Why Is Putonghua Chosen as the National Standard Bearer of China

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Why is Putonghua chosen as the national standard bearer of China? To answer this question, we have to know what Putonghua is. Putonghua is defined like this: “Putonghua is the common spoken language of the modern Han nationality, the lingua franca of all ethnic groups in the country. The standard pronunciation of Putonghua is based on the Northern dialects, mainly based on the Beijing dialect. and the grammar policy is modeled after the vernacular used in modern Chinese literary classics.” We are a united multi-ethnic country, all the ethnic languages are equal, and during the period of the Republic of China, Mandarin is the common language of the Han nationality, known as “官话”,rather than the other minority nationality's common language. In order to highlight our country is a large family, in order to highlight our language equality, after a thorough study, we decided not to take the name of Mandarin. If we call it Mandarin, it may misunderstand as the Han nationality take precedence over other ethnic groups of China. Finally we decided to call it Putonghua. So Mandarin and Putonghua actually mean the same, but with different names. China is a vast nation with 55 minorities. And many of these minorities have their own languages, but these languages are only belonging to minority groups. Hence, their languages are basically spoken by themselves and in some particular areas, it’s really hard to be accepted by people from other areas to speak them, don’t mention to understand. On the countary, Putonghua is a majority language which is spoken by a large group of people in china. If people acquire it, it will become easier for them to communicate with each other. To popularize Putonghua is conducive to promoting communication of different ethnic groups, is conducive to safeguarding national unity, and enhance the cohesion of the Chinese nations. By

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