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Podcast: Exchanges: A Cambridge UP Podcast
Episode: Gina Anne Tam, "Dialect and Nationalism in China, 1860-1960" (Cambridge UP, 2020)
Description: The question of how a state decides what its official language is going to be, or indeed whether it even needs one, is never simple, and this may be particularly true of China which covers a continental landmass encompassing multitude of different language families and groups. Indeed, what is even meant by “Chinese” is unclear when one considers the huge range of related but mutually unintelligible linguistic varieties – from Cantonese to Shanghainese and many other lesser known ones. The story of how the Beijing-derived language today known – at least in English – as “Mandarin” became the standard is thus a highly complex...