普通話最標準的地方不是北京!沒想到居然是這裏!

Getting ready to learn Chinese in China? Well, here's an interesting fact you might want to hear - according to a report from the People's Daily the best speakers of Putonghua (Standard Chinese) in China are not actually Beijingers but residents in the small county of Luanping in Chengde, Hebei Province.

準備在中國學習漢語嗎？那麼有一個有趣的小真相你也許想要知道--據《人民日報》的一篇報道顯示，普通話說得最好的人其實不是北京人，而是住在河北承德灤平縣的人們。

Located in the northeast of Hebei appropriately 165 kilometers away from Beijing, Luanping county, with an estimated population of 315,000 residents, has the honor of being the hometown of Putonghua.

灤平位於河北省東北部，距離北京大約165公里遠。灤平縣人口大約有31萬5000人，享有“普通話之鄉”的美譽。

According to the People's Daily report, early in the 1950s prior to the establishment of a national standard, two linguists from the Chinese central government were sent to Luanping to conduct field research among the villagers.

據《人民日報》報道，在上個世紀50年代普通話標準建立之前，中央政府委派兩名語言學家前往灤平，在村民間進行實地調研。

One of the interviewees, Bai Fengran, a 14-year-old student at the time, now 77, was introduced to the Beijing experts by his teacher.

其中一名接受訪談的人名叫白鳳然，當時只有14歲（現年77歲）的他還是一名學生，他的老師把他介紹給了來自北京的專家們。

They asked him to read aloud a newspaper article and then another two articles from a Chinese book.

他們要求白鳳然大聲朗讀報紙上的一篇文章，然後又朗讀了一本語文書裏的另外兩篇文章。

Listening carefully, the two researchers were amazed and surprised by the young man's perfect pronunciation. This young man and many other interviewees they met caused Luanping to stand out.

兩名研究員仔細聽取了白鳳然的朗讀過程，他們對這個年輕小夥完美的發音感到非常驚奇。白鳳然和其他接受訪談的人們最終使得灤平脫穎而出，成爲了普通話標準音採集地。

Recordings were collected and brought to Beijing by the linguists, which in turn led to the county being chosen as one of the example sites for pronunciation when it came to establishing and promoting a national standard language to other parts of China where local dialects were the daily spoken language.

兩名語言學家收集了灤平縣人們說話的語音，並將其帶到了北京，這使得灤平縣成爲了普通話發音樣本採集地之一，後來形成了全國標準的普通話，並被傳到了中國其他方言地區。

So why is Luanping considered as speaking the most standard form of Putonghua instead of Beijing? This mainly comes down to historical reasons.

那麼爲什麼認爲灤平說的普通話最標準，而不是北京呢？這主要是由歷史原因導致的。

Wang Guoping, a historian and vice chairman of the Luanping County Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, explained to the People's Daily that in the beginning of the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644), the Yongle Emperor, in order to protect the empire's northern border from the military threat of Mongolia, ordered all of the residents and armies in that threatened area to relocate to the inner side of the Great Wall. Luanping was part of that abandoned zone.

歷史學家、灤平縣政協副主席王國平向《人民日報》解釋稱，明代（1368-1644）初期，爲了保護北部邊境不受蒙古人的軍事威脅，永樂大帝下令該危險區域所有的居民和軍隊都撤退到長城內。而灤平就是那個被捨棄地區的一部分。

This policy continued for more than 200 years, during which almost all the previous dialects from the Luanping area disappeared.

這一政策持續了200多年的時間，在此期間灤平幾乎所有之前存在過的方言都消失了。

At the beginning of the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911), however, people began moving back to the region. Most of those migrants were nobles, imperial ministers and their families, who spoke the official language of the period that later formed the foundation of today's Luanping Putonghua.

然而，清代（1644-1911）初期，人們又開始重新搬回了該地區。大多數搬遷而來的人都是貴族、大臣、以及他們的家人，這些人都講着當時的官話，後來成爲了今天灤平普通話的基礎。

For Chinese culture and language lovers, be they foreign or Chinese, most imagine Beijing is the ideal place to study and learn Putonghua, but actually many international students in Beijing end up picking up the local Beijing accent, which actually has certain very local elements which are not seen in Putonghua, such as a heavy use of the -er suffix and the omission of certain syllables when speaking.

對於愛好中國文化和語言的人們來說，無論他們是外國人還是中國人，大多數人都將北京想象成學習普通話最理想的地方，但是事實上在北京學習的許多國際學生最後學會的卻是北京話。而北京話事實上有一些普通話中不具備的、非常本土的元素，例如大量使用兒化音、說話時省略掉某些音節等等。