Really? Can you cite any examples? I’m genuinely curious.
Can a Mandarin (and only Mandarin) speaker fully understand Taiwanese as it might be transcribed using Chinese characters? If not, you’re doing a great job of proving Bu En Lai’s point.
If I were to learn that “fact”, I’d have to forget the fifteen years I’ve spent learning the Chinese language.
It sounds as if you’re writing about the old “wenyanwen”, Classical Chinese. And Classical Chinese is the language that characters were designed for, not “baihua”, the common vernacular. In wenyanwen, each character does indeed carry meaning, but in baihua usually two or three characters stand for a concept. I’ve come to believe that characters are maladapted to representing vernacular speech, because that’s not the use for which characters were designed.
The only reason all the different Chinese vernaculars continue to use this suboptimal writing system is to substantiate the myth that they’re all really the same language. And that’s a big part of the Chinese cultural myth that I think inhibits Taiwanese (and other regions’) nationalism. Take away the myth of a shared language, and you do a lot of damage to the myth of a unified China.
As the Taiwanese realize that they have an ordinary language, distinct from Chinese, this might help further their consciousness as being an ordinary nation-state, distinct from the remains of the Great Qing Empire.
I hope you don’t mind my replying when you directed remarks to Juba.
1- Calling Standard Written Chinese (SWC) modern Mandarin is somewhat mistaken, although the two are very closely related. There are differences and these can be significant, particularly when discussing writing other dialects since where SWC differs from Mandarin it usually does so in a way more inline with things conserved in other dialects.
2- When you write in SWC you aren’t writing Cantonese, Mandarin, Hokkien, or any dialect. So there is no inaccuracy there. If you mean writing using modern vernacular form of those dialects, then for most ideas you are trying to express it will be completely accurate, only where there are new additions to the language do you have a problem.
100 to 200 years ago there was no putonghua. There was guanhua, which all the officials learned to speak to some extent in order to communicate with one another. This is the precursor of Mandarin. However, all these officials could write to each other and be understood using Classical Chinese. They weren’t thinking in Mandarin, they were thinking in their local dialect (including the pronunciation of the characters) and writing in the form of Classical Chinese.
Classical Chinese tied all the dialects/languages together the same way Standard Written Chinese ties them together today. There was one written form.
I guess your argument is simply to declare that there is no such thing as “Chinese”, only “Literary Modern Mandarin” which does not serve non-Mandarin Chinese languages equally.
I guess my question to you, or anyone else who questions the Chinese-ness of these other dialects is whether or not you speak those languages (as a second language is fine). I speak a fair amount of Cantonese and everything I know about it tells me that Cantonese links very strongly to SWC and even Classical Chinese.
Now, every writing system needs to evolve to keep up with changes in oral language, so with HK having already codified dialect specific characters to fill in the gaps left by evolution, I think that’s strong support for Hanzi to continue to be the writing script for even vernacular Chinese.
You can argue that Cantonese should drop Hanzi and write their own way, but I would strongly disagree— as I bet most Chinese do.
What some people are saying is a myth of Chinese cultural unity is no myth at all. It’s reality, and the writing system is a reflection of that. It existed before the PRC in the form of Classical Chinese, it continued afterwards in a form closer to modern speech.
[quote=“Bu Lai En”]Saying ‘Taiwanese is Chinese’ is like saying ‘Spanish is Latin’.
But Taiwanese is a Chinese language, just like Spanish is a Latin language.[/quote]
With the exception of the written language, which is the crux of the argument.
But not a strong connection. [/quote]
I strongly disagree here. I think the connection is quite powerful. Again, I believe that disagreement is at the root of this discussion.
But not all Hokkien words can be written with characters, and there’s not standard for this. Hokkien can also be written using the Latin alphabet. Does this make it Latin?[/quote]
The lack of a standard doesn’t mean it isn’t done. There’s no “official” character for some words, but they’re used anyway. But we don’t write Chinese using Latin letters, you do use Chinese characters. That’s why the written language is Chinese. You can write English using Chinese characters as well-- you’d just have to come up with a standard to make it work.
Written Chinese is resistant to additions. It takes time for new characters to be added, for standardization to take place. That does not invalidate it as the script for writing Hokkien.
