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Welcome to my blog
Hi everyone, my name is Rene. I'm studying languages at Dawson because I like languages just like everyone in this class. I'm currently studying Chinese and Italian. I will like to become fluent in both languages. My dream is to work as a language teacher in another country or work as a translator. Concerning my background, I was born in Montreal, but I grew up in El Salvador the half of my life and the rest here in Montreal. I have both nationalities. Since I was young, I have always been curious about learning other languages of other countries and their history. I enjoyed studying these topics; I consider myself a self-taught person. On the other hand, I have been dating a Chinese girl for the last four years that's why I have a great appreciation and curiosity for Chinese culture. For this reason, I decided to focus this project on the "history of Mandarin in the 20th century". Many people don't know, but Chinese Mandarin only has a couple of decades of existence. The pursuit of a common language, among many dialects, It's one of the reasons why this country has worked so hard not only for political and cultural issues but rather for a question of survival and social progress. Because of this, I decided to do this research.
My project
The history of Mandarin in the 20th century
My goal with this project is to introduce the most important historical facts of the standard Chinese language. For this, My work will be divided into 5 points of which I will use to write my project.
The first point is going to be "China in 1912". The last dynasty of emperors in China fall to usher in a new era. The war between the communist and the nationalists began, and China needed to make radical changes. Plus, the search for a common language was a matter of survival.
My second point will be " the commission of the unification of pronunciation, February 15, 1913". The Chinese government wanted to find a common language for the entire nation. They asked the famous Chinese linguistic " Zhao Yuanren" to take care of this duty. He recorded around 6000 Chinese words, and he was the creator of the Chinese tones system.
My third point will be " Zhou Youguang" the father of the pinyin system. Mao Zedong ordered that the common language for the entire nation would be the Beijing dialect after 1949. As a result, Mandarin Chinese was born as an official language throughout China. Through the 50s and 60s, it was introduced two lists of simplified Chinese characters. However, the Chinese pronunciation was still complicated. That is why The Chinese government ordered "zhou Youguang" to develop a simple Chinese pronunciation system in 1955. As a result, Pinyin was born.
Finally, I want to introduce a small view of Mandarin nowadays. The percentage of people who talk Mandarin in mainland China and the people can not. At the same time, I want to introduce some of the propaganda that the Chinese government does to encourage its people to talk Mandarin or Putonghua.
Sources
History of China
1) Mooser, David. A billion voices: China’s search for a common language, Penguin Random House Australia,2016. Google Books, books.google.com/books?isbn=978-1-76014-330-5
This book comes from David Moser a translated and Psycholinguistics who worked for five years at the Beijing Foreign StudiesUniversity. He has a PHD in Chinese Studies from the University of Michigan,with a major in Chinese Linguistics and Philosophy. He is currently Academic Director at CET Chinese Studies at Beijing Capital Normal University, an overseas study program for U.S. college students, where he teaches courses in Chinese history and politics. This book talks about the history of Mandarin in the 20th century. He does an introduction about china when the QingDynasty falls; it talks about 1913, all the economic and political problems that China has at that time, and the dream of one language for all nations. He also mentions some of the most important people who helped to the contribution with Chinese Mandarin, then all it talks about the popularization from the 70s to the 90s and finally an overview about Putonghua in nowadays. It’s a very complete book and it’s actually the base of my research, that is the reason why I choose this book. The reason why I need is that it will help to the development of the introduction and body paragraph of my research. That is why this information is absolutely necessary for my project.
2) Zhang, Pei. “ The Course and Achievements of New China's Spoken and Written Business”. Chinese language and literature net, October,2020,http://www.china-language.edu.cn/yw/mtsd/202010/t20201030_32306.html.
this website comes from the Institute of Language of the Ministry of Education in China. It is one of the most popular websites that many students use and its information is according to the government's desire. This article talks about the achievements of the Chinese government in promoting and popularizing Chinese Mandarin. It also gives an introduction to Mandarin History. the reason why I need this data for my research is that it will help me in developing my second and third paragraphs. Plus, it mentions the three objectives of the government with the popularization of Putonghua which are the simplification of Chinese characters, the promotion of the language, and the implementation of Pinyin.
