■"Uniting China to Speak Mandarin, the One Official Language: Easier Said Than Done," by Howard W. French, New York Times, 10 July 2005, p. A4.
There is no such thing as "China" or "Chinese." Instead, there is a collection of people about 3 times the population of Europe and with just as many languages that are even more distinct.
Putonghua is what the locals refer to as Mandarin Chinese, the official language of China. Thing is, only about half of China can speak it. Most speak 3-4 dialects and some as many as six, which tend to be as distinct from one another than French is from English. Wu, a dialect spoken in Shanghai, shares only about one-third of Mandarin's lexicon, which is about the same as French and English.
Beijing pushes to have Mandarin adopted by all, but hey, Beijing's even got a fairly distinct dialect-not just an accent like New Yawk, but a dialect reasonably distinct from the as many as 1,500 dialects in use across China.
A local linguist puts it this way: "We have an expression, that if you drive five miles in Fujian the culture changes, and if you drive 10 miles, the language does."
America thinks it's diverse because we push 1 for English and 2 for Spanish. Try pushing 1256 for Wu.
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