When you travel the any remote area expect localization of the language. I could recount stories of being totally assured that everyone in the UK spoke English. Like any good tourist I headed off to Shetland and Blackpool. It challenged my listening comprehension quite a bit.
Same in China, especially rural China. I would have to agree with you, people with a heavy Sichuan accent speaking Mandarin seems otherworldly on first encounter. But even in Beijing you might run into a few unintelligible speakers for those who ears are tuned to southern accented Mandarin.
When you travel the any remote area expect localization of the language. I could recount stories of being totally assured that everyone in the UK spoke English. Like any good tourist I headed off to Shetland and Blackpool. It challenged my listening comprehension quite a bit.
Same in China, especially rural China. I would have to agree with you, people with a heavy Sichuan accent speaking Mandarin seems otherworldly on first encounter. But even in Beijing you might run into a few unintelligible speakers for those who ears are tuned to southern accented Mandarin.
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I guess that’s true. I’ve been to places where I couldn’t understand their English - Jamaica, remote villages in Newefoundland, slums in Glasgow - but where I would still agree they were speaking English.
Where, though, does a dialect become so uncomprehensible to speakers of the standard version that they would have to be considered separate languages?
It’s like asking British Imperial subjects in 1900 whether they speak English. “Yes, sahib”. Ok then.
Roughy translated this non-story says: “Comrades must be vigilant in increasing pressure on the Empire’s more far-flung subjects to adhere to the National Language Policy. We have noticed some subjects are speaking their own dialects and that there have been television programmes broadcast not in Mandarin. We remind comrades that it is very important to the illusion that China is a unified “country” rather than an empire of subject peoples that everyone speaks the language of Beijing (and are all in the same time zone etc etc). Therefore we have made up this statistic of only 50% ability in Mandarin to be used when justifying forced usage of Mandarin and a reduction in the visibility of minority language. We also remind comrades to always refer to the national language as “Putonghua” rather than “Guoyu” or “Huayu” given the respective origins of these terms. Xin Hua ‘News Agency’.”
Speaking Mandarin makes Taiwanese “Chinese”, then am I right in saying that all English speakers are Brits? [/quote]
So is there any other race in general other than Chinese, who speak Mandarin at this moment?
So this is another area in which China lags far behind Taiwan: I’m sure that a much higher proportion of the people here, perhaps even 80% or more, speak the national language, Taiwanese.
[quote=“Omniloquacious”][quote]
Half of Chinese speak national language
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So this is another area in which China lags far behind Taiwan: I’m sure that a much higher proportion of the people here, perhaps even 80% or more, speak the national language, Taiwanese. [/quote]
Shanghai, Guangdong, Hongkong and Taiwan having a higher education level than the rest of other provinces or SARs. The level of spoken Mandarin varies in different regions as well. Like Guangdong, 99% of the people speak Cantonese but they are still part of China. Nothing unusual.
So we are all accepting the premise that “Mandarin” or “Putonghua” is the “national language of China”?
Hugely important for the Chinese government to talk about “different dialects of the same language” rather than different languages. Otherwise you end up with different language groups with different religious backgrounds, different cultural frames of reference and thousands of miles away from one another with no common means of communication wondering how the hell they come to be in “the same country”. Step up Modern Written Chinese and Spoken Putonghua to provide the answer.
That is the point behind any discussion of language in China at the moment. Finding some reason to call Cantonese and Mandarin the “same language but with er different pronunciations” is great stuff for Ph.D.s but has little real meaning. Put a Beijinger in a roomful of Cantos and then tell me “but it’s the same language” has any real meaning.
So the original “survey” is nothing but more nonsense from Xinhua which simply isn’t worth the paper it’s written on.
I’m somewhat willing to accept the assertion that “spoken putonghua” is a modern creation intended to facilitate communication between otherwise distinct language groups.
But now, you’re asserting the same of “modern written Chinese”? I don’t know if you’re ignorant or intellectually dishonest, or quite possibly both… but that’s quite a claim. A Beijinger in a room full of Cantos have been able to communicate for thousands of years by pulling out pen and paper, and as any proper Chinese would tell you, all thanks to the wisdom of Qin Shihuang. If national integration/migration was a real possibility in 200 BC, some dialect of Chinese would’ve been set down as the standard spoken language for the past two thousand years as well.