3) “ Retrospective Research on the Process of Popularizing Mandarin in New China ”. children's shoe network, April, 2014, www.txlunwenw.com/jiaoyulunwen/20140410395.html
this website it's called "children's shoe network". It is an encyclopedia of which many of his documents and articles come from famous universities such as Tsinghua University and Peking University. It is an encyclopedia that is updated every day and at all times. All its documents and articles are for free and it is very popular in China among students. This article talks about the popularization of ChineseMandarin, the stages of its promotion from the 60 till the 90, and the people who get involved too. The reason why I choose this article is that it will help me as well in the development of the second and third paragraphs of my work. Plus, it helps me to confirm some information in my previous articles. That is why I believe it will help too in my research.
4) King,File. " You can speak "Mandarin", but you may not know these stories”.people.cn,February,2018, www.society.people.com.cn/n1/2018/0207/c1008-29811520.html
The People's Daily is one of the largest newspaper groups inChina. The paper is an official newspaper of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party which makes its information reliable. This article talks about the history of Chinese Mandarin from the 20th century. It points out the most important historical facts and it ends with the situation with the Chinese language nowadays. The reason why I choose this article is that I wanted to use in the developing of the first and second paragraph of my research. Its information is really interesting. Plus it helps me to confirm my first source of the history of Mandarin and it gives me some additional data. That is why this information is necessary
5) " important events in the language work in the early days of China ". Ministry of education of the people's republic of China, 22 mars 2006, www.moe.gov.cn/jyb_xwfb/xw_fbh/moe_2128/moe_2326/moe_1144/tnull_14349.html.
This website comes from the ministry of education of the people's republic of China which means its content is reliable. Basically, this website pointed out important events in the development of Chinese mandarin in the 20th century. It shows important events from 1949 until 1965. the reason why I choose this website is that I wanted to confirm some historical such as the popularization of Chinese Mandarin, the simplification of Chinese characters, and the implementation of the Pinyin system. This can be confirmed on February 11 1958 where the first prime Minister Zhou approved the " resolution on the Chinese Pinyin plan". The reason why I choose this website is that I want to put an in-text citation about this event and give some evidence about the popularization of Chinese Mandarin in the country. I believe this information will be enough to show the plan of the government to find a common language for the country.
6) "the current task of writing reform". Chinese Marxist Library, 10 January 1958, www.marxists.org/chinese/zhouenlai/129.htm
This website comes from the Chinese Marxist library, which is a very popular online library that helps students in China in their research, which means its content is reliable. Basically, this website is a letter from Zhou Enlai, the first prime minister, where he pointed out the three main points that he and the government will apply to promote the standard Chinese nationally. These three main tasks are simplifying Chinese characters, promoting Putonghua, and formulating and implementing the Chinese Pinyin plan. The reason why I choose this website is that I want to put an in-text citation as well where Zhou Enlai mentions the next step to proceed after the success of Zhou Youguang and his Pinyin system. I believe this information will be enough to demonstrate the three phases that the government applied in order to promote Chinese Mandarin.
Percentage of people who talks Mandarin
7) Yu,Xiao. “the penetration rate of Mandarin in China exceeds 80% and the illiteracy rate drops below 4%”.People.cn,Octover,2020,www.chinanews.com/gn/2020/10-13/9311349.shtml
Chinese new services is a state-level news agency in China, but also an international news agency with compatriots in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macao. This website talks about the percentage of Chinese people who talks Mandarin in the country which is 80 %. This means, only 20 % just talk itsdialect. Plus, the percentage of illiteracy rate drops below 4%. It also compares China from the 20 century when the percentage of people who could not read and how Mao and its government help the country to promote education and decrease bit by bit the rate of illiteracy. The reason I choose this article is that I want to talk at the end of my research about the situation of Chinese Mandarin nowadays. I believe it is necessary to show how many people talk the standard language nowadays.
