Putōnghuà
"Yesterday, my eighty-year-old grandpa called me," writes Tina. "He told me he looked at the map to find out where Minnesota is. I was surprised that he knew it was cold in winter there. He said, 'It is like Harbin.'
"Harbin is a northern city of China. He once lived there and some of my relatives were born there, including my parents. Then because of the work, they moved to Hubei province, central part of China. Although I was born in Hubei, I am a northerner.
"In northern part, people can speak mandarin better than other parts. That's why my mandarin is good. And it seems that my grandpa is very happy to know I can live in a place similar to Harbin."
Back in May when our team of teachers and administrators began helping me to prepare for the hiring trip to China, I was encouraged to try and identify candidates who spoke Putōnghuà (Standard Mandarin). It sounded like a good idea, although I wasn't sure how I would be able to establish that, short of simply asking candidates and trusting in their answer.
The thinking was that since there are so many different dialects in China and natives of different provinces can be virtually unintelligible to each other when speaking local dialects, it would be important to hire someone who would teach the standard language.
Visit Wikipedia (the first coherent piece on this subject my Google search turned up) and read more about this.
But Tina's note got me thinking about regional influences and the underlying social, political and cultural forces at play in the evolution of a common language. I am certain there are thoughtful works of considerable depth and breadth on the subject. Perhaps Evangeline will uncover something about this during her offline humanities studies.
There is something of a parallel in this country, if on a less extreme scale. While Maine natives can certainly get along with their Arkansas cousins, the accents can be quite different, especially to the ear of a foreigner.
We didn’t talk like most people in Baltimore, where I grew up. With grandparents from Ohio, Illinois, Kansas/Colorado and upstate New York, my linguistic lineage was decidedly Midwestern, home of standard broadcast American English - our version of Putōnghuà.