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Chinese Dialects

  Tags: Dialect | Mandarin
 Language Learning Forum : Lessons in Polyglottery Post Reply
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minus273
Triglot
Senior Member
France
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Speaks: Mandarin*, EnglishC2, French
Studies: Ancient Greek, Tibetan

 
 Message 25 of 41
06 July 2009 at 10:01am | IP Logged 
Budz wrote:
Oh, and by your logic Norwegian and Danish and Swedish are dialects of some other language group.

Yes. If we are calling Mandarin "a language", rather than different languages divided not on a linguistic bases, but province by province.

Internal diversity of Mandarin surpasses easily that of the mainstream Scandinavian languages.

Sensibly we could either say that Mandarin is a language with such-and-such dialects, or Mandarin is a group of closely related languages, comprising such-and-such languages, but anyway we don't make the boundary on political boundaries, as the boundaries of N/D/Sw are. The illogical one is N/D/Sw, not Sinitic languages.

Edited by minus273 on 06 July 2009 at 10:02am

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Budz
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Australia
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 Message 26 of 41
06 July 2009 at 10:53am | IP Logged 
Yes, I can agree that the N/D/Sw situation is a bit on the illogical side if they are indeed so mutually intelligible. Are they?

I would imagine that Croatian and Serbian are an even more extreme case. They are rather political decisions.

Isn't Mandarin the same as Putonghua? I think the university down the road here in Australia offers Mandarin. Surely that's a standardised form of Chinese based on what they speak in Peking? Or did you mean to write Chinese rather than Mandarin? Or is it the Standard Mandarin v. Mandarin question? If it is, then I would have thought that university departments would be required to be more accurate in the names of their courses.

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minus273
Triglot
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France
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Speaks: Mandarin*, EnglishC2, French
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 Message 27 of 41
06 July 2009 at 12:04pm | IP Logged 
Budz wrote:
Yes, I can agree that the N/D/Sw situation is a bit on the illogical side if they are indeed so mutually intelligible. Are they?

I would imagine that Croatian and Serbian are an even more extreme case. They are rather political decisions.

Isn't Mandarin the same as Putonghua? I think the university down the road here in Australia offers Mandarin. Surely that's a standardised form of Chinese based on what they speak in Peking? Or did you mean to write Chinese rather than Mandarin? Or is it the Standard Mandarin v. Mandarin question? If it is, then I would have thought that university departments would be required to be more accurate in the names of their courses.


Mandarin itself is quite a big dialect group spoken throughout Northern and Southwestern China. Standard Mandarin is but a prestigious dialect of it, promoted as the National Language.

Stolen from a random article:
Quote:
1987年,《中国语言地图集》将官话划分为东 官话、北京官话、胶辽官话、冀鲁官话、中 官话、兰银官话、江淮官话、西南官话八大 ,这才成为方言学界事实上的分类标准。

The Compendium of Chinese Linguistic Atlases splits Mandarin into North-eastern Mandarin, Beijing Mandarin (note: the dialectical basis of Standard Mandarin), Jiao-Liao Mandarin, Hebei-Shandong Mandarin, Central Mandarin, Lanzhou-Yinchuan Mandarin, Yangtze-Huaihe Mandarin and South-western Mandarin, which becomes the de facto classification standard in dialectology.
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Linguistics
Diglot
Groupie
Finland
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Speaks: Mandarin*, English
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 Message 28 of 41
06 July 2009 at 1:45pm | IP Logged 
Budz wrote:
Yes, I forgot about Hong Kong.


Excuse me? Facts are not based on your selected memories, I hope you realize that. By the way, you seemed to have "forgotten" Macao too. Next time you will "forget" and then believe Melbourne is Kiwis', huh? I'm sure you won't piss them off. :-P

I see your profile saying that you do speak Mandarin, and that makes me wonder how true that could be. Because in Chinese, all these terms end with "hua", which can be translated into "language". So, Pu Tong Hua, Shanghai Hua, Minnan Hua and so on. There is no difference in Chinese, but in English. So, it's not Chinese people who have different concepts of "languages", it's the "gap" in translations, particularly in English in this case. You see what you are missing there?

Another problem is that you confuse "language" with "dialect". Let me google it once again...just for you. Next time do your own homework!

"Language: Such a system as used by a nation, people, or other distinct community; often contrasted with dialect."

"Dialect: A language considered as part of a larger family of languages or a linguistic branch. Not in scientific use: Spanish and French are Romance dialects."

And your example of Nordic languages simply doesn't work-- They are all independent countries, that's why it's called "languages" for them. You will offend everybody by saying their "language" is a dialect of another Scandinavian country's; are you gonna divide China into smaller countries or what? Now you know how ignorance pisses people off?!
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Budz
Octoglot
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 Message 29 of 41
06 July 2009 at 2:27pm | IP Logged 
I ignored references to the 'hua' of Minnan Hua etc. because the discussion was in English.

The definitions you've cited aren't necessarily correct. If you google something you can get any answer you want. At the very least they are just two definitions amongst many.

This is a linguistic forum, not a political one. For a linguist, it doesn't matter how big the army is, it doesn't make something into a language. I'm referring of course to the saying: A language is a dialect with an army.

