82 replies to this topic

[phoenix_bladen]

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.

ah i see Kulong.... i have a few questions that i'm curious about ...

Were all the warring states ethnically the same? Sorta like a civil war type of setting... if so then all their languages would have been related to each other. Or was Qin simply conquering foreign states that their ethnic and linguistic had no relation to each other? I know that what is now southern china was not inhabited by ethnic han chinese but we'll leave that out of this.

Also i'm very interested in what hanzi or what writing system the OTHER states used before being conquered by Qin state....... does anyone have any idea what it might have looked like? Or was all the writings burnt by Qin Emperor?

thanks!

[Kulong]

ah i see Kulong.... i have a few questions that i'm curious about ...

Were all the warring states ethnically the same?  Sorta like a civil war type of setting... if so then all their languages would have been related to each other.  Or was Qin simply conquering foreign states that their ethnic and linguistic had no relation to each other?  I know that what is now southern china was not inhabited by ethnic han chinese but we'll leave that out of this.

I don't know the details of the Warring States era, I'm sure there are other members here who do or can point you in the right direction.

As for all the Warring States being of the same ethnic group, there are numerous theories.

For the most part, it's safe to say all Warring States were of the Han ethnic group.

I've heard of some Hmongs claim that the Chu state was a Hmong/Miao state... but I've never seen any evidence to support this...

Also i'm very interested in what hanzi or what writing system the OTHER states used before being conquered by Qin state....... does anyone have any idea what it might have looked like?  Or was all the writings burnt by Qin Emperor?

thanks!

Prior to the Qin & Warring States era were the Xia, Shang and Zhou dynasties. Recent discoveries shown that while Shang and Zhou controlled regions were certainly the "center" of culture and Chinese civilization back then, there were other Chinese-influenced culture centers that in some ways are unique, like that in Sanxingdui, Sichuan province. As for they having their own writing system, I wouldn't know, but I doubt they did.

[lobster]

I think other warring states belonged to the same ethnicity, except for the ones in the south that appeared by themselves (not created by Zhou feudalism) very late, namely, Chu, Wu and Yue.

During the first encounters between Zhou and Chu the Zhou described Chu as people who "talked like birds". They were described as some uncivilized barbarians. So I think Chu probably was ethnically different, but got assimilated by the Zhou/Centeria civilization. Same for Yue but it simply broke apart by itself in the end.

I think the script that other states used had the same origins as the Qin script, but may (or may not) look a bit different. I think most characters would still be intelligible but one could tell which way of writing a certain character was which state's style. And yes, Qin Shihuang burned them all.

EDIT: Kulong, I think phoenix_bladen meant other states of the warring states like Qi, Chu, etc.

[Zuo Zongtang]

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.

I never said that Cantonese, Haka, etc came from Mandarin. I simply said that it was the standard language. What that means is that it is the central language, that it was the "normal, familiar, or usual" langauge, which it is. It is the most commonly used form of speech, and its the national language. If Cantonese was the national dialect, then it would be "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?

I'll repost that bold part: "...its representation in writing or printing, that symbolizes and communicates a meaning..." Some Japanese words have very different meanings then the original Chinese word. There are few Japanese words out there that has the exact same meaning as the Chinese word. And for the ones that do have that meaning, such as (日語), if it was just put there alone, it could be Chinese or Japanese, there is no difference, and no one will ever know without someone pronouncing the word.

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...)

By your logic, "trời" and "Sky" are the same thing, "Happy" and "Gleeful" are also the same things. Sure, that point can be argued before spelling was standarized, but now, the argument no longer works. Even then, you are still considering two different languages.

[tongyan]

I never said that Cantonese, Haka, etc came from Mandarin. I simply said that it was the standard language. What that means is that it is the central language, that it was the "normal, familiar, or usual" langauge, which it is. It is the most commonly used form of speech, and its the national language. If Cantonese was the national dialect, then it would be "the standard language."

I agree that mandarin is the national language. It is the most commonly used form of speech for the people who speak it... I'd be a little careful to say that it is the "normal, familiar, or usual" (which is the dictionary definition of 'standard') language. to be sure, it's certainly not the "normal, familiar, or usual" language that I, my father, my grandfather, or my great grandfather spoke.

[Fobulous]

Japanese words that are of Chinese origin have two pronounciations, the Chinese one and the Japanese one.

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To those of you who insist on calling the Chinese dialects, languages, please list reasons why so we have something solid to discuss.

interesting.

I think Chinese is a set of languages only unified by the written characters. Then again, pure Cantonese writing can be totally different from Mandrian writing. I only say this because a Northern Mandrian speaking Chinese will never understand someone from Shanghai and vice versa if the Shanghainese are not "educated" to know Mandrian, which is kinda unlikely.

[Kulong]

interesting.

