Chinese v. Mandarin v. Cantonese (General discussion) Language Learning Forum

Chinese v. Mandarin v. Cantonese
Tags: Cultural Identity \| China \| Cantonese \| Dialect \| "Louche" Languages \| Mandarin
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Language Learning Forum : General discussion

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Chung
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Message 17 of 47

28 January 2011 at 6:29am | IP Logged

Ari wrote:

Why do some people (including, sometimes, me) get so sensitive when someone refers to Mandarin as "Chinese"? Why do people get upset when you call Cantonese a "dialect"? I'll try to make a short explanation from my point of view.

Speakers of Catalan don't get upset when you call Castilian "Spanish" (do they?). So why do some Cantonese speakers get so upset when you call Mandarin "Chinese"? And what's the deal with the whole Chinese "dialect" thing? It's common usage and it's just words and they don't have specific definitions, anyway. We all know that Mandarin and Cantonese are not mutually comprehensible, including those who call Cantonese a "dialect". There's no accepted definition that says that dialects are mutually comprehensible while languages are not.

Here's the issue. Either of those statements are fine. Chinese=Mandarin. Fine. Cantonese is a dialect. Fine. The problem occurs because both of them occur at the same time, sometimes by the same people. If you in one breath say "Chinese" and mean "Mandarin" and in the next call Cantonese a "dialect", well … what's it a dialect of? Chinese, of course. And Chinese=Mandarin, so that makes Cantonese a dialect of Mandarin.

That's the problem. That's what gets people. This is how those statements imply that Cantonese is just a "version" of Mandarin. Add to this the fixation many Chinese have with "standard" varieties. The most common compliment students of Mandarin get on their pronunciation is that it's very "standard" (標準 / 标准). Having a "standard" accent is very desirable and Cantonese is obviously not very "standard" from a Mandarin viewpoint. Thus it feels like Cantonese gets belittled.

So technically is you use one of these statements but not the other, you're not belittling Cantonese, but the fact is that both are in common usage and people may take your statement in this context.

There's also a lot of cultural issues behind this. Southern China has historically often been a bit on the outskirts of Chinese culture. The historical, original China that still forms the heartland of Chinese civilization does not include the south. Guangdong province used to be populated by a different people. It's a conquered province. During much of history it hasn't been really considered "Chinese", much like you might today think of Xinjiang or Tibet as belonging to China but not really being "Chinese". The inhabitants of Guangdong province today are descendants of both the Yue (越) people and the Han (漢) people who moved into the region when it was conquered. They have often been considered "uncultured". They themselves, however, often strongly feel themselves to be part of the Chinese culture and this has led to a defensive nationalist feeling which give rise to strong feelings when you imply they're not Chinese. In fact, many Cantonese will argue that they're more Chinese than the northerners, who were conquered first by the Mongols and then by the Manchurians, whose influence was much smaller in the south than in the north. This is why you'll hear some Cantonese referring to Mandarin as "Manchurian Chinese", implying that since Cantonese is in fact more conservative than Mandarin, it's the true Chinese language.

This post is not to convince you to talk in a specific way. It's not meant to persuade you to adopt a PC attitude. I don't get offended and even if I did, you've got the right to offend people. Free speech. I just wanted to give some of the information behind the feelings so you'll know why some people make such a fuss about it.

Well put, Ari.

For the record, I treat the Chinese "dialects" as separate languages and it doesn't matter to me whether they're standardized or not. Hell a lot of languages out there aren't standardizied or official languages.

The mutual unintelligibility within Chinese languages is high enough that most reasonable outsiders would present no opposition to thinking of them as Abstand and at least partially Ausbau languages. Tough luck if it conflicts with some political motivation that needs to perpetuate the awkward belief that a nominally unified people/group of subjects must also speak the same language/dialect. As you posted, the division within China of dialect vs. language and the degree to which the rulers and many of the ruled place on using language by the book leads to the silly notion that not conforming to the prescriptions is marked as uncouth, uncivilized or whatever other culturally-laden perjorative epithet you can think of. *gag*
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Chung
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Message 18 of 47

28 January 2011 at 6:39am | IP Logged

Aineko wrote:

If we go strictly by PC I can 'promote' myself to a hexaglot straight away :D.

