Mandarin Day 24: What’s in a Name?

When I dabbled in Mandarin last year, I got confused by how different sources used different words for the Chinese language. Pimsleur used pǔ tōng huà. ChinesePod used zhōng wén.Was I just hearing it wrong? Were there really multiple words for “Chinese language”? Were they just used in different contexts? I even started thinking (wrongly!) that maybe pǔ tōng huà meant spoken Chinese and zhōng wén meant written Chinese.

This is when the internet is your friend. Yoyo Chinese has a very good explanation of the different words for “Chinese language” (there’s actually five different ways to say it!). In short, both pǔ tōng huà and zhōng wén are commonly used and the differences are slight.

Thank you internet! Thank you YoYo Chinese!