82 replies to this topic

[stupidumboy]

Also note that Portuguese, French, Spanish, Italian, etc., and Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese all have their non-Latin, non-Han, native words.

As for stupidumboy's question, I for one have this background.  Mandarin first seemed incomprehensible to me.  But since Mandarin is also the modern day written Chinese, once you have some knowledge in that, everything starts to click.  That's my way of learning Mandarin - learn written Chinese first.

On the other hand, it would be hard for a pure Mandarin speaker to learn Cantonese.  I think this is why Mandarn is chosen as the "national" language - it's more or less the norm of all dialects.

As a side note, I heard that the German language has dialects in similar fashion as Chinese.  Not too sure.

I understand,thank you for your kind anwer.

So we can guess that Chinese language has dialects like German language has different pronounciated dialects such as bavarian and saxonian dialects but they follow the same writing.

[Yun]

According to my dictionary, a dialect is a "form of a spoken language used in a part of a country or by a certain class of people". For example, the Yorkshire dialect and cockney dialect in the UK.

Whether the various types of Chinese spoken in different parts of China are dialects, or different languages that just use the same written characters, would seem to me to depend on their mutual intelligibility. I've heard when I was in Shanghai that in many parts of southern China, the people in one city cannot even understand the spoken language of the people in the next city without making an effort to learn it. The problem is far less evident in north China.

So are there different dialects of 'northern Mandarin', which also includes Hubei, Sichuan, Yunnan, Guizhou, and northern Jiangsu, while in much of the south there are non-Mandarin languages? This is how I've seen it classified in many texts.

[phoenix_bladen]

English and Vietnamese use Latin letters in their writing, correct, but Vietnamese words are very different from English word. On the other hand, Chinese dialects, although with different pronunciation, have exactly the same words.

For example, lets translate "Sky."

Mandarin:天
Cantonese:天
Shanghainese:天
English:Sky
Vietmanese:trời
French:ciel
Spanish:cielo
Latin:caelum

The example that you have showed me indicates that you misunderstood a little bit from what i originally meant.

Let me point out something from your example.

Mandarin:天
Cantonese:天
Shanghainese:天

remember the same writing does not mean they're the EXACT same word.... they're just dervied from the same root word as your other example pointed out. Btw the 3 you have just posted isn't even the exact same word...they're just all dervied from an earlier word.... of classical chinese

French:ciel
Spanish:cielo
Latin:caelum

you see the connection of french and spanish from the latin word? they're both dervied from latin.... which is EXACTLY THE SAME as mandarin cantonese and shanghainese... they're derived from classical or ancient chinese..... i'm not very good in explaining but i hope you know what i mean..... the only reason why they're SPELLED with the exact same word was because CHina was never fragramented into several states..... so while the spoken languages changed exactly the way Europe and it's languages did , the written language was still intacted and all of those dervring languages still used the ancient or classical script without knowing they've all been changed into different languages.

[phoenix_bladen]

I think Cantonese,Mandarin and all the other Chinese languages are separate languages are for these main reasons

1) one speaker can not understand another speaker.

2) a dialect is the same language with regional differences but you can still understand each other more or less .... this isn't true at all with chinese languages....( about the definition of dialect correct me if i'm wrong but hat's how i intrepret dialect)

3) If you look at Chinese languages this way..... they're as diverse linguistically as the romance languages are.....(i'm not including the written script of each language)

one last thing......

if mandarin and cantonese are the same language and classified as a dialect then shouldn't portugese and spanish both be the same language and classified as a dialect too? from what i know they're both very very similar and one speaker can more or less understand the other.......

What do you think?

[tongyan]

a language is a dialect with an army
a dialect is a language without an army

look at some of the scandinavian languages, for example, i think alot of them are mutually intelligible (correct me if i'm wrong) but norway has norwegian, sweden has swedish, etc etc

[tianzhuwoye]

I agree with the pronounciation but disagree on the meaning.

Using Japanese as example again, true they use Han characters to represent native Japnese words, like the example you've given, but they always have the same or similar meaning as the Han character, at least as the time when they were imported.  So a native Japanese word represented by the character 天 may pronounce totally non-Han but always means the something similar or the same, in Japanese.

Maybe I should say in most cases... as I don't really know Japanese too well.

Wussup lobster,

I totally hear what you mean. But the point here is just that we can get by using the same writing systems across ‘unrelated languages.’ Chinese has the added convenience of infusing elements of meaning into the written imagery so that'll be taken up when the characters are used in other languages. Similarly, most of the world knows what to do when you come to a red light, but the name given to that situation will vary between different drivers, and nobody worries about who invented the traffic signal each time they come to an intersection.

