Cantonese is a 'northern' language that diverged during the Han dynasty.

Hakka is a 'northern' language that diverged during the late Song dynasty when the mongolians invaded north china.

Gan is most probably a 'northern' language that diverged during the late Ming dynasty when the manchurian conquered northern china prompting another wave of migration southwards. That is why the language is close to Hakka.

Mandarin is the 'northern' language that remained northern until today but were influenced by the mongolians, manchurian and other altaic languages which conquered northern china after the song dynasty.

Shanghainese(Wu) and Xiang are languages derived from the language spoken in the "Chu state" before the Qin dynasty ie. warring state era. Wu and Xiang diverged when the Hakka and the Gan people migrated southwards forming a barrier between the two.

Min language seems to be derived from the language of the Qi state during the warring state era ?

http://www2.sjsu.edu/faculty/watkins/warringstates.htm

Any opinions on this ?

1. dun think Cantonese diverged during Han, most of its innovations : Pw>F devoicing of b-d-g s are indicative of Tang era diversion

2. agree that Gan is close to Hakka (in many parts of Jiangxi the distinction between what dialect is Hakka and Gan is blur) do not agree that language diverged during Ming, too late)

3. agree Mandarin had the greatest outer influence...

4. agree Xiang is derived from Chu (actually I think Cantonese partly is too). Wu has more divergent influences though, from ancient Wu itself , from Chu and also from the north, especially the immediate Jiangnan area. I think the basis of this Wu-Xiang affinity is both actually preserve voiced initials..

5. hard to comment on Min, I can only agree it has very strong influence from the Eastern China coastal area

I think you left out Jin. but I think the chart is correct for it though..

First let me say I'm not a linguist.
When I was in college. One of my roomate is from Zhe Jiang, and another is from Fu Zhou.
Fu Zhou people say a dialect totally different from Mandarin, Cantonese or Min. It's even not monosyllabic. Maybe it derived from ancient Yue people.
Zhe Jiang's language don't use 4 or 5 tones like most other Chinese language. When two Zhe Jiang people talking to each other, I can't understand one word of them. They sounds more like Japanese than Chinese IMO.
In Southern China sometimes people seperated by a mountain can't understand each other's language. I think any classification must also be simplication.

Might be later influence rather than splitting. By looking at the "tense vs lax" consonants, it's quite clear that Korean and Cambodian also underwent such kind of change...
Also:
The very old Min dialects are devoiced... Some Wu are also devoiced — clearly late influence. An example is Changzhou(?)-nese.

Cantonese have Chu words like 睇... And as far as I know Xiang does not preserve voiced initials...
I have Hunanese friends, so I will ask about things that should be voiced...
Oh, and Mandarin influences like hi->xi are clear.
希望 in Hunanese hears exactly like Mandarin..

No. It's slightly more monosyllabic than Mandarin. You might be referring to other language...
http://www.jjps.matsu.edu.tw/Web/mother/first-1.htm
listen to the sound and see the characters... and think of how you would speak it in Mandarin. (in average, slightly longer)

In some Wu, there are 7-8 tones; while in some other there are less tones. The tones are mostly flat...
Hunanese and Sichuanese also hears quite flat but I can't be sure before some other non-speaker say that...
In my opinion, the thing that makes some Wu hears more Japanese than Hunanese or Sichuanese is the simple structure of the rimes and the higher speed....

Sometimes, the boundary between 2 languages is a mountain..

Fu Zhou Hua is not Min Nan Hua. Taiwan people speak Min Nan Hua not Fu Zhou Hua. OK?

No. It's not Min Nan Hua at all. If it were, then it would hear quite usual to me.
And pay attention to the title: 福州語首頁 / 福州語敎學第一冊.
It's quite strange if place like Lianjiang 連江 (a few km Northeast of Fuzhou, see http://www.speedway.com.cn/service/JX/pic9/ditu/fujian.jpg ) use Traditional Chinese.... but this actually depends on how the authors want to write... see http://spaces.msn.com/gnudoyng/?partqs=cat...mpart=Permalink , also in Traditional Chinese....

I don't think Cantonese diverged during Han as well. Rather, probably during Tang dynasty as it shares features of Middle Chinese as Hakka does.

Hakka and Gan was the same thing (proto-gan-hakka) before, with Central Plainers fleeing to Jiangxi at the fall of Northern Song. However, many fled further south to Northern Guangdong- which later became Hakka. While the proto-gan-hakka which stayed in Jiangxi later evolved to be Gan. Gan has recieved northern influence (though far less than mandarin and shanghainese) which can be seen with the merge of -m final into -n and dropping the final -p.

What makes you think Cantonese 'partly' derived from Chu? Evidence shows that it derived from Central Plain Speech of Middle Chinese.

