The New Wave of Indian Type • Hacker News Board

Re: The New Wave of Indian Type

#161

Post by HumanDrivenDev » Thu, Mar 08, 2018, 7:39 PM UTC

echevil wrote: post #137

HumanDrivenDev wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Native speaker here. I have absolutely no idea where you get that. Mandarin wasn't really written until about 120 years ago. Before people would write classical Chinese. It's a "written vernacular/白話文". > Cantonese is just one of many dialects, and in fact, it is not a single dialect: People from different parts of Guadong province actually speak Cantonese very differently. Should you consider those different langu…

> Mandarin wasn't really written until about 120 years ago. Before people would write classical Chinese. It's a "written vernacular/白話文 This is true, but it's a separate issue from having various dialects. Language evolves as time goes by, and in the case of Chinese before "written vernacular", people would write in the same form of ancient Chinese (regardless of pronunciation) which diverged a lot from what people a…

This is true, but it's a separate issue from having various dialects. Language evolves as time goes by, and in the case of Chinese before "written vernacular", people would write in the same form of ancient Chinese (regardless of pronunciation) which diverged a lot from what people actually speak. With the promotion of "written vernacular", people started to write what they speak, irrelevant of dialects.

No, people started to write down what they spoke in Mandarin. It wasn't irrelevant to the language they spoke, it was tailor made for Mandarin. Hong Kong went through this exact same process, and came out with a different written language. Which is why you have a cantonese wikipedia and a mandarin (w/ traditional chinese characters) wikipedia. And which is why Taiwanese people who can read mandarin in traditional characters fluently can't read cantonese in traditional characters fluently.

French and Spanish are 'mostly the same'. Same alphabet and everything. And they're not dialects. With languages like Hokkien it's more like the difference between English and German.

I speak a southern Chinese dialect myself (I don't know what to call it in English) which is also dramatically different from Mandarin. Yes it has a few words that we commonly used, that I thought to be unique, but it turns out all of the characters and words exist in standard Chinese dictionary.

That's because you never learned to write your language, because people don't consider it worth writing. You would have hammered mandarin characters into the right shape, because - presumably - that was the only thing your family was literate in. Of course it turned out the characters matched fairly well.

Again, that's like me finding out that "bonjour" in French actually literally translates to "Good day" in English - doesn't mean they are the same language.

I think you also agree that both Taiwanese and people from mainland China CAN read Hong Kong newspapers, just not as fluently.

Sure. I'm an English speaker that doesn't speak French or Dutch, but I can follow a French or Dutch newspaper well enough, if not all the details. Are French and Dutch just dialects of English? Goede Dag is just Good Day after all...

Re: The New Wave of Indian Type

#162

Post by echevil » Thu, Mar 08, 2018, 8:21 PM UTC

HumanDrivenDev wrote: post #161

echevil wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Mandarin wasn't really written until about 120 years ago. Before people would write classical Chinese. It's a "written vernacular/白話文 This is true, but it's a separate issue from having various dialects. Language evolves as time goes by, and in the case of Chinese before "written vernacular", people would write in the same form of ancient Chinese (regardless of pronunciation) which diverged a lot from what people a…

This is true, but it's a separate issue from having various dialects. Language evolves as time goes by, and in the case of Chinese before "written vernacular", people would write in the same form of ancient Chinese (regardless of pronunciation) which diverged a lot from what people actually speak. With the promotion of "written vernacular", people started to write what they speak, irrelevant of dialects. No, people s…

I don't know what to say. Believe in whatever you want to believe. I'm glad I can speak more languages than I thought.

Re: The New Wave of Indian Type

#163

Post by tonylinn80 » Thu, Mar 08, 2018, 8:41 PM UTC

HumanDrivenDev wrote: post #160

krapht wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you a native speaker? Because 廣東話 and 閩南話 are totally unintelligible to me, and I want your language superpower.

Its just typical chinese nationalist mythology. 'We all speak the same language' is just another fairy tale they drill into their heads, along with '5000 years of culture' When youve talked to one of them youve talked to all of them.

A few dialects are unintelligible indeed, and they're mostly spoken in southern parts of China. But most people can understand dialects spoken in central and east (north of Changjiang river) fairly easily even though they cannot speak those dialects.

Re: The New Wave of Indian Type

#164

Post by sangnoir » Thu, Mar 08, 2018, 8:45 PM UTC

ivm wrote: post #145

janc_ wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you are comparing with "business English" instead of actual locally spoken/written English here...

No, the one spoken with family and friends – it's still limiting. Profanities in English aren't diverse either.

> Profanities in English aren't diverse either

English profanity feels unsatisfying/watered-down. I suspect overuse in pop-culture has worn away most of the taboo factor, making it less cathartic.