Zhou Youguang
8)“Academic master Zhao Yuanren”. Tsinghua University History Museum Liu Huili,2017, www.xsg.tsinghua.edu.cn/info/1004/2198.htm.
Tsinghua University. This source comes from the Tsinghua library of the Tsinghua University in Beijing. It is one of the most important universities in all of China. It belongs to the C9 league an alliance of the nine top universities in all China; it was ranked as the 15th best university in the world by the QS world university ranking an annual publication of university rankings in the united kingdom. This is the reason why I choose this source because it belongs to one of the most important universities in China and its source is reliable. This is an article that talks everything about Zhou Youguang an economist and linguist considered the father of PInyin; he was very famous in the 50s and 60s. It's basically a complete Biography of its life and its most important contributions to Chinese history. The reason why I need this information in my research is that it is one of the most important men that helped to create the Pinyin system. If it is not for him, we will not able to pronounce accurately all the characters in Chinese. That is why it is compulsory to talk about him.
9) Shi,Xun.“Zhou Youguang: Father of Chinese Pinyin”.chinatoday,February 2017, http://www.chinatoday.com.cn/chinese/culture/mrl/201702/t20170228_800088649.html
China today is one of the most important newspapers in China founded in 1952. it is intended to promote China's culture, geography, the economy as well as a positive view of the people's republic of china. the reason why I choose this resource is that it is associate with the government of China which means, everything they post, they must do it with government oversight. That means it is a reliable source. This article talks about the life of Zhou Youguang as well, but it points out the most important data of his life and contributions. This article is a small biography of its life and it mentions as well his contributions to Chinese Mandarin. The reason why I chose this article is that it has good information and it has some extra points that I didn’t know about his life. Plus, it helps me to confirm the information on my previous source.
10) "four Dynasties Zhou Youguang: I am an optimist",BBC NewChina,February,2017,www.bbc.com/zhongwen
/simp/chinese-news-38626111
BBC News is one of the world's largest broadcast news and one of the most authentic websites all around the world. It is one of the few western websites that is not banned in the country which means the Chinese government has access to its information and they can control it as they want it. The reason why I choose this source is that it has good information regarding Zhou as well. This article talks as well about this incredible man, it has some extra information that my previous two sources do not have and I used it in order to build a small biography about his life. At the same time, it helped me to confirm the information that I read on my previous websites.
Zhao Yuanren
1) Mooser,David. A billion voices: China’s search for a common language,pinguin random house,2016. Google Books, books.google.com/books?isbn=978-1-76014-330-5
4) King,File. " You can speak "Mandarin", but you may not know these stories”.people.cn,February,2018, www.society.people.com.cn/n1/2018/0207/c1008-29811520.html
China politics
11) "Constitution of the people's republic of China (1982)". the national people's congress of the people's republic of China, www.npc.gov.cn/wxzl/wxzl/2000-12/06/content_4421.htm.
This website comes from the National People's Congress of the People's Republic of China. Basically, it is a website that belongs to the Chinese government, so its content is trustworthy. This website makes a small mention of the situation in China in the 20th century and the way in which Mao Zedong and his colleagues gradually eliminated the economic and social problems in the country. As these problems were eliminated, new laws began to be introduced that could help the government to maintain order and thus progress as a society. This website introduces 138 official articles in the Chinese constitution. Among them, article 19 is mentioned, which consists of four sections where it talks about Chinese education and, most importantly, where it promotes Chinese mandarin throughout the country. The reason why I chose this website is that I want to mention article 19 of the Chinese constitution in my work and for this, I need a website from the government where this article is displayed. I am pretty sure this information is going to be helpful in confirming historical facts in my work. In this case, the promotion of Chinese Mandarin at a national level.
12) " the state promotes Putonghua and implements standardized Chinese characters".Sohu.com, 16 Oct 2019,https://www.sohu.com/a/347445941_684441.
