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Chinese Dialects | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Lessons in Polyglottery |  | |
| victor Tetraglot Moderator United States Joined 7106 days ago 1098 posts - 1056 votes  6 sounds Speaks: Cantonese*, English, FrenchC1, Mandarin Studies: Spanish Personal Language Map | Message 33 of 41 07 July 2009 at 2:33am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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I have always had difficulty explaining to friends the differences between Mandarin and Cantonese. They often ask me if it's different like French and Spanish are different. Perhaps the different Chinese languages (dialects) are even more distant. But the political situation is like the Italian dialects, with a form of the Tuscan dialect promoted as the standard.
The languages in China should be categorized in groups because there is just so much variation. There are variations from one town to another, and dialects under certain groups are not easily intelligible. For political reasons, the Northern language (dialect) was promoted as a national language. Its written form was also promoted as a standard, in favour of Classical Chinese. Modern written Chinese is written Mandarin/Putonghua/Guoyu/etc. This means that every literate Chinese speaker has had to learn Mandarin vocabulary and grammar, regardless of whether he learned its spoken form. Children in Hong Kong and Macau are more or less exceptions, since they are principally educated in Cantonese, but learn to read and write Mandarin as all Chinese children do. As Cantonese is linguistically different from Mandarin in many respects, many Cantonese speakers have a lot of difficulty mastering Mandarin. They know the grammar of Standard Mandarin perfectly well, but mostly have trouble with articulating the sounds. It's probably impossible to construct what Cantonese would have be like without its Mandarin influences. I think it's the same for all other dialects (languages). Since Mandarin is the written language, it heavily influences vocabulary use in the other dialects. Jeff is definitely right in saying that Mandarin speakers can't just "pick up" Cantonese, or any other dialect group. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| icing_death Senior Member United States Joined 5649 days ago 296 posts - 302 votes Speaks: English* | Message 34 of 41 07 July 2009 at 6:45am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
Mandarin, Cantonese, Shanghaiese(sp?), etc are definitely different languages. Not even as similar as the romantic languages, from what my friends tell me. My language learning Chinese friends understand the difference between the Chinese government's definition and linguistic definition, and have given up trying to convince me that they are just dialects. Now here's the question: would a group of Taiwanese linguists talking amongst eachother call them dialects or languages? 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| minus273 Triglot Senior Member France Joined 5553 days ago 288 posts - 346 votes Speaks: Mandarin*, EnglishC2, French Studies: Ancient Greek, Tibetan | Message 35 of 41 07 July 2009 at 8:33am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
Languages. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Linguistics Diglot Groupie Finland Joined 5416 days ago 59 posts - 62 votes Speaks: Mandarin*, English Studies: German, Finnish | Message 36 of 41 07 July 2009 at 2:36pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
The discussion is in English, but the topic is Chinese. I believed people who ticked Mandarin on their profile must speak the language, and using "Hua" earlier would give a better view of how Chinese people perceive this issue, which is what you and Glossika originally questioned, so I gave the explanation, but apparently you chose to cover eyes and ears, kicking and yelling "I don't see or hear anything!" If you are confused, ask with a question mark. I'm sure people would like to answer and help, but starting with biased and ignorant statements won't get you any further but humiliation sought by yourself. In case you still don't understand what's going on, let me rephrase it once again, without fees: Standard Mandarin, translated from Chinese "Biao Zhun Pu Tong Hua", can be considered as Chinese version of RP (Received Pronunciation) in China. There is one way to test whether you speak Standard Mandarin or not, it's called "Quan Guo Pu Tong Hua Ce Shi", in English "National Standard Mandarin Test". Who speaks perfect Standard Mandarin in real life? Anchors from TV, especially from CCTV, can speak it. I can't guarantee even all anchors from provincial TV programs are able to speak it well enough at all, and it gets worse on a city or town level. To apply as an anchor, you need to get "Yi Ji Jia Deng" on the certificate, which means "A+". All graduates majoring in Teaching have to take that test too before getting their diploma, and the minimum level of "Pass" is "B-". Normally 2-5 out of 5000 will get "A+", sometimes nobody gets it, and it's not anything rare. So the above is about Standard Mandarin (in a narrower definition). Dongbei Hua, Beijing Hua, Shanghai Hua, Sichuan Hua and so forth are all labeled as "dialects", so none of them can be called Standard Mandarin, which is beyond all those "regional factors". However, a wider interpretation of "Mandarin" is, as I said earlier, an abbreviation of "Standard Mandarin", BUT it's not quite the same as you can see from the above paragraphs. "Mandarin" becomes people from regions with their dialect accents trying to speak Standard Mandarin as well. You can of course argue some dialects sound "closer" to Standard Mandarin or Standard Cantonese, some do not. Every dialect has their unique aspects which can't be replaced by another, but seeing from a higher level, they are all equal in the nation. (Standard) Mandarin is more useful in the North, where (Standard) Cantonese is almost useless, but it plays an important role in the South. Edited by Linguistics on 07 July 2009 at 2:45pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| icing_death Senior Member United States Joined 5649 days ago 296 posts - 302 votes Speaks: English* | Message 37 of 41 07 July 2009 at 6:42pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
Thanks, I suspected that was the case.
