I speak Texan

I speak Texan

hmmmm Cantonese? Mandarin? or Hakka?

half of China can't understand the other half

hmmmm Cantonese? Mandarin? or Hakka?

half of China can't understand the other half

The Beijing Guanhua (Mandarin) dialect is the official language in China.

At the fall of the Qing Dynasty in 1911, there was no single, national language in China nor an education system that could teach the proper sounds of any of the languages. There were archaic dictionaries and a literary Chinese over a thousand years old that little resembled the spoken vernacular. The new government decided a national language (Guoyu) must be established and so it was decided by a group of scholars in 1913 that Mandarin be made the standard. A set of phonetic symbols were created (zhuyin fuhao) and a dictionary created called Guoyin zidian (Dictionary of National Phonics). However, this dictionary did not resemble Mandarin as it was spoken because it retained pronunciations of the Ru-sheng characters, so it was a mix of northern pronunciation with the rhymes of the southern languages. Not a single person could speak the language set down in this dictionary except Yuen Ren Chao (Zhao Yuanren), a native Wu speaker but skilled linguist and phonetician who is famous for developing the tone contour system used by linguists and doing much of the early dialect fieldwork. He is the one who made a set of recordings of this dictionary for use in schools. Nobody really could learn from this dictionary, and it wasn't until 1932 that a dictionary based on the pronunciation and speech of Beijing came about. Now, in addition to the term "Guoyu" (which is the term now used in Taiwan), Putonghua or "universal language" has become the national term for the official language. This is usually called Huayu "Chinese language" by most overseas Chinese. Another term, zhongwen is used to refer to Chinese in a more literary sense.

It was originally thought in the early stages of developing Mandarin as the national standard that within 100 years, or by 2030, that the whole nation would be unified linguistically under Mandarin. Because of the sheer size of China and the number of various languages spoken there, teaching everybody Mandarin and making it the national standard has been a very long journey, and even now with less than 30 years to go, most of the languages and dialects are thriving. In many schools, classes are given in the local language and Mandarin is studied as the universal language (much like a foreign language class) to use for speaking with any non-locals.

http://www.glossika.com/en/dict/faq.php

I've never been good at learning a second language. and I used to live in the phillipines and my aunt is from korea

I've never been good at learning a second language. and I used to live in the phillipines and my aunt is from korea

I never thought I could learn a second either, but after moving to and living in Georgia for a while, I really started to pick up this strange new tounge (I think they call it redneck). Before you knnow it I was using phrases like,"Yall" and "fixin to..." So I think you just have to emerse yourself in the culture for a bit. So soon enough when they foreclose for none payment we will have plenty of em around to learn from.

I never thought I could learn a second either, but after moving to and living in Georgia for a while, I really started to pick up this strange new tounge (I think they call it redneck). Before you knnow it I was using phrases like,"Yall" and "fixin to..." So I think you just have to emerse yourself in the culture for a bit. So soon enough when they foreclose for none payment we will have plenty of em around to learn from.

I'm fluent in redneck...I struggle with english at times though...so I guess I do speak a 2nd language