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The New Wave of Indian Type

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Re: The New Wave of Indian Type

#171

Post by HumanDrivenDev »

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…

I think it's even funnier to see how many Chinese people - even those Chinese people who are fluent in English - take the folksy word 方言 and try and shoehorn that into the precise linguistic term "dialect". For whatever reason Chinese the world over seem to believe in literal 1:1 translations of Chinese -> English terms, when they really don't mean the same thing. It makes it very hard to talk to them.

We all learn classical Chinese at school, and that must be a completely different language.

Of course it's a different language. It's not completely different. Languages can be related to each other. Old English is a different language than English. If English was written in Logograms instead of a phonetic alphabet, many of us could probably read Beowulf the same many of you can read the works of 老子.

Again, if I had the Chinese mindset, there would be a language called "Indo European" which would have various dialects like "Persian" and "Russian" and "Icelandic". There would also be "Standard Indo-European" - aka, English. It makes no sense.

Re: The New Wave of Indian Type

#172

Post by HumanDrivenDev »

tonylinn80 wrote: post #163
HumanDrivenDev wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

And Portuguese people can often understand Spanish. Are they dialects?

Re: The New Wave of Indian Type

#173

Post by HumanDrivenDev »

echevil wrote: post #138
HumanDrivenDev wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but suppression of dialects was never a major part of the campaign From the article: The initial goal of the campaign was for all young Chinese to stop speaking dialects in five years, and to establish Mandarin as the language of choice in public places within 10 years. > Hokkien is still spoken by many Singaporean. Again, the article shows that in 1980 81.4% of Chinese Singaporeans spoke a Chinese language at home…

Please search for "suppression of dialects was never a MAJOR part" in the original article for more details. I copied the exact sentence from there. Yes, there are much less Singaporeans speaking their dialects at home. I've actually met several Singaporeans saying that want to speak their dialects as much as possible as they feel it's endangered. However, what are the alternatives? Singaporean Chinese doesn't speak…

Well one advantage is that Singaporean employers can put on superfluous "must speak Mandarin" sentences in their job descriptions, which lets them hire Chinese people and avoid hiring Malay and Indians, all the while landing on the right side of anti-discrimination laws.

Hard to do that when lots of people speak Hokkien, Cantonese etc.

Re: The New Wave of Indian Type

#174

Post by mantas »

murukesh_s wrote: post #111
mantas wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Point in case - proto Indo European language. It's clear most of European languages (except pre-Indo-European, like Finnish, Estonian, Basque..) have common parent language. For example, look at numbers. All those languages have awfully familiar numbers. If you speak one language, you can recognise most numbers in other languages rather easily. Yet they evolved into very different languages in different regions.

I think numbering system is a recent introduction to European languages - adopted from India in 10th century or so.. but some other words have similarity like maatha- mother, pithaa- father etc! https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindu–Arabic_numeral_system

Exactly, essential words that we needed thousands of years ago as well as today sound similar. Because they are leftovers from when it was a single language. Modern words that were just invented tend to sound similar as well. E.g. "computer" in different languages. The vast difference is in words that came up in between split of Indo-European tribes and modern times.

Re: The New Wave of Indian Type

#175

Post by tonylinn80 »

HumanDrivenDev wrote: post #171
tonylinn80 wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I think it's even funnier to see how many Chinese people - even those Chinese people who are fluent in English - take the folksy word 方言 and try and shoehorn that into the precise linguistic term "dialect". For whatever reason Chinese the world over seem to believe in literal 1:1 translations of Chinese -> English terms, when they really don't mean the same thing. It makes it very hard to talk to them. We all learn c…

Sure, I love the fact that I can speak many languages. Why not.

If you don't like the translation form 方言 to dialect, should I just call it fangyan or 方言? Or is there a more precise linguistic term for that?

Our definition for "Language" is also different then. Should we call it "Yuyan" instead?

Re: The New Wave of Indian Type

#176

Post by tonylinn80 »

jacobolus wrote: post #167
tonylinn80 wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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_s…

So, even though most people cannot understand some southern dialects when they hear it, they can fluently understand other dialects without explicitly learning to do so when it's written down. Even when you explicitly write down exactly what you say in the dialects (like the Cantonese version of Wikipedia pages), people can still understand it, without much difficulties. And yes, there're some words used differently from standard Chinese, but the difference is not much bigger than the difference between UK and US English.

For that reason, we define them as dialects not languages. We can "speak" other dialects but we can certainly "read" and understand them.

If you find that definition unsatisfying, sure you can call them different languages. We just call them dialects and that's not going to change.

Re: The New Wave of Indian Type

#177

Post by echevil »

HumanDrivenDev wrote: post #173
echevil wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please search for "suppression of dialects was never a MAJOR part" in the original article for more details. I copied the exact sentence from there. Yes, there are much less Singaporeans speaking their dialects at home. I've actually met several Singaporeans saying that want to speak their dialects as much as possible as they feel it's endangered. However, what are the alternatives? Singaporean Chinese doesn't speak…

Well one advantage is that Singaporean employers can put on superfluous "must speak Mandarin" sentences in their job descriptions, which lets them hire Chinese people and avoid hiring Malay and Indians, all the while landing on the right side of anti-discrimination laws. Hard to do that when lots of people speak Hokkien, Cantonese etc.

English is the official language used in formal context in Singapore, not Chinese, Indian or Malay. All the documents you’d sign with a company are in English.

Re: The New Wave of Indian Type

#178

Post by HumanDrivenDev »

tonylinn80 wrote: post #175
HumanDrivenDev wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's even funnier to see how many Chinese people - even those Chinese people who are fluent in English - take the folksy word 方言 and try and shoehorn that into the precise linguistic term "dialect". For whatever reason Chinese the world over seem to believe in literal 1:1 translations of Chinese -> English terms, when they really don't mean the same thing. It makes it very hard to talk to them. We all learn c…

Sure, I love the fact that I can speak many languages. Why not. If you don't like the translation form 方言 to dialect, should I just call it fangyan or 方言? Or is there a more precise linguistic term for that? Our definition for "Language" is also different then. Should we call it "Yuyan" instead?

Terms in different languages don't map 1:1. You're trying to fit Chinese square pegs into English round holes. I think this is due to Chinese education methods, since you all do it - even very fluent writers such as yourself.

I'd translate "方言" to "dialect" when it's mutually understandable, and "language" when it's not. So Singapore Hokkien and Taiwan Hokkien are both dialects of the Hokkien language. But I'd translate 方言 to "language" when talking about Mandarin and Hokkien. They're languages not dialects in English because you cannot have a conversation - but they are part of the same language family.

Re: The New Wave of Indian Type

#179

Post by HumanDrivenDev »

tonylinn80 wrote: post #176
jacobolus wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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_s…

So, even though most people cannot understand some southern dialects when they hear it, they can fluently understand other dialects without explicitly learning to do so when it's written down. Even when you explicitly write down exactly what you say in the dialects (like the Cantonese version of Wikipedia pages), people can still understand it, without much difficulties. And yes, there're some words used differently…

> If you find that definition unsatisfying, sure you can call them different languages. We just call them dialects and that's not going to change.

Sure, if you want to speak Chinglish, keep calling them dialects. If you want to speak English, listen to what people here are telling you.

Re: The New Wave of Indian Type

#180

Post by murukesh_s »

nl wrote: post #134
murukesh_s wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wasn't Roman numerals in use, before the Indo-Arabic came to Europe? How come they are similar? They look worlds apart to me.. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_numerals

The numerals are different but the words are the same. 5 and V are both pronounced “five”, just represented differently.

Ah my bad...
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