Beijing says 400 million Chinese cannot speak Mandarin
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Re: Beijing says 400 million Chinese cannot speak Mandarin
#2> Of the 70% of the population who can speak Mandarin, many do not do it well enough, a ministry spokeswoman told Xinhua news agency on Thursday.
Keep in mind that there are many dialects of Mandarin and what this ministry is referring to is the fact that people do not speak the Beijing dialect well, which is the national standard.
Re: Beijing says 400 million Chinese cannot speak Mandarin
#3> Of the 70% of the population who can speak Mandarin, many do not do it well enough, a ministry spokeswoman told Xinhua news agency on Thursday. Keep in mind that there are many dialects of Mandarin and what this ministry is referring to is the fact that people do not speak the Beijing dialect well, which is the national standard.
He said that 70% do not speak Mandarin, and most of these do not speak "well".
I guess only the "speak well enough" is related to dialects.
The other 30% I think he is referring to people that speak cantonese, and all other interesting languages that exists there, including the mongolian languages (almost everything in China west of the great wall, was originally part of mongolia, like Tibet for example... and thus they have not much to do with China actually, specially Han people).
I hope someday people will figure a way to keep mongolians peaceful without erasing their culture or resorting to extreme tyranny.
Re: Beijing says 400 million Chinese cannot speak Mandarin
#4So you prefer them to communicate using English, a language that is even more unrelated?
Re: Beijing says 400 million Chinese cannot speak Mandarin
#5> Of the 70% of the population who can speak Mandarin, many do not do it well enough, a ministry spokeswoman told Xinhua news agency on Thursday. Keep in mind that there are many dialects of Mandarin and what this ministry is referring to is the fact that people do not speak the Beijing dialect well, which is the national standard.
He said that 70% do not speak Mandarin, and most of these do not speak "well". I guess only the "speak well enough" is related to dialects. The other 30% I think he is referring to people that speak cantonese, and all other interesting languages that exists there, including the mongolian languages (almost everything in China west of the great wall, was originally part of mongolia, like Tibet for example... and thus t…
I knew China had different languages but wow there are quite a lot of them
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_China#Spoken_langu...
Re: Beijing says 400 million Chinese cannot speak Mandarin
#6> Of the 70% of the population who can speak Mandarin, many do not do it well enough, a ministry spokeswoman told Xinhua news agency on Thursday. Keep in mind that there are many dialects of Mandarin and what this ministry is referring to is the fact that people do not speak the Beijing dialect well, which is the national standard.
He said that 70% do not speak Mandarin, and most of these do not speak "well". I guess only the "speak well enough" is related to dialects. The other 30% I think he is referring to people that speak cantonese, and all other interesting languages that exists there, including the mongolian languages (almost everything in China west of the great wall, was originally part of mongolia, like Tibet for example... and thus t…
Han people take part of about 91% percent... This 70% may refer to the "standard" mandarin, more like comparing to accents of the same language.
Re: Beijing says 400 million Chinese cannot speak Mandarin
#7Waiting for tokenadult to comment on this...
Re: Beijing says 400 million Chinese cannot speak Mandarin
#8Earlier quoted context omitted.
He said that 70% do not speak Mandarin, and most of these do not speak "well". I guess only the "speak well enough" is related to dialects. The other 30% I think he is referring to people that speak cantonese, and all other interesting languages that exists there, including the mongolian languages (almost everything in China west of the great wall, was originally part of mongolia, like Tibet for example... and thus t…
Han people take part of about 91% percent... This 70% may refer to the "standard" mandarin, more like comparing to accents of the same language.
I guess my comment confused people...
Cantonese for example is a Han language.
There are lots of non-mandarin but Han languages, and beside those.there are the languages of non-Han people.
Re: Beijing says 400 million Chinese cannot speak Mandarin
#9Earlier quoted context omitted.
He said that 70% do not speak Mandarin, and most of these do not speak "well". I guess only the "speak well enough" is related to dialects. The other 30% I think he is referring to people that speak cantonese, and all other interesting languages that exists there, including the mongolian languages (almost everything in China west of the great wall, was originally part of mongolia, like Tibet for example... and thus t…
I knew China had different languages but wow there are quite a lot of them http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_China#Spoken_langu...
The history of the language is quite an interesting one, in my opinion: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_Chinese_phonology
Re: Beijing says 400 million Chinese cannot speak Mandarin
#10Mandarin is a very interesting language because there are hundreds if not thousands of dialects across China that can vary substantially. For a while I lived in China and could speak the Beijing dialect well enough to get to know someone and engage in small talk about the NBA. I took a train trip from Beijing to Lanzhou which is like 1500 km west. My buddies and I got off the train and couldn't understand a lick for the first 2 days.
Then there's southern China which speaks Cantonese, which is about 100 million people give or take.