On Wed, 6 Jun 2001, John Cowan wrote:
> Marco Cimarosti scripsit:
> > Or "Hanyu", in fact, which is the normal name for "Mandarin" in Mandarin.
>
> I believe, however, that this term is relatively recent in its current
> sense, and is part of the effort the PRC government makes to distinguish
> between "zhongguo" as a political term and "han" as an ethnic one.
"Hanyu" usually does refer to Mandarin (in the same way that "Chinese" in
English usage usually refers to Mandarin), but I think that is because
Mandarin is considered the "standard" or is the "most salient" form of
Chinese. There are usages such as in the title of the book _Hanyu Fangyan
Cihui_[1], a Swadesh-esque comparison of terms in various "fangyan"
(topolects; usu. trans. as "dialects"), where non-standard Mandarin and
non-Mandarin forms of Chinese are included under the umbrella "Hanyu"
term.
(FYI, here's a sample from the 2nd ed. of the "tomato" entry:
http://deall.ohio-state.edu/grads/chan.200/misc/tomato.jpg)
[1] _Hanyu Fangyan Cihui_ \u6c49\u8bed\u65b9\u8a00\u8bcd\u6c47,
1st ed. (Beijing: Wenzi Gaige, 1964); 2nd ed. (Beijing: Yuwen,
1995).
There is a discussion in one the latter chapters of Jerry Norman's
_Chinese_ (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988) which discusses
terms including "hanyu", "putonghua", "zhongwen", "guanhua", etc.
Thomas Chan
tc31@cornell.edu
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.2 : Fri Jul 06 2001 - 00:17:18 EDT
