Northern dialect generally refers to Mandarin, which is the first-class dialect of Chinese with the largest population and the widest distribution. Its name comes from the name of the official standard Chinese language in ancient China. The Chinese used by the imperial court was called "Ya Yan" in the Zhou Dynasty, at least in the Ming and Qing Dynasties, and it was called "Mandarin" in 1909. 1956 Chinese mainland changed its name.
With the academic development, "Mandarin" has become a proper noun of a specific Chinese dialect in linguistics, and the Mandarin dialect was formerly called "Northern Dialect". About 70% of China's population speaks Mandarin as their mother tongue, mainly distributed in the northern region, northwest region and southwest region of the south, Jianghuai region (central Jiangsu, central Anhui), northern Guangxi, northern and southeastern Hunan, and areas along the Yangtze River in Jiangxi.
The main features of Mandarin include:
Compared with the Chinese dialects in the southeast, the northern mandarin is more ancient, including retaining the intermediate sound (that is, the rhyme); In the middle ages, the initial consonants of Zhi, Zhang and Zhuang were merged into a fricative sound, which was opposite to the refined group words of Pinghua. Divide mud to form initials; Divide the front and rear nasal sounds and so on.
In the Middle Ages, the fully voiced initials became aspirated and unvoiced in Pingsheng characters, and became unvoiced and unvoiced in Cuosheng characters. However, the Chengdu-Chongqing dialect and the Chiguan dialect (that is, Sichuan dialect) in Southwest Mandarin are quite special, and some middle-aged full-voiced sounds are pronounced with aspirated initials.
Generally speaking, there are three to five tones. In most areas, the flat tone distinguishes yin and yang. The entering tone (that is, the rhyme ending) of Middle Chinese falls off in most mandarin. It is said that some mandarin (such as Minjiang Xiaopian, Lichuan Xiaopian, Wutian Xiaopian, Qiannan Xiaopian, Xiangnan Xiaopian and Cenjiang Xiaopian) retains some rhymes.