Indeed I've come across a few people from the Balkans in job interviews who have done just that boasting on their CVs and to the uninformed and me that they're trilingual with BCS.... Needless to say, I take points off any candidate trying to play fast and loose with stuff like this.
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Aineko
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Message 19 of 47

28 January 2011 at 7:04am | IP Logged

Chung wrote:

Indeed I've come across a few people from the Balkans in job interviews who have done
just that boasting on their CVs and to the uninformed and me that they're trilingual with
BCS....

mind you - quadrilingual (you have M now).
seriously now, that just shows all the comedy of mixing language and politics and taking
it too seriously.

Edited by Aineko on 28 January 2011 at 7:05am
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jsun
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Message 20 of 47

28 January 2011 at 7:09am | IP Logged

Aineko wrote:

jsun wrote:

Dialect nowadays means mutually intelligible in general sense.

really? I dare you to show up in certain places and say that Croatian is a dialect of
Serbian or vice versa :).

I really wanted to stay out of this thread, but I can't not comment on this pulling out
of definitions. Why people can't accept that terms 'language' and 'dialect' are
political terms as much as linguistic terms, at least in everyday life? I think people
should simply be less sensitive about these things and not assume that everyone wants
to offend them. We sure mean different things when we say language/dialect, depending
on language pair we are talking about: is it Croatian/Serbian, Mandarin/Cantonese,
MSA/Egyptian Arabic and so on.

Sometimes it is just about practicality. In this forum and this part of the world, if I
say I study Mandarin, people know what I'm talking about. If I say that to someone in
Serbia (who couldn't care less about language learning), it is quite possible that they
would have no idea what I'm talking about. If I say Chinese, they have the idea.

Who thinks that Cantonese and Mandarin are mutually intelligible and therefore,
Cantonese is, in that sense, 'dialect of Mandarin' - such person is simply uninformed.
Who wants to know about languages, they will find out. Who doesn't care which language
is spoken in China, they won't care about the details either (but will have some idea
of which type of a language you are talking about).

If we go strictly by PC I can 'promote' myself to a hexaglot straight away :D.

Your Croatian and Serbian analogy is not quite right.
Croatian and Serbian can be taught in the same course.
Also, Cantonese speaking area isn't near traditionally Mandarin speaking area.
Even Southern people have different skin tones from the Northern people.

The term "dialects" can be used on mutually intelligible languages,
so there is a confusion if the label still applies to Southern languages.
It makes the people who don't care don't care more since they think
these are the same languages.

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jsun
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Message 21 of 47

28 January 2011 at 7:11am | IP Logged

Serbian, Croatian and Bosnian are grouped into one language course in university while it is
not
possible for Cantonese, Mandarin, Taiwanese to be grouped into just one course

It is not a funny joke.
The authority tells outsider that all the Chinese languages are dialects.
On the other hand, due to the great grammatical and lexical differences,
authority told insider that other Chinese languages are the barrier to Mandarin.
"Even foreigner speaks Mandarin better than you" is quite a common phrase
towards non-Mandarin as first language Chinese.

Why isn't it a serious issue?
I don't like the "get over it" attitude.
If a word causes confusion, get it right.

Edited by jsun on 28 January 2011 at 7:21am
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Chung
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Message 22 of 47

28 January 2011 at 7:48am | IP Logged

jsun wrote:

The "get over it" attitude seems to arise from the fact that it doesn't really pay to get worked up about it (or to get your blood pressure permanently elevated over it), because the problem of Chinese language vs. Chinese dialects has been around for a long time. The message that I got from Ari's original post is that people who know what the situation is can make or have made an informed judgement. I think that anyone here who studies languages or follows the spirit of descriptive linguistics knows that viewing Cantonese as a dialect of Mandarin holds no water, regardless of the political motivation for the rulers who speak Mandarin, and the emergence of Mandarin as the first-ranked Chinese language in numbers and prestige.

People who don't want to know the situation can't be coerced or shunted with lengthy exposés into knowing it or learning about the "correct" answer. With all due respect jsun, I notice that you are highly sensitive to the perception of Cantonese and seem to go to great lengths in your posts to demonstrate how divergent it is from Mandarin. We get it. While I agree with your message and have independently arrived at the conclusion long before I joined this forum, I don't see the need to keep waving the Cantonese flag high on a forum where people here focus on more practical aspects of learning languages (e.g. "What does this word mean?", "Is Assimil better than Michel Thomas"?, "Can anyone recommend a good online dictionary for [insert language here]"?).

I mean no offense, but belaboring your point only diminishes the value of your message.
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Ari
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Message 23 of 47

28 January 2011 at 9:59am | IP Logged

Yes, it should be mentioned that discussing politics on this board is actually against the forum rules. My post was made in the spirit of explaining a cultural phenomenon related to language learning and I hope I didn't cross the line. I also hope others in this thread won't.

