Kenyans Say Chinese Investment Brings Racism and Discrimination (2018) • Hacker News Board

Re: Kenyans Say Chinese Investment Brings Racism and Discrimination (2018)

#121

Post by barry-cotter » Mon, Feb 04, 2019, 2:27 PM UTC

PakG1 wrote: post #119

spacehunt wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you should form your opinion after hearing what Cantonese (and other regional "dialects") sound like. Then you should be able to appreciate just how close the Northern speech is to Standard Chinese.

I'm not sure why you think I don't know what other dialects sound like. I know what various languages and dialects in China sound like, and am most familiar with Cantonese, Sichuanese, Hunanese, Hakka, Shanghainese, and Yi. Yi sounds positively African and is not a fair comparison, given that it doesn't even share the same writing system and is probably an actually completely different language family. Sichuanese sou…

Is this the Yi you speak of?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E_language

It appears to be a Tai Chinese creole or mixed language (like a creole but without the massive simplification in grammar).

Yi(Loloish) is definitely a different language family though that wouldn’t stop people writing in Mandarin if they really wanted to. Vietnamese, Korean and Japanese were all written as if they were Classical Chinese to greater or lesser extents until relatively recently.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loloish_languages

I’ve heard Sichuanese described as Mandarin without tones. All of Sìchuān speaks different forms of Mandarin for the same reason Manchurians do, recent massive resettlement, though not as recent as in 东北.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sichuanese_dialects

Re: Kenyans Say Chinese Investment Brings Racism and Discrimination (2018)

#122

Post by PakG1 » Mon, Feb 04, 2019, 3:35 PM UTC

barry-cotter wrote: post #121

PakG1 wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure why you think I don't know what other dialects sound like. I know what various languages and dialects in China sound like, and am most familiar with Cantonese, Sichuanese, Hunanese, Hakka, Shanghainese, and Yi. Yi sounds positively African and is not a fair comparison, given that it doesn't even share the same writing system and is probably an actually completely different language family. Sichuanese sou…

Is this the Yi you speak of? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E_language It appears to be a Tai Chinese creole or mixed language (like a creole but without the massive simplification in grammar). Yi(Loloish) is definitely a different language family though that wouldn’t stop people writing in Mandarin if they really wanted to. Vietnamese, Korean and Japanese were all written as if they were Classical Chinese to greater…

No, it's the language of the Nuosu people to which I'm referring. Yeah, them being a different language family wouldn't stop them from writing in Mandarin. I know that, having learned Japanese and Korean. My point is that if the original written language is different between two languages, it is a strong indicator that they come from different language families. This does not stop them from starting to use the same writing system at some point in history, especially if one of the languages has no original written form.

If Sichuanese sounds similar to Mandarin due to migration, it would certainly explain a lot. Thanks for that bit of information. But I would say that the differences between Sichuanese and standard Mandarin would be more from pronunciation differences than tonal differences.

Re: Kenyans Say Chinese Investment Brings Racism and Discrimination (2018)

#123

Post by moorhosj » Mon, Feb 04, 2019, 4:13 PM UTC

iguy wrote: post #103

moorhosj wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would we compare the US today to the US 100 years ago? Should the Jim Crow-era really be our North Star? Categorizing it like this could be viewed minimizing today’s prejudice by comparing to prejudice of 100 years ago. I think the goal is to get to zero prejudice, so let’s compare against that. “Women don’t have it so bad today, 100 years ago they couldn’t even vote.”

I write pretty carefully, kindly try not to put words into my mouth. My reason for comparing real things, not utopias, is that we can learn things from them. Because they exist, or existed. And what you learn here is that the volume of argument about a bad thing is a poor indication of the prevalence of this bad thing. Quite possibly anti-correlated. Here's an easier example for you. The Guardian is full of articles…

The easier example involves comparing a single, privately-owned British newspaper in a democracy to all newspapers in an absolute monarchy?

==This difference in the volume of discourse does not indicate that women have it worse in London than in Riyadh.==

This is a strawman, as nobody has ever claimed they have it worse. However, the wage gap in England effects women in London directly and they have the ability to change it through voting. Do you see how that is different from state-sponsored/controlled media in a country that makes no attempt at equality?

==And observing this simple fact does not indicate approval of the situation in either country.==

But using one country's scenario in an attempt to diminish the plight of people in another is implying that we have to choose one. It's a false choice because we can work on improving Saudi Arabia from the outside while actively voting for improvement in England from within. To clarify, I don't live in England, but this applies to any comparison of what another country is doing (specifically, a non-democratic country).

Re: Kenyans Say Chinese Investment Brings Racism and Discrimination (2018)

#124

Post by barry-cotter » Mon, Feb 04, 2019, 4:57 PM UTC

PakG1 wrote: post #122

barry-cotter wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this the Yi you speak of? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E_language It appears to be a Tai Chinese creole or mixed language (like a creole but without the massive simplification in grammar). Yi(Loloish) is definitely a different language family though that wouldn’t stop people writing in Mandarin if they really wanted to. Vietnamese, Korean and Japanese were all written as if they were Classical Chinese to greater…

No, it's the language of the Nuosu people to which I'm referring. Yeah, them being a different language family wouldn't stop them from writing in Mandarin. I know that, having learned Japanese and Korean. My point is that if the original written language is different between two languages, it is a strong indicator that they come from different language families. This does not stop them from starting to use the same w…

It looks like Nuosu and Loloish are different ways of referring to the same language (group) with Lolo being the Chinese name and Nuosu being their name for themselves.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuosu_language

> Nuosu is one of several often mutually unintelligible varieties known as Yi, Lolo, Moso, or Noso; the six Yi languages recognized by the Chinese government hold only 25% to 50% of their vocabulary in common. They share a common traditional writing system, though this is used for shamanism rather than daily accounting.

I bow to your superior expertise when it comes to the differences between Sichuanese and Mandarin but all of Sìchuān is definitely part of the Mandarin speaking area.

The book to buy if you’re interested in this is the Language Atlas of China.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_Atlas_of_China

Re: Kenyans Say Chinese Investment Brings Racism and Discrimination (2018)

#125

Post by iguy » Wed, Feb 06, 2019, 6:46 PM UTC

mmczaplinski wrote: post #104

iguy wrote: post #75

Can anyone knowledgeable comment on the depth of Kenya's internal divisions? From the NYT's perspective clearly Kenya is racially uniform, but I know that there was significant political violence at recent elections, to do with which tribe or language group candidates or parties represented. Do such distinctions matter only at voting time, or do they matter in everyday life too... like whether X landlords will be hap…

A westerner who used to live in Kenya for about 6 months. The tribal divisions are very much present in Kenya. You can tell the tribe that someone belongs to by their surname and to a lesser extent by physical appearance. People are definitely more happy to hire others from their own tribe or rent rooms to them but it's more just nepotism than outright racism, at least in larger cities. The violence that happened dur…

Thanks, that's helpful.