Ah, if it were shown that Shanghainese are somehow racially different from the rest of China, does that suddenly make their speech into a language?

Does it pain you to call Shanghainese a language? Given that Cantonese and Mandarin and Shanghainese are mutually unintelligible, don't you think they should all count as separate languages?

Wikipedia has a rather good article on the attitude of linguistics and Chinese towards the languages of China:

However, owing to China's sociopolitical and cultural situation, whether these variants should be known as languages or dialects is a subject of ongoing debate. Some people call Chinese a language and its subdivisions dialects, while others call Chinese a language family and its subdivisions languages. If the definition of "dialect" includes mutual intelligibility, this confusion would resolve into a paradigm of mutually incomprehensible languages, such as Cantonese and Mandarin, broken down into groups of mutually intelligible dialects, such as Beijing and Sichuan speech as rather easily mutually intelligible dialects of Mandarin.

From a purely descriptive point of view, "languages" and "dialects" are simply arbitrary groups of similar idiolects. However, the language/dialect distinction has far-reaching implications in socio-political issues, such as the national identity of China, regional identities within China, and the very nature of the Han Chinese "nation" or "race". As a result, it has become a subject of contention.


Thanks to minus273 for the informative citation in and on Mandarin. I was quite surprised to see that Chinese does indeed use 官话; I had thought it was an English expression.

Oh, Linguistics, nothing gives me the shits more than the use of the expression <i>to piss off</i>. (not part of my particular dialect of English). It doesn't really belong in this sort of forum. All I did was say that Shanghainese is a language... no need to start swearing.

Hmmm, anyone remember what the original discussion was...

Edited by Budz on 06 July 2009 at 2:31pm

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jeff_lindqvist
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 Message 30 of 41
06 July 2009 at 5:26pm | IP Logged 
Based on what I've heard from speakers who know both Mandarin and Cantonese, the two have to be learned separately and not just something you can "pick up" by osmosis (one of my sources is a native speaker of English, but grew up with Spanish and has also learned Italian in addition to Mandarin and Cantonese, so I assume he qualifies as being a polyglot).

As for D/N/Sw, I have the biggest problems understanding spoken Danish, while written is as easy/difficult as written Norwegian, i.e. not very different from Swedish with some guesswork (and an open mind). Spoken Norwegian is a breeze, I can watch movies or listen to radio with just as good comprehension as if it were in English (a language on which I have spent thousands of active study hours). It even annoys me when I watch Norwegian shows with Swedish subtitles - there's NO reason to include those.

I assume that Cantonese natives do understand movies in Mandarin due to the education system (and perhaps the subtitles?), but vice versa?
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Linguistics
Diglot
Groupie
Finland
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Speaks: Mandarin*, English
Studies: German, Finnish

 
 Message 31 of 41
06 July 2009 at 7:16pm | IP Logged 
Budz, ignore whatever you want, but nothing will change because of an individual's bad memory or biased opinions.

Oh, by the way, Wikipedia is not always correct as anybody can edit it. If you genuinely wish to do some studies or research, it is not a reliable source. Try again.

All languages can't be deprived from politics, history and culture, however, only did you mention politics here in this thread. Vague memory again?!

The one who swears most asks others not to quote themselves? Must be your special "logic" which doesn't make much sense in reality, does it?
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Budz
Octoglot
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Speaks: German*, English, Russian, Esperanto, Ukrainian, Mandarin, Cantonese, French
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 Message 32 of 41
07 July 2009 at 1:53am | IP Logged 
For Jeff, it's probably just about impossible to get a Cantonese speaker that hasn't been exposed to Mandarin at school, but no doubt there are some native speakers overseas that just learnt at home. For them Mandarin might as well be Hungarian (well, an exaggeration of course. I think the truth is that once a Cantonese speaker starts learning Mandarin, he can guess words that he hasn't come across before, but he must actually make an effort to learn before these processes happen.). And bear in mind, if you can only speak Cantonese even words such as the word for he/she which are the same, won't be recognisable as it's only when reading written Chinese that that particular word for he/she is used. And probably Cantonese pronunciations of written Chinese should be ignored in the mutually intelligible test anyhow.

Linguistics, you seem to be twisting my words. I didn't ignore any facts. I said we were having a discussion in English.  English words have certain meanings. It's irrelevant what Chinese regard these languages to be. We're talking about languages regarded from a linguistic point of view. Next you'll be telling us that Taiwan is a province of China and that Tibet has always been part of China... simply because this is what the Chinese government says.

Lets see, you criticise my use of wikipedia, yet previously you backed up one of your arguments by citing something you googled, yet you didn't even bother telling us the ultimate source.

The one who swears most asks others not to quote themselves?

I'm sorry, but the above statement doesn't actually make sense. But if you're criticising me for swearing, then I'm nonplussed. You swore first, and I was just suggesting it doesn't belong here. I'm confused.

Lastly, you last post has replied to none of the arguments set forth in my previous post. Instead, all you've done is attack me personally. If you can't post something relevant then please don't bother posting at all. I was hoping that someone else would join in with some relevant info about mutual intelligibility, technical linguistic definitions etc. I didn't want to end up in a flame war.


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