Edited to add: For the record I tend to use the term "lingualect" when talking about the varieties of Chinese. It's a ridiculous made-up term but it has the advantage of not stirring up the same tired old debate every time you want to discuss Cantonese.

Edited by Ari on 28 January 2011 at 10:03am
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jsun
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Message 24 of 47

28 January 2011 at 10:07am | IP Logged

Chung wrote:

jsun wrote:

Serbian, Croatian and Bosnian are grouped into one
language course in university while it is
not
possible for Cantonese, Mandarin, Taiwanese to be grouped into just one course

It is not a funny joke.
The authority tells outsider that all the Chinese languages are dialects.
On the other hand, due to the great grammatical and lexical differences,
authority told insider that other Chinese languages are the barrier to Mandarin.
"Even foreigner speaks Mandarin better than you" is quite a common phrase
towards non-Mandarin as first language Chinese.

Why isn't it a serious issue?
I don't like the "get over it" attitude.
If a word causes confusion, get it right.

The "get over it" attitude seems to arise from the fact that it doesn't really pay to get worked
up about it (or to get your blood pressure permanently elevated over it), because the problem
of Chinese language vs. Chinese dialects has been around for a long time. The message
that I got from Ari's original post is that people who know what the situation is can make or
have made an informed judgement. I think that anyone here who studies languages or
follows the spirit of descriptive linguistics knows that viewing Cantonese as a dialect of
Mandarin holds no water, regardless of the political motivation for the rulers who speak
Mandarin, and the emergence of Mandarin as the first-ranked Chinese language in numbers
and prestige.

People who don't want to know the situation can't be coerced or shunted with lengthy
exposés into knowing it or learning about the "correct" answer. With all due respect jsun, I
notice that you are highly sensitive to the perception of Cantonese and seem to go to great
lengths in your posts to demonstrate how divergent it is from Mandarin. We get it. While I
agree with your message and have independently arrived at the conclusion long before I
joined this forum, I don't see the need to keep waving the Cantonese flag high on a forum
where people here focus on more practical aspects of learning languages (e.g. "What does
this word mean?", "Is Assimil better than Michel Thomas"?, "Can anyone recommend a
good online dictionary for [insert language here]"?).

I mean no offense, but belaboring your point only diminishes the value of your message.

If people really get it, why do they keep using "dialects" on languages that are mutually
unintelligible and these languages are spoken by every class in large regions, each of them
is bigger than many European states. They are as diverse as European languages.

Just one word. Just need you to change from saying "dialect" to language. Why is it so
difficult? Is it pride?

I have never told people to learn other Chinese languages. I usually just appeared in posts
that are tagged with Cantonese or when people ask about relationship between Asian
languages. I provided pics and journals and my own works to make people see beyond
"Chinese" when they are discussing relationship between Asian languages. My posts are
relevant to the topics and not many people know these info.

Many people "get it" on many issues but they don't change their attitudes - "Get it" is like
the twin brothers of "Get over it" - from racism to not to smoke, people "get it" and then "get
over it".

"oh, that person is a nuts. " (for doing something right but has zero return)
"why so stubborn on this issue" (the issue is not yet solved)
It can be language problem. It can be a health problem. It can be a political problem.
Stubborn isn't good.
But it seems there's no compromise - either suppress or being oppressed.
The only thing a little potato can do is to "bite one's teeth" and keep resistance against
oppression even though it knows its fate very well.

I know it's silly. Being a Chinese person who speaks Cantonese, Hakka and Mandarin, I can
just "go with the flow" and claim all the prestiges of Mandarin. Why would I ever waste time
in here to persuade people to use "language" and to be treated coldly?
Being a Chinese person, I know people care less about culture and just care about money,
anything makes money is good, why would I waste time to create Cantonese stuffs that
earns me nothing at all?
In the end, I don't care how many buckets of cold water being poured on me.
The responses in here don't make me sad. The responses from own my people don't make
sad either. I keep doing what I want to do no matter how unpopular it is. That is it.
I read news about a Teochew person spent all his life on creating a Teochew dictionary by
himself. Isn't that silly? He could have spent his time of dictionary creation on other jobs or
families.
You just can't explain passion.

Even though I can persuade nobodies, I will keep going on.

A few days ago, a columnist as hot head as me about Cantonese saw my stuffs and write a
bit of in his column (newspaper). And I posted more stuffs on his FB. . I know if I keep going,
one day I will get an audience.

Edited by jsun on 28 January 2011 at 11:10am

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