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Since this site is mostly about Mandarin, I'd say to remove the tag from questions about Mandarin only and use it only when the question is about comparisons with other dialects, or similar questions.

What do the community thinks about this? I'll be looking forward to hear from everyone of you. :)

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  • I just want to clarify that Mandarin is a spoken dialect 官话, while Chinese language encompasses both the oral and written form 华文+华语. Therefore, I don't agree with your suggestion.
    – 杨以轩
    Aug 13, 2012 at 16:38
  • I think I was mistaken this time. :)
    – Alenanno
    Aug 13, 2012 at 16:57
  • @QuestionOverflow: when people use Mandarin, they are most of the time referring to 普通话, which is not the same as 官话.
    – BertR
    Oct 16, 2012 at 7:58
  • @BertR, I understand, but it is not the point that I am trying to make. Strictly speaking, Mandarin is 官话 to which 普通话 is a subset of. I did a check on Wikipedia before I wrote that down. The disambiguation could be found here. Further, 普通话 is a China-centric term: the Taiwanese term it 国语; the Malaysians and Singaporeans term it 华语.
    – 杨以轩
    Oct 16, 2012 at 13:40

1 Answer 1

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The "Chinese Language" goes way beyond Mandarin. It'd be a mistake, and very Beijing-centric, in my opinion, to equate "Chinese" to "Mandarin". As a parallel, consider the word 白話, which many assume to mean "Mandarin", but that 80 million+ Cantonese speakers use to mean Cantonese. Also, if you look in HK-based, job ads web sites like jobsdb.com/hk, you'll see that a frequent requirement is to be able to "speak Chinese" (or 中文) -- whereas "Chinese/中文" in these ads means only one thing: Cantonese. The requirement for 普通話 is labeled "Mandarin".

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  • I'm not equating them. I said that on this site the most part of questions is about Mandarin. Anyway, you make some good points. Perhaps you're right. I'll wait for others to say something.
    – Alenanno
    Aug 13, 2012 at 9:14
  • I agree with dda.
    – BertR
    Oct 16, 2012 at 7:57

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