100 hundred years ago was 1907. This was right before the fall of the Manchu Qing Dynasty. I'm not sure if you could say there was an official language, but since the court was based in Beijing, all the highest ranking officials probably spoke mandarin (with some er-hua no doubt!).
the official language in China is Mandarin cause hk and guangdong speak in cantonese and some people in hk and guangdong can speak mandarin.
100 years ago probably the official language would be closer to Mandarin, since in Qin dynasty the emperor unified the language (burning books and such like). Having said that, it probably would have been a bit different than modern Mandarin... but still, closer to Mandarin I reckon.
It was mandarin...mainly because Mandarin was adopted around the 17th century. As mandarin was taught as the mother language...it became the language spoken in China. But still areas in China who speak other languages such as ppl in Ghongzhou speaks Cantonese
its totally mando...lol..u see..some japenese word sound like chiense..and its mostly mando.. so it gotta be mando...lol.
I believe china didn't have a official spoken language yet in acient times. Only written Chinese was an official language called : Wenyan (anyone here knows this meaning ?) Mandarin was the language used by 'officials' of the government, known as mandarins. Everyone in China just spoke their own local dialect. Mayor differences existed between 'northern chinese' languages and 'southern chinese' languages. Mandarin was introduced(created) by altering the 'mandarins' language and combine it with the local Beijing dialect. There was a mayor language conference in Beijing around 1913 with decided about the national language. So it was decided to base Modern Chinese on the Northern version of the Chinese language (dialect of Beijing area) and was adopted as Official National Language by law in 1932. This introduced the term 'Guoyu' >>=Mandarin as we know it today.
The official language back then and now is still mandarin. It's just that there are certain parts of china that speak another dialect like cantonese.
Interesting enough (and not strictly related to this topic), Cantonese sounds closer and has preserved more sounds from classical Chinese than its counterpart, Mandarin.
Toisan? I don't think so. Even with the majority of Chinese immigrants coming to Canada and the United States were Toisanese, that wasn't the official language. The official language was mandarin, that's what people were taught in schools, and chose to keep their own dialect from the villages they came from.
it was mandarin. a real long time ago (like a thousand years ago), i think cantonese was more common though.
