"There's no such thing as the Chinese language!"

Or,

How to talk about Chinese in Chinese

by Dr. Ash Henson

One of the biggest sources of grief we get from our online ads is in response to us using the terminology “learning Chinese” in reference to our Chinese Character Masterclass. I wouldn’t have guessed it ahead of time, but it is a huge source of negative comments.

Basically, people post on the ad (and more often than not, in a very not-so-nice attitude) that there is no such thing as “the Chinese language,” and that there are many languages in China. Often they'll follow up by saying "There's just Mandarin and Cantonese!"

The bizarre thing about this, as you may notice from the (incorrect) followup statement, is that the people posting this usually don’t even speak Chinese and don’t even really know much about China either. Usually, they're just repeating something they've heard as a sort of "gotcha."

In other words, they don’t really even have skin in the game. 

It reminds me, actually, of an incident that happened when I was living in Taiwan.

I was standing outside of a pub with a Korean friend, and an American friend. The three of us usually spoke Mandarin when we were together.

All three of us were in graduate school in Taiwan, and thus had a decent command of the language.

Some westerner walks out of the pub, notices that we’re speaking Mandarin, and asks, “Are you guys speaking Mandarin?! Hello! We’re in Taiwan. You should be speaking Taiwanese!”

So, I asked him in response to his unsolicited advice: “Do you speak Taiwanese?”

“No.” he replies.

“Do you speak Mandarin?”

“No.” he says again.

“Then why do you care what we speak?”

Mandarin being our language of choice had nothing to do with politics whatsoever. We were simply using the official language of Taiwan. The language we had moved to Taiwan to learn.

We aren’t anti-dialect either. In fact, personally, I’m very fond of dialects (or "topolects" fāngyán 方言).

I speak decent Cantonese, and a little bit of Taiwanese.

I’d love to learn other dialects as well, such as Shanghainese, Hakka, etc.

So, can we refer to Mandarin as “Chinese”?

It’s an interesting question, so I’d like to take you through the ins and outs of what it means to say “learning Chinese” or more specifically, referring to the language as “Chinese.”

Linguistically speaking, is there a single Chinese language that represents everyone in China?

No. There is not.

Practically speaking, are there languages in China that could be considered representative of large groups of people in China?

Yes. There are.

So, I guess the first thing to point out, is that when we say “the Chinese language,” we are not making any claims about there being a single Chinese language that represents everyone.

A very important aspect to saying “learning Chinese” on our ad, is that we are talking about the written language.

What are those characters called again that Chinese people use to write?

Oh, yeah! Chinese characters.

They are not called “Mandarin characters.” They are called Chinese characters. And our ad is about learning Chinese characters, after all!

So, when you’re referring to written Chinese, calling it “Chinese” is totally acceptable.

In fact, it would be wrong to call it something else!

Funny side note:

When I was the Teaching Chinese as a Second Language department at National Taiwan Normal University,  we were taught to use the term Huáyǔ (華語 | 华话) because it basically means “The language of ethnic Chinese (Huárén 華人 | 华人),” and thus is supposed to skirt political issues.

In my enthusiasm to incorporate this term into my thinking (I’ve since reversed positions on using that term though), I once called Chinese characters Huáyǔ Wénzì (華語文字 | 华话文字) in a graduate term paper.

My prof had no clue what I meant. He wasn’t happy.

“Is that pinyin? Chinese characters? Bopomofo? IPA? What do you mean?!”

Mental note: it’s better not to create your own terminology. :)

How do Chinese people talk about Chinese?

Well, that’s not a simple question.

For one thing, what does it mean to be “Chinese?” There are people who are ethnically Han Chinese, but not politically Chinese (i.e., they don’t have a PRC passport).

And I’m not even talking about the controversial situations. There are ethnic Chinese all over South East Asia, like Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam, etc.

And, there are people who are politically Chinese, i.e., citizens of the People’s Republic of China, but are not ethically (Han) Chinese. There are 56 officially recognized minority groups in the PRC.

