What is the History of the Chinese Language?

The notion of a single Chinese language is misleading. China has several major dialects may be related but are all highly distinctive. Mandarin is the official spoken language and is known as Putonghua within China. It is spoken by approximately 70% of the population, although it may always be their first language. It is the language that is spoken around Beijing. From the time China became a nation state in 221 B.C. until the end of China’s last imperial dynasty in 1912, China did not have a single national language.  Rather, the Chinese spoke many different languages and dialects that developed organically over the course of several millennia.  By the early years of the 20th Century, most Chinese agreed that China needed a common language in order to facilitate national communication and to combat widespread illiteracy. The Commission’s first task was to create a simple, easy to learn, phonetic system to help people learn the common Chinese language.  Many different phonetic systems were proposed and tried, including a  fixed set of Chinese characters, newly created symbols, and the Roman alphabet.   After years of extensive research and debate, the Commission adopted the Zhuyin alphabet as China’s official alphabet in 1918, deeming it to be the most effective method of teaching Chinese pronunciation.

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