What is the Difference between Chinese and Mandarin. Which one shall I study?

After sharing so much Chinese learning materials and Chinese related entries, let us go back to the basics.

The other day, a follower of this blog asked me what is the difference between Chinese and Mandarin and which one she should study. Here is a simple explanation.

Chinese includes all dialects used in China, including Mandarin, Cantonese, Hokkien, Teochew etc. These are the few major ones and there are too many to be listed.

Mandarin is the standard official language in China. Just like Japanese which exists many dialects such as Kansaiben, however, the Kanto version is chosen as the standard Japanese. Mandarin is also known as 国語(guo2 yu3), meaning " the national language" in China, Hong Kong and Taiwan. It is also commonly known as 普通話(pu3 tong1 hua4), meaning " a common language". In Singapore, Mandarin is commonly known as 華語(hua2 yu3), meaning " the Chinese language" in order to identify the Chinese race among others such as Malay and Indian in this multiracial nation.

Since Mandarin is most commonly used, when people mention about "Chinese", it usually refers to Mandarin. In the case when referring to other Chinese dialects, people usually indicate the specific dialect such as Cantonese etc. Hence, Chinese, Mandarin, 国語(guo2 yu3), 普通話(pu3 tong1 hua4) and 華語(hua2 yu3) generally means the same thing.

Although there are many dialects in Chinese, the dialects are mainly used as verbal communication tools in different regions of China. For the written form, Mandarin is the only standard. Therefore all written documents in modern China are written in Mandarin and students learn Chinese by writing in the Mandarin form as well.

In Hong Kong and most parts of Guangzhou, the main communication tool is Cantonese. The Chinese education system in Hong Kong had been using Cantonese as the medium of teaching for a long time until near the end of the British rule. The learning of Chinese using Cantonese is possible as the written Chinese text can be read 100% using Cantonese pronunciation. However, it is important to know that reading Chinese text in Cantonese is different from conversational Cantonese. Although the language structure and grammar of both Mandarin and Cantonese is very similar, we use different words for the grammar such as "is", "at" and many other vocabularies are totally different. I understand that this can be very difficult to understand for non-Chinese and non-Cantonese speakers. If I am not wrong, it will be similar to French and German or Spanish where the structure and grammar are similar but they are totally different languages.

Due to this difference between written Mandarin and spoken Cantonese, Hong Kong people has developed a written form of "conversational Cantonese". This written form of "conversational Cantonese is usually found in casual texts such as magazines, comics, letter to friends, online chat rooms etc. This explanation can be a little confusing, what it means by "written form of "conversational Cantonese""?? It means by reading the Chinese text in Cantonese, it will sound like conversational Cantonese. To illustrate further, it will be like "yar, wads up?", "Nah, I'm not gonna be a cop.", "I wanna", that expresses verbal conversation. However, the differences in the words when compared to the standard written Mandarin is so great that a non-Cantonese, even if he is proficient in Mandarin, will have no idea what the written form of "conversational Cantonese" is talking about.

To end this completed entry, Mandarin or Chinese is also knows as 中文(zhong1 wen2) and 汉语(han4 yu3). In Japanese, it is 中国語 or 北京語. Good luck. You guys learning Chinese are really brave.