Sohu.com is a Chinese Internet company, in Haidian District, Beijing, that offers advertising, a search engine, online multiplayer gaming, and other services. This article basically mentions some important articles in the Chinese constitution. Among them, article 19 is mentioned as well where it confirms the Chinese government promotes the Putonghua nationally. The reason why I choose this website is that I wanted to find another source where it mentions article 19 as well and its status in society. I basically wanted to confirm this article with another website, but I am not planning to use it as an in-text citation, it is just a website that supports my previous source of the 138 official articles. "
Simplified Chinese Characters
13)"Simplified Chinese characters". wikiwand, 8 April 2020, www.wikiwand.com/en/Simplified_Chinese_characters#/google_vignette.
Wikiwand is an American internet company related to Wikipedia that offers thousand of articles of many subjects, which it makes it a reliable online source. This article basically talks about the story of the simplification of Chinese characters. that started in the 50s. This article gives a brief introduction about that and the evolution of the four lists of simplified Chinese characters in the history of China. My purpose with this article is to mention that it took around 63 years for the Chinese government to have a finally a good list of simplified Chinese characters that could be used in the Chinese education system. For this, I want to talk about that and give some evidence. That is why this article is so important to my research.
14) " Introduction to simplified Chinese Characters". CLI, 7 December 2020, https://studycli.org/chinese-characters/simplified/
CLI is an American institution that settles in China for the study of Chinese language, and culture, founded by two American entrepreneur brothers Robert and Bradford Fried. This American institution has the goal to give the opportunity to many foreigners to study the Chinese language and culture abroad. At the same time, they give them the opportunity, to apply to universities in China. This article talks also about the story of the simplification of Chinese Characters. The only difference is this article mentions something very important in the development of implied Chinese characters which is the " the technique". The technique that the government used to simplify traditional characters into simplified characters. This article talks about and for that reason I want to mention it in my writing.
Chinese Mandarin today
15) " 10 reasons Chinese Mandarin is the language of the future",bilingual kidspot, 10 April 2017, https://bilingualkidspot.com/2019/05/06/learn-mandarin-language-of-the-future/
Bilingual kidspot is an American webpage that provides practical advice for parents seeking to raise bilingual kids and global citizens; it is a website that not only provides support to parents but also gives some strategies to acquire a new language. Everything based on worldwide websites. This article talks about the reasons why Chinese language in the language of the future and why we should teach our kids Mandarin. The reason why choose this website is because I want it to used in my last paragraph where I talk about the situation of Mandarin nowadays and how strong it has become since the Chinese government wanted to find a common language for the whole nation. I want to use the first two reasons of this article in order to write the last paragraph of this work because I feel it is going to look well if i talk about the situation of the language now in the 21st century.
16) " what are the top most spoken languages". Ethnologue Language of the world, https://www.ethnologue.com/guides/ethnologue200
Ethnologue is an annual reference publication that provides statistics and information on the living languages of the world. This is just a small article where it shows the top of the most spoken languages in the world. The reason why I choose this article is based on my previous article " 10 reasons Chinese Mandarin is the language of the future". This is the first reason why I choose this article because it shows the graphic of the most spoken languages in 2021 and the situation of Chinese mandarin in the 21th century. That is why this article it is important for me in my writing cuz I want to paste a picture where it shows this reality in my research.
17) Barbosa, David. " China passes Japan as second largest economy". The New York Times, 15 Aug 2010, https://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/16/business/global/16yuan.html
The new York Times is one of the most important and popular newspapers in the US for this reason its content is reliable. This article talks about how China has surpassed Japan's economy becoming the second-largest economy worldwide after the US and Japan in third place. To explain this event, Nicholas R.Lardy, explained this event and gives a prediction that in 2030 Chinese economy will probably overcome the US economy. The reason why I chose this new is because it is based as well on my article" 10 reasons Chinese Mandarin is the language of the future". This is the second reason why people should learn Chinese mandarin. I want to use this source in my last paragraph as evidence that Mandarin has become a powerful economy worldwide.
