Mandarin

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See also: mandarin and mandarín

English

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Etymology

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Calque from Chinese 官話／官话 (Guānhuà, “spoken language of the mandarins”). An extension of mandarin (“bureaucrat of the Chinese Empire”) to the language used by the imperial court and sometimes by imperial officials elsewhere. As such, it was adopted as a synonym for Modern Standard Chinese in the 20th century. The term became ambiguous, however, as its use was extended to the various Northern dialects of Chinese.

Pronunciation

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Noun

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Mandarin (uncountable)

  2. Standard Mandarin, an official language of China and Taiwan, and one of four official languages in Singapore; Putonghua, Guoyu or Huayu.
    • [1669, John Nievhoff, “Athanasius Kircher Description of China”, in John Ogilby, transl., An Embassy from the Eaſt-India Company of the United Provinces, to the Grand Tartar Cham Emperour of China‎[1], London: John Macock, →OCLC, page 106:
      [...]and though the ſame word hath one ſignification in the Mandorines Language, and a contrary in Japan and other places, yet knowing one Speech and their Character, you may Travel not only through the Empire of China, but the adjacent Kingdoms.]
    • 2014, David Eimer, The Emperor Far Away: Travels at the Edge of China‎[2], Bloomsbury USA, →ISBN, page 75:
      Far fewer people understood Mandarin in Hotan than anywhere else I'd been in Xinjiang. It made getting around difficult, as not only did the taxi drivers fail to understand what I was saying, but they couldn't read an address either. Most ignored or didn't know the Chinese names given to the streets anyway.
    • 2022 March 9, “'Lithuania mania' sweeps Taiwan as China spat sizzles”, in France 24‎[3], archived from the original on 09 March 2022:
      Owner David Yeh says his Little-One bar -- a homophone to Lithuania's Mandarin name "Litaowan" -- started getting more attention last year after Vilnius became the first EU government to donate vaccines.
    • For more quotations using this term, see Citations:Mandarin.
  4. A branch of the Chinese languages, consisting of many dialects; Guanhua or Beifanghua.
    • 1978 January 8, L. Chen, “What they say of Peiping rule”, in Free China Weekly‎[4], volume XIX, number 2, Taipei, page 3:
      "Two, three, four, five, south! Six, seven, eight, nine, north!" Strange as it may sound, this is the way the people on the Chinese mainland complain about the lack of clothes, food and other necessities.
      Absent from the phrases are "one" and "ten"—"i" and "shih" in Chinese Mandarin. The words for "clothes" and "food" sound alike. Also missing are "east" and "west." Their Chinese equivalents when put together as "tung-hsi," stand for "things," "objects" or "matters."

Usage notes

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  • Standard Mandarin (language of the media and education) and Mandarin Chinese (the group of Northern Chinese dialects together with Standard Mandarin) are not always interchangeable and are referred to differently in Chinese (as an extreme example, Dungan is completely unintelligible to speakers of Standard Mandarin, yet both are varieties of Mandarin Chinese). Both are a part of the broader group of languages (see Chinese: Zhongwen, Hanyu), dialects, or topolects.

Synonyms

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Derived terms

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Translations

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See also

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Further reading

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Anagrams

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German

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Pronunciation

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Noun

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Mandarin m (strong, genitive Mandarins or Mandarines, plural Mandarine)

  1. mandarin (Chinese Imperial official)

Declension

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Declension of Mandarin [masculine, strong]
singular plural
indef. def. noun def. noun
nominative ein der Mandarin die Mandarine
genitive eines des Mandarins, Mandarines der Mandarine
dative einem dem Mandarin, Mandarine1 den Mandarinen
accusative einen den Mandarin die Mandarine

1Now rare, see notes.

Descendants

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  • → Hungarian: mandarin

Proper noun

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Mandarin n (proper noun, strong, genitive Mandarin or Mandarins)

  1. Mandarin, standard Chinese
    Synonym: Hochchinesisch

Further reading

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  • “Mandarin” in Digitales Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache
  • “Mandarin” in Duden online
  • “Mandarin” in Duden online

Tagalog

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Etymology

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Borrowed from Spanish mandarín, from Portuguese mandarim, from Malay menteri, from Sanskrit मन्त्रिन् (mantrin, “minister; councillor”).

Pronunciation

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Proper noun

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Mandarín (Baybayin spelling ᜋᜈ᜔ᜇᜇᜒᜈ᜔)

  1. Mandarin (Standard Chinese language)
  2. language from northern China, especially in Beijing

Further reading

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  • “Mandarin”, in Pambansang Diksiyonaryo | Diksiyonaryo.ph, Manila, 2018
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