[quote]There’s two extremes here:
They are all Chinese dialects. It’s all one language.
They are different languages that share some comon roots.
Hobart was taking the second position ot an extreme, but that’s certainly not nonsense. The answer lies somewhere in the middle.
Brian[/quote]
I agree with that completely. I think Zeugmite underestimated his knowledge of Chinese and hastily made a judgement there. Hobart’s view dosen’t match mine, but it is a fairly well informed opinion. It may even be that either can be right depending on how you want to define a term or two.
Chinese occupies a unique place among world languages. It’s a closely related set of languages, and it’s one language as well. The ability of Chinese symbols to carry a semantic value independent of pronunciation is what allows this to take place. Strip that away and the cohesion breaks up and you no longer have the one language/many languages phenomenon.
I would claim this: in oral form the Chinese languages are just that-- separate languages. In written form (and I don’t mean SWC here) they are dialects of the same language. The governing characteristic of dialects of the same language is mutual intelligibility.
Now, how much can you understand reading this? If you can get a decent amount of it and you don’t understand Cantonese then we’re looking at dialects of the same language.
Now, take the same post how it’s spoken and see how you do.
I bet it went from whatever you were picking up from the characters (I’d hazard 25%) down to close to zero.
Keep in mind, the majority of what was said was using a lot of Cantonese specific words and dialectal characters. That’s about as bad as it gets. Go to anything more formal and what you understand through reading will increase a lot.
Strip that away and the cohesion breaks up and you no longer have the one language/many languages phenomenon.[/quote]
Aren’t you contradicting yourself? On the one hand, you indicate that Chinese has some sort of mystical yin/yang, many languages/one language characteristic as an organic feature of the “language”, and on the other hand the “cohesion” among the vernaculars–so essential to the Chinese language’s uniqueness–is only maintained by an external factor, namely a contrived writing system explicitly designed to maintain the artifice of a “common” language.
Chinese isn’t unique even in this respect. Individuals speaking Spanish, Japanese, and Finnish would all understand the semantics behind the numeral “2” and yet speak it aloud in their own mutually unintelligible languages.
There’s a big difference between “could” and “should”. You seem to tacitly concede the linguistic question–whether they “could”–and now address the political question of whether they “should”.
But our politics are different than yours, don’t you see? I began this thread with the thesis that Chinese “unity” could be undermined by encouraging development of vernacular script. All the arguments that you and zeugmite have presented seem actually to support this thesis: you agree that this would undermine Chinese vernacular–and by implication, cultural and political–cohesion.
The only remaining question is whether it’s a good idea. You say no, perhaps I say yes. Perhaps speakers of Taiwanese and other vernaculars would say yes as well.
Aren’t you contradicting yourself? On the one hand, you indicate that Chinese has some sort of mystical yin/yang, many languages/one language characteristic as an organic feature of the “language”, and on the other hand the “cohesion” among the vernaculars–so essential to the Chinese language’s uniqueness–is only maintained by an external factor, namely a contrived writing system explicitly designed to maintain the artifice of a “common” language.[/quote]
ALL writing systems are artificial. All writing systems are contrived. Just because written English is a contrived system doesn’t mean our written words aren’t part of the language.
Chinese isn’t unique even in this respect. Individuals speaking Spanish, Japanese, and Finnish would all understand the semantics behind the numeral “2” and yet speak it aloud in their own mutually unintelligible languages.[/quote]
That’s why many people will call mathematics the universal language. We all speak one language of mathematics.
Sorry about the previous edit-- I hit the button before I was done with it. Then you posted before the edit got in there.
There’s a big difference between “could” and “should”. You seem to tacitly concede the linguistic question–whether they “could”–and now address the political question of whether they “should”.[/quote]
Sure, I don’t think there’s any question that Chinese of whatever dialect can dump their orthography in favor of another. We can dump English and switch to characters if we could come up with a logical system.
You’re right that it is just a question of “should”
Sure, but you just said “develop a phonetic script for the Taiwanese language”. You didn’t say how that would result in dismantling the Chinese script. There are already lots of phonetic scripts and their development does nothing to destabilize Chinese.