Just for fun, the fact is that changes over time have left marked differences in the use of Chinese characters in the languages that have adopted them. If you read Chinese and have ever looked at Japanese you can tell that things are just different over there. Basic examples: 大丈夫 daijoobu means ‘okay’ or ‘safe,’ the 邪魔 in お邪魔します ojamashimasu ‘excuse me’ (when entering a room) means ‘hindrance’ or ‘obstacle’ and 勉強 benkyoo means to study, but there’s some logic to that one

Back to the argument- by definition, the Chinese ‘dialects’ are now separate languages, although it’s very likely that they were technically dialects at some point in the past, and may have even come from a common ancestor of some kind. This holds true for the German ‘dialects’ as well as for the situation between Uzbek and Uyghur, Russian and Ukrainian, Hochdeutsch and ‘standard English,’ and so on. The problem isn’t so much that of walking the fine line between languages and dialects, it’s in trying to pin down and classify something as fluid and arbitrary as human communication systems.

[Zuo Zongtang]

The example that you have showed me indicates that you misunderstood a little bit from what i originally meant.

Let me point out something from your example.

Mandarin:天
Cantonese:天
Shanghainese:天

remember the same writing does not mean they're the EXACT same word.... they're just dervied from the same root word as your other example pointed out.  Btw the 3 you have just posted isn't even the exact same word...they're just all dervied from an earlier word.... of classical chinese

I'm not sure what you mean by not exact same word. They are the same word. Its sky in Mandarin, Cantonese and Shanghainese.

word
A sound or a combination of sounds, or its representation in writing or printing, that symbolizes and communicates a meaning and may consist of a single morpheme or of a combination of morphemes.

www.dictionary.com

French:ciel
Spanish:cielo
Latin:caelum

you see the connection of french and spanish from the latin word? they're both dervied from latin.... which is EXACTLY THE SAME as mandarin cantonese and shanghainese... they're derived from classical or ancient chinese..... i'm not very good in explaining but i hope you know what i mean..... the only reason why they're SPELLED with the exact same word was because CHina was never fragramented into several states..... so while the spoken languages changed exactly the way Europe and it's languages did , the written language was still intacted and all of those dervring languages still used the ancient or classical script without knowing they've all been changed into different languages.

di·a·lect
A regional or social variety of a language distinguished by pronunciation, grammar, or vocabulary, especially a variety of speech differing from the standard literary language or speech pattern of the culture in which it exists: Cockney is a dialect of English.

www.dictionary.com

The definition never says anything about one side being able to understand the other side, so that is definately not a factor here. All it says is the difference in "pronunciation, grammar, or vocabulary" from the standard langauge. The standard language is Mandarin, and of course, all dialects of China are in some way differing from the standard language.

[Yun]

The standard language is Mandarin, and of course, all dialects of China are in some way differing from the standard language.

The problem there is, Mandarin has not been the standard language for much more than 500 years, since it was institutionalised by the Ming as 'guanhua' (the officials' speech) after the move of the capital to Beijing. In the Song dynasty and before, the 'standard language' used in court was probably closer to that spoken as 'dialect' in south China now.

[phoenix_bladen]

I'm not sure what you mean by not exact same word. They are the same word. Its sky in Mandarin, Cantonese and Shanghainese.

word
A sound or a combination of sounds, or its representation in writing or printing, that symbolizes and communicates a meaning and may consist of a single morpheme or of a combination of morphemes.

www.dictionary.com
di·a·lect
A regional or social variety of a language distinguished by pronunciation, grammar, or vocabulary, especially a variety of speech differing from the standard literary language or speech pattern of the culture in which it exists: Cockney is a dialect of English.

www.dictionary.com

The definition never says anything about one side being able to understand the other side, so that is definately not a factor here. All it says is the difference in "pronunciation, grammar, or vocabulary" from the standard langauge. The standard language is Mandarin, and of course, all dialects of China are in some way differing from the standard language.

You just gave me a definition of WORD but that doesn't say anything about what i said earlier..... i said they aren't the exact word..... just because they used the same character doesn't mean they're the same word..... Japanese has many borrowed words that uses the same Chinese character in writing but they are pronouced totally different then in Chinese.......so that means that word Japanese and Chinese word are totally the same?

