Maybe this is a pure number game, or democracy at its natural work? The Chinese who speak Pu Tong Hua (Mandarin) are far outnumbered Chinese who use any other dialect, whether it is within China, or around the world. I guess that is the most important reason for Pu Tong Hua becoming the standard. And another reason is that it is the easiest to learn (comparing to other dialect). And being a Chinese myself, I have never heard any other Chinese, including those who know/speak dialect, to ever complain about using Pu Tong Hua as the standard accent. Pu Tong, in English, means General. I do not understand why you, an American, should complain about it????
And I want to correct you too, it is not only people in Beijing who have correct pronunciation, generally speaking, people from the north part of China ALL speak standard mandarin, as well as plenty of young people from south part of China. And they can communicate each other without ANY barrier at all. Unlike people in south part of China, who use so many (>200) dialect (accent), and most of people from other places have a very hard time to understand those Dialect. Personally, I can only understand <10% of Cantonese, and maybe 70% or so Shanghai dialect.
And one more thing: a lot of dialect in Chinese are completely dif. from the accent among English-speakers. English speakers with dif. accent can at least understand each other, this is not the case with a lot of Chinese dialect |
