31–40 of 163 posts
It's always seemed wild to me that Indonesia doesn't come up more in general in the west. It seems like the only time I hear about it in the news is when there's a natural disaster.
Claims about the relative simplicity or complexity of different languages are rarely grounded in actual linguistic evidence. Languages comprise so many parts that it's not even clear what the basis of comparison could be: is English, a language with highly restricted word order but without grammatical case marked on most nouns, more complex than Russian, a language with comparatively free word order but a highly arti…
I'm not even convinced the basic argument that a language with 40-odd million people regarding it as their primary language is not widely spoken is true (never mind the ludicrously false clickbaity "no-one speaks" headline). Sure, more Indonesians speak other languages at home and with fellow native speakers because they're the local languages of particular areas, some of which were more widely spoken than the Malay…
People in America really don't appreciate the blessing of having a single (nearly) uniformly spoken language. Being able to drop in anywhere in a country of 300+ million people and being able to converse with the locals (not just communicate , but convey your deepest thoughts)--it's a benefit the vast majority of people in the world simply do not have. This article touches on something I've been thinking a lot about…
Isn't Mandarin Chinese understood on all China, from Xinjiang to Canton?
I've been in the middle of Sichuan (in Tibetan counties), many of the older people don't understand mandarin while the younger people do. The same applies to rural Xinjiang.
Definitely Mandarin will get you farther in China than English, but it isn't quite universal yet.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Isn't Mandarin Chinese understood on all China, from Xinjiang to Canton?
Think of Mandarin like English. Many regions only have it as second language, with not everyone speaking it well (and just like with English, younger generations do better on average). In regions where it is the first language, it is usually a dialect differing from Standard Mandarin. Canton (guangzhou) speaks Cantonese, Shanghai speaks Shanghainese, and so it goes, with none of these languages having much at all to…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Think of Mandarin like English. Many regions only have it as second language, with not everyone speaking it well (and just like with English, younger generations do better on average). In regions where it is the first language, it is usually a dialect differing from Standard Mandarin. Canton (guangzhou) speaks Cantonese, Shanghai speaks Shanghainese, and so it goes, with none of these languages having much at all to…
That's exaggerated, outside of Cantonese-speaking areas Mandarin is the native language of the younger generations.
Cantonese isn't very special as Chinese dialects go; e.g. Taiwanese/Fujianese (Min Chinese) are just as proud of their dialect (more so in Taiwan where the push for mandarin is not as strong as on the mainland).
People in America really don't appreciate the blessing of having a single (nearly) uniformly spoken language. Being able to drop in anywhere in a country of 300+ million people and being able to converse with the locals (not just communicate , but convey your deepest thoughts)--it's a benefit the vast majority of people in the world simply do not have. This article touches on something I've been thinking a lot about…
There's also a lot to be said for shared institutions like government, religion, retail and media. You can drive to the other coast, and during your four or five-day journey, you will decent roads and useful signage; truck stops from same 5 chains (in truth, only 3 different companies) with reliable bathrooms, fuel, and drinks; restaurants from the same dozen chains serving familiar food; Walmarts where you can be in…
It is far from clear to me whether this is a feature or a bug.
It felt like around 20-30% of what was said was English, the rest I assume Hindi, but I guess what really surprised me was that it wasn't one or the other, but a mixture of both.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Glad you asked, as this article reminded me of that. Outside of Northern China, where Mandarin is original dialect, the answer is no, Mandarin is not understood throughout the country on a level that English is in the US. It's a kind of second language for many, with younger generations generally being more fluent than their elders. Like the Indonesian dialect, it's somewhat forced by recent government mandate except…
I experienced the same in India a few month ago, when I traveled the length of the west coast with an Indian friend of mine. Coming from the US, I never appreciated how diverse the country is, especially with language. In the south especially, he often struggled just as much as me to communicate with people from his own country, despite being fluent in both Hindi and English. It blew my mind a little bit, especially…
What your Indian friend experienced could be because of an assumption that many people in the north make about Hindi being the lingua franca around the country. The truth is that while Bollywood has made Hindi more widespread than it otherwise would be, every section of the country its non-Hindi languages, be it west, east, north east or the south, resists the imposition of Hindi by governments. People in many states, not just in the south, may not even understand Hindi or speak it even if their languages are closer to Hindi.
Among Indians, only someone from some of the northern states (where Hindi is the official language) would mistakenly think of Hindi as a "national language" or a bridge language.