Kuo-yün.
/ɡwɔːˈjəː//kwɔːˈjəː/ The name given to the Chinese ‘national tongue’, a form of Mandarin adopted for official use.
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the mind > language > languages of the world > Sino-Tibetan > [noun] > Chinese > Mandarin > varieties of
Kuan Hua1814
wen li1887
mandarin Chinese1895
pai-hua1923
Kuo-yü1932
putonghua1950
wenyan1964
1932 W. L. Graff Lang. & Langs. xi. 421 The modern Chinese of Pekin, the Mandarin, Kuan Hua, or Guoryu..has become the language of officialdom.
1934 in Webster's New Internat. Dict. Eng. Lang.
1954 M. A. Pei & F. Gaynor Dict. Linguistics 116 Kuo-yü, the new ‘national tongue’ of China, based on the Peiping dialect of North Mandarin; now estimated to be used by about 300,000,000 persons.
1957 B.B.C. Handbook 132 There were large audiences to the relays by Radio Hong Kong of BBC programmes in Cantonese, English, and Kuoyü.
1964 New Statesman 10 Apr. 581/4 (advt.) Applicants must be native Kuoyu speakers.
1968 ‘D. Torr’ Treason Line 45 He remembered just enough of the Kuo-yü he had learnt in Chungking.
1969 J. M. Gullick Malaysia i. 29 The universal teaching in Chinese schools of the national Kuo-Yu dialect should in time provide a lingua franca.
This entry has not yet been fully updated (first published 1976; most recently modified version published online December 2020).
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n.1932