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Since one of the primary factors for 'ethnic minority' status in China is language, I'm curious as to why these two groups were not considered 'ethnic minorities' in China. Of course, they were part of the various dynasties since Qing rule, so were considered subjects of the Emperor at the time, and of course, many were descendants of invaders from the north, but that was the case with other ethnic minority groups throughout China. Genetically, these ethnic groups are similar to the Han Chinese who live close to them.
I just find it interesting how they're also often considered 'dialects' instead of languages, which seems more of a political rather than linguistic thing as Cantonese is further from Mandarin as German is from English.
Since one of the primary factors for 'ethnic minority' status in China is language, I'm curious as to why these two groups were not considered 'ethnic minorities' in China. Of course, they were part of the various dynasties since Qing rule, so were considered subjects of the Emperor at the time, and of course, many were descendants of invaders from the north, but that was the case with other ethnic minority groups throughout China. Genetically, these ethnic groups are similar to the Han Chinese who live close to them.
I just find it interesting how they're also often considered 'dialects' instead of languages, which seems more of a political rather than linguistic thing as Cantonese is further from Mandarin as German is from English.
Even if they speak different "languages", the languages are still Sinitic languages. Tibetan, Korean, Uyghur etc. are NOT Sinitic languages.
People of those places share the same history of literature too. They read the same books and write in the same language.
What is the most important is, those people consider themselves Chinese.
And no, Cantonese is not further from Mandarin than English from German. A Mandarin speaker will be able to understand Cantonese if he lives in Guangdong/Hong Kong for a few months. You cannot say that for English speakers living in Germany. It is more like Portuguese vs Spanish if you have to compare it that way.
I read somewhere that Cantonese and Mandarin had less similarity/intelligibility than English and German. Some ethnic groups like the Bai and She also speak Sinitic languages.
I read somewhere that Cantonese and Mandarin had less similarity/intelligibility than English and German. Some ethnic groups like the Bai and She also speak Sinitic languages.
Bai language is not Sinitic, neither is She. However, nowadays many ethnic minorities in China speak Chinese. It is just like most native Americans speak English now.
I speak Mandarin and some Cantonese. I also learned some German. I can tell you Mandarin and Cantonese are much closer.
Example:
English: I love you.
German: Ich liebe dich.
Mandarin: Wo ai ni.
Cantonese: Ngo oi nei.
English: Please speak English.
German: Bitte sprechen Sie Englisch.
Mandarin: Qing jiang yingyu.
Cantonese: Tsing gong yingyu.
Bai language is not Sinitic, neither is She. However, nowadays many ethnic minorities in China speak Chinese. It is just like most native Americans speak English now.
I speak Mandarin and some Cantonese. I also learned some German. I can tell you Mandarin and Cantonese are much closer.
Example:
English: I love you.
German: Ich liebe dich.
Mandarin: Wo ai ni.
Cantonese: Ngo oi nei.
English: Please speak English.
German: Bitte sprechen Sie Englisch.
Mandarin: Qing jiang yingyu.
Cantonese: Tsing gong yingyu.
Going by your examples they seem similarly different.
According to wikipedia Bai is most likely a Sinitic language.
Even if they speak different "languages", the languages are still Sinitic languages. Tibetan, Korean, Uyghur etc. are NOT Sinitic languages.
People of those places share the same history of literature too. They read the same books and write in the same language.
What is the most important is, those people consider themselves Chinese.
And no, Cantonese is not further from Mandarin than English from German. A Mandarin speaker will be able to understand Cantonese if he lives in Guangdong/Hong Kong for a few months. You cannot say that for English speakers living in Germany. It is more like Portuguese vs Spanish if you have to compare it that way.
Chinese has a shared written form, that's true, but in terms of speaking, I wouldn't say that it's actually easier to acquire Shanghainese or Taiwanese as a spoken language for a Mandarin-speaker (and I do speak Mandarin) than it is for an English-speaker to acquire German or Dutch. This can quickly change depending on the generations though.