Then, even within the group that is both politically and ethnically Han Chinese, there are various subgroups divided largely along linguistic lines: Hakka, Hoklo, Cantonese, Sichuanese, Teochew, etc. 

From the complexity of what it means to be Chinese, we can infer that the linguistic situation isn’t going to be simple either. So, let’s dive in!

Like English, Mandarin is pluricentric, which is a fancy way of saying that there are several codified forms of the language.

English has (at least) the following varieties: American, Australian, Canadian, English, Irish, Indian, New Zealand, and South African to name a few.

Mandarin also has various standards, like Malaysian, PRC, Singaporean, and Taiwanese. 

“Chinese” as it appears in official terminology

The term “Standard Chinese” (Xiàndài Biāozhǔn Hànyǔ 現代標準漢語 | 现代标准汉语) is over 75 years old. It’s based on the term Hànyǔ (漢語  | 汉语), which is literally “The Language of the Hàn people.” This is the name often used in linguistic circles, and it’s used to give names to other types of Chinese, like:

• “Middle Chinese” or Zhōnggǔ Hànyǔ (中古漢語  | 中古汉语; roughly speaking, the standard language of the Táng (唐; 618 to 907 AD) and Suí (隋; 581 to 618 AD) dynasties,
• “Old Chinese” Shànggǔ Hànyǔ (上古漢語  | 上古汉语; roughly speaking, the language of the Shījīng《詩經  | 诗经》, i.e., ~the 11th to the 7th centuries BC).

The term Pǔtōnghuà (普通話 | 普通话) is favored over Hànyǔ in some circumstances because it simply means “Common speech” and thus can apply to everyone in the PRC regardless of ethnicity.

Additionally, the term Zhōngguóhuà (中國話  | 中国话), literally “The speech of China” is also used.

The term Huáyǔ (華語  | 华话) is the official term for Mandarin in Singapore and Malaysia. As mentioned earlier, it basically means “the Language of people who are ethnically Chinese.”

Additionally, Huáyǔ is used in the community of people that teach Chinese as a foreign language. The first Ph.D. program I was in was called Huáyǔwén Jiāoxué Yánjiùsuǒ (華語文教學研究所 | 华语文教学研究所) in Mandarin (but this is a rather Taiwanese way of saying it, in the PRC they would say something like Duìwài Hànyǔ Jiāoxué 對外漢語教學 | 对外汉语教学), and the Teaching Chinese as a Second Language program in English.

The department I graduated from is called Guówén Xuéxì (國文學系  | 国文学系) in Mandarin, and Department of Chinese in English. Here, the term Guówén (國文  | 国文) refers to the fact that National Taiwan Normal University (國立台灣師範大學  | 国立台湾师范大学 aka NTNU) was established to train teachers for Taiwanese children. The subject they take in school is called Guówén (國文  | 国文), or literally "the national language."

Side note: Did you know that if the word “normal” appears in the name of a university it means “a university for training teachers”? I didn’t know that either until I mentioned the name of our university to my uncle, who was a history professor.

Chinese departments at other universities in Taiwan usually go by Zhōngwén Xuéxì (中文學系  | 中文学系) or Zhōngwénxì (中文系) for short.

That is a good segue to terms used in Taiwan. Mandarin is called Guóyǔ (國語  | 国语) meaning literally “National Language.” But as previously mentioned, Zhōngwén (中文) and Guówén (國文  | 国文) are also used.

“Chinese” as used in daily conversation by native speakers

In Chinese, the terms that get used in daily conversation include such terms as Hànyǔ (漢語  | 汉语), Pǔtōnghuà (普通話  | 普通话), Zhōngwén (中文), Huáyǔ (華語  | 华语), and even Chinese (yes, people use the English word "Chinese" even when speaking Chinese.

Ex.: Tā bú huì jiǎng Chinese a! (他不會講 Chinese 啊! | 他不会讲 Chinese 啊!)).