If you reword your thesis to argue for promoting the script as a replacement for Characters, I’d agree that it could accomplish what you are talking about given enough time. I guess I didn’t read your post as you intended it.
I’d have to revise my vote from Plausible but innocuous: It could happen, but no big deal to the exact opposite Implausible but dangerous: Couldn’t happen, but the idea itself is bad enough. with the reservation that I wouldn’t say “couldn’t” but extremely unlikely.
I don’t see any benefit to fracturing unity of culture, but I can understand the sentiment of wanting to tear down a government like that of the PRC. Even assuming moral high ground for your end goal, I think the cost is too high. It’s like burning down a national treasure to save yourself from getting frostbite.
Really? Can you cite any examples? I’m genuinely curious.
[/quote]
Uh… Western Europe? Portugal? The Sweden/Norway/nynorsk issue?
[quote][quote]
If you, Bu Lai En, can comprehend anything in Hokkien written with the Latin alphabet, without beforehand having known it, then we can talk about whether that makes it Latin, mmkay? [/quote]
Can a Mandarin (and only Mandarin) speaker fully understand Taiwanese as it might be transcribed using Chinese characters? If not, you’re doing a great job of proving Bu En Lai’s point. [/quote]
Puiwaihin’s right that this is about the most colloquial example of Cantonese you’ll get (I.M. like), with lots of slang (and probably bad orthography) thrown in. But a reader of Chinese can still get the point. It’s about the difficulty that a standard English reader would have in reading slang-ridden Ebonics. Yet great minds here would have me believe that Ebonics is somehow not English:
My bf is so good looking that he’s worth a fight?, he already knows my older guy [i.e. brother] dislikes him, he said it’s not possible to have the whole world to like him, so long as we ourselves are happy then it’s fine! Possibly he doesn’t mind same-house-peoples’ feelings (for him) aren’t this deep, because in the end his older guy [brother], older sister have all married, and they don’t see (each other) every day, the one who interacts with his family the most is me. He doesn’t even take notice of his daddy, just gives him some money every month?..
I don’t speak Cantonese. The parts in question mark I am probably wrong. The parts in brackets are dialect specific but not hard to learn because they are limited in number.
[quote][quote]
Chinese occupies a unique place among world languages. It’s a closely related set of languages, and it’s one language as well. The ability of Chinese symbols to carry a semantic value independent of pronunciation is what allows this to take place.
[/quote]
Chinese isn’t unique even in this respect. Individuals speaking Spanish, Japanese, and Finnish would all understand the semantics behind the numeral “2” and yet speak it aloud in their own mutually unintelligible languages.[/quote]
Then take this to nearly all words and let it be for a couple millenia and what do you get?
Exactly as puiwaihin says, it’s not any better or worse adapted either way. It’s just a script. The important thing was that it got airtime. You have a fundamental misunderstanding about how two-/three- character words are constructed to begin with. They come together in modern usage but are not stuck together.
[quote]There’s a big difference between “could” and “should”. You seem to tacitly concede the linguistic question–whether they “could”–and now address the political question of whether they “should”.
But our politics are different than yours, don’t you see? [/quote]
As I have pointed out, cultural unity and character script are both realities, an imposed replacement of the character script for the purpose of breaking cultural unity, and official demoting the status of the character script, is the only blatantly political activity being discussed here. Not to mention none except the Masaotakashi kind of T.I.er would accept this. Many underestimate Chinese cultural unity and affinity for political unity.
The purpose of creating an alternative in this case to written Chinese has nothing to do with indigenous empowerment or anything half so high minded. The singular intent is the intellectual deconstruction of the Chinese state and culture in order to promote Taiwan identity and subsequently independence/seccession. Afterall if there is no such thing as Chinese or China, how can Taiwan be a part of it as the arguement goes. A favourite tactic of die-hard anti-China advocates such as Lee Teng Hui, who even wrote a masturbatory book about a possible future division of mainland China into several substates. Of course all of this is an simultaneous exercise in intellectual vanity and impotence. For those who feel that it would be a good idea to foster regional languages, oral and written, how would one proceed to accomplish such a task and monumentally reshape the cultural and political landscape of China. I hope you have something in mind besides the general word “promote”. To give you an idea of the difficulty in the matter, one only needs to witness the difficult implementation of simplified characters by the PRC. Do you honestly think that the government of Zhejiang is all of a sudden going to opt to create and enforce the use of an entirely new written language for Wu Chinese upon the population at large? Keep dreaming.
