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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| beano Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4628 days ago 1049 posts - 2152 votes  Speaks: English*, German Studies: Russian, Serbian, Hungarian | Message 17 of 28 12 January 2015 at 4:31pm | IP Logged | ||
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I'm not sure if I would class German as a global language. It certainly has major clout in Europe and it is still used as a lingua franca in some of its border regions but I would say it's more of a continental language.
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| Cthulhu Tetraglot Senior Member Canada Joined 7229 days ago 139 posts - 235 votes Speaks: French*, English, Mandarin, Russian | Message 18 of 28 12 January 2015 at 9:05pm | IP Logged | ||
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Ari: On what are you basing your assessment of the goals of the PRC government? Most of the examples you give
have little to nothing to do with the central government, and further I would argue that those sorts of things are EXACTLY how you go about promoting the use of a particular language instead of others. You can either reward people for using the desired language (Praising people who speak Mandarin as being civilized) or punish them for using the undesired language. Otherwise they’re never going to change their behaviour. That’s just elementary psychology, as a teacher I use the same principles every day. You claim that it’s the PRC government's policy to wipe out those other languages, but most of the pressures acting on those languages have nothing to do with the government. Hell, some nut job proposing a linguistic cause for the high incidence of throat cancer in southern China TEN YEARS AGO certainly doesn't prove that the Chinese government is systematically trying to exterminate anything that’s not Mandarin. I know you love Cantonese and hate Mandarin, because you’ve said so time and again, and that’s great. But this is China; if the really wanted to exterminate your precious Cantonese, they’d be doing a lot more than putting up silly signs. Finally, the fact that “Standard Mandarin” has a very narrow definition is kind of the point. Standard Mandarin is a standardized, systematic, largely artificial, linguistic structure that the government tries to popularize in order to promote unity, modernity, understanding, and yes, ease of governance. It’s being promoted to the detriment of all the Chinese dialects, including Mandarin. That is absolutely still going on, and sometimes it can get pretty ugly. However, in spite of all the other terrible things they government of the PRC has done and continues to do, I don’t believe attempted linguistic genocide is one of them. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| robarb Nonaglot Senior Member United States languagenpluson Joined 5065 days ago 361 posts - 921 votes Speaks: Portuguese, English*, German, Italian, Spanish, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, French Studies: Mandarin, Danish, Russian, Norwegian, Cantonese, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Greek, Latin, Nepali, Modern Hebrew | Message 19 of 28 12 January 2015 at 9:39pm | IP Logged | ||
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It's complicated because Mandarin is also outcompeting other varieties of Chinese in Taiwan and Singapore.
Regardless, the continued survival or not of China's minority languages has little impact on the position of Mandarin on the world stage. The other languages may still be widely spoken, but they do not compete significantly with Mandarin in education, literature, or international communication. As for Standard Mandarin being narrowly defined and spoken by few Chinese, the situation is not really different from other countries. If you define Standard to exclude the hundreds of millions who speak something very similar but with a few regionalisms, it would be similar to saying that people who don't use the RP ("Queen's English") pronunciation "can't speak Standard English fluently." The only difference is that the PRC has a linguistic policy of promoting a particular standard variety. But many Western countries also promote a standard form of their language. Mandarin speakers in Taiwan and Singapore aren't in the range of the PRC's standard variety of Mandarin, but they still speak the same language, with a few regional words and pronunciations, but easily comprehensible to each other. If Mandarin is to be considered as a global language, we must understand it to include those and other varieties. We probably shouldn't discuss China's policy regarding repression of minority languages too much more, other than that the government obviously wants competence in Mandarin to be universal. Edited by robarb on 12 January 2015 at 9:42pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Cthulhu Tetraglot Senior Member Canada Joined 7229 days ago 139 posts - 235 votes Speaks: French*, English, Mandarin, Russian | Message 20 of 28 12 January 2015 at 10:54pm | IP Logged | ||
