Talk:Mandarin Chinese

I'm not capable in either, but do Mandarin and Cantonese both use the same translations of the same ideograms? Or would they produce different English transliterations (if that's the word to use from ideogram to letters...)? 184.70.60.42 (talk) 20:04, 20 December 2023 (UTC)

Much of Mandarin and Cantonese vocabulary is cognate (i.e. the same morphemes written with the same characters, but pronunciation shifting over time), but a huge chunk of it isn't—I've seen figures as high as 50% of vocabulary being different between Mandarin and Cantonese. Many morphemes present in both varieties have simply evolved divergently over time. I have been learning Mandarin, I can read some written Cantonese—but I can listen to and understand no Cantonese whatsoever.

For example, the Cantonese copula ('to be', 'is'/'am'/'are', etc.) is 係, which was actually originally used like a copula much more in Classical Chinese, compared to the Mandarin copula 是, which originally meant 'this' (a proximal demonstrative) in Classical Chinese.

There are also some grammatical differences—in Cantonese the indirect object in basic sentences usually comes after the direct object in the sentence, while it comes before in Mandarin: 给我笔 is "give me (a) pen" in Mandarin—in Cantonese, this is usually 畀笔我 "give (a) pen (to) me". (The pen is the direct object, because it is what is being given, while 'me' is the indirect object.)

Also, a lot more loan words from English etc. in Cantonese. hope this helps! Remsense留 00:02, 21 December 2023 (UTC)

It's worth emphasising that the answer is "normally yes", as normally written Chinese corresponds to Mandarin rather than Cantonese: Vernacular Chinese in particular is just written Mandarin, and is widely used even in Cantonese speaking territories such as Hong Kong, even for things meant exclusively for use in HK. --2A04:4A43:903F:F303:659B:EBB6:9243:6050 (talk) 18:05, 29 September 2024 (UTC)

This article is about the group of languages, "官話". However, Reference 1 actually redirects to "普通話", which is the standardised version of Mandarin. Therefore this reference is not relevant to this article, as the statistics only includes those who speaks Standard Chinese. RockyLi0601 (talk) 12:09, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

The full Ethnologue entry is behind their paywall – without a subscription only a small excerpt is shown. There is confusion within the Ethnologue entry: the autonym is given as 普通话‎, but the detailed description is of the group, and the speaker figures refer to Mandarin dialects. Kanguole 12:59, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

Thank you for your information, and that also proves the fact that there is indeed confusion in this regard. We should then seek other references to replace reference 1. RockyLi0601 (talk) 13:21, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

In the Beijing dialect article, it says that it is mutually intelligible with other Mandarin dialects, but here it states that many Mandarin dialects are not mutually intelligible with the Beijing dialect. One of these statements is false. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.104.203.97 (talk • contribs) 23:11, 21 April 2025 (UTC)

The statement in Mandarin Chinese#Mainland China is supported by several references, while the one in Beijing dialect#Mutual intelligibility is unsourced. Kanguole 07:45, 22 April 2025 (UTC)

If the majority of sources count them as four, saying there are 4 tones in Mandarin is still wrong. There are 4 contour tones, or there are 4 tones plus a neutral tone, would be better ways of phrasing it. This takes into account the way Mandarin is understood by Chinese speakers, but without saying something that's factually incorrect, because how natives describe their own language isn't always the whole truth. Consider "long" vowels in English, for example, or the single liguature that once existed for d͡ʒ because it was thought of as a single sound. Pinyin is written with 5 different options for tone marks, where no mark is one of the options. However, Zhuyin originally did contain a fifth mark. So I'm not the only one who sees it this way. From a linguistic perspective, there are also plenty of minimal pair examples where the neutral tone changes meaning. DAVilla (talk) 04:07, 21 September 2025 (UTC)