Do you know the features and history of Min? I've read that Minan was the closest dialect to ancient Chinese but I was shocked to find that the Chaozhou dialect doesn't have the -n and -t finals...



Why would Cantonese have Chu words given that Cantonese branched off from the Central Plains Speech of Middle Chinese? Also, I read somewhere that 睇 was actually an ancient word for 'to see' whereas 'kan' is much more recent.
There are 2 types of Xiang (hunanese). Old Xiang, which is more traditional, sounds quite different from Mandarin. Whereas New Xiang is much more recent and is heard in northern Xiang speaking areas, bordering areas speaking Mandarin. Mandarin influence is very strong in New Xiang.



Wu is high speed? I heard the Suzhou dialect before and it was very very slow. The tour guide told me that she had trouble learning Cantonese because it's pace was much faster than Wu. Ive always thought that out of the Chinese dialects, Mandarin sounds most like Japanese and Cantonese sounds like Korean.

Min Nan are not closest to Ancient Chinese in term of *phonology* but rather the usage of words/characters.
No modern Chinese preserve all ancient Chinese initials and endings.
There are -n and -t in Min Nan (as in the "Taiwanese", may not be there in Chaozhou and/or Hainan), but they are from "literarized reading" which actually loaned the sound from Tang speech.

Who knows? There are also Cantonese words of obscure origin like 呢, 嗰, 啱 which is probably found in some minorities around there

見 is the most ancient word for "to see"...
睇 was part of ancient Chinese, but in Kangxi dictionary the description (taken from older dicitionaries) is that it's how Chu people use.
Compare: Min dialects (both North and South) use 儂 for "human" and somebody claim that it's in ancient Chinese... not wrong but it's actually from 吳 Wu people. (different from modern Wu). But in this case, 儂 is described as a sound variant of 人. The two words should have sounded quite similar in the ancient time.
Also, you can see that 睇 is very similar Vietnamese thấy (to see).

*Wu as in Ningbo and Shanghainese. They are unlike Suzhou that they don't have many tones and their tones are flat. There's no reason not to subdivide Wu. Mandarin does not sound Japanese and Cantonese does not sound Korean at all. That's because of the tonality. The Ningbo/Shanghai-nese hears more Japanese/Korean than Mandarin...

I never say it is not derived from Central Plain China (well, I will have to say partly also), but so is it derived partly from Chu language and also from the language from ancient Guangdong.

There are lots of features of Cantonese, vocab and grammar, that are clearly not from Central Plains Speech of middle-age China and that extends beyond 't'ai' 睇 and so on..

Please do a check before you post

where are your Hunanese friends from? Being Hunanese might not mean he/she speaks a Xiang dialect or a old Xiang dialect for the matter

Do you have some substantial evidence?

呢 is used in Mandarin-
those: nei xie 那些
that: nei ge
The origin of the word is not obscure. 呢 means 'that' and is acutally supposed to be as 那 but as pronounciation changed over time, the word for 'that' sounded more similar to 尼 rather than 那, thus the creation of 呢.

The same thing goes to 嗰. Pronounciation changed over time so that 嗰 was created to use for 個.

If hakka and Gan people migrated at the same time, both of them wouldn't have diverged from each other so much so that both can be considered different chinese languages now. The difference between the two is big enough for them to be considered separate chinese languages instead of dialects.

You do know the difference between a chinese language and chinese dialects, don't you ? There are only around 8 chinese languages but hundreds of chinese dialects.

How do you explain this ?

Is this the same language as Jin in northern china ?

If it is, then the linguists are wrong in saying that it is a mandarin dialect rather than a separate chinese language. I read somewhere that the Jin language region is surrounded by mountains which isolated itself from the onslaught of mandarin.

But I heard that the "Ping" language which is a dialect of cantonese was because Qin shih huang send troops down south and they stayed there. There is a 800 years difference between the Qin dynasty and Tang dynasty ? It would be sufficiently long time to form a separate language instead of dialects. Would we say that the Ping language is closest to the imperial language used during the Qin dynasty ?

What's your opinion on this ?

Fu zhou hua is a Min Bei language, different enough from Min Nan language and all other chinese languages.

I think the Min language evolved from a different branch (the Qi branch) than the 'imperial branch' like cantonese, hakka, gan, mandarin.

That is why the Min language lost/gained initial or finals differently from the imperial or central plain branch.

Same would be true for the Chu branch except that Wu and Xiang borders the mandarin region which made them more vulnerable to mandarin influences.

Whereas the Min language were isolated from the mandarin language by the non-mandarin provinces and isolated from the other southern languages by mountains.