The original survey is a statement of fact. Most of the hand-wringing and poo-flinging that followed it are pretty nonsensical. The survey didn’t suggest that putonghua speakers are Chinese, nor that all Chinese citizens must speak putonghua. The survey made one very simple and accurate observation of the current status of the Chinese nation.
For those who don’t have foreign objects taking up valuable space in their bodily orifices, consider this an interesting fact to be filed away for future reference.
My personal point is that a major percentage of Chinese do not speak putonghua. Hope that wasn’t too confusing for ya.
Just to add a little more color to your census result, I suspect that a vast majority of those who do not speak English fluently are foreign-born. The United States is an immigrant country, and that number will probably only grow over the next 50-100 years in the United States as well.
That’s a load of BS, and I think you know it. Your statement only holds true if you attach “if they all happened to be members of the very small minority who were literate in classical Chinese.” Even then, how efficiently could literate Canto and Beijinghua speakers have communicated by text in the days before MSN Instant Messenger? Paper and pens were expensive, mind you.
Speaking Mandarin makes Taiwanese “Chinese”, then am I right in saying that all English speakers are Brits? [/quote]
So is there any other race in general other than Chinese, who speak Mandarin at this moment?
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No more than non Europeans that speak English.
That’s a load of BS, and I think you know it. Your statement only holds true if you attach “if they all happened to be members of the very small minority who were literate in classical Chinese.” Even then, how efficiently could literate Canto and Beijinghua speakers have communicated by text in the days before MSN Instant Messenger? Paper and pens were expensive, mind you.[/quote]
How in the world did people qualify for government positions back then? OMG dynastic rule was impossible. It’s all a myth.
Thank goodness brushes and inks were affordable back then. People might get the silly idea of carving characters in stone or wood.
MTV in HK are all in classical Chinese, no self respecting HK’er would speak like that in public. So what’s the deal with all those young HK’er crooning away in classical Chinese that is supposed to be unintelligible to them? Thank goodness for the British in teaching all those HK’er proper classical Chinese in traditional character sets. No tell what the commies with their simplified set and PTH would have done.
My personal point is that a major percentage of Chinese do not speak putonghua. Hope that wasn’t too confusing for ya.
Just to add a little more color to your census result, I suspect that a vast majority of those who do not speak English fluently are foreign-born. The United States is an immigrant country, and that number will probably only grow over the next 50-100 years in the United States as well.[/quote]
I’ve noticed in this thread that whenever anyone replies with something you don’t like you put them down with a mix of snooty derision and the classic ‘I was just pointing out this very interesting fact, not making some between-the-lines comment about Taiwanese Sinofication’. Come on cc, we might not all be as learned as your esteemed self but a 5-year-old orangutan could see through that.
Again - and this is a serious challenge - given that this is the Taiwanese Politics Forum and you know damn well that we all know damn well that a major percentage of Chinese do not speak putonghua, what’s your point? Stop throwing out meat for the vultures then complaining when they come and get it.
That’s a load of BS, and I think you know it. Your statement only holds true if you attach “if they all happened to be members of the very small minority who were literate in classical Chinese.” Even then, how efficiently could literate Canto and Beijinghua speakers have communicated by text in the days before MSN Instant Messenger? Paper and pens were expensive, mind you.[/quote]
How in the world did people qualify for government positions back then? OMG dynastic rule was impossible. It’s all a myth.[/quote]
AC, he wrote “a room full of Cantos” and “a Beijinger.” He did not write “a room full of scholar-officials from Guangzhou” and “a scholar official from Beijing.” If you don’t understand the difference, then PM CCTang. I’m sure he can explain it to you.
All? Are you sure about that, AC?