Come to think of it, why don’t we play devil’s advocate (Sam Vines version) here?
Why are African Americans DENIED the use of their language in written discourse?
Why are they not TAUGHT in schools in their OWN speech, Ebonics, with its own phonetic orthography?
Why maintain the political INJUSTICE of elite English cultural dominance, making them write in a different language than they speak?
There is already the example of Cajuns in Louisiana basically losing their language because of the elite standard English.
Should African Americans lose their home speech, too?
Let’s teach them Ebonics and bust wide open the myth of unity in the US, right along racial lines. How does that sound, hmmm?
So everyone here agrees that Taiwanese is taken care of just fine by using Chinese characters for teaching, transcribing and communicating in Taiwanese?
Any NATIVE Taiwanese speakers care to comment. These Mandarin Speaking Pro-China boys don’t really have a clue. Anyone else care to comment?
Kudos to cmdjing for capturing my essential idea better than I had expressed myself, apparently.
Yes, that’s essentially it, but with more emphasis on neutering China’s emergence as a world power by deconstructing the idea of China. Then, as a side benefit, allowing Taiwan to emerge as a fully fledged state as Gaul, Iberia, Brittania, and others emerged from the ruins of the western Roman Empire.
Of course, this is where we part ways. You understand the end, but pooh-pooh the means as ineffectual. But doesn’t zeugmite show us that language can be an effective tool for separatism and regional nationalism, by helpfully citing the cases of “Western Europe? Portugal? The Sweden/Norway/nynorsk issue?”
But the PRC’s efforts you cite are a top-down initiative, imposed upon an unwilling educated class. I’m suggesting a much more grassroots, “viral” initiative if you will: giving Taiwanese speakers a tool to express themselves in their own language, with a form of official endorsement and dissemination (i.e., Taiwan’s education system) but nothing dictating that people give up the characters they’re familiar with–unless they want to . If it’s an effective system, it might be carried by Taiwanese businessmen to Fujian province (educating their kids there), and so it goes. Who cares what the Zhejiang government thinks, when people are making their own choices (with a bit of behind the scenes encouragement)?
Zeugmite said:
[quote]
Why are African Americans DENIED the use of their language in written discourse? Why are they not TAUGHT in schools in their OWN speech, Ebonics, with its own phonetic orthography? Why maintain the political INJUSTICE of elite English cultural dominance, making them write in a different language than they speak? . . .
Should African Americans lose their home speech, too? Let’s teach them Ebonics and bust wide open the myth of unity in the US, right along racial lines. How does that sound, hmmm?[/quote]
If I were an African-American separatist like Louis Farrakhan, I would recognize this as a very effective potential tool. The problem is that there’s no official or quasi-official sponsor of Ebonics, as Taiwan might be for a Minnanyu vernacular script.
Even if I don’t agree with Farrakhan, I can agree that the language angle is a clever and potentially quite effective ploy . . . just as you seem to be inadvertantly agreeing with me througout this thread, I think.
unicode.org/charts/PDF/U31A0.pdf - apparently an extended BoPoMoFo with characters for Minnan/Taiwanese/Hokkien/Hoklo (whatever you prefer to call it!) and Hakka exists… does it get used anywhere? (that’s a real question - I don’t live in Taiwan and have never been there so I only know what I’ve read on the Internet)
edutech.org.tw/dict/Sutiern0.htm - an example of Taiwanese written with a mixture of characters and romanisation. IMHO, something similar with characters and extended bopomofo (which I guess would come out looking vaguely like Japanese) would be a good way to write ‘Taiwanese’ and Hakka for those who want to keep the characters (some people write it completely in romanised form) - it would certainly look more sensible than mixing characters with the Roman alphabet.
. If it’s an effective system, it might be carried by Taiwanese businessmen to Fujian province (educating their kids there), and so it goes. Who cares what the Zhejiang government thinks, when people are making their own choices (with a bit of behind the scenes encouragement)?