We are talking about the Old Xiang branch here and not the new Xiang which could be considered a mandarin dialect if more mandarin influences were to be absorbed.

But 呢 means 'this' and not 'that'. It would be more acceptable if 呢 means 'that', then it is a slight deviation from 那.

嗰 means 'that' and has nothing to do with 個.

yes Jin of northern China.. it s not a language but more of a language group.. I think your explanation for Min can roughly be used on Jin as well.. It developed outside the frame of the standard language throughout the ages...because of its geography.... however the proximity of it to the power centres also meant they never got too far away..

Curiously, Jin dialects still preserves some ancient terms that are cognate with Minnan dialects of Fujian

I wonder if there is a dialect which uses 100% Mid-Chinese vocab and grammar...

Changsha might be heavily affected by Mandarin...

Some think that they branched more early than others...

Influences does not mean the language will become the dialect of the influencer....

Some classifies Jin as Mandarin, I don't know why.

such as?

Gan was viewed as closely related to Hakka dialects, because of the way Middle Chinese voiced initials have become voiceless aspirated initials, as in Hakka, and were hence called by the umbrella term "Hakka-Gan dialects". Hakka diverged from Gan in the Southern Song dynasty, 1000 years of separation would of resulted in the present day difference. Administrtaion and territorial borders restricted interaction between Hakka and Gan and both of them developed in different ways.
http://www.ling.sinica.edu.tw/publish/06--...%9E--Sagart.pdf

It is not surprising that Jin preserves some ancient terms as you can see from the chart, there were 3 main chinese languages spoken during the zhou dynasty (before the warring states era) - Qi and Jin and Chu.

The Min language most probably diverged during the warring state era from the Qin subbranch.

The Qin subbranch is the ancestor of today's mandarin and the imperial language of the northern plains.
This Qin subbranch (hakka, gan, mandarin, cantonese) seems to be most influenced by languages of the north with cantonese the least influenced as it diverged the earliest - either the Han or Tang dynasty.

Languages having a great influence from other language can be mistaken for the other language. This is the case with 'modern' xiang.

As for the Jin classification, tt depends on who the linguist is. But some linguist classify it as a separate language as rightfully so. Jin retains 'p','k','t' endings which is absent in most (all ?) mandarin dialects.

Another language of dispute is Ping.
This Ping language could have been the central plains language (Qin branch) diverged during the Qin or early han dynasty. Earlier than cantonese. If there is someone here who can confirm that QinShihHuang sent troops to Gwangxi region and the troops stayed there.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_language

The map on the right depicts the subdivisions ("languages" or "dialect groups") within Chinese. The traditionally recognized seven main groups, in order of population size are:

Mandarin 北方话/北方話 or 官話/官话, (c. 800 million),
Not to be confused with Standard Mandarin 普通話/普通话 or 國語/国语, the standardized spoken variant of Chinese based on the dialect of Beijing, which is just one member of the Mandarin dialect group
Wu 吳/吴 , which includes Shanghainese, (c. 90 million),
Cantonese 粵/粤, (c. 80 million),
Min 閩/闽, which includes Taiwanese, (c. 50 million),
Xiang 湘, (c. 35 million),
Hakka 客家 or 客, (c. 35 million),
Gan 贛/赣, (c. 20 million)

Chinese linguists have recently distinguished 3 more groups from the traditional seven:

Jin 晉/晋 from Mandarin
Hui 徽 from Wu
Ping 平話/平话 partly from Cantonese

Plausible explanation but the Hakka in gwangdong province and the hakka in Fujien province were also separated by territorial and administrative barriers (although they were in neighboring provinces). Why didn't they developed as separate languages instead of dialects ?

So what is your opinion ? Did the cantonese diverged during the han or tang dynasty and then had later LOCAL influences ?

A probable explanation is that Pro-Gan-Hakka assimilated into Jiangxi's population whereas they remained isolated and separated to the locals in Guangdong and in Fujian. The locals didn't welcome the Hakka and were protective of their own more fertile lands, and the newcomers were pushed to the outer fringes of fertile plains, or settled in more mountainous regions to eke out a living. Conflicts arose such as the Punti-Hakka Clan Wars and the Hakka remained separated to locals in Guangdong and Fujian. This can be seen with the 围龙屋,四角楼 and 土樓 dwellings, designed to defend the residents and protect them from the locals. The separation from the locals allowed the Hakkas to maintain their identity and thus their language. This is probably why Hakka in Guangdong and Hakka in Fujian developed as different dialects instead of languages.

Hi, Jin does not contain -p -t -k endings. Its rendering of 'ru' sheng is only the glottal stop, (in many areas so weak that it is assumed to have disappeared).



