I watched the whole video not understanding a word of what was said, even when I tried to read the subtitles.
Then I realized that even the subtitles were in Taiwanese. What the fuck is the point of having Taiwanese subtitles when the person is already speaking in Taiwanese?
They are there to help our hearing impaired friends?
Guy
???
The same as the mandarin subtitles they put when speaking mando.
Mandarin? You mean the Standard Chinese subtitles that people who speak Taiwanese can read even if they don’t speak Mandarin?
Standard Chinese is the same as Mandarin. I prefer to call it Mandarin because of two reasons:
It’s clearer, Chinese is also used as the name of the language family akin to Romance or Germanic.
It doesn’t relegate other Chinese languages to be inferior to the standard (or dialects).
You’re a bright guy, @HongKonger . And you’ve made K-Town your home. Now I’m not going to tell anyone what they should learn, especially as I struggle with my own language learning. BUT if you plan to stick around in that town, maybe picking up a bit of Taiwan Hokkien (I don’t call it “Taiwanese” as there are heaps of languages here on this island) may be helpful. It’s the language of the street and of the majority of people in that city. Who knows, you might end up liking it!
Guy
Mandarin usually refers to the spoken language. You don’t write Mandarin. You write in Chinese (Traditional Chinese or Simplified Chinese) and then you can read it in whatever spoken language you want: Taiwanese, Mandarin, Cantonese, Shanghainese, etc.
Never had to use it. People start speaking to me in Taiwanese (I don’t called it Taiwanese Hokkien, as Taiwanese is the well-known abbreviation), and then I say “huh?” and then they switch to Mandarin. Never been an issue.
Weren’t you just complaining about it upthread?
Guy
Never been an issue in the streets! Only been an issue on Forumosa.
No, that’s not how it works. You can write in any Chinese language. For example, in Mandarin I would write 今天 and in Hokkien I would write 今阿日.
What you wrote is just the convoluted justification that the PRC (and I suppose the KMT of yore) uses to try to tell people that
A) you can’t write “”“”" dialects"“”“”
And
B) these “dialects” are all subordinated to Mandarin
This lie is also helpful in making people believe that classic chinese is the same language as modern Mandarin. Which it is plainly not.
A classic in my country too. Spaniards simultaneously say Catalan is useless and also force us to not use it on many occasions.
The spoken language is called 國語 and the written language is called 繁體中文 or 簡體中文 (which translates to Traditional Chinese and Simplified Chinese). Notice that the written language is not called Mandarin.
It’s the truth, not justification. Many Taiwanese words can’t be written because there is no Chinese character for it. (And by the way, notice it’s called Chinese character and not Hokkien character? That should give you a clue.)
What you’re saying is DPP justification.
And then I would be able to read that in Cantonese if I wanted to. See how that works? What you’re doing is simply writing Chinese in Taiwanese Hokkien grammar and vernacular.
The written language taught in schools is just called Chinese (which uses Mandarin grammar). In Taiwan you would read Chinese text in Mandarin and in Hong Kong you would read it in Cantonese, but it’s the same written language which is just called Chinese. Not Mandarin.
I thought 國語 was a KMT invention as part of their nationalist branding of everything to include 國民 or 國 for short. 國語 just basically means national language, 國民語言.
Unless I am wrong, Mandarin, which is the language of the Mandarins, officials in China is called 官話 - Speech of the officials. But relatively unused.
IDK, I just call it a Taiwanese invention, but it doesn’t matter what Mandarin is called. Some call it 華語 and others call it 漢語. My point is that it isn’t called 中文. That’s the written language.
But it wasn’t invented in Taiwan. It was invented by the KMT of China in China.
國語 was taken from the Japanese. And again, all that rethoric to separate the written language from the spoken language is just empty words to justify what I said above. Other languages don’t do this.
Doesn’t matter why it was done. What’s done is done. The written language is universally known today in the Sinosphere as 中文 (even in Taiwan) which is NOT Mandarin or Cantonese or Taiwanese.
In Hong Kong we don’t say we write in Mandarin. We say we write in Chinese.
People here do say they speak 中文. And of course it is Mandarin. If you don’t know Mandarin you can’t read 中文。
Some people do say that, but that’s grammatically incorrect. 文 is the writing. 語 is the spoken language. Some people in Hong Kong also say they speak 中文 when they’re talking about Cantonese.
Tell that to the vast majority of people in Hong Kong who don’t know Mandarin yet can read 中文 perfectly. Of course, 中文 grammar conveniently follows Mandarin grammar for historical and political reasons, I get that. So it is different from Cantonese spoken grammar.