I know that Shanghainese and Taiwanese as spoken by older generations is substantially different from those of the younger generations as a lot of idiomatic expressions, word choices, and even inflections and pronunciations and grammatical structuring have creolized towards Mandarin Chinese to a substantial amount in younger generations to a pretty large extent and this is a continuing trend. I grew up overseas with family that spoke Taiwanese and some Hakka that is a little bit more "pure" compared to what people my age in Taiwan speak, if they can speak it at all, and there's a really noticeable difference. My guess is Cantonese followed a similar path. So while it's arguable, though not guaranteed, your statement isn't true right now, it is steadily becoming more and more true.
Using wikipedia out of laziness, you will have a phrase in Taiwanese like "我家己人有淡薄無爽快" be equivalent "我有一點不舒服" in Mandarin. However, younger generations will often do some variant of the latter phrase directly transliterated into Taiwanese and with an easing of the different tonal differences, a flattening of sorts, when saying the same thing rather than what would have usually been said in Taiwanese among those who grew up in a mostly Taiwanese community. There's been some effort in Taiwan, and Hong Kong for Cantonese, to try to stem or reverse the process, but the fact is most people want their kids to speak fluent Mandarin for practical purposes and most media, at least high budget and widely broadcasted media, is in Mandarin so the younger generations education consists mostly of fairly standard Mandarin. Unfortunately, I sound like some kind of hillbilly Taiwanese hick mixed with an American accent when I speak Taiwanese to people around my age or younger in Taiwan when I speak Taiwanese there--so I revert to Mandarin as it's easier for them to understand. It's even worse when I use the many common idiomatic expressions I learned in which case misunderstanding or just complete non-comprehension sometimes happens.
It's funny because sometimes I'll say things which make people laugh at the funny American who can't speak Taiwanese and is getting things all wrong, and later in older, fluent Taiwanese-speakers (such as their parents), the same people will be berated for speaking worse Taiwanese than an American.
Last edited by OyCrumbler; 08-14-2013 at 10:07 PM..
Going by your examples they seem similarly different.
According to wikipedia Bai is most likely a Sinitic language.
Some scholars suggest Bai is a Sinitic language but it is not widely accepted.
Even if it is true, Bai and other Chinese languages diverged about 5000 years ago. Mandarin and Cantonese diverged about 1000 years ago and there has always been language contact between the two.
I have never lived in any Cantonese-speaking place but I understand Cantonese TV news without formal training. I just kept watching for a while and then got it.
You think Americans can understand German that way?
(Though I am aware that TV news is easier than informal conversations for a Mandarin speaker.)
Chinese has a shared written form, that's true, but in terms of speaking, I wouldn't say that it's actually easier to acquire Shanghainese or Taiwanese as a spoken language for a Mandarin-speaker (and I do speak Mandarin) than it is for an English-speaker to acquire German or Dutch. This can quickly change depending on the generations though.
I know that Shanghainese and Taiwanese as spoken by older generations is substantially different from those of the younger generations as a lot of idiomatic expressions, word choices, and even inflections and pronunciations and grammatical structuring have creolized towards Mandarin Chinese to a substantial amount in younger generations to a pretty large extent and this is a continuing trend. I grew up overseas with family that spoke Taiwanese and some Hakka that is a little bit more "pure" compared to what people my age in Taiwan speak, if they can speak it at all, and there's a really noticeable difference. My guess is Cantonese followed a similar path. So while it's arguable, though not guaranteed, your statement isn't true right now, it is steadily becoming more and more true.
