Standard Chinese - Names

Names

Standard Chinese is officially known,

• in the People's Republic of China (including the SARs of Hong Kong and Macau) as Putonghua (simplified Chinese: 普通话; traditional Chinese: 普通話; pinyin: Pǔtōnghuà; literally "common speech").
• in Taiwan as Guoyu (Chinese: 國語; pinyin: Guóyǔ; literally "national language").
• in Malaysia, Philippines and Singapore as Huayu (simplified Chinese: 华语; traditional Chinese: 華語; pinyin: Huáyǔ; literally "Chinese (in a cultural sense) language"). In other parts of the world, the three names are used interchangeably to varying degrees.

The name Guoyu received official recognition in 1909, when the Qing Dynasty proclaimed Mandarin as the "national language". The name Putonghua also has a long, albeit unofficial, pedigree. It was used as early as 1906 in writings by Zhu Wenxiong (朱文熊) to differentiate a modern standard language from classical Chinese and other varieties of Chinese.

For some linguists of the early 20th century, the Putonghua, or "common tongue", was conceptually different from the Guoyu, or "national language". The former was a national prestige dialect or language, while the latter was the legal standard. Based on common understandings of the time, the two were, in fact, different. Guoyu was understood as formal vernacular Chinese, which is close to classical Chinese. By contrast, Putonghua was called "the common speech of the modern man", which is the spoken language adopted as a national lingua franca by conventional usage. The use of the term Putonghua by left-leaning intellectuals such as Qu Qiubai and Lu Xun influenced the People's Republic of China government to adopt that term to describe Mandarin in 1956. Prior to this, the government used both terms interchangeably.

Huayu, or "language of the Chinese nation", originally simply meant "Chinese language", and was used in overseas communities to contrast Chinese dialects against foreign languages. Over time, the desire to standardise the variety of Chinese spoken in these communities led to the adoption of the name "Huayu" to refer to Mandarin. This name also avoids choosing a side between the alternative names of Putonghua and Guoyu, which came to have political significance after their usages diverged along political lines between the PRC and the ROC. It also incorporates the notion that Mandarin is usually not the national or common language of the areas in which overseas Chinese live.

In English, (Modern) Standard Chinese tends to be used when contrasting with non-Chinese languages, while Mandarin tends to be used for both this standard and for Northern Chinese when there is a contrast with other varieties of Chinese. However, in both English and Chinese, Mandarin (官话, Guānhuà) has largely taken over the latter meaning, so phrases like Standard Mandarin (Chinese) have become more common.