How ridiculous exactly is calling Cantonese a dialect of Chinese? (life, places)

[Trimac20]

Originally Posted by Neutre

The language situation in China can be very difficult to grasp because there's practically no other language in the world that has had a common writing system going back into more than a thousand years.
Sure there are other old languages like Latin and Sanskrit whose history can also be traced back that long, but in their cases the emergence of new languages with separate identities is inevitable due to the nature of the writing system (alphabet, abugida, abjad, etc.).
In Chinese it is possible for folks to communicate using the common written language in spite of the development of over a thousand years rendering the spoken language completely unintelligible to each other.
That is an unprecedented phenomenon practically inexistant anywhere else as far as I can tell.
There is a reason why Chinese see themselves as having one language, yet some of us with our arrogance, thinking that we know better as outsiders, try to tell them that their understanding about THEMSELVES is completely wrong.

Call it whatever you want, I'll stick to respecting the native speakers who have best understanding of their own culture and history, having their own reasons for considering their native tongue a Chinese dialect.

Here's a newsflash. Until very recently most people in China were illiterate. As were most common folk around the world. That's right, go back to Qing Dynasty China, only the educated folk, in general, could read, write.etc. All those fancy Chinese characters would've been JUST AS UNINTELLIGIBLE to the average Chinese peasant, whether he be from Gansu or Fujian province, as they are to you and I today. Their spoken languages were, as the article above says, at LEAST as different as Italian and German. The written Chinese language was mostly used in the Mandarin court in Beijing. Rural villages in the Southeast of China would be totally unfamiliar with it. The language they spoke, just as the She or Miao languages, developed on their own as a spoken tongue. The imposition of Chinese characters on the Yue language was just as artificial as it's imposition on the Vietnamese language.

[Neutre]

Originally Posted by Trimac20

Here's a newsflash. Until very recently most people in China were illiterate. As were most common folk around the world. That's right, go back to Qing Dynasty China, only the educated folk, in general, could read, write.etc. All those fancy Chinese characters would've been JUST AS UNINTELLIGIBLE to the average Chinese peasant, whether he be from Gansu or Fujian province, as they are to you and I today. Their spoken languages were, as the article above says, at LEAST as different as Italian and German. The written Chinese language was mostly used in the Mandarin court in Beijing. Rural villages in the Southeast of China would be totally unfamiliar with it. The language they spoke, just as the She or Miao languages, developed on their own as a spoken tongue. The imposition of Chinese characters on the Yue language was just as artificial as it's imposition on the Vietnamese language.

Wow. Bravo. You are indeed an expert who knows better than the native speakers and native Chinese academics.
Good luck on teaching them that they don't speak a Chinese dialect. After all they got it all wrong about themselves and their own native tongue.
Maybe you can practice by telling Sachsen that they don't speak a German dialect. After all it's pretty unintelligible to most German speakers.

Originally Posted by gen2010

If you have a better understanding of Chinese culture, you would know that there are more than 1000 different languages according to your definition.

Originally Posted by iamnancy07

As a Chinese, there are many other dialects in China and Cantonese is just one of them. I think Cantonese is just a very popular dialect mostly because Guangdong province is one of the first few well developed regions in early 80s.

Originally Posted by Neutre

try to understand the perspective of the very people who speak the dialects/languages we're talking about.
Ask a native Cantonese speaker if they'd call it a dialect of Chinese or not.

AFAIK, most of the 1300000000 Han Chinese are aware that their dialects/languages are sometimes mutually unintelligible, yet if they see them as dialects of one language, who are we to tell them what to call their dialect/language?


Btw, if you think a language is supposed to sound similar, just listen to a couple of accents of English.. You seem to be an expert in them and should know how diverse they sound.

Originally Posted by Neutre

There are enough examples of dialects of a language that are not mutually intelligible with others, just as there are separate languages with high mutual intelligibility.
Examples
for the former: German varieties spoken in Switzerland, those in southern Germany and the ones spoken in northern Germany
for the latter: Montenegrin, Serbian, and Bosnian.

But I guess you're an expert who knows better than me or any native speakers for that matter.

[Trimac20]

^ Well they can redefine the definition of a 'dialect' but that would render it meaningless, wouldn't it? Billions of people around the world believe falsehoods that make them feel good. I think you'll find that prior to the modern era most Chinese people had no such concept, and a great many Chinese people assert that they speak separate LANGUAGES not dialects.

[Neutre]

Originally Posted by Trimac20

^ Well they can redefine the definition of a 'dialect' but that would render it meaningless, wouldn't it? Billions of people around the world believe falsehoods that make them feel good. I think you'll find that prior to the modern era most Chinese people had no such concept, and a great many Chinese people assert that they speak separate LANGUAGES not dialects.

Right..

