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Part of
The Intricacy of Languages
Edited by Francesc Feliu and Olga Fullana
[IVITRA Research in Linguistics and Literature 20] 2019
► pp. 205–226

The standardization of Chinese

A process run alongside Catalan for a century?

| Universitat de Lleida

Modern Standard Chinese, known as Putonghua (or Common Speech), as well as Mandarin in the West, is the official language used by the People’s Republic of China, the Republic of China (Taiwan) and the island city-state of Singapore. As a result of the May Fourth Movement of 1919, the bases for a modern Chinese literary language reform were put forward in order to get an up-to-date national language, by substituting the colloquial speech (báihuà) for the classical language (wényán). However, it was under Mao Zedong’s rule when a threefold sociolinguistic reform was implemented in his first decade in power: oral standardization based on Pekingese, character simplification and the adoption of Pinyin. Alongside Chinese, Catalan experienced a language reform under the Institut d’Estudis Catalans’ and Pompeu Fabra’s leadership during the first third of the 20th century.

Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.The process of language standardization: Terminology and basic concepts
  • 3.Ethnic and linguistic diversity in China: Chinese and non-Chinese languages
  • 4.From the Empire to the Republic: The first and genuine Chinese Cultural Revolution: The May Fourth Movement (1919)
    • 4.1A common goal reached along divergent paths: Chen Duxiu and Hu Shi
    • 4.2The three-fold reform in the People’s Republic: Between Mao and Zhou
      • 4.2.1From the Old Mandarin to the Modern Putonghua : Standard Chinese
      • 4.2.2The Romanization of Chinese and the simplification of characters
  • 5.Is it possible to draw a parallel between the respective processes of language standardization at the two ends of Eurasia?
  • 6.Conclusions
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
  • Appendix
Published online: 30 October 2019
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ivitra.20.12jul
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