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The reason that Mandarin became a national language has to do with the political power vested in the Northerners and that the capital is at Beijing. If Sun Yat Sen, after he overthrew the Qing government were to start the national capital in Guangdong province, would that make Cantonese the national language?
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It was a close call. Neither language had a clear dominance when the Republic of China was founded, and it was only by a hair that Mandarin became the national language. It turns out, ironically, that Cantonese is actually closer to Classical Chinese than Mandarin is.
It’s sad that people now think that Cantonese is a "dialect." It’s actually a language, no more closely related to Mandarin than Portuguese is related to Romanian.
Most likely. The people in power decide the national language, so if Cantonese speakers became the political lords of China, China would most likely become a Cantonese-speaking country.
Probably not. Sun Yat Sen himself was cantonese as are any number of KMT members and the original KMT HQ was in Nanjing.
I recall reading from somewhere there was referendum held shortly after 1911. Cantonese lost out.
Cantonese is spoken as a dialect by the minority. It actually exists as a spoken form, with reliance from the Chinese characters so this DOES NOT make it an ethnic language under linguistics and therefore, it is classified as a dialect, a subset of the Chinese language.
Unless the majority speak Cantonese, it will not override Mandarin because across Asean countries in particular, Chinese communicate among themselves in Mandarin, next best in other Chinese dialects or English. For English-educated Chinese, they can only understand (if not in worse cases, nothing about Mandarin) a little spoken Mandarin and cannot even read Chinese characters so using Cantonese eliminates the communication between them & the Chinese.
Politically, this will not happen in the Chinese societies across the world. Government officials, diplomats, ambassadors etc of Taiwan, Malaysia, Singapore and China have all been communicating in Mandarin as a common language to enhance bilateral & economic ties so they are unlikely to change their mode of communication and operation even if the people want to.