18) "A history of Mandarin: China's search for a common language".youtube, uploaded by NYU Shanghai,22 Feb 2018,https://youtu.be/3Wjy0WfKhQc. This video comes always from David Moser, the linguist. It is basically a conference made by the Ney York University in Shanghai where David talks about his book. At this conference, he gives a resume about what his book talks about; he talks about China in the 20th century and he also talks about the Mandarin situation in the 21st century. the reason why I choose this video is becuase I want to give my reader the opportunity to see how interesting this subject is instead to read the book. I am not pretending to use it as an in-text citation, because for that I pretend to use the book of David Moser. My purpose with this source is just to give an overall understanding to my readers of Chinese Mandarin in the 20th century.
19) "the man who revolutionized Chinese writing: Zhou Youguang, inventor of Pinyin".youtube, uploaded by WooKong,15 Aug 2018,https://youtu.be/o6CYNQxsi40. This video comes from a small youtube channel where it shares small biographical videos about important people. In this case, I founded a small introduction about the life of Zhou Youguang the father of PInyin. The reason why I choose this video is that I want to introduce to my readers a small biography about who Zhou Youguang was and what contributions did to his country. I am not pretending to use it as an in-text citation, I just wanted to use it as an informative video to my readers.
Thesis statement
The Chinese government, along with the first prime Minister Zhou Enlai and the commission on the unification of pronunciation, managed to find a common standard language for the entire country which subsequently helped popularize Chinese Mandarin through the promotion of the language, the simplification of Chinese characters, and the implementation of the Pinyin system in the 20th century.
China in the 20th century
At the beginning of the 20th century, China had to face a series of economic difficulties and poverty. The country was just recovering from the opium wars and peasant rebellions; the only option for the government to solve these problems was modernization. However, to achieve this goal, the government would have to literate and educate its people.
After the establishment of the Republic of China in 1912, the government's next step was to search and create a standard common language.
In its search for a common language, the Chinese government considered drastic options such as dropping Chinese characters or abandoning the language because the country had too many dialects, and learning traditional characters was so difficult. However, they decided not to go to that extreme. On February 15, 1913, the Ministry of Education created "the Commission on the Unification of Pronunciation." This commission had the mission of looking for a common language based on a Chinese dialect that would serve to create a standard language and to popularize the language throughout the country. Many months of debate passed and the commission was able to compile a complete guide of 6500 basic characters. After the compilation, the next step was to find the right linguists who could compile the correct pronunciation of all these characters and create a phonetic system for its learning. The Commission on the Unification of Pronunciation met the right linguists for this task; the first one was Zhao Yuanren in 1921 and the second one Zhou Youguang in 1955.
The commission on the unification of pronunciation hired the linguists Zhao Yuanren and Zhou Youguang to compile the right pronunciation of Chinese Mandarin and develop a phonetic system known as pinyin in the 20th century.
in 1921 Zhao Yuanren had to record 6500 basic characters through a series of gramophone records. Likewise, his work contributed to the creation of the four tones in Mandarin. After thirteen years of hard work, Zhao managed to compile the right pronunciation of all these characters in Chinese. However, it turned out that the task of recruiting and training teachers to teach the correct pronunciation of these 6,500 Chinese characters was very difficult as not all of the teachers possessed the same Zhao ability for phonetics. As the linguist, David Mooser states" The commission on the unification of language entrusts the scholar Zhao Yuanren to record 6500 Chinese Characters through a series of phonograph recording. Once the recording was completed for dissemination, the task of recruiting and training teachers alone would be insurmountable" ( Mooser 20). The government realized that they had to look for an alternate system and a base dialect that would help to pronounce the Chinese characters more efficiently.
Years passed and the new China arrived in 1949. However, the search continued. At that time, Mao Zedong knew that the search for a common language would benefit the Chinese people economically and socially since 80% of the population, at that time, was illiterate. In 1953, in order to find a dialect to serve as the basis for the phonetics of the standard language, the Government Affairs Council hired again Zhao and other experts in the language to collect phonetic samples at various locations. According to the Chinese newspaper people.cn, "the Government Affairs Council organized linguistic experts to collect speech samples in various places. Luanping County, from Hebei province, has become one of the places to collect Mandarin pronunciation due to its unique historical origin. Experts such as Zhao Yuanren went to Luanping and other villages and towns to collect sample sounds for the formulation of the standard Chinese language Mandarin" ("you can speak Mandarin").