Using wikipedia out of laziness, you will have a phrase in Taiwanese like "我家己人有淡薄無爽快" be equivalent "我有一點不舒服" in Mandarin. However, younger generations will often do some variant of the latter phrase directly transliterated into Taiwanese and with an easing of the different tonal differences, a flattening of sorts, when saying the same thing rather than what would have usually been said in Taiwanese among those who grew up in a mostly Taiwanese community. There's been some effort in Taiwan, and Hong Kong for Cantonese, to try to stem or reverse the process, but the fact is most people want their kids to speak fluent Mandarin for practical purposes and most media, at least high budget and widely broadcasted media, is in Mandarin so the younger generations education consists mostly of fairly standard Mandarin. Unfortunately, I sound like some kind of hillbilly Taiwanese hick mixed with an American accent when I speak Taiwanese to people around my age or younger in Taiwan when I speak Taiwanese there--so I revert to Mandarin as it's easier for them to understand. It's even worse when I use the many common idiomatic expressions I learned in which case misunderstanding or just complete non-comprehension sometimes happens.
I agree. However, do not forget there are two registers in every Chinese dialect: the formal language and the colloquial language. Even farmers with no education are aware of this difference and can use the formal language in some situations (e.g. when talking to outsiders). It has always been like that and you cannot ignore it just because English does not have this phenomenon.
Cantonese people use 佢 as the third person singular pronoun; however, all of them understand 他 as well, and can use it when needed. You cannot find any Cantonese people without this knowledge. This is just a fact.
In Southern Min （闽南语）, a Chinese character can have a few pronunciations depending on the register. It has always been like that and you cannot just "blame the young generation". For example 人 can be "lang" or "ling" depending on the context. Nowadays, Southern Min just started to borrow more things from Mandarin.
In Beijing dialect, 色 can be pronounced as "shai" in colloquial language, but it is "se" in formal language. They will not say "shai" when they talk to someone from Shanghai, for example.
I agree. However, do not forget there are two registers in every Chinese dialect: the formal language and the colloquial language. Even farmers with no education are aware of this difference and can use the formal language in some situations (e.g. when talking to outsiders). It has always been like that and you cannot ignore it just because English does not have this phenomenon.
Cantonese people use 佢 as the third person singular pronoun; however, all of them understand 他 as well, and can use it when needed. You cannot find any Cantonese people without this knowledge. This is just a fact.
In Southern Min （闽南语）, a Chinese character can have a few pronunciations depending on the register. It has always been like that and you cannot just "blame the young generation". For example 人 can be "lang" or "ling" depending on the context. Nowadays, Southern Min just started to borrow more things from Mandarin.
Right, the registers are important and they exist because there is what's called a prestige dialect that basically takes after Mandarin. There will be no real, strong movement to codify the colloquial language into the standard dialect because there's no need to do so. Mass media and high literacy rates arrived pretty suddenly for China and so there's going to be little separation of it and there had been a strong government push to never bring them into an official context. Colloquial Mandarin used to be far different from formal Mandarin, but with Mandarin becoming the official language, colloquial Mandarin was able to pervade formal register. This is extremely unlikely to happen for the other Chinese languages. And it definitely has not always been like that to that in terms of scope and extent. There was a strong social register in Taiwanese, but that's now just a course of academic study rather than something that gave cause to alter Taiwanese without the influence of Mandarin. Even written documents, among the educated and literate, had odds and ends even if they were supposed to be in a standardized written language when you look at letters written among each other (you can probably dig these up among materials at Academia Sinica and it can be pretty interesting).
The preference for what word is now chosen in any dialect is now heavily influenced by Mandarin and it becomes progressively more so with each generation.
Just out of curiosity, does the first phrase I listed for Taiwanese seem incredibly clunky to you? If someone said that to you without eliding into Mandarin-influenced intonation, my guess is that it'd be absolutely bewildering for a while. And this would happen in phrase after phrase after phrase in talking with the educated who put it in polite company terms or with betel nut spitting truckers.
In addition, among all Chinese dialects/languages, Min (闽) is the most different from Mandarin. So it may not be a good example.
For most Chinese people, Cantonese is much easier to learn than Taiwanese or other Min dialects.
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