Statistics say one thing, the reality is often different. The term 'Mandarin Chinese' is largely negated by the fact there are so many Chinese dialects. In fact, technically, the majority of those speakers will be using Putonghua - the 'common language' which although is often referred to as 'Mandarin Chinese', isn't quite the same. The attempts to standardise the Chinese language came after the formation of the Republic of China in 1912 and the result was based on Mandarin Chinese spoken in the Beijng area and known as 'Guoyu'. After the civil war, the Communist party made further changes to encompass more of the population and the language changed more. People what is now of the Republic of China (Taiwan) will consider themselves to be Mandarin speakers and their dialect is very different to Putongua - to the extent thay often will not be able to understand each other. And this is the same for many of the other Chinese regional dialects. Someone from Chengdu will find it hard for himself to be understood in Shanghai. And although the Communist party tries to standardise Chinese still, there are big linguistic differences. Another statistic tells us there are about 800,000,000 Putonhua speakers, but not all of them can converse freely together.
ATC English is improving rapidly in China. A majority of my flying is done there and although I am used to it, I don't see the standards being as much of a threat as say, flying using meters. Putonghua is being used less and less on the airways, mainly due to the number of expat pilots, but partly due to regional dialects.
'Mandarin chinese' would not be suitable for general ATC use.
Last edited by Dan Winterland; 4th Sep 2012 at 05:34.