"::::I guess we will just have to disagree about ""Mandarin."" It's not that I particularly like the term, either. I don't think the word is anachronistic. I do think that putonghua is a word that has strong political connotations (and the same applies to guoyu). On top of that, the so-called putonghua is not really ""common"" in the sense that ""common table salt"" is common, i.e., not everybody or even most people in China speak putonghua as their first language. The objective way to describe it would be ""the language of instruction of the PRC"" and then it would be even more obvious that it does not apply outside of the PRC even though PRC Mandarin speakers and Taiwan Mandarin speakers can understand each other perfectly well (not to mention Mandarin speakers in Malaysia and other such areas).   

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