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Preference for the expression of modality often differs among northern Mandarin speakers and Taiwanese, as evidenced by the selection of modal verbs. For example, Taiwanese Mandarin users strongly prefer 要 yào and 不要 búyào over 得 děi and 別 bié, respectively, to express 'must' and 'must not', compared to native speakers from Beijing.
The Chinese language enjoys the status as official language in mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau, Singapore and Taiwan. It is recognized as a minority language in Malaysia . However, the language shows a high degree of regional variation among these territories.
Chinese speakers will frequently code switch between Standard Chinese and the local dialect. Parents will generally speak to their children in the local variety, and the relationship between dialect and Mandarin appears to be mostly stable, even a diglossia. Local dialects are valued as symbols of regional cultures. [194]
Mandarin Chinese is the most popular dialect, and is used as a lingua franca across China. Linguists classify these varieties as the Sinitic branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family . Within this broad classification, there are between seven and fourteen dialect groups, depending on the classification.
The Taiwanese standard of Mandarin differs very little from that of mainland China, with differences largely in some technical vocabulary developed from the 1950s onwards. [ 51 ] While the spoken standard of Taiwanese Mandarin is nearly identical to that of mainland China, the colloquial form has been heavily influenced by other local languages ...
Quite a few words from the variety of Old Chinese spoken in the state of Wu, where the ancestral language of Min and Wu dialect families originated, and later words from Middle Chinese as well, have retained the original meanings in Hokkien, while many of their counterparts in Mandarin Chinese have either fallen out of daily use, have been ...
Bilingual Taiwanese speakers may code-switch between Mandarin and Taiwanese, sometimes in the same sentence. Many Taiwanese, particularly the younger generations, speak Mandarin better than Hakka or Hokkien, and it has become a lingua franca for the island amongst the Chinese dialects. [20]
Taiwanese Mandarin has important differences from Putonghua in terms of vocabulary. It is written in traditional characters and is regulated by the National Languages Committee . Hong Kong written Chinese differs from other forms of written Chinese in terms of vocabulary and grammar.