It can be frustrating studying Chinese, a.k.a. “Mandarin” or “Mandarin Chinese.” Inside China, the language we study is called 普通话 (pǔ tōng huà) or “the common language.” Before I came to China, I didn’t realize — or fully appreciate it anyway — that every region has a local dialect. People here in Kunming speak the Kunming dialect. It is the language you are most likely to hear on the streets — in restaurants, vegetable markets, and the corner stores. On the university and college campuses, signs are posted for students to please speak and write Mandarin. Presumably this is because the government needs to make sure educated people can speak it. It is also worth noting that classes are (supposed to be) taught in Mandarin, and furthermore the students come from a variety of places and often truly don’t share a common dialect… hence the need for Mandarin, the COMMON (i.e. SHARED) language.
According to an article in the Shanghai Daily, the Chinese government reports that “only 45.1 percent of rural residents could speak Mandarin, compared to 66 percent of urban residents.”
This article is actually about how dialects isolate migrant communities in China. It’s an interesting and worthwhile subject that shares a lot of characteristics with the situation in the U.S. with the Spanish-speaking migrants.
However, I what really surprised were these numbers! If they’re accurate, that means less than 66% of China’s total population speaks Mandarin, less than 66% of Chinese people speak (what we call) Chinese. Weird!
Does that mean I speak more Mandarin than 34% of China’s population?
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7 comments ↓
I, of course, want the t-shirt!
I’ve never heard the figures, but I can’t say that I’m surprised. My Chinese is not at all liuli, but I can already easily recognize when nationals are speaking standard Chinese or not. And having done some village trips, yeah, Mandarin has not penetrated very deep into the rural areas. I guess I haven’t noticed the problem overly much here in Kunming…. I feel that about 75% of people are understandable. Could well just be the areas I frequent?
@Mom, The T-shirt can be purchased here:
http://www.cafepress.com/sinosplice.79781247
@Richard, Don’t underestimate your ability to understand the local dialect, too! You probably picked up more than you think.
You are absolutely right!You can speak more mandarin than 34% of chinese population.
Well, i think the best places to study chinese are Beijing and Haerbin(the capital city of Heilong Jiang province).Because the dialect there is mandarin. :)
Hello, I’m a local Kunmingness, I love my local dialect. Actually, our dialect is belong to the Mandarin, just have different pronunciation, the grammer is almost same. Most people in my province can speak Mandarin, maybe someone’s pronunciation is not so correct, but it is always the same language.
Of course there are many languages in China. Many other nations have their languages, but most of them can understand Mandarin and they can speak in it. And some places, such as Shanghai, Guangdong, I think they maybe have other languages, but they also can speak Mandarin.
Sometimes we prefer dialect because it is homely.
I have a really hard time explaining this phenomenon to people who haven’t lived or traveled in China, and I think it’s an altogether over-looked issue facing China’s future in Western media.
I lived in the Yunnan area for about two months three years ago, and noticed a huge range of what I would describe as different languages and dialects. Sometimes the difference was so obvious that that I equated it to the differences between languages such as Spanish, French, and Portuguese. Now that I live in Shandong, I hear a lot of different accents of putonghua, like the difference between a new yorker and north carolinian. But were talking like a stock broker and a moonshiner trying to communicate with each other.
I don’t this is a perfect analogy, but it’s I’ve found that it’s a good way for people to understand.
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