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Beijing says 400 million Chinese cannot speak Mandarin

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Beijing says 400 million Chinese cannot speak Mandarin

#51

Post by dragonwriter »

kyllo wrote: post #39
mmorris wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not a linguist, per se, but my understanding is that there is no formal definition (or even agreement) on what constitutes a separate language versus a separate dialect. Rather, a number of factors are taken into consideration (including political factors), and the distinction is almost always debatable. While it is desperate for citations, it looks like the Wikipedia article supports that: http://en.wikipedia.o…

The common analogy is that Chinese "dialects" are really different languages in the same Chinese language family (they have a common ancestor), the same way that Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Corsican, Catalan, etc. are different languages in the Romance language family (their common ancestor is Latin). Where it gets confusing is when nationalism gets involved. Mandarin and Wu are different "dialects" of the same "la…

Linguists tend toward using mutual intelligibility as the difference between a language and a dialect, but it's fuzzy. Beijing and Shanghai dialect are almost totally mutually unintelligible, but if you walked from Beijing down to Shanghai, each village, town, or city you pass will speak a dialect that's still mutually intelligible with the immediately neighboring village/town/city's.

So, its a "ring language" (by analogy to a "ring species" [1] in biology.)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring_species

Re: Beijing says 400 million Chinese cannot speak Mandarin

#52

Post by saraid216 »

maaku wrote: post #31

“A dialect is a language without an army or navy.” Chinese dialects are totally separate languages, in some cases only distantly related. A Mandarin speaker with no previous exposure to dialect X would find it incomprehensible. It'd be like calling Swedish and Portuguese dialects of the common language “Euro-nese” (as was once the case with 'vulgar' Latin before we started calling it French, Spanish, Italian, etc.) T…

Except that the Chinese writing system is basically the same across all dialects. This is one of the most remarkable oddities of the Chinese language. This isn't true of the various Romance languages, which will cheerfully include random additional letters all over the place.

And nevermind that Swedish is descended from Germanic whereas Portuguese is descended from Latin, so your comparison is closer to Cantonese with Hindu.

Re: Beijing says 400 million Chinese cannot speak Mandarin

#53

Post by shawn-furyan »

maaku wrote: post #31

“A dialect is a language without an army or navy.” Chinese dialects are totally separate languages, in some cases only distantly related. A Mandarin speaker with no previous exposure to dialect X would find it incomprehensible. It'd be like calling Swedish and Portuguese dialects of the common language “Euro-nese” (as was once the case with 'vulgar' Latin before we started calling it French, Spanish, Italian, etc.) T…

This is the point that I found disappointingly lacking in the article. Most Westerners have very little familiarity with China's diversity, and this article would have been a great way to introduce some of that nuance to the uninitiated. To wit, it's not just Tibet, who's conflicts with Beijing have been very well publicized, but many other parts of China that are ambivalent about integration into Beijing society. China is far from monolithic, but this article fails to dispel the common assumption that it is.

Re: Beijing says 400 million Chinese cannot speak Mandarin

#54

Post by gaoshan »

laumars wrote: post #18
gaoshan wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And some of them sound rather radically different from Mandarin. My wife speaks something called Hangzhou dialect (spoken just a few hours away from Shanghai) and when other Chinese hear it they sometimes think she is visiting from another country. On one occasion some people thought she was speaking English (it sounds nothing like English). An example of the differences... in Mandarin to say "It is." you would say "…

I'm no expert, but I always wondered if it was a result of the language being tonal. In England, you have dialects that can sound so different that it could be another language to the untrained ear. However as English isn't tonal, there's a larger margin for error (so to speak) - accents can exist without transforming the word. Whereas with a tonal language, an accent could change the language more dramatically. Thou…

>However as English isn't tonal, there's a larger margin for error

True. The tones are critical in a way that can be very difficult for non-native speakers to grasp. Here are the four tones used with the words mā (mother), má (hemp), mǎ (horse) and mà (to curse) with an extra for ma indicating a question http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QRkCf6Djprs.

And in that video she pronounces them far clearer than would be used in actual conversation.

Re: Beijing says 400 million Chinese cannot speak Mandarin

#55

Post by abayer »

dragonwriter wrote: post #51
kyllo wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The common analogy is that Chinese "dialects" are really different languages in the same Chinese language family (they have a common ancestor), the same way that Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Corsican, Catalan, etc. are different languages in the Romance language family (their common ancestor is Latin). Where it gets confusing is when nationalism gets involved. Mandarin and Wu are different "dialects" of the same "la…

Linguists tend toward using mutual intelligibility as the difference between a language and a dialect, but it's fuzzy. Beijing and Shanghai dialect are almost totally mutually unintelligible, but if you walked from Beijing down to Shanghai, each village, town, or city you pass will speak a dialect that's still mutually intelligible with the immediately neighboring village/town/city's. So, its a "ring language" (by an…

The equivalent term in linguistics is "dialect continuum" - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialect_continuum

Re: Beijing says 400 million Chinese cannot speak Mandarin

#56

Post by newsign »

dragonwriter wrote: post #48
kyllo wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's because Hindi is no-one's native language, it's an artificial language that was invented by a committee. Mandarin is almost the same situation, except that it is very very close to the native language of Beijing and Northeast China. So it's almost like they're forcing the entire country to learn Beijing dialect.

