CHINESE LANGUAGE: Mandarin or Cantonese? Simplified or Traditional?

There is a common misconception for many of us in the West to think of Chinese in two or more languages. 

In reality there is only a single LANGUAGE, and that is CHINESE.  Regardless of where Chinese people have grown up or are currently living such as Mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, or other countries including Canada, the linguistic structure is all the same.  The Chinese language, however, which is taught in today’s schools and universities, and which is spoken around the world, has changed over time.

Individuals who reside in different parts of China’s vast lands speak many distinct local dialects. And, the speakers of local dialects sometimes find it difficult to communicate with each other or neighbouring villages. Persons from Guandong (a.s.a Canton) province and neighbouring areas including Hong Kong speak dramatically different from people living in other parts of China, but they can read, write and understand the same Chinese language. The term standard Chinese known as putonghua 普通话 (common tongue), and in Taiwan guoyu 国语 (national tongue) was understood as a formal vernacular Chinese. Today, all people living in Mainland China and Taiwan have grown up speaking mandarin, which has often been regarded as the “politically-correct” way of speaking. For more than 100 years Hong Kong has been an independent political unit, and the official language has been Cantonese, and for generations the people growing up in Hong Kong have spoken Cantonese. 

Thus, both Mandarin and Cantonese are synonymous with colonial-period publications and terms, and should not reflect official dialect destinations.  Mandarin no longer refers to a diverse group of dialects spoken exclusively in northern and southwestern China. Mandarin is a conventionally powerful speaking dialect, which in fact all Chinese speak.  It is officially spoken in the media regardless of where individuals live (expect Hong Kong), and is not considered a local dialect.  At one time Cantonese was a local dialect of Mainland China, but remained the official vernacular in Hong Kong. 

Before the 1950s, Chinese had only one single form of writing conventionally called “traditional”.  The government of the People’s Republic of China undertook to reform the writing style, which became known as “simplified”. People born in Mainland China after the 1960s are much more familiar with the “simplified” writing style, whereas people from Hong Kong and Taiwan, along with those who were born before the 1950s, are more accustomed to the “traditional” style of writing. 

Therefore, the terms “traditional” and “simplified” do not refer to differences in the Chinese language, they denote the standardization of Chinese characters used when writing.  Over the course of several different generations these styles of writing have altered just as the people growing up in mainland China and in other parts of the world have changed. 

By the year 2000 simplified characters were taught exclusively in schools, and if you, as a Canadian, enrolled in a Chinese language class in any university in North America today you would be taught to speak the Standard Common Mandarin and to write in “simplified” form.