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When Jesuit missionaries learned this standard language in the 16th century, they called it "Mandarin", from its Chinese name Guānhuà (官话; 官話; 'language of the officials'). [10] In everyday English, "Mandarin" refers to Standard Chinese, which is often called simply "Chinese".
The earliest historical linguistic evidence of the spoken Chinese language dates back approximately 4500 years, [1] while examples of the writing system that would become written Chinese are attested in a body of inscriptions made on bronze vessels and oracle bones during the Late Shang period (c. 1250 – 1050 BCE), [2] [3] with the very oldest dated to c. 1200 BCE.
The Chinese language has always consisted of a wide variety of dialects; hence prestige dialects and linguae francae have always been needed. Confucius (c. 551 – c. 479 BC) referred to yayan 'elegant speech' modeled on the dialect of the Zhou dynasty royal lands rather than regional dialects; texts authored during the Han dynasty (202 BC – 220 AD) also refer to tongyu (通語 'common ...
Standard Chinese is the standard language of China (where it is called 普通话; pǔtōnghuà) and Taiwan, and one of the four official languages of Singapore (where it is called either 华语; 華語; Huáyǔ or 汉语; 漢語; Hànyǔ). Standard Chinese is based on the Beijing dialect of Mandarin.
For example, the late Qing textbook "Chinese History of the Present Dynasty" published in 1910 stated that "the history of our present dynasty is part of the history of China, that is, the most recent history in its whole history. China was founded as a country 5,000 years ago and has the longest history in the world. And its culture is the ...
Among linguists, Standard Chinese has been referred to as Standard Northern Mandarin [8] [9] [10] or Standard Beijing Mandarin. [11] [12] It is colloquially referred to as simply Mandarin, [13] though this term may also refer to the Mandarin dialect group as a whole, or the late imperial form used as a lingua franca.
Cantonese was the dominant Chinese language of the Chinese Australian community from the time the first ethnic Chinese settlers arrived in the 1850s until the mid-2000s, when a heavy increase in immigration from Mandarin-speakers largely from mainland China led to Mandarin surpassing Cantonese as the dominant Chinese dialect spoken. Cantonese ...
Mandarin Chinese, branch of Chinese originally spoken in northern parts of the country Standard Chinese or Modern Standard Mandarin, the official language of China; Taiwanese Mandarin, Standard Chinese as spoken in Taiwan; Mandarin (late imperial lingua franca), the spoken standard of the Ming and Qing dynasties of China