Right now, I feel like revisiting Chinese with a new understanding. Back then, we only memorized without understanding. Teachers, no matter how good he or she was, were forced to conform to a system that only taught how to memorize long sentences but not how to understand them. I felt the approach of reading in both Mandarin and Amoy can be distracting to one thing--learning Mandarin. Talk about not allowing vernacular to be spoken in Tagalog class. However, Amoy is spoken in class (and I got into trouble many times for breaking that rule) to learn Mandarin. I took basic Mandarin at the University of San Carlos (since a foreign language elective is required), learned pinyin, and later one of my Chinese language teachers spoke to me in Amoy, "Now, you see how important Mandarin is. Good." She used the word 华语 (huá yǔ). Just because I had bad grades back then doesn't mean I'm unable to learn new things, right?
We have seven ways to say Chinese? Many times, it's very easy to say, "华语 (huá yǔ) is very important." Yet, somebody ends up saying other words like 普通话 (pǔ tōng huà) to refer to Mandarin. I looked into Yoyo Chinese to find how Chinese has seven meanings. Yet, one ends up getting mixed up. So, how does it work?
In Chinese, we have two words that end up making one word. Talk about compounded words like in the English language. So, we must think of how these words end up with such. Now, let's begin, shall we?
中文 (zhōng wén)
We have the word zhōng wén. The character 中 means middle or China the Middle Kingdom. The 文 means script or language. This would mean the Middle Kingdom Script or language. The 文 would mean the language, both written and spoken.
普通话 (pǔ tōng huà)
Now, we learn another word. This is used to talk about the official language of China. The word 普通 means common. The word 话 means speech or language. It's the spoken language. A direct English translation means the commonly spoken language. It's almost like saying Tagalog is the common spoken language in the Philippines.
国语 (guó yǔ)
Now, we have 国 which means country or national. The 语 means language, tongue, or words. Translated, it would mean the national language. So, if somebody were to say, "The national language of the Philippines is Tagalog." It would be almost like saying, "The 国语 of the Philippines is Tagalog while the 国语 of China is Mandarin."
汉语 (hàn yǔ)
Ever heard of the statement Hanyu Pinyin? Well, that's the Pinyin often used in the encoding. Taiwanese pinyin has a few differences like X is Hs and C is Ts. The Han here refers to the Han ethnic group. Chinese history also talks about the Han Dynasty which lasted for 400 years. Eventually, the Han Dynasty fell down during the Three Kingdoms era.
中国话 (zhōng guó huà)
中国 would refer to China as a country. The 话 would refer to the spoken language. Put together, it means the spoken language of China.
华语 (huá yǔ)
Now, we have the use of the word 华语. The 华 can refer to Chinese ethnicity in general. Chinese have become quite a scattered race. You've heard of terms like Chinese-Filipino, Chinese-American, Chinese-Canadian, Chinese-British, Chinese-Singaporean, etc. As a Chinese-Filipino, it's more appropriate to call me a 华人 (huá rén) in 菲律賓 (Feilübin). To say, I'm a 菲律賓华人 would be more appropriate than to call me a 中国人 since I have zero Chinese citizenship. So, the translation means the Chinese language, Chinese tongue, or Chinese words.
华文 (huá wén)
We had the 华语. Now we talk about the 华文. As mentioned earlier, the 文 means the language in both written and spoken. The 华文 would now refer to the Chinese language, both written and spoken. So, I think using 华文 instead of 华语 to label the subject might be more appropriate. It's to learn how to speak Mandarin, know the pinyin (as encoding will be much easier eventually), and write Chinese characters.