Actually, they are classified as "fangyan", which you know from glossika's post doesn't translate as dialect. When I speak chinese, I'll call them fangyan. When I speak English, I'll call them languages. Topolect isn't in my vocabulary, but maybe that would be a reasonable compromise for you. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| kimchicurry Super Polyglot Newbie United States Joined 5783 days ago 12 posts - 29 votes Speaks: English, Cantonese*, Mandarin, Japanese, Korean, Hindi, Spanish, Nepali, Urdu, Taiwanese, Shanghainese, Kannada, Gujarati Studies: Biblical Hebrew, Arabic (Egyptian), Sinhalese, Swahili, Vietnamese, Modern Hebrew, Arabic (Written), French, Persian, Bengali, Malay | Message 38 of 41 07 July 2009 at 7:00pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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to glossika:
I realize that some of the differences between Teochew and Cantonese are a result of a dialect continuum, but certain marked Cantonese words such as 睇 "to look" appear in Teochew as opposed to Hokkien/Taiwanese 看. Either both Teochew and Cantonese preserve this word from some ancient third source (the Chu language?), or one influenced the other at some point in time. I think it would be pretty hard to trace the history back though. As a Cantonese speaker who regularly hears Teochew spoken in my family, and has studied Taiwanese, the natural inclination would be to suspect that some of these words are a result of borrowing. And I'm sorry about my statement with Suzhou/Shanghai; I didn't mean tonal system in the sense of how tones and tone sandhi work, I just meant that the Suzhou accent tones are slightly more complicated than Shanghai accent tones, at least according to people like my grandmother (a native speaker). I know that tone sandhi and things like that are very similar between the two, and my grandparents mentioned that they can understand Suzhou-hua very well. I think that it's fair to consider Mandarin, Cantonese, Wu, Minnan, and Hakka separate "sister" languages. And for those who like to disregard Wikipedia whenever it doesn't agree with you, I suggest reading actual linguistic materials concerning the Sinitic languages, though those published in PRC will still adhere to the old 七大方言 stuff, just like Chinese publications still like to the idea that the Kradai and Hmong-Mien are part of the Sino-Tibetan family, which is no longer common in the West, which is now looking into an Austronesian connection. More disputable would be the other smaller and less prominent branches, such as Old and New Xiang, Gan, Mindong, Jin, etc. But even if there is no separate country promoting the languages, it doesn't mean that they are dialects and not languages, just like Uighur and Tibetan are separate languages from Mandarin yet are part of the same political country. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Linguistics Diglot Groupie Finland Joined 5416 days ago 59 posts - 62 votes Speaks: Mandarin*, English Studies: German, Finnish | Message 39 of 41 07 July 2009 at 7:35pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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Don't try to mix 方言 with 少数民族语言. "Zang yu" (Tibetan), along with all other minorities' languages (Hui, Chao Xian, Menggu, etc.) are NOT called Fangyan. So to bring that up is completely off the topic.
If you quote Wikipedia in your whatever studying paper or research, I'm afraid you will have to fail miserably. Didn't teachers give tips how to find reliable sources from the internet? Topolect is a new concept for me in linguistics, but as far as I can see from official and authorized documents, they haven't used the word yet, which is why it's an "arguable" topic. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| minus273 Triglot Senior Member France Joined 5553 days ago 288 posts - 346 votes Speaks: Mandarin*, EnglishC2, French Studies: Ancient Greek, Tibetan | Message 40 of 41 07 July 2009 at 8:00pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
Good point. Tibetan isn't ONE language, either. It is a monogenic dialect group as diverse as the Romance languages. So in Chinese lingo, it's a 语言 (language) with a bunch of 方言's (dialects?). Guess just the Chinese language/dialect threshold is significantly higher than the Nor/Swe/Dan one. [*]
It depends. We, in computer science, quote Wikipedia regularly for textbook/reference concepts. [*] Besides, what the PRC government classifies as "Tibetans", are Tibetans only in the cultural sense. Some of them can speak non-Tibetan Tibeto-burman languages, and, in one case, a strange mixed language with Tibetan grammar and Mandarin lexicon and Tibetan higher vocabulary. And Tibetan nationalists in China claim that the rGyalrong speakers, for example, speak Tibetan, because culturally they are Tibetan and the higher words matter more than the lower, etc. Edited by minus273 on 07 July 2009 at 8:03pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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