Comments on: 你会讲国语吗?…How to Say “Chinese” in Chinese

By: shane

shane — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 12:45:36 +0000

中文 means the chinese language, most specifically the already standardized written characters, can technically be used to denote any spoken version of chinese

国语 means the spoken national language, Mandarin, including all the sub/regional dialects of Mandarin. Speakers of Mandarin are usually mutually understandalbe, which is not the case with Cantonese and Mandarin speakers.
国语 inside China is generally Putonghua, but 国语 outside China is any version of Mandarin, may or may not be standard Putonghua, which does not offically recognize many words and slangs

普通话, Putonghua is literally the “common tongue”, is Standardized Beijing Mandarin offically taught and used in Chinese schools. Chinese pupils who already speak a Mandarin dialect are taught to speak in Putonghua, which offically excludes a number of slang words common in some Mandarin dialects and is used as the basis for PinYin

Talwanese do not consider the Mandarin they speak Putonghua, even though they have neglible differences, mainly in some slangs and word meanings and its being more informal.

你会说国语吗

By: Jetso

Jetso — Sun, 27 Jul 2008 14:26:38 +0000

FYI, M’sians, S’poreans and other Straits Chinese called their version of Mandarin as Huayu (华语）。

By: Olx

Olx — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 00:32:13 +0000

Tom,

He didn’t use 進，he used 講。 which also means to speak.

By: Tom

Tom — Fri, 30 May 2008 02:13:49 +0000

You made a mistake in your title… it should be 你会说国语吗， not 你会进国语吗。Can you enter Chinese, or speak it?

By: Chris

Chris — Thu, 29 May 2008 03:17:40 +0000

Holty is right with the different meanings of the three (语, 文, and 话）, although 中文 can EITHER mean written language exclusively, or both written/spoken language as comprising the entire language – akin to the way that you could tell someone, “your English is really good” either by saying that (in the context of their spoken English being good) or by writing it in an email (in the context that their written English is very good). As for my experience, people almost exclusively say, “你的中文这么好“ － in a speaking-only context (ie, they’re obviously not referring to my knowledge of 汉字, the written language). Were they to say, “你说汉语说的很好” － this would be the most grammatically correct, and specific to saying, “You speak Chinese really well” – but I’ve never heard this on the street – only in textbook conversations.

Side note: the subtitle at the top of the page is wrong, I think – did mean to use 说 (shuo) instead of 进 (jin)?

By: holty

holty — Wed, 21 May 2008 12:38:43 +0000

Thanks for the author to bringing this topic to the attention, this was something hit me several time but never thout it can be turned into an interesting blog post .
This is what i thought:
语 refers to language as a general
文 refers to written language
话 refers to verbal language.
普通话 means “common language”, but it meant to “standard language” intentionally as it is created to solve the communication problem among the people who uses different dialects.
汉语 means language of Han people, it is more appropriate to refer “Chinese Language”.
But in recent years chinese people especially han chinese people tend to use 国语 to mean “Chinese Language” .
Why??? I think the main reason is lately many han chinese people adopting a concept of “greater china” with unified language, unified identity and values. which means all the ethnic minorities should accept 汉语 as national language rather than a official language.
This may sounds rather rational to outsiders, but for a ethnic minority it is a sign of a threat of further assimilation.

By: GnuDoyng

GnuDoyng — Sun, 18 May 2008 17:06:03 +0000

Guoyu is not a new term from Taiwan. It was widely used throughout China until the communists’ take0ver of the mainland.

By: Vera

Vera — Thu, 15 May 2008 07:47:16 +0000

I think 中文 is more related to the written Chinese, like you can describe a book is 中文教材 ( Chiense langauge text book) 汉语 is more related to hearing, sound and culture thing. accordingly, you can refer to Americans and British speak 英语, Japanese speak 日语. You won’t say Japanese speak 日文， but you can say the subtitles of a movie is 日文

My another view I want to share with you is that the character 话 is more often applied to describing Chinese dialect. examples : 上海话，宁波话，武汉话，北京话, 白话( 粤语).

By: Anqi Dai

Anqi Dai — Sun, 11 May 2008 09:01:49 +0000

I did not hear the word “Guoyu” for Chinese until the mid/late 80’s in China. “Guoyu” is a fairly new word for Chinese in mainland China. It was probably “impoted” from Hong Kong or Taiwan during that period time when Teresa Teng (Deng Li-Jun) and the Taiwan/HK movies began to invade mainland China.

By: FOARP

FOARP — Sat, 10 May 2008 20:06:28 +0000

As an aside, it’s worth remembering that neither 国语, 普通话, nor even 汉语 were in fact very accurate names for Chinese until relatively recently in historical terms. Probably before 1949 and certainly before the advent of the KMT Nanjing government in 1927 neither the majority of people in China proper, nor the majority of the ‘common’ people throughout China, nor even the majority of ‘Han’ Chinese could speak Mandarin. In fact, ‘Mandarin’ is probably the most accurate name for the form of Chinese that is most widely used in China nowadays, since this language was the language of Qing-dynasty officialdom, and owes its prevalence throughout China to this fact.