Hi All,

Are there any differences between the two groups?

In my opinion, minorities are part of dialect parts but facing additional problems: inequality, besides the common problem of dialect group marginalisation.

Any comments are welcomed.

Thanks in advance.
ljs

There are definitely dialectal minorities, and other more like the poor and the rich...but here minorities mean ethnical minorites by default.

Is there a difference between the two? When I refer to Tibetan, they have their own dialect and a different way of life from the norm. However, when referring to major/prominent dialect groups, e.g. hokkien and cantonese, they do have different dialects and different way of life, except that they are the norm, given that they are the majority.

If Tibetan is the majority of the population and hokkiens, the minority of the population, would Hokkien be both a dialectal and ethical minority?

Thanks for the reply.
ljs

Tibetans genes separated from Han chinese genes many thousand years ago (>5000 years ?) whereas cantonese/hokkien genes are still Han chinese.

Well, I think dialect group does not correspond 100% to minorities, as different ethnic groups may share the same dialect group (e.g. most Hui people speak Mandarin).
Also within the same ethnic group, there are different dialects which are often unintelligible. I am not sure what you are referring to as a "dialect group", but if by a group it means those ones that are similar enough to enable communication, then we can have "Cantonese dialects" and "Mandarin dialects" which are different groups.