When you hear an old Beijinger say that someone "listens to the song of lalagu", it doesn't mean the guy is a fan of a famous singer named Lalagu. In fact, it's a humorous and euphemistic way of ...

Regarding Hugo Restall’s review of “Kingdom of Characters” (Bookshelf, March 2): The Beijing dialect, known in the West as Mandarin, was voted by the Kuomintang to be the guoyu, or national dialect, ...

Reporting from Beijing — In Guangzhou, the city formerly known as Canton, Chinese government banners hang in primary schools with instructions to use the country’s official language, Mandarin, also ...

Phonemica, or xiangyinyuan, is an innovative project that documents China's myriad dialects and languages. Founders Kellen Parker and Steve Hansen started the open-archive, ethnographic project in ...

ROAD TO BEIJING: There's a reason the 2008 Summer Olympics begin here at exactly 8:08 p.m. on the eighth day of the eighth month. In the Cantonese dialect, the words for "eight" and "fortune" rhyme.