Modern Mandarin Vs. Historical Mandarin
Historically, and properly speaking, the word "Mandarin" (官話) refers to the language spoken in the 19th century by the upper classes of Beijing as well as by the higher civil servants and military officers of the imperial regime serving in Beijing or in the provinces.
This Mandarin language is quite close to modern-day Mandarin (普通话 / 普通話/ 國語), but there exist some differences. The Mandarin language used many polite and humble words which have almost entirely disappeared in daily conversation in modern-day Mandarin, such as jiàn (賤 "my humble"), guì (貴 "your honorable"), bì (敝 "my humble"), etc.
The grammar of the Mandarin language was almost identical to the grammar of modern-day Mandarin, with sometimes very slight differences in the choice of grammatical words or the positioning of words in the sentence. The vocabulary of the Mandarin language was also largely the same as the vocabulary of modern-day Mandarin, although some vocabulary items have now disappeared.
In order to allow comparisons, here are four dialogues in the Mandarin language with their equivalent below in modern-day Mandarin. These are authentic dialogues extracted from the Compass of the Mandarin language (官話指南), a phrasebook published by the Japanese legation in Beijing in the 1880s and translated into several western languages.
Please note: the dialogues are written in simplified Chinese characters, followed by traditional characters.
Read more about this topic: History Of Modern Standard Chinese
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