Guess the 1.3 billion Han Chinese folks are fools for clinging to what they know about their very own culture and history and for calling Cantonese a Chinese dialect cause it's just another dumb lie that native Chinese speakers believe to make them feel good.

But then again, Chinese folks are not unfamiliar with that kind of arrogant and patronizing attitude from foreigners who insist that they know better, that the way Chinese deal with themselves -having their own reasons and inside perspective based on their own cultural and historical backdrop- is stupid and that they maintain it just to make them feel good.

Poor ignorant Chinese people. They really could use some listening to foreign experts like you more.

Originally Posted by gen2010

If you have a better understanding of Chinese culture, you would know that there are more than 1000 different languages according to your definition.

Originally Posted by iamnancy07

As a Chinese, there are many other dialects in China and Cantonese is just one of them. I think Cantonese is just a very popular dialect mostly because Guangdong province is one of the first few well developed regions in early 80s.

Originally Posted by Neutre

try to understand the perspective of the very people who speak the dialects/languages we're talking about.
Ask a native Cantonese speaker if they'd call it a dialect of Chinese or not.

AFAIK, most of the 1300000000 Han Chinese are aware that their dialects/languages are sometimes mutually unintelligible, yet if they see them as dialects of one language, who are we to tell them what to call their dialect/language?

Originally Posted by Neutre

There is a reason why Chinese see themselves as having one language, yet some of us with our arrogance, thinking that we know better as outsiders, try to tell them that their understanding about THEMSELVES is completely wrong.

Originally Posted by Neutre

There are enough examples of dialects of a language that are not mutually intelligible with others, just as there are separate languages with high mutual intelligibility.
Examples
for the former: German varieties spoken in Switzerland, those in southern Germany and the ones spoken in northern Germany
for the latter: Montenegrin, Serbian, and Bosnian.

But I guess you're an expert who knows better than me or any native speakers for that matter.

[Trimac20]

^ Yes as if repeatedly quoting those comments proves anything. We'll just agree to disagree.

[Neutre]

Originally Posted by Trimac20

^ Yes as if repeatedly quoting those comments proves anything. We'll just agree to disagree.

I certainly am not disagreeing with the tens of millions of native speakers. Just as I respect Swiss Germans or Austrians who say that they speak German dialects or Dutch who say that they speak an independent language despite it originally being a dialect of German, just to name a few of the numerous examples in this world.

All of them have their reasons why they'd call their mother tongue a dialect or a language, and I as a foreigner would at least try to understand them with their own history and culture that results in their perspective instead of arrogantly and patronizingly telling them they're plain wrong.
Amazing how we overestimate ourselves above the natives somehow.

[Trimac20]

Originally Posted by Neutre

I certainly am not disagreeing with the tens of millions of native speakers. Just as I respect Swiss Germans or Austrians who say that they speak German dialects or Dutch who say that they speak an independent language despite it originally being a dialect of German, just to name a few of the numerous examples in this world.

All of them have their reasons why they'd call their mother tongue a dialect or a language, and I as a foreigner would at least try to understand them with their own history and culture that results in their perspective instead of arrogantly and patronizingly telling them they're plain wrong.
Amazing how we overestimate ourselves above the natives somehow.

If some primitive tribe believes they are all the ancestors of a magical snake, do you expect academics to accept their story as scientific truth just 'out of respect' for their beliefs?

[Jonah K]

Hmm, I guess no here is familiar enough with Chinese to discuss fangyan (方言) or "regional speech" and why "topolect" might be a better English translation for it than "dialect."

[jtur88]

Originally Posted by gen2010

If you have a better understanding of Chinese culture, you would know that there are more than 1000 different languages according to your definition. Cantonese is not even the second most spoken dialect in china. WU dialect in shanghai and surrounding areas is used by more people than Cantonese.

I didn't even mention Chinese in the post you quoted, so I don't know how you can gauge my understanding of Chinese culture from it. Cantonese is being used in the previous posts to contrast with Mandarin because it is the main language of the southern industrial and commercial zones of China (Canton and Hong Kong), and is the language of nearly all the Chinese who have immigrated to North America, and its existence is therefore familiar to Americans as an illustrative reference point.

[Clodius et Claudius.]

Originally Posted by Neutre

In Chinese it is possible for folks to communicate using the common written language in spite of the development of over a thousand years rendering the spoken language completely unintelligible to each other.
That is an unprecedented phenomenon practically inexistant anywhere else as far as I can tell.

This is true in that Standard written Chinese, though based on Mandarin grammar, is compatible with Cantonese. However, Cantonese has many specialized characters/diction/grammatical structures that Mandarin speakers would NOT understand.

Still, if "A language is a dialect with an army and a navy," then Cantonese is a dialect, as it is the official language of only Hong Kong and Macau, two dependencies of China.