I think Chinese is a set of languages only unified by the written characters. Then again, pure Cantonese writing can be totally different from Mandrian writing. I only say this because a Northern Mandrian speaking Chinese will never understand someone from Shanghai and vice versa if the Shanghainese are not "educated" to know Mandrian, which is kinda unlikely.

Obviously most, if not all of us can agree on the following:

• IN GENERAL, though not always, speakers of different Chinese 方言 fangyan* can't understand each other orally.

• Chinese fangyan IN GENERAL are much more closely related than any neighboring languages, in that they share a near-identical grammar structure and vocabulary set, though there are some variations.

• Southern Chinese fangyan TEND TO BE closer to classical Chinese.

So I think what's truly important are the following:

• Did Chinese fangyan all originated from the same language? I personally believe so.

• How much difference and variation is needed to catagorize a dialect as a language? If you look at the evolution of the English language in various places such as England, North America & Australia / New Zealand, you'd noticed that in the past 200 years or so, the English language spoken in those places have changed in terms of vocabulary and accent. Assuming that Chinese fangyan developed the same way (but without modern communication and transportation technology), isn't it plausible that after 2,000 years or so, English dialects could've eventually evolved into mutually unintelligble languages?

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* I use 方言 fangyan instead of "dialect" or "language" because it's the most fitting as in Chinese, it literally means "regional spoken language".

[tianzhuwoye]

If you look at the evolution of the English language in various places such as England, North America & Australia / New Zealand, you'd noticed that in the past 200 years or so, the English language spoken in those places have changed in terms of vocabulary and accent.  Assuming that Chinese fangyan developed the same way (but without modern communication and transportation technology), isn't it plausible that after 2,000 years or so, English dialects could've eventually evolved into mutually unintelligble languages?

Absolutely. This is exactly what has happened between any two languages (or dialects) that are understood to be ‘related.’ 'Dialect' is the term for the period when there is still mutual intelligibility, and changes will continue until, and past, the point where a 'new language' is formed. It does however remain to be seen how the increasing ease of global communication will influence language development in the future.

[Kulong]

Absolutely. This is exactly what has happened between any two languages (or dialects) that are understood to be ‘related.’ 'Dialect' is the term for the period when there is still mutual intelligibility, and changes will continue until, and past, the point where a 'new language' is formed. It does however remain to be seen how the increasing ease of global communication will influence language development in the future.

What bothers me about calling Chinese fangyan, "languages", is that the label implys they are completely different and unrelated. It's like saying 廣東話 Guangdonghua, for example, is as different to 普通話 Putonghua as Japanese or Russian is.

[phoenix_bladen]

What bothers me about calling Chinese fangyan, "languages", is that the label implys they are completely different and unrelated.  It's like saying 廣東話 Guangdonghua, for example, is as different to 普通話 Putonghua as Japanese or Russian is. 

hah well it certainly up how people view their political views... i'd say linguistically i truly believe they are separate langauges but of course still within a family and related definitely.....

But going back to the 200 years english was changed topic..... well nowadays mass communications is so advanced that it's really hard for english to separate into different langauges in other countries...

that's if that country is REALLY isolated from the world ...then yes...

Pardon me if i get off topic but everyone has heard of the language afrikanns spoke in south africa and is also an official language....

that evolved from dutch during the colonial days from around 1600's to present ... so yes there's always a change a language can still change but ya you have to really be isolated from the rest of the world or the countries that speak the same language to do that ....hhaha

[phoenix_bladen]

I found another post very similar to this one and i'm going to quote one of the authors which i thought he explained it very well

tianzhuwoye

Just a couple points to raise here. Sorry it’s on an old post, but hey, what’s a couple of months vs. thousands of years of linguistic change?

A fact that applies to all languages is that they change over time. There’s a truckload of reasons for why this happens, and it’s really unfortunate that people tend to highlight ‘foreign contamination’ as THE red light signaling change, or worse, as a corruption of some idealized, pure, ‘correct' original language. Many nations across the world and throughout history have tried to standardize their official languages through governmental intervention, educational programs and so on, but these attempts have always failed. Languages just change (with or without contact with barbarians) and there's no real way to stop that. Also, something like the extremely thought-provoking theory that modern Mandarin pronunciation originates from the accents of native speakers of ‘Manchu’ as they read the characters, if true, doesn’t change the fact that it’s still ‘Mandarin,’ but it does give you an idea of the extent to which languages, and all other social inventions, are hardly eternal and unchangeable.

Really simple examples from relatively recent changes: Who here can use the word ‘whom’ without feeling like a dork? When you say "better than" does it sound more like "better then?" Or, (and I don’t know how this applies outside of the PRC- let me know, thanks!) in relaxed conversation, how do you personally pronounce 谁? How do you pronounce 의 in 존재의 이유? Same example, is it easier to say 재 or 제?

