonology or sound system of Beijing minus some pronounced regionalisms. In practice, the actual colloquial pronunciation in Beijing dialect is not identical to Putonghua. In fact, is a common impression that the sounds of Harbin and Changchun (both in northern Manchuria) may be equally or more similar to standard Mandarin pronunciation than the local dialect of Beijing.
- The vocabulary of Mandarin dialects in general. This means that all slang and other elements deemed "regionalisms" are excluded. On the other hand, the vocabulary of all Chinese dialects, especially in more technical fields like science, law, and government, are very similar (this can be compared to a similar profusion of Latin and Greek words in European languages). This means that much of the vocabulary of standardized Mandarin is shared with all varieties of Chinese.
- The grammar and usage of exemplary modern Chinese literature, such as the work of Lu Xun, which in turn is based loosely upon a mixture of northern (predominant), southern, and classical grammar and usage. This gives formal standard Mandarin structure a slightly different feel from that of street Beijingese.
Although Beijing dialect is the basis for Putonghua, the standardized form of Mandarin, it is not the case that Putonghua is the same as "Beijing dialect". It is true that the standard pronunciation and grammar of the language of instruction is based on the Beijing dialect, but "standard Mandarin" is a rather elusive concept since it is a set of "constructed" language standards imposed on people who are asked to give up their accustomed regional pronunciations. Over the vast area from Manchuria in the north-eastern part of China to Yunnan in the south-western part of China, the home language of most people is Mandarin, but these home languages all differ from the pronunciation, vocabulary, and sometimes even the grammar of the language of instruction.
Specifically as regards the language of the natives of Beijing, most speakers conform well to standard pronunciation of the initial retroflex sounds (zhi, chi, shi, ri), but they add a final "er" — commonly used as a diminutive — sound to vocabulary items that other speakers would leave unadorned (儿音; pinyin: éryīn). There are also many vocabulary items that have wide local currency but are hardly ever used outside of the Beijing area. On top of those differences, as with London and New York City, there is more than one local "accent" in Beijing.
At the same time, there are aspects of Beijing dialect that have made it into the official standard. Standard Putonghua has a T-V distinction between the polite and informal versions of you, that comes from Beijing dialect. In addition there is a distinction between "zánmen" (we including the listener) and "wŏmen" (we not including the listener). In practice, these distinctions are almost never used by most Chinese.
Standard Mandarin and local dialects
The national standard can be very different to the point of unintelligibility from a local speech which is classified as Mandarin. In addition, since Putonghua is taught as a second language across all of China, it is also very common for two people who both believe themselves to be speaking Putonghua to require a translator. Nevertheless, efforts by the PRC, ROC, and Singapore to promote Putonghua and Guoyu as the standard tongue have greatly boosted the number of Putonghua and Guoyu speakers.
Note that while the term Hànyǔ (漢語; simplified: 汉语), or "the Han Chinese language", is sometimes used to refer to just standard Mandarin, it is more precisely used to refer to all variants of Chinese, since they are, after all, all spoken by Han Chinese. Some speakers of Hakka, for example, will object that their own dialect should carry the name Hanyu, as its grammar is closer to that of ancient texts.
Status of Putonghua
From an official point of view, Putonghua is theoretically something like a lingua franca — a way for Han Chinese and non-Han ethnic groups speaking a wide variety of mutually unintelligible of languages to communicate with each other. The very name of "Putonghua", or "ordinary speech", reinforces this idea. In implementation, however, Putonghua is sometimes given the aura of the "only right language", and other languages or dialects, both Chinese and non-Chinese, have shown signs of losing ground to Putonghua, to the chagrin of many local culture proponents.