In 1955, in the city of Beijing, "the Commission on the Unification of Pronunciation.", after a careful study, the participants of that conference decided, unanimously, to call the standard Chinese "Putonghua." However, the participants had a difficult time debate as to which dialect to use for Putonghua phonetics. Ultimately, the conference decided to use a voting method to select one of the 15 candidate dialects. The result of the vote was Beijing dialect as the base dialect of Mandarin and Beijing phonetics as the standard tone
After finding the dialect that would serve as the basis for standard Chinese phonetics in 1955, the first Prime Minister Zhou Enlai of the People's republic of China requested the presence of Zhou Youguang in Beijing. Zhou Youguang was an economist, linguist, known as the father of Pinyin, who was born in Jiangsu in 1906. The party needed him to design a new phonetic system when he was about to turn 50; this system Phonetic would later be known as Pinyin. From 1955 to 1958, he and his colleagues spent three years using 26 Latin letters as the basis for the Chinese phonetic system. As the Chinese newspaper China today states "Within 3 years, Zhou Youguang and his colleagues used 26 Latin letters as the basis for phonetic notation and presided over the compilation of today's common Chinese phonetic scheme .known as Pinyin" (Shi Xun). This helped to rapidly promote the progress of national literacy in China. During this time, linguistics experts from the Soviet Union came to China to persuade Zhou and his colleagues not to use the Latin alphabet, but instead the Russian alphabet. These suggestions were obviously rejected. As a result, the use of the Latin alphabet remained for the promotion and publicity of pinyin.
in 1958, the Chinese government passed a resolution on the Chinese Pinyin program. That same year, Zhou Enlai, the prime minister, presented a report to the state council on the three main tasks to be carried out for the promotion of Mandarin Chinese: simplifying Chinese characters, popularizing Mandarin, and implementing the Pinyin system. As a consequence, Pinyin became a required course for elementary schools across the country. After Zhou Youguang's success, he and his colleagues traveled to many countries participating in international conferences and working hard for international recognition of their work. It was not until 1982 that the International Organization for Standardization recognized the Chinese Pinyin program as a standard system for Chinese language learning.
The popularization of Chinese Mandarin was thanks to Zhou Enlai's plan and article 19 of the constitutional law of the People's Republic of China through the simplification of Chinese characters and the implementation of the PInyin system across the country.
Through Zhou Enlai's plan in 1958, the popularization of Mandarin Chinese became a priority for the government across the nation. From this popularization plan, two counties emerged in China that would serve this purpose: Datian County in Fujian Province and Wanrong County in Shanxi Province. As the newspaper people.cn states, " From the mid-1950s to the mid-1960s, learning Mandarin became common throughout the country, and two advanced models of popularization emerged in Datian County, Fujian Province, and Wanrong County, Shanxi Province" ("you can speak Mandarin"). These counties would serve to promote literacy on the one hand and on the other hand popularize Mandarin Chinese and the pinyin system.
Between 1970 and 1990, the government did everything in its power to promote Chinese Mandarin by simplifying Chinese characters, popularizing Mandarin, and implementing the Pinyin system. On January 7, 1955, the first list of simplified Chinese characters was announced and it contained 2238 characters. Nevertheless, it failed to convince many educators, so a second list had to be worked on.
On December 20, 1977, the second list of simplified Chinese characters was announced containing 6196 characters which was a spelling reform aimed at replacing traditional Chinese characters that were considered difficult to learn. However, this list also failed due to the multiple economic and social problems left by the great leap forward of 1958-1962, the cultural revolution of 1966-1976, and the death of Mao Zedong in 1976. It was not till 1986 when the government promulgated a third list containing 7000 simplified Chinese characters. This list of characters was used for many years in daily life and all primary schools in China until the government announced on June 5th, 2013 a new and final list of simplified Chinese Characters with a total of 8105 simplified characters" the new table of General Standard Chinese Characters consisting of 8105 characters was officially implemented for use by the state council of the people's republic of China on June 5th, 2013" ( "Simplified Chinese characters").
