[SpamCop-Social] Re: Outsourced

[Porpoise]

"Sylvesterthekat" <spamalyzer at isaluzer.net> wrote in message 
news:Xns96E0A6740D6A0spamalyzerluzernet at 216.154.195.61...
> "Porpoise" <porpoise1954 at yahoo.co.uk> wrote in
> news:dhhgki$klt$1 at news.spamcop.net:
>
>
>> Mandarin is now what the Chinese government has made the official
>> Chinese language - which is taught in every school and which is now
>> called Chinese. All the other regional dialects are what kids learn at
>> home from their parents and contemporaries and are called dialects.
>
> Really? I hadn't heard that. Got any cites? and what do they actually call
> it themselves?
>
>

http://library.thinkquest.org/18802/factchin.htm


<quote> (from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_language)
About one-fifth of the people in the world speak some forms of Chinese as 
their native language, making it the language with the most native speakers. 
The Chinese language, spoken in the form of Standard Mandarin, is the 
official language of the People's Republic of China and the Republic of 
China on Taiwan, as well as one of four official languages of Singapore, and 
one of six official languages of the United Nations.
</quote>

http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/ch.html#Comm

http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0855611.html

Is this one official enough for you?   :-)

<quote> (from: http://www.unhchr.ch/udhr/lang/chn.htm - Universal 
Declaration of Human Rights - Chinese (Mandarin) Version - Source: United 
Nations Department of Public Information )
Background
    Chinese is the official language of over 1,1 billion people and, as a 
mother tongue, it is the most spoken language in the world. With regard to 
its classification, it is considered an isolated language, though it is the 
most important one within the Sino-Tibetan superfamily. Chinese is the 
language of the Han people, the majority ethnic group of China. Modern 
Standard Chinese is known as "Putonghua" (General Language) in mainland 
China, and as "Guoyu" (National Language) in Taiwan (Mandarin in English). 
Like most related languages it is monosyllabic, has very little inflection, 
and is tonal, assigning to words a distinctive relative pitch or pitch 
contour. Spoken Chinese comprises many regional varieties. Although they 
employ a common written form, many are mutually unintelligible. The dialect 
spoken in Beijing constitutes standard Mandarin, which forms the basis both 
of the modern written vernacular and of the official spoken language.

<quote> (from: 
http://acc6.its.brooklyn.cuny.edu/~phalsall/texts/chinlng1.html)
Some of the numerous dialects of spoken Chinese are totally different from 
each other.
  All of them use tones to distinguish different words. Mandarin, which is 
spoken in the
  Beijing region and in northern China generally, has four common tones. 
Cantonese, spoken
  in southeastern China, has nine tones and is quite different from 
Mandarin. Cantonese is
  probably most common among Chinese-American immigrants. Today 
<b>Putonghua</b>, which is
  based on Beijing-area Mandarin, is the official language of government and 
education, and
  everyone is expected to learn to speak it.


If you need any more, you can goggle them yourself - I'm bored with it 
now.......