How Mandarin Conquered China: the 100+ year battle for language unity

✍️ SYNOPSIS: The complete history of Mandarin Chinese, from 官话 (guanhua) to Putonghua.

📍TIMESTAMPS:
0:00 || Intro
0:30 || One Nation, Too Many Languages
2:50 || Brief History of Court Language 官話
7:15 || Creation of the National Language 國語
14:15 || Rise of Putonghua - Mandarin Chinese 普通话
19:09 || What happens to China's minor languages?
21:30 || The Future of Mandarin Chinese

✧Support my channel for FREE by using my affiliate links✧

✧✧Products I USE and ❤️(referrals/affiliate)✧✧
10% off with code: ABCHINESE
20% off with code: ABCHINESE

⚠️ NOTES:
Note 1: “Mandarin” or “Mandarin Chinese” used in this video refer to Putonghua and not the Mandarin family of Chinese languages as a whole. Putonghua and Mandarin Chinese (modern definition) are used interchangeably in this video. Putonghua and Guoyu (in Taiwan) are mostly identical except for minor pronunciation differences.

Note 2: I use the term “dialect” in comparisons between 2 Chinese languages of similar origin, such as comparing 官话 of the North vs the South. The term “accent” or “pronunciation" is used to stress differences in standard pronunciation, such as 北音 vs 南音.

Note 3: “Court language” is not a standard term for Guanhua (官话): it’s simply what I deemed to be the best English translation. Guanhua is a type of court language, or bureaucratic language.

Note 4: 中原 (zhōng yuán) is a highly arable region in central China, thought to be the birthplace of Chinese civilization.

Note 5: The term Guanhua (官话) first appeared in the Ming dynasty, although contemporary historians sometimes group older government languages under the same term, such as Yayan (雅言).

Note 6: Baihua (白话) is the term for the spoken colloquial. The text at 6:42 is a line from a text called《鱼我所欲也》by Mengzi (Mencius).

Note 7: Manchu is the language of the Manchurian ethnicity, while the Chinese language is the language of the Han ethnicity. Both had coexisted throughout the Qing dynasty, but Chinese slowly prevailed over Manchu.

Note 8: 读音统一会 had 80 delegates: 2 from each province, 1 each from Mongolia, Tibet and 1 for overseas Chinese.

Note 9: Nationalism was THE most important political agenda in the early 1900s. Following decades of unfair treaties and the power vacuum left by the fallen Qing dynasty, many people (some on opposing sides) all wanted a unified China. This is the heart of why the KMT wanted a unified language.

.

✧FOLLOW ME!✧

🎹 MUSIC from Uppbeat (free for Creators!):
License code: G65G7OVQEUWKNJNU
License code: YIXH7J2T8H1LTPVK

🖼️ MEDIA CREDIT:

Image by tohamina on Freepik

**Fan mail ✈ DM me on Instagram or Tiktok

[ABChinese]

Hey guys! Hope you liked this video and don’t forget to share with your friends! I will have NO ADS on this video for the first 24 hours it’s out 😊

Edit: I made a mistake at 11:45. The 尖音 and 团音 are labeled backwards

[Dawsoncws]

I’m a Hakka descendent living in Malaysia. I must say Malaysia is a very blessed nation as we are allowed to embrace our own cultures and language. However, with the earlier dominance of US which focus more on English and later China which now emphasizes on Mandarin, the dialects are slowly fading to only spoken by at best the Gen Y. Many minority dialects in Malaysia is losing its speakers. The only few remaining that is still widely spoken here is Hokkien and Cantonese. I like the proverb “I rather sell my ancestor’s land than not forgetting my ancestor’s language” So I’ll continue to speak Hakka to preserve this dialect in Malaysia!

[FefeHpg]

One misconception though is that Beijing dialect = modern Mandarin completely. If you've ever heard old native Beijingers talk, there are still a lot of differences, especially in accent and vocab

[sportingusa]

I am in Singapore.
My youngest 3 year old boy speaks five languages and dialect fluently. He dreams in Shanghainess and Bahasa. Speaks English, Mandarin and Japanese. It is effortless for him to learn at such a young age.

He speaks to the Maid in Bahasa, the grandparents in Shanghainess, Mandarin with the mother, English with me and he attends a japanese nursery.

Hence it is possible as long as the right opportunities and environment are provided.

[burbex]

My 86 year old female neighbor in the Shanghai countryside doesn’t speak a single word of Putonghua. I’m English and I speak better Chinese than her. I’m trying to learn her dialect a bit to communicate.

[Travelwithmiracle]

Coming from a very culturally diverse country Nigeria 🇳🇬 I can understand the stress of learning new language in order to understand each, I also understand the concern of people who don’t want to lose their ancestral languages, I can’t imagine someone forcing me to change Igbo language to another Nigerian language. But at the end of the day, there has to be a language which is the mean language of a country which is diverse, like general language which the whole country can understand and communicate with .