Re: The New Wave of Indian Type

#165

Post by tonylinn80 » Thu, Mar 08, 2018, 8:46 PM UTC

barry-cotter wrote: post #104

baobrain wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the Chinese government doesn’t want to acknowledge that they are separate mutually unintelligible languages. Except they are not mutually unintelligible. Put someone from heilongjiang province in Sichuan and they will still be able to understand the language, albeit with more difficulty. Though there are dialects that do have completely different pronunciation, they all use the same underlying script , save a selec…

Heilongjiang is part of the Northeast, aka former Manchuria and was settled in the mid to late 1800s from the North Chinese plain. The entire North Chinese plain speaks variants of Mandarin for the same reason North American English is far less diverse than British and Irish English, there was a relatively small recent founder population. Wu (Shanghainese and the other related dialects of the Yangtze river delta), Yu…

I speak a branch of Wu myself, and it's ABSOLUTELY not a different language from other dialects of Chinese. There are small parts (also commonly used) of the dialects that's dramatically different from Mandarin, but most parts are still the same. Especially if you need to speak about things in a more formal context, or describe concepts that are more abstract, the dialects has no difference with each other if written down

Re: The New Wave of Indian Type

#166

Post by tonylinn80 » Thu, Mar 08, 2018, 9:37 PM UTC

echevil wrote: post #162

HumanDrivenDev wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is true, but it's a separate issue from having various dialects. Language evolves as time goes by, and in the case of Chinese before "written vernacular", people would write in the same form of ancient Chinese (regardless of pronunciation) which diverged a lot from what people actually speak. With the promotion of "written vernacular", people started to write what they speak, irrelevant of dialects. No, people s…

I don't know what to say. Believe in whatever you want to believe. I'm glad I can speak more languages than I thought.

It's funny to see how westerners talk about dialects in China. Western propaganda worked pretty well I guess :)

And yeah, most Chinese are bi-lingual by default. Now I know I can speak tons of northern Chinese languages. That's a big upgrade!

We all learn classical Chinese at school, and that must be a completely different language. Wait, are "classical Chinese" a single language? Should we count each of those spoken in different dynasty and different regions all as different language? Oh man, I can't even count how many languages I can speak

Re: The New Wave of Indian Type

#167

Post by jacobolus » Thu, Mar 08, 2018, 9:45 PM UTC

tonylinn80 wrote: post #166

echevil wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know what to say. Believe in whatever you want to believe. I'm glad I can speak more languages than I thought.

It's funny to see how westerners talk about dialects in China. Western propaganda worked pretty well I guess :) And yeah, most Chinese are bi-lingual by default. Now I know I can speak tons of northern Chinese languages. That's a big upgrade! We all learn classical Chinese at school, and that must be a completely different language. Wait, are "classical Chinese" a single language? Should we count each of those spoken…

If you can fluently understand people across northern China without explicitly learning to, then that means they speak “dialects” of your language.

But hundreds of millions of other people in China natively speak hundreds of other mutually unintelligible Chinese languages. Most of them are (at least) bilingual.

Here is a grossly simplified map showing major language groups: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Map_of_sinitic_languages_...

Re: The New Wave of Indian Type

#168

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Mar 08, 2018, 9:50 PM UTC

tonylinn80 wrote: post #165

barry-cotter wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Heilongjiang is part of the Northeast, aka former Manchuria and was settled in the mid to late 1800s from the North Chinese plain. The entire North Chinese plain speaks variants of Mandarin for the same reason North American English is far less diverse than British and Irish English, there was a relatively small recent founder population. Wu (Shanghainese and the other related dialects of the Yangtze river delta), Yu…

I speak a branch of Wu myself, and it's ABSOLUTELY not a different language from other dialects of Chinese. There are small parts (also commonly used) of the dialects that's dramatically different from Mandarin, but most parts are still the same. Especially if you need to speak about things in a more formal context, or describe concepts that are more abstract, the dialects has no difference with each other if written…

[deleted]

Re: The New Wave of Indian Type

#169

Post by jacobolus » Thu, Mar 08, 2018, 9:53 PM UTC

tonylinn80 wrote: post #165

barry-cotter wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Heilongjiang is part of the Northeast, aka former Manchuria and was settled in the mid to late 1800s from the North Chinese plain. The entire North Chinese plain speaks variants of Mandarin for the same reason North American English is far less diverse than British and Irish English, there was a relatively small recent founder population. Wu (Shanghainese and the other related dialects of the Yangtze river delta), Yu…

I speak a branch of Wu myself, and it's ABSOLUTELY not a different language from other dialects of Chinese. There are small parts (also commonly used) of the dialects that's dramatically different from Mandarin, but most parts are still the same. Especially if you need to speak about things in a more formal context, or describe concepts that are more abstract, the dialects has no difference with each other if written…

The pronunciation of words in Wu Chinese and Mandarin is systematically different, and many common words are entirely unrelated. Typical Mandarin speakers can’t understand Wu Chinese at all.

The relationship is similar to that between English and German or French and Italian.

Re: The New Wave of Indian Type

#170

Post by forapurpose » Thu, Mar 08, 2018, 10:40 PM UTC

beojan wrote: post #149

forapurpose wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why did CERN spend $185,000 plus labor on a TLD?

CERN is one of the rare cases this makes sense, since it's otherwise an international organisation with a domain under a ccTLD of a specific country (Switzerland).

> makes sense

It might make sense by the logic of domain names, but it doesn't by the logic of return on the investment of scarce resources. cern.org or cern.ch or cern.anything would meet all functional needs just as well and for much less.