I’m glad to see that people on this board refer to Hakka and Cantonese as languages as opposed to dialects. The classification of languages into families or dialectical branches, while usually a blast, can never be definite or even ‘scientific.’ All languages are made up by their speakers over time- end of story. Think of how you learn languages- you’re born, you hear people around you talking, you start imitating what you hear, and after a while you pick it up. Things change and you pass that on to the people you come into contact with. Language, like culture, depends purely on context. Nobody speaks Mandarin because they’re Han by ‘ethnicity,’ or even because they happened to be born within certain borders. This of course applies to all languages everywhere.

All the so-called ‘differences’ and our neat little categories for organizing them, are usually politically derived. A frequently quoted example comes from northern Europe, where speakers of Norwegian, Swedish and Danish, which we’d assume are all separate languages since, hey, that’s three different countries, are easily able to communicate with each other. Going slightly south to Germany, which we might be tempted to view as a unified nation and a single ‘ethnicity,’ it turns out that speakers of ‘German’ in certain areas of this pretty small country (at least when compared to the PRC) are completely unable to understand each other. The ‘German Language’ is just a political label. Obviously in the PRC (and pretty much every other country where ‘cultural heritage’ helps to keep the government in power, which unfortunately in the modern world is just about every country), it’s the same deal, and you can’t refer to Wu or Yue as separate languages because apparently that threatens national security and the disrupts the unity of the motherland.

Also, while it’s always tempting to play around with ‘identity’ and pride, just keep in mind that Fuzhou Hua, Hokkien, Cantonese, the Canadian Frenches, Cheju Island Korean, Galician, Sibe, the Scottish dialects, so on and so on, all have histories as rich, varied and full of changes as Mandarin’s, or any other ‘official’ language.

And real quick… a Quote from above:

"Both ancient Chinese and Mandarin may have four tones, but some Chinese dialects have evolved more than four. This includes Cantonese, which has about nine, and Hokkien, which has seven."

The general consensus appears to be that modern Mandarin has been simplified down to four tones, as opposed to a situation where it has been left behind while the other languages have evolved to become more tonally complex. It's also a simplification process that explains why Mandarin has a smaller phonological inventory- less available 'syllables'- than most of these other languages.
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very well said and this is the link to the other post...

http://www.chinahist...p?showtopic=226

i especially love the part where he explains that language and dialects are twisted and intrepreted different for every country because they want to keep the unity of the country and so they would boradly name it chinese language ... which infact they are separate... that is the point i am trying ot make too but i couldn't put it to words ... this was a great post.

[sahaliyan]

They are generally considered different languages because they fail the mutual intelligibility criteria. No one doubts Spanish and Portugese are different languages, but they are much more closer than Mandarin and Cantonese, for instance. Sure, the percentage of cognates is very very high, but if Spanish and Portugese were written in characters, they would look virtually identical.

Calling them languages does not mean they are from different origins. It merely means that they have diverged sufficiently such that they are not mutually intelligible. English as spoken in Scotland can be different enough from American English and have a sufficiently strong accent derived from Scots that I cannot understand it. This was made abundantly clear one day when in a linguistics course the teacher showed us a movie from Scotland in English. I could not understand without subtitles, nor could most of the class, and we were all very much native English speakers. In that case that movie was in a different language.

[phoenix_bladen]

I have posted a similar topic at AE

http://www.allempire...p?TID=2455&PN=1


However there is 1 person named Coolstorm which does not agree at all that the han language and culture is diverse. He believes Chinese is one single language.

Maybe someone with a much superior knowledge then i do help him out?

thanks!

[jwrevak]

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

It is far more complicated than that I think. The single way a single, basic word is written in different parts of China fails to tell the whole story. More importantly, if you put, say, four Chinese in a room from Beijing, Shanghai, Hong Kong, and Taiwan, could they understand each other well. Probably not.

In my opinion, if you can't understand what the other person is saying about 80% or 90% of the time, he/she is speaking a language different from yours. It may be related, of course, but it is different.

For example, I speak a Germanic language, English. Does this mean I can understand German? No, I understand very little. German and English, although related, are different languages. They are not merely different dialects of the same language in my opinion. Similarly, if someone speaks fluent Italian can he/she understand most of what a French individual says? No. That both languages are of the Romance family does not mean that the Italian speaker understands the French speaker more than a small portion of the time.

A detailed discussion of these related matters is found in the excellent book, The Chinese language : fact and fantasy by John DeFrancis.

[jwrevak]

What bothers me about calling Chinese fangyan, "languages", is that the label implys they are completely different and unrelated.  It's like saying 廣東話 Guangdonghua, for example, is as different to 普通話 Putonghua as Japanese or Russian is. 

Yes, that's a problem. One doesn't want to minimize the fact that there is an historic commonality--linguistically and culturally--amonst Chinese. It is one reason why some people prefer to speak of multiple Chinese dialects rather than languages. Yet the practical reality is that someone from Shanghai can't understand someone from Beijing most of the time.