China has one of the best history in the world, I honestly applaud Chinese leaders for how they managed the country and that large number of people with different language, culture and ethnicity. The world should learn human management from China 🇨🇳

[DustinLaGriza]

It doesn't have to be an either/or situation. The government should promote both Putonghua and the local dialects--it's good for the brain too!

[shen]

Cantonese still used in Vietnam, Saigon and Hanoi. So our languages still exist. So i hope Hongkong, Macau, or any Cantonese speaker in the world, please keep the languages alive, any languages like Teochew, Hokkien, Hakka, Hainansese, Shanghainese, Toishanese, ...

[Reazzurro]

This is a similar situation of what happened in Italy. After the collapse of the Roman Empire, Latin in Italy evolved into the various regional tongues that developed throughout the peninsula. While Latin was considered "proper speech" (since most people assumed they just spoke a version of Latin), a movement gradually grew for a unified vernacular. Very long story short, this culminated in what is called "Standard Italian" which was slowly adopted by all the city-states while the bulk of the population continued to speak the regional tongues. Now of course with modernization Italian is dominant, but there are now pushes to have more appreciation for the "dialects."

[穆宇穹]

Parts of my family are from Fuzhou (Hokchew). Actually, I sometimes feel sad that I can't speak fluent Eastern Min Chinese, i.e., Fuzhounese, and my listening is not good enough so I can only understand maybe 50% native vocabularies. My parents and relatives in Fuzhou spoke Mandarin to me when I was child, but they spoke Fuzhounese to each other. Now I am around 30 years old and just started learning Fuzhounese by myself for few years. The sad thing is the deep and complex thinking in my mind can only be in Mandarin now.

Now the number of fluent native speaker may be less than 10 million, and I still notice that my relatives in Fuzhou tend to speak Mandarin to their children tho they chat to each other fluently in Fuzhounese. It seems that the children can't speak Fuzhounese and can only understand basic Fuzhounese. My relatives migrated to Australia told me that maybe they are the last generation who can speak Fuzhounese. How sad that is!

[gerard]

Very informative. I'm English, lived in HK and speak Cantonese. I watch HK dramas and listen to Cantopop to maintain it. A Chinese guy from Shanghai told me that Cantonese actually was closer to ancient Chinese than Mandarin, I didn't believe it, believing that Mandarin was the original Chinese and the Southern dialects had a lot of Aboriginal influence. Nice to know the truth. I learned Mandarin before traveling in China 10 yrs ago and find it a beautiful language although not being Chinese it's difficult for me to maintain both dialects so being that I live in San Francisco my Cantonese is fluent and my Mandarin has become rudimentary

[erichuanp]

I notice that more modernized the city is, people pay less attention on local dialect. I came from a poor little town in China and worked in Shenzhen. People in my hometown don't speak Mandarin unless the teacher is monitoring us. We speak Gan in daily life and even teachers tells dialect jokes more than Mandarin jokes. I can say that 95% of my friends can speak both Gan and Mandarin. However, when I started work at Canton and Shenzhen, people always tell me their Cantonese is dying. I really can't understand because like I said people speaking two languages is really common in my hometown.

[lenaxchannel]

Omg, thank you so much for your hard work. I’ve been waiting for this video for so long

[sskiyer]

Brilliant! You have managed to bring out many aspects of the richness of the Chinese civilisation in your discussion of the variety of languages that exist in China (which seldom gets mentioned due to political correctness reasons even by many Chinese themselves). I sincerely hope that the rich diversity of China does not get erased, but continues to thrive and enrich the rich culture of the land. "I'd rather sell my ancestor's land, than forget my ancestor's language." That one is a gem, and as you said will be applicable everywhere in the world. Appreciate your creating this video and sharing it. While I had inferred many points you mentioned in disconnected readings in the past, you have put it all together in a wonderful manner. Thank you from India.

[paradoxicalocus]

Only posted 4 hours ago, less than 1000 views, I wasn’t already subscribed, but the algorithm is doing its job!

[Yogi-Megan]

Grate information.
As a westernised Chinese. Proud of my heritage. Overseas Chinese should learn more about their history n heritage….

[lukey]

I am proud of you being an ABC who can make such in depth video about Mandarin Chinese. Very informative video and way to go.

[apeironbohemicus]

I remember I read the brief history of Mandarin Chinese in a book before and I totally like this very informative and understanable summary of this very interesting topic. Thank you very much for your effort.

[victorjackson]

Thank you for this video. Well done! I really enjoy travel throughout China and hearing the various dialects and accents across the country.

[tvl]

My family in southern China are speaking three dialects. Hakka, Mandarin and Cantonese. The national language putonghua is useful to communicate with every different ethnics groups. When I have travelled around China, many people are still using their ethnic language.