The Sounds of Mandarin: Learning to Speak a National Language in China and Taiwan, 1913–1960 by Janet Chen (review)

The national language movement in modern China is usually viewed as closely tied to nationalism, a concept that first emerged in Europe and gained wider prominence in the nineteenth century. 1 Inspired by powerful nation-states such as England, France, Germany, and Japan-each with established national languages-leading Chinese intellectuals and language reformers in the early twentieth century advocated for the creation of a unified national language. 2They