Talk:Mandarin Chinese

Move discussion in progress
There is a move discussion in progress on Talk:Mandarin (late imperial lingua franca) which affects this page. Please participate on that page and not in this talk page section. Thank you. —RMCD bot 15:16, 12 June 2018 (UTC)

McWhorter's theory of the origin of Mandarin
I have reverted the re-addition of McWhorter's theory that Mandarin formed under the influence of the conquered peoples settled in frontier regions during the Tang. McWhorter is not a specialist in this area, and his theory is well outside the mainstream. Kanguole 23:33, 15 December 2018 (UTC)

"Many local Mandarin varieties are not mutually intelligible." So is Mandarin itself a macrolanguage?
We can all see that Chinese is a macrolanguage, no question. But is Mandarin also a macrolanguage? I'm thinking yeah. If the statement "Many local Mandarin varieties are not mutually intelligible." is true, then it's a macrolanguage too, right? Macrolanguage within a macrolanguage. Geographyinitiative (talk) 22:05, 24 April 2019 (UTC)

traditional and simplified
The illustration in the upper right corner gives guanhua first in simplified and then in traditional characters. - This order is not plausible and highly confusing. - Look at the article Chinese Characters - https://ingen.miraheze.org/wiki/Chinese_characters - where the correct order with traditional first and simplified second is well represented. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2001:16b8:5cbf:100:a502:bd18:109b:aac3 (talk • contribs) 04:12, 25 May 2019 (UTC)
 * As with Oxford and Webster English spellings, there is no order of Chinese orthographies that is encyclopedically more "plausible" or "correct" than the reverse one, either. Also note that writing in columns that are ordered from right to left follows time-honoured Chinese typographical conventions, so it can be argued that the illustration shows traditional characters first, and that you are subject to systemic bias and an Anglo-American focus. Love —LiliCharlie (talk) 07:50, 25 May 2019 (UTC)
 * I don't think there's any need for an image of the name at all, given that the characters occur several times in the article. The order of character forms in article bodies will vary between articles (like the English spelling example LiliCharlie mentioned).  In the case of Mandarin, the vast majority of speakers live in the PRC, where simplified characters are used.  Kanguole 08:02, 25 May 2019 (UTC)