> That's because Hindi is no-one's native language, it's an artificial language that was invented by a committee. More accurately, Modern Standard Hindi (like Modern Standard Urdu) is a committee-standardized register of the Hindustani (also known as "Hindi-Urdu") language. (prior to standardization, "Hindi", "Urdu", and "Hindustani" all referred to the same language, apparently.) > Mandarin is almost the same situat…

Also those people are purely native speakers, meaning people whose first language is Hindi - while there are many whose command over Hindi is very strong but their first language is Marathi, Gujarati, Punjabi etc.

If you count all those people who can speak/write Hindi then the count goes way over 500 Million ....

Re: Beijing says 400 million Chinese cannot speak Mandarin

#57

Post by SeanLuke »

taway2012 wrote: post #45
jamesli wrote: post #19

Many people think Mandarin and Cantonese are basically the same language, or Cantonese is an accent of Mandarin. It is understandable since the majority of early Chinese immigrants were from Canton Province (or Guangdong Province), where Cantonese is the dominant language. Cantonese is a dialect, with very different sound system, although it shares the same writing system with Mandarin. The difference between their s…

Hmm, if Cantonese is as different from Mandarin as Spanish is from English, why do you still call it a "dialect" of Mandarin?

He didn't say that. Cantonese is not a dialect of Mandarin. Mandarin and Cantonese (and many others) are both dialects of Chinese.

Chinese is traditionally only written. A Chinese person would speak in his local dialect, but read and write in Chinese. The local dialect typically had a different vocabulary and grammar from written Chinese. Since these dialects aren't written, only spoken, they're dialects.

Largely due to politics, over the last two centuries written Chinese has gradually shifted such that nowadays its grammar and vocabulary have a one-to-one correspondence with a particular dialect, namely Mandarin. But that wasn't always the case. Indeed, most ancient written Chinese poems don't rhyme in Mandarin: but they rhyme in many older dialects (like Cantonese).

Now stuff like Tibetian: that is a language, separate from Chinese and with its own writing system. This is not the case for Cantonese (and 40 other major dialects in China).

Re: Beijing says 400 million Chinese cannot speak Mandarin

#58

Post by taway2012 »

SeanLuke wrote: post #57
taway2012 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmm, if Cantonese is as different from Mandarin as Spanish is from English, why do you still call it a "dialect" of Mandarin?

He didn't say that. Cantonese is not a dialect of Mandarin. Mandarin and Cantonese (and many others) are both dialects of Chinese. Chinese is traditionally only written. A Chinese person would speak in his local dialect, but read and write in Chinese. The local dialect typically had a different vocabulary and grammar from written Chinese. Since these dialects aren't written, only spoken, they're dialects. Largely due…

OK, that's a good point, but IMHO the question still stands.

If Cantonese is as different from Mandarin as French is from Italian (though, IIRC, both are Latin languages), then why are they still called dialects?

I see from the rest of the comments that dialect vs. language is political and arbitrary rather than an objective difference.

Re: Beijing says 400 million Chinese cannot speak Mandarin

#59

Post by dragonwriter »

taway2012 wrote: post #58
SeanLuke wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He didn't say that. Cantonese is not a dialect of Mandarin. Mandarin and Cantonese (and many others) are both dialects of Chinese. Chinese is traditionally only written. A Chinese person would speak in his local dialect, but read and write in Chinese. The local dialect typically had a different vocabulary and grammar from written Chinese. Since these dialects aren't written, only spoken, they're dialects. Largely due…

OK, that's a good point, but IMHO the question still stands. If Cantonese is as different from Mandarin as French is from Italian (though, IIRC, both are Latin languages), then why are they still called dialects? I see from the rest of the comments that dialect vs. language is political and arbitrary rather than an objective difference.

> If Cantonese is as different from Mandarin as French is from Italian (though, IIRC, both are Latin languages), then why are they still called dialects?

If France and Italy weren't different countries, we might well not call French and Italian languages rather than dialects of the same language. The dialect/language distinction isn't particularly clear cut.

Re: Beijing says 400 million Chinese cannot speak Mandarin

#60

Post by singlecomment17 »

singlecomment17 wrote: post #50
newsign wrote: post #37

India is also in similar situation where many dont speak Hindi - its like a Britain or American cant speak English ... being multi dialect/language country shouldn't be an excuse of not being able to speak the national language - i guess past and present government is to be blamed...

LOL, I'll bite. The second sentence is a fallacy: it's NOT like a Britisher or American not being able to speak English. It's like a Spaniard not being able to speak Italian. Before unification each part of India was its own political entity. Also read up on the debates in the constituent assembly. There were heated debates on the topic of Hindi as "national language", "only language" etc. Also, I am pretty sure you…

Related: http://www.thehindu.com/features/friday-review/official-lang... "Official language or national language?"

And: http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2010-01-25/india... "There's no national language in India: Gujarat High Court"

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