Talk:Mandarin dialects

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[edit] Misinformation in opening paragraph

It states "A northeastern dialect speaker and a southwestern dialect speaker can hardly communicate." This is hardly true. People who speak the two can understand each other fully, just they will think they have a strong accent. The grammar in the two languages is the same, just the tones and pronunciations are a bit changed.

—Preceding unsigned comment added by FreeThoughts (talk • contribs) 09:22, 13 February 2008 (UTC)


[edit] Name change proposal

Strictly speaking, mandarin (普通话) refers to the official pronounciation of the Han-Chinese language (Hanyu, 汉语), and does not include the one zillion dialects in China. Thus the term "mandarin-dialect" is an oxymoron. If the purpose of this article is to explain the dialects in China, I suggest changing the title to "Chinese language dialects". This probabaly entails extensive modifications to the article. However, if the goal here is to describe the variety of accents of mandarin spoken by Chinese in different regions, then I'm not sure if it is even meaningful. In that case, the best I can think of is to title it "Mandarin accents". Keep in mind that accent does not amount to dialect. Pseudotriton 05:19, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

Nah, Mandarin is also a dialect group of the Chinese language(s). Anonymous Coward 59.78.18.5 09:51, 22 October 2006 (UTC)


Good article. As Putonghua is the official title of the language also variously called Standard Mandarin (ie like RP for Standard British English), Mandarin dialect is a good term to use to describe the variations within this 'Northern' Chinese language group. Languages previously called dialects of Chinese, eg Mandarin, Cantonese, Hokkien, etc should be more accurately called languages in their own right. That is to say they belong to the Chinese family of languages, but they are different enough to be classified as separate languages based on linguistics. Within these language exist their respective dialects.