When each of these terms gets used depends on geographic location and on the situation involved. For instance, people from northern China prefer terms for languages that end in -yǔ (語  | 语) or -huà (話  | 话), while southerners tend to use ones that end in -wen (文).

But that’s not absolute either. Mǐnnánhuà (閩南話  | 闽南话) as spoken in Taiwan is often called Táiyǔ (台語  | 台话). 

Northerners tend to use the terms Hànyǔ (漢語  | 汉语), Pǔtōnghuà (普通話  | 普通话), and Zhōngguóhuà (中國話  | 中国话), while Southerns seem to prefer Zhōngwén (中文).

Malaysians and Singaporeans tend toward Huáyǔ (華語  | 华语).

Hong Kongers use the terms Pǔtōnghuà (普通話  | 普通话), Zhōngwén (中文), and Guóyǔ (國語  | 国语), though they pronounce them Pou² tung¹ wa ², jung¹ mahn ², and gwok³ yuh⁵, respectively. They also refer to written Chinese, which is essentially written Mandarin, as Shūmiànyǔ (書面語  | 书面语) though they pronounce it as syu¹ mihn⁶ yuh⁵.

If you understand the Chinese characters involved, the terms Zhōngguóhuà (中國話  | 中国话), Huáyǔ (華語  | 华语), and Zhōngwén (中文) are very legitimately translated into English as “Chinese.” I would also add Hànyǔ (漢語  | 汉语) to that list.

And I know someone is going to bring up the fact that -wén (-文) technically refers to written language.

While that is not wrong per se, it’s definitely true that southerners very often use -wén (-文) to refer to spoken language.

The question Nǐ huì shuō zhōngwén ma? (你會說中文嗎？  | 你会说中文吗？) is certainly NOT asking, “Do you speak Written Chinese?”

What it IS asking depends on context.

If you’re speaking Mandarin, it definitely refers to Mandarin. But, if you’re speaking Cantonese and you’re in Hong Kong and someone asks you that question, they’re asking “Do you speak Cantonese?” If you're in a Mandarin context, however, it may mean “Do you speak Mandarin?” even if it's said in Cantonese. 

If you have an issue with that, keep in mind that human language use is heavily metaphoric.

Like, when you’re chatting with someone online, you may ask, “What did you say?”

But wait! You didn’t hear anything! Why are you asking what was “said” when technically speaking, nothing was said! It was all typed!

But we don’t ask, “What did you type?” It’s because we’re speaking metaphorically. We talk about our online conversations just like our normal spoken conversations.

In this same sense, using -wén (-文) to refer to spoken language is perfectly fine (and is exactly the same as using words like “saying” or “hearing” to refer to typed texted messages).

If you’ve made it this far, hopefully you’ve gotten a feel for the amount of complication involved in answering the question “Does Chinese exist?”

Linguistically, no, there is no single language in China.

Practically speaking, there are many contexts in which it is legit—I daresay even normal—to refer to Mandarin or Cantonese as “Chinese.”

This is true even in official contexts, and especially true when referring to the written language.

There are a lot of variables to this equation, a lot of ins and outs and what-have-yous.

But, it is totally true that Chinese people refer to Mandarin (and sometimes Cantonese) as “Chinese,” both in Chinese and in English. There is nothing wrong with doing so, unless the person is claiming that there is a single Chinese language that can represent all of the Chinese world.

But, the vast majority of the time, no one is making such a claim.

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Addendum:

From an article called Learning and teaching Chinese as a foreign language: A scoping review which is about academic papers written in the field of teaching Chinese as a second language:

"The generic terms ‘Chinese’ or ‘Chinese language’ are the most commonly used by researchers in our literature sample, contributing to 84% of all the articles (Figure 11). ‘Mandarin’ is much less widely used, in approximately 10% of articles; 6% of articles identified the language as ‘Mandarin Chinese’."

Also, note that for their Mandarin proficiency tests, both the ROC and the PRC translate the name of the language into English as "Chinese":

• ROC - TOCFL - Test of Chinese as a Foreign Language
• PRC - HSK - the Chinese Proficiency Test

QED.