Aspiration and devoicing of middle Chinese voiced initials is not a feature unique to either Hakka or Gan. It exists in the Taizhou dialect of Jiangsu as well (where Zheng Banqiao came from) and the westernmost part of Henan (near the boundary with Shaanxi). Having such a feature alone is not strong proof for language kinship

I gave a site underneath my post that further expains the origins and relationship between Hakka and Gan. Pronounciation and usage of terms are similar between Hakka and Gan.
-> http://www.ling.sinica.edu.tw/publish/06--...%9E--Sagart.pdf

I'm sorry i dont.... Would you tell me please?

Does anyone know the Shandong dialect?

I read somewhere that Shandong dialect preserves initials better than other forms of Mandarin, it's not as palatalised. Instead of the palatalised 'ji' for machine, it's 'ki' in Shandong Mandarin.

Hakka- Shan Dong Dialect- Mandarin- English
橋 Kiu- Kiu- Qiu- Ball
方向 Fong Hiang- Fang Hiang - Fang Xiang - Direction
人 Ngin - Yin - Ren -People
我 Ngai - An - Wo -I
自家人Zu ga ngin - Zi jia yin - Zi ji ren -Our people
飛机 Fui gi - Fei gi - Fei Ji -Airplane

Are you Cantonese?

haha yes im from HK but studyn overseas....how did u kno???
r u cantonese?

I'm American!

How many Chinese dialects do you know?

As in White American?
I don't know alot .... Cantonese, Mandarin (a bit of Hakka n a bit of Shanghainese)
I'm very interested in learnin Hakka though.
What about u?

No.I'm asian!

O... haha it's misleading when you use the term 'American'
are you chinese?

Yeah.

if you look carefully, the author maintains a rather neutral attitude towards using devoicing aspiration as a common feature for grouping Hakka and Gan into one group.

I have never doubted the close relations between Hakka and Gan. In many parts of Jiangxi it is hard to classify whether the dialect is Gan or Hakka, the dialects of 2 groups being mutually intelligible to a certain extent..

Hakka however also shared a number features with Yue which are not found in Gan by and large..I find the author's position , grouping based on shared innovations, to be debatable at best..

which part of Shandong are you referring to? If the southern part, yes.

I ve heard some Shandong people say like this before, i.e. unpalatalised Ki- ,K'i-, however I must add that this feature is not representative of Shandong dialect as a whole. The majority, I heard (speaking their dialects of course) use palatalised j- q-

Something to add: I dun think Hakka 'ngai' and northern Chinese 'an' has quite the same origins...

It's because Yue and Hakka have the same origins - Zhongyuan. Gan has recieved more northern influence than Hakka and Yue which is why its probably not found in Gan
OR
The features are unique to Guangdong


ic ic. I dun think 'ngai' and 'an' has same origins either.... It's just a comparison between standard mandarin, hakka and shandong mandarin.

Do you know if Jin retains the unpalatised intials?

I must admit I have only heard Jin dialects twice in my life, once hearing some aqquaintance talk to his family on phone, and in Anyang (dialect is classified as Jin).... could not understand any of them..

but from information on line, at least some of them remained unpalatalised.

( 隰州dialect as example)

去 k'e?/ke?

出嫁 ts'ue?kei

O thanks. Do you know when palatalisation of initials began? '?' is the glottal stop rite?

Languages mean the sounds are different enough to be around 90% unintelligible if you were to hear them for the first time. Dialects mean they are about 90% intelligible if you were to hear them for the first time.
Related languages would mean they share a lot of common grammar and vocabulary.

It is similar to english and german who are considered related but different languages.

Dialects would mean American english versus Australian English which have slight variations in sound.

Read

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jin_(linguistics)

I thought a glottal stop means 'p','k','t' endings like some of the southern chinese languages.

The link is broken.

[c] and [c'] phonemes are similar to j- and q-, but a little bit different. Many parts in Shandong have 2 kinds of distinction of the Beijing jqx category... So if your friend say taht there is a little difference between 精 and 經, that this is it.

Hakka "ngai" or "nguoi" seems closest to Fuzhouhua 我 "nguai". "An" is 俺, I don't know from where it began..
Oh, I don't know how Gan pronounce it. Is it more similar to Hakka?

No. Glottal means that the "place of articulation" is on the glottis. Stop is the "manner of articulation".
p, for example, is "bilabial stop".

O.... I thought dialets were if they had a common ancestry. I was thinking that all "Han" speeches were dialects(eg. Cantonese and Mandarin) and variations of them were subdialects(eg. Zhongshan Cantonese and Shandong Mandarin). How did you find this?

If thats the case then does it mean that Vietnamese is as distanced to Cantonese as Mandarin to Cantonese (since both are around 90% unintelligible to Cantonese)? There would be many languages in China then.....