在对外交流中 ,我们该如何称呼我们的官方语言——中文 ,似乎不是个问题 ,但实际上 ,无论在英文中还是在中文中 ,它所带来的问题远比我们想象的要多。一个世纪以来 ,我们曾经有多种多样的说法 :“国语”、“普通话”、“汉语”(或“现代汉语”)、“华语”等。在英文中 ,有 Chinese,Mandarin,Standard Chinese,Putonghua,Kuo-yü等。这些词语的出现都有相应的历史背景以及各自的使用范围。上述这些说法 ,应该说 ,无论中外人士 ,都能心领神会。然而细究起来 ,这些说法在使用上具有相当的不确定性 ,而且时有混淆甚至混乱。混乱的情形有两种 ,一是表现在外国人在定义我们现代中国的官方语言时有较大的差异 ,甚至出现错误 ,一是我们中国人自己在对外交流中 ,在把我们的官方语言翻译成外文时出现混乱乃至错误。本文希望从一个独特的角度——英汉对比 ,来省察我们使用上述词汇时的混乱 ,并对怎样纠正这方面的问题提出了一些看法 In our foreign exchange, it seems that it is not a question of how we call our official language, Chinese, but in fact it brings more questions than we think, both in English and in Chinese. For a century, we used to have a variety of expressions: “Mandarin”, “Mandarin”, “Chinese” (or “Modern Chinese”), “Chinese” and so on. In English, there are Chinese, Mandarin, Standard Chinese, Putonghua, Kuo-yü and so on. The emergence of these words has a corresponding historical background and their respective scope of use. All these sayings should be said that both Chinese and foreigners can take the hint of God. However, carefully studied, these statements have considerable uncertainty in their use and can sometimes be confused or even chaotic. There are two kinds of chaos. One is that there is a big difference or even a mistake in the definition of the official languages ​​of our modern China by foreigners. First, our Chinese people themselves have to translating our official language in foreign exchange Confusion or even mistakes when you become a foreign language. This article hopes from a unique perspective - English-Chinese comparison, to examine the confusion we use when using the above terms, and put forward some views on how to correct this problem