This is a good point as well. Here in Newfoundland the provincial government is in charge of education, and it heavily promotes standard Canadian English over Newfoundland English and standard Parisian French over français terre-neuvien or even quebecois. That doesn't mean it's trying to stamp out those things, any more than the British promotion of RP is intended to destroy Northumbrian English. That might happen incidentally, but the goal is always to just give everyone the *ability* to speak to a certain shared standard when necessary or appropriate. Why is it that when China does something that every other country on the planet does, it's linguistic genocide? 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| aokoye Diglot Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5547 days ago 235 posts - 453 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Dutch, Norwegian, Japanese | Message 21 of 28 13 January 2015 at 3:13am | IP Logged | ||
I don't see how you couldn't get into a discussion about politics when discussing the article and the study. The study seems to have significantly more to do with politics (and not politics of the linguistic type) and globalization than it does to do about language or linguistics. I think the idea of trying to figure out what makes a language globally important and the attempt to quantify and qualify the languages and their [global] importance is interesting. That said I think the ways they went about trying to do so were flawed. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| aokoye Diglot Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5547 days ago 235 posts - 453 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Dutch, Norwegian, Japanese | Message 22 of 28 13 January 2015 at 3:51am | IP Logged | ||
I can assure that this isn't a "China" vs the rest of the world issue. People, myself included, have said it about various other governments including the Canadian and US ones (forcing First Nations/Native American into boarding schools), South Africa (attempting to force Black Africans to go to school using Afrikaans as the language of instruction - see the Soweto riots), various local and national governments in terms of attempts to force deaf people to be oral, various decisions on the language of instruction in Latin America and the lack of instruction in X indigenous language. This concept is in no way new and it is most definitely not unique to China. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6588 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 23 of 28 13 January 2015 at 8:10am | IP Logged | ||
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Once again, I haven't said anything about anyone else than China. Anyway, you do have some points, Cthulhu, and sometimes I let my worry over the future of Cantonese and my frustration that people don't treasure it the way I do get the better of me, and I might be guilty of letting my views of Chinese politics in general, especially with regards to Hong Kong, color my perception of their language politics.
That said, I still claim that there is a difference between promoting the national language and forbidding people from speaking their native language. It's very possible to reward excellence in Mandarin, put a lot of money in educating people in the language, making it a requirement for government jobs, and so on, without some of the measures set out by the central or local government. You need a special permit (rarely granted to non-Mandarin Chinese languages) to broadcast in a langage other than Mandarin, for example. There was the huge protests when a law was proposed requiring news readings on all TV channels to be at least 50% Mandarin (it's not like the Mandarin speakers lacked news programs to watch). Due to the protests, the proposal was retracted, only to be reintroduced a few years later. Mandarin is doing very well in China, and most people see it as essential for success. There's no need to punish people for wanting to be bilingual. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Cthulhu Tetraglot Senior Member Canada Joined 7229 days ago 139 posts - 235 votes Speaks: French*, English, Mandarin, Russian | Message 24 of 28 13 January 2015 at 1:07pm | IP Logged | ||
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Ari: That's fair, and I'm sure I'm at least partially trying to convince myself when I discuss this topic. I think about this
and related issues a lot; if Mandarin became the first language of Cantonese speakers, would they lose their unique culture or would they simply bring it to Mandarin? Did Irish people become less Irish when they stopped speaking Gaelic? Is the pursuit of a national language actually worth the negative side effects? How much are my own views on this coloured by the fact that Mandarin is so dear to my heart, while I have no personal attachment to the languages getting the short end of the stick? I started watching Stephen Chow movies and hanging out with Cantonese speakers before I learned Mandarin, so I could very easily have been in your shoes if things had gone a bit differently. Really, all I can say with any degree of certainty is that I think it's very important to not look at the question in isolation; it's always beneficial to contextualize and compare things that are going on in one country to what's going on in others. That's why I keep harping on what countries have done and continue to do. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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