In 1982, the PRC or the constitutional law of the People's Republic of China decreed in article 19 section 5 the following: “The state promotes the use of Putonghua at the national level” ( "Constitution of the people's republic of china"). As a consequence, the popularization of Mandarin Chinese, along with the simplification of Chinese characters and the promotion of the pinyin system began. The country finally succeeds in promoting Putonghua nationally. In addition to that, the radio and television from the 80s and 90s also helped to promote Chinese Mandarin all around the country. This includes all urban areas in China.
In 2000, the Chinese government enacted the National Common Language Law further clarifying the legal status of Putonghua and standardized Chinese characters as a national common language. As of the end of 2019, China currently has 83 laws and regulations regarding Mandarin Chinese as a national language. These laws and regulations cover language at the written and spoken level. Today, Putonghua's nationwide penetration rate in China has reached 80.72% and the proportion of the literate population using standardized Chinese characters has exceeded 95%. According to the Chinese news, " Up to now, the nationwide penetration rate of Putonghua in China has reached 80.72%, and the proportion of the literate population using standardized Chinese characters has exceeded 95%" (Yu).
However, even if a large part of the Chinese population already speaks Mandarin Chinese, there is still a small percentage of the population that does not speak the standard language, so the popularization of Mandarin Chinese continues to this day.
In nowadays, Chinese Mandarin has become the second world's most widely spoken language after English. According to Ethnologue, an annual reference publication that provides statistics and information on the living languages of the world, " Mandarin speakers close to 1.2 billion speakers. Globally we are talking about an astonishing 20% of the world’s population speaks some form of a Chinese language" ( " Topmost spoken language"). At the same time, China has become the second-largest economy in the world after the US due to the fact that its economy has passed Japan. According to Nicholas R.Lardy, an economist at Peterson institute for international economics, " this phenomenon where China has been eclipsing Japan economically, indirectly reconfirms what has been happening for the better part of the decade and that the Chinese are now the biggest trading partner rather than the U.S. or Japan" ( Barbosa). This is the result of the hard work of the Chinese government to find a common language for the whole nation in the 20th century. It did not only help Chinese people to progress as a society or to become the second worldwide spoken language, but it also helped many foreigners around the world to communicate in Chinese and learn about Chinese culture.
Questions of my topic research
1) What have you learned so far from the reading/research that you have done?
It is not easy to research a topic of our interest and develop it with all its details because its time consuming and demands a lot of energy. It is very important to know the objective of our research topic and where we want to go in our research topic. That is why it is very important to make an outline of our research with the basic ideas that we have in our minds. This will certainly help us to develop our ideas and it will be very useful to identify the information that we want to use in our writing report. I have also learned that researching and reading documents both nationally and internationally can be difficult at first but later becomes very useful in order to write our own research topic and most importantly our own judgment on the subject.
2) How far have you come with your work?
I believe that I have come a long way with my research. At first, I had a basic idea of what I wanted to investigate but I did not know exactly where I wanted to go. However, after digging deeper and investigating the subject, I discovered where I wanted to go with my research and the topics that I wanted to talk about in the history of Chinese Mandarin in the 20th century. Even if the subject is very complex, I think I managed to get where I wanted to go with my research and I also managed to find a little more information about the subject. I managed to talk about its history from the beginning of the 20th century to the present day and the impact it has produced worldwide. In my opinion, this is more of what I wanted to investigate and learn about this subject.
3) Does it meet the requirements that are described in the course outline?
yes, it definitely met the requirements that I described in my outline and a little bit more at the end of my research.
4) Have you consistently added new material and improved your blog?
Yes, I definitely added new material in my blog and new pictures to make it more attractive. I consistently worked on my blog each time I founded new information on my topic research and I consistently changed the information in my blog if I founded something that I didn't like that much.
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