[AGL] Re: "There is no Chinese language"?

[Wayne Johnson]

Bill.

Most excellent reposte.  At least it maps pretty well over what small 
amounts of Chinese linguistic history gathered up over the decades.  Not 
that linguistic diversity should be surprising, considering the length of 
time people have lived there and, in some parts of China, an incredibly 
"complicated" terrain.  As I recall, Dr. Epstein @ UT said that in parts of 
Mexico and Central America, completely different languages existed in local 
areas separated by mountains.  As completely different as, say, Japanese is 
from German!  From what I recall, China has similar issues, hence hundreds 
of different languages.

The phrase Lingua Franca began as French was the "trading language" for 
sailors and merchants for a millenia or so.  Not their native tongue, of 
course, but a means to do business and learn things.  Mandarin undoubtedly 
serves that same purpse, as does English in many parts of the world, 
especially the high-tech world.

Thanks again.

wayneJ
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Bill Irwin" <billi at aloha.net>
To: "survivors' reminiscences about Austin Ghetto Daze in the 60s" 
<austin-ghetto-list at pairlist.net>
Sent: Saturday, May 06, 2006 11:22 PM
Subject: Re: [AGL] Re: "There is no Chinese language"?


> Jon:
> Where did you get the article?  It's a font of misinformation.  There are 
> a
> lot of dialects spoken in China, it must run into the hundreds.  Not only
> are there a lot of different dialects spoken they are also all mixed up
> geographically.  One town could be speaking one language and the 
> neighboring
> town another language and the next town down the road could be speaking an
> entirely different language.  This situation came about because over the
> centuries population groups have been moved from one place to another.  So
> in Yunnan, probably the most diverse province in terms of language, you 
> can
> find one village speaking Tibetan, the next village speaking Mandarin, the
> next speaking Cantonese, and the next village speaking a tribal minority
> language, and so on.  I recently saw a story in a major American paper 
> that
> claimed that only 50% of the Chinese speak Mandarin.    I think the story 
> is
> in error and it meant to say that about 50% of the Chinese use Mandarin as
> their native language.  Putonghua translated just means "the common
> language".  Most people in China can speak Mandarin or at least understand
> it enough to get by.  Even though there are many languages spoken the
> characters remain the same so most people can read the same book and
> understand it.  Many Chinese TV programs are subtitled with Chinese
> characters as are Chinese movies.  Chinese money has the denomination
> printed in 5 different writing systems, I have never been able to figure 
> out
> what the 5 are and any Chinese person I have asked about this don't know
> either.  Throughout China there is a system of hand signs for the numbers 
> so
> that anybody can bargain in the market using hand signs, if you travel to
> China it would be helpful to know this sign language.  It is also 
> incorrect
> to say that Mandarin is based on the Beijing dialect.  That is like saying
> that English is based on the southern drawl dialect.  Beijing does have a
> distinct accent as do other parts of China.  There is also a standard
> Mandarin accent much like there is a standard American pronunciation. 
> Today
> Mandarin is the standard language taut in schools except in minority areas
> where the instruction may be done in the minority language (China has a 
> lot
> of laws and rules to preserve minority cultures).  Another error in the
> article you cited is the Han people (Chinese) are much less than 92% of 
> the
> population.  Chinese characters are called han zi - "Chinese characters".
> My wife can speak 3 Chinese languages - Mandarin, Cantonese, and Hainan
> dialect (Hainan, an island of the south coast of China, her father's 
> family
> came from there) but she can't translate any Chinese dialect to English.
> Ewie
>
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "Jon Ford" <jonmfordster at hotmail.com>
> To: <austin-ghetto-list at pairlist.net>
> Sent: Saturday, May 06, 2006 7:52 AM
> Subject: [AGL] Re: "There is no Chinese language"?
>
>
>> Harry claims there is no Chinese language per se. Here's some more 
>> precise
>> information about the two major types and dialects of Chinese. Basically,
>> everybody in China learns Mandarin, the official national language, and
>> everyone uses the same basic writing system with characters. So they can
>> communicate across regional borders (sort of):
>> Jon
>>
>> Chinese Dialects
>> >>From Jun Shan,
>> Your Guide to China Online.
>>
>> There are many Chinese dialects in China. It is hard to guess how many
>> dialects exist, but they can be roughly classified into one of the seven
>> large groups, i.e., Putonghua (Mandarin), Gan, Kejia (Hakka), Min, Wu,
> Xiang
>> and Yue (Cantonese). Each language group contains a large number of
>> dialects. These are the Chinese languages spoken mostly by the Han 
>> people,
>> which represents about 92 percent of the total population. We will not 
>> get
>> into the non-Chinese languages spoken by the minorities here, such as
>> Tibetan, Mongolian and Miao.
>>
>> The dialects from the seven groups are quite different. For example, a
>> Mandarin speaker in northern China usually understands little Cantonese,
> but
>> a non-Mandarin speaker usually can speak some Mandarin with a strong
> accent.
>>
>>
>> This is largely because Mandarin has been the official national language
>> since 1913. Mandarin or Putonghua is mainly based on the Beijing dialect.
>> Despite the large differences among Chinese dialects, there is one thing
> in
>> common for them -- they all share the same writing system based on 
>> Chinese
>> characters.
>>
>> A distinguishing feature of the Chinese languages is tonal. Mandarin has
>> four tones and Cantonese has more than four tones.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>
>
>