"Mandarin"

[Bob Dylan Thomas]

I'm sure this duscussion has probably been had on here before, but i can't find it... anyway, does anyone have any opinions on the use of the term "Mandarin" to describe standard spoken Chinese?

Is it better to use the italicized term putonghua, which may eventually become a recognized Anglicized word to describe the language?

and why do some people object to the word Mandarin?

and if the word Mandarin is considered wrong, then how would, say, HK or Malaysian Chinese refer to "guoyu" when speaking english, since "putonghua" would be a bit of an insult, as it isn't very putong in theose places?

[skylee]

In HK, referring the standard language as "Putonghua" or "Mandarin" in English, and 普通話 or 國語 when speaking in Cantonese, are all very OK. No one will find any of the terms insulting. Really we are more broad-minded than that.

[Bob Dylan Thomas]

well, some guy wrote to the UK's Guardian newspaper saying that it was outdated and incorrect for them to use the word Mandarin, since it was a "hangover from imperial times" - this surprised me because i couldn't imagine anyone having a problem with the word, and although it originated from "guanhua", it has now come to mean putonghua. This guy suggested that English language publications should simply say Chinese instead, which seems a bit daft if you want to distinguish, say, CAntonese from Mandarin.

or maybe, this just proves the popular belief that guardian readers are wankers.

[yonglan]

I don't see the issue. It's an English word, so we can use whatever we want. I already think it's ridiculous that English newspapers use pinyin when 99+% of their readers end up pronouncing Zhang completely off when Jahng would get them close enough. Many other examples, of course.

I just say Chinese, since Mandarin is the official language of both Taiwan and China.

[Xiao Yu]

The use of pinyin is confusing, but the problem is if all Chinese words were written so they can be pronouced "correctly" by whatever audience is reading it, there'd be way too many ways to spell one word. Like the example of "Zhang"; it would be something like Jahng for English, but it would sound totally wrong for someone who speaks German, say. So to use a standard spelling like pinyin makes sense.

I'm not even sure where the term "Mandarin" comes from; is it from the Manchus? Maybe that's why the person objects to the usage...though I think most people don't really care nowadays.

[Claw]

I'm not even sure where the term "Mandarin" comes from; is it from the Manchus?

Mandarin is from the Portuguese word mandarim, meaning "magistrate." Putonghua during the time of the Qing dynasty was called 官話, meaning "language of the magistrates," and the Portuguese just took the literal translation of that word.

[Guest Roderic]

Like the word "Oriental", Mandarin can be falsely linked with a colonial memory. I can't see any problem with these two words and never hear any complaints about them from my friends. But if you want 100% safe, you may use "Putonghua" any way.

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"Power does not corrupt man; fools, however, if they get into a position of power, corrupt power"

Echoing http://chinese-forums.com/viewtopic.php?t=2894&start=20

[lpascoe]

The term 'putonghua' is not used in Taiwan, so I call 国语 'Mandarin' when speaking English. None of my friends here in Taiwan seem to find this offensive. They tend to just call it 'Chinese' but I don't like doing that because there are a lot of kinds of Chinese, not just Mandarin. Having said that, I'm not sure why I should be worried about this if they are not!