John Rohsenow sent me a WeChat (a Chinese text and messaging service) post that compares Putonghua (Modern Standard Mandarin [MSM]) sentences with their equivalents in Pekingese. The differences are stark, amounting to a translation from one language to another.
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[This is a guest post by Mark Swofford. N.B.: Pǔtōnghuà 普通话 = Modern Standard Mandarin (MSM); PRC = People's Republic of China; MOE = Ministry of Education]
In the South China Morning Post this week:
"One-third of Chinese do not speak Putonghua, says Education Ministry".
I tracked down the Ministry of Education's release. It's here.
The Web-based e-mail system I'm using at the moment will scramble any Hanzi, so I'll write in Pinyin.
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