Great article, that even talks about the difference between the standards in China and Taiwan. Taiwan's version has more loan words from Japanese and English, where the China version is more down to earth and does not have as many loan words. There is an effort in Mainland China to keep Chinese pure of borrowed foreign words. And it seems per a survey, that many Chinese feel the Beijing accent comes across as pompous, where hte Taiwan accent comes across as more cultured. A major question on accent, is to er, or not to er (Mandarin Northern China accent).

Conflicting notions of language purity: the

interplay of archaising, ethnographic, reformist,
elitist and xenophobic purism in the perception
of Standard Chinese by Chris Wen-Chao Li of Cal State SF

Labels: Learning Chinese