What about the French and Spanish examples you pointed out earlier? Why aren't they the same word? Just because they are spelled differently ? Doesn't make any sense..... in a way you're kinda contridicting....... (sorry for my grammer and spelling mistakes...)

[phoenix_bladen]

The standard language is Mandarin, and of course, all dialects of China are in some way differing from the standard language.

I don't quite agree with you on this point... and i'm not sure what you mean...

So by saying Mandarin is the standard language is to say Cantonese, Hakka all dervied from Mandarin.... but what you don't know is that (as Yun pointed out) Mandarin wasn't even the languaged used in courts 500 years ago.....

to go further then that ..... you make it sound as if Mandarin is the mother language and all the other chinese languages spawned from Mandarin.... then you are wrong.....

None of the modern Chinese languages existed 2000 years ago.... EVERY language that you hear today spawned from an ancient Chinese langauge... now that is a fact..... read the article i posted earlier....

Mandarin is not a standarded language where every other language derved from it's just an official language of China. And one of MANY languages of the Chinese family group. Correct me if i'm wrong.

[Kulong]

it's quite interesting how this can be discussed on and on all this time i just thought w/o question:

1) Mandarin is the national language b/c ppl in Beijing speak it.
2) Written words were standardized by QinShiHuangDi,  but then dialects were left alone.

....... or maybe im just ignorant. 

enlighten me if possible...... 

1.) Mandarin is the national language because it was chosen so by the Nationalists after the Republic of China was established during the 1910's. There was supposedly a vote and Cantonese was a close second. Dr. Sun Yatsen supported Mandarin as the national language. Modern Mandarin, or what we know as 國語 in Taiwan or 普通话 in mainland China, while BASED ON the Beijing dialect, is NOT identical.

2.) Yes Qin Shi Huang standardized written Chinese but not spoken.

[phoenix_bladen]

2.) Yes Qin Shi Huang standardized written Chinese but not spoken.

correct me if i'm wrong but don't you think Qin Shi Huang standardized written AND SPOKEN language? And that that original language just evolved into different languages as the times went on and ppl just did not noticed it?

Remember back then chinese ppl moved in all directions and mass communications were not yet known ...... so it is possible that Qin Shi Huang might have unifed BOTH spoken and written but as times went on that original chinese language that was spoken in the Chin dynasty just evolved into several different languages...... just like how latin evolved.......

besides how could you just unify written and not spoken ? It's like telling everyone to write all theiy words exactly in english but just say it in frnehc or chinese.......

it's not possible in my opinion....

[Kulong]

correct me if i'm wrong but don't you think Qin Shi Huang standardized written AND SPOKEN language?  And that that original language just evolved into different languages as the times went on and ppl just did not noticed it?

Remember back then chinese ppl moved in all directions and mass communications were not yet known ...... so it is possible that Qin Shi Huang might have unifed BOTH spoken and written but as times went on that original chinese language that was spoken in the Chin dynasty just evolved into several different languages...... just like how latin evolved.......

besides how could you just unify written and not spoken ?  It's like telling everyone to write all theiy words exactly in english but just say it in frnehc or chinese.......

it's not possible in my opinion....

Well, for one thing, according to historical records, it's only been mentioned that Qin Shi Huang unified the Chinese writing system but there was never a mention of Qin Shi Huang unifying spoken Chinese.

Since during the Warring States era, each state had their own version of Hanzi so it's safe to assume that they pronounce them a little different from each other too.

As far as I know, it would be difficult to unify spoken Chinese during the Qin dynasty some 2,000 years ago because 1.) Hanzi is not a phonetic script so there's really no way to know right off the bat how to pronounce a character and 2.) Qin dynasty didn't last too long so while unifying written Chinese would've been feasible, forcing everyone to speak the same dialect would've been tougher. Heck, Mandarin has been the standard language for almost 100 years and it has been popularized by both the ROC and the PRC yet other dialects still exist and some older folks still can't speak Mandarin.

Hanzi is not like Latin letters, Hanzi focus on meaning and not phonetic pronounciation like Latin letters. This is why Japanese, Korean and Vietnamese were able to use Hanzi while not having to adopt spoken Chinese. So your argument of pronouncing words in different languages is irrelevant.

With all that said though, I do believe all Chinese dialects came from the same origin and eventually developed in their own paths. This can be proven through geographical feature of China, historical documentations and simple logic.

[lobster]

Qin Shihuang did try to unify the spoken language, as everyone must speak the Qin dialect to him, but obviously it's an impossible job to impose that on the entire population, even just for all officials would have been too big a task.