What a crock. Before and after 97, hardly any classical Chinese was or has been taught in HK schools. Hong Kong people are generally dumb to it. And so what if they can read a bit of it? That doesn’t mean they can communicate with it, nor does it have any meaning for whether or not classical Chinese served as an effective means of communication for large numbers of people from different regions within China. That is what CCTang implied in his post. If classical Chinese was such a great tool for communication, then why the hell have people bothered with Guoyu/PTH for the past century? Why did scholar officials from all over bother using guanhua if they were so damn good at getting business done with brushes and ink?
But we’re not really talking about commoners are we. Were talking politics, thus we assume that these are people with some resources. It’s been awhile since China was actually ruled by a real peasant, no matter what the PR says.
I’m pretty sure. Go through any of the 4 kings of canto pop or any current pop artist in HK song list and you will find some lyrics that have non colloquial terms used on HK. Many HK’er know that they are taught proper Chinese at schools but insist on speaking pidgin Cantonese in HK.
I guess the intellectual class needed something else complain about when they were overthrowing the Qing Dynasty.
The short answer is that Classical Chinese has too much “cultural baggage” if one is thinking about creating a progressive thinking population. Improving functional literacy was huge issue during those times. Who really has time to read the classics to understand an idiom when the nation was embroiled in a few wars.
And technology has really pushed for a common spoken language now. You don’t know how many times I’ve to the mainland and a really beauty offers her services to be my tour guide during my stay. I mean if it wasn’t for the ROC push to make Mandarin the guanyu of modern China…You know what a turn off it is to have a beauty speak Chinglish…
Qin Shi Wang was a genius burying those scholars alive. It takes really cajones to do something as unpopular like that and to begin building a wall to keep out undocumented immigrants. I can’t figure out for the life of me why he only lasted 25 years?
All kidding aside. Just pop into a Chinese language forum and see for yourself how many people whose native dialect are not Mandarin taking advantage of the common character sets to communicate. Character sets aren’t even the same sometimes. They yap away about anything…except 6/4, SARS, AIDS…
[quote=“cctang”]I’m somewhat willing to accept the assertion that “spoken putonghua” is a modern creation intended to facilitate communication between otherwise distinct language groups.
But now, you’re asserting the same of “modern written Chinese”? I don’t know if you’re ignorant or intellectually dishonest, or quite possibly both… but that’s quite a claim. A Beijinger in a room full of Cantos have been able to communicate for thousands of years by pulling out pen and paper, and as any proper Chinese would tell you, all thanks to the wisdom of Qin Shihuang. If national integration/migration was a real possibility in 200 BC, some dialect of Chinese would’ve been set down as the standard spoken language for the past two thousand years as well.
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From Qin Shihuang to the end of the Qing dynasty, the method of communication between a Cantonese speaker and a Mandarin speaker would have been to write in classical Chinese. Since the classical Chinese literacy rate were quite low, few Cantonese speakers would have been able to communicate with Mandarin speakers and vice-versa. While classical Chinese was the standard for 2000 years, it has since been replaced by “modern written Chinese” after the fall of the last dynasty.
Modern written Chinese is just slightly less than a century old. When language reform was going on in the early 20th century, there was much debate of what this new modern written Chinese should look like. Some Chinese scholars lobbied heavily for complete romanization, other promoted character based vernacular writing and even others advocated for an improvement and revitalization of classical Chinese. There was wide general agreement that classical Chinese as it stood simply was insufficient for the needs of a new China. Eventually, “baihua 白話” (a mixture of vernacular Mandarin and classical Chinese) was settled upon and promoted by the central government and continued after the CCP took over. Even though it was acknowledged that a written style based on Mandarin would disadvantage southern dialect speakers, the power that be for various reasons nevertheless went ahead with promoting Mandarin-based baihua writing.
Yes, there had been novels written in the vernacular before but these writings were used as a low written medium and were difficult to understand to those not familiar with the vernacular in question. Modern written Chinese, on the otherhand, borrows quite a bit of vocabulary from Japanese (e.g. 社會, 電話, 電腦, 科學, 哲學, 抽象, 浪漫, 銀行, etc.) and in this respect, even early on, had a lot of vocabulary differences from classical Chinese. Before such borrowings from the Japanese, terms such as telephone and science were written as 德律風 and 賽恩斯.
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