It follows grammar and sound system of Mandarin… Because it is written Mandarin. Imagine claiming written Italian is not the same as spoken Italian and Spaniards can read it.
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How does it follow the sound system of Mandarin?
Someone who only speaks Cantonese and not Mandarin can read 中文 perfectly in Cantonese and understand it.
Calling it written Mandarin is narrow-minded. It is Chinese, and non-Mandarin speakers can read it in other Chinese languages and dialects and understand it.
It follows the sound system of Mandarin by having sound components. Most characters have it.
How can you read Mandarin in Cantonese? You yourself said the grammar is different. Is it possible that you are just reading Mandarin but pronouncing characters in Cantonese? Effectively being a mix of both languages.
Think about my example earlier. How do you read 今天 in Hokkien? It doesn’t exist. You can’t read it, because it’s Mandarin, not Hokkien.
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What’s the word for sky in Hokkien? Now combine that with the word for 今. There, you just read it in Hokkien. Of course, that’s not how you would say “today” when speaking Hokkien.
In Cantonese we have written grammar and spoken grammar. Written grammar originally came from Mandarin grammar, but we don’t equate it with Mandarin. It’s just written Cantonese which we call 書面語 when you read it aloud. If we write using spoken Cantonese grammar, then it’s called 白話文 but there is no standard as to which characters are used for certain words that aren’t found in Mandarin.
Even if you don’t learn Mandarin in school (and most people don’t), you still learn written Cantonese grammar.
By the way, this isn’t a Hong Kong or PRC thing. It’s a Canton thing that existed for as long as the Cantonese population could read and write modern Chinese.
I get that a separate “written grammar” doesn’t exist for Hokkien, thus the tendency for Taiwanese people to equate Chinese with Mandarin and Mandarin with Chinese.
Just as a curiosity and I don’t mean to change the subject, but since you speak Spanish and Catalan, when you speak Mandarine/Taiwanese/Hakka in Taiwan do you have a lisp?
In addition to the “th” sound, they have a regular S sound in Spain so they can pronounce it just fine.
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I would rather ask the opposite question to people that can’t produce that sound.
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It’s pretty clear that there are Chinese characters for Taiwanese words. And they have been used since at least the Ming dynasty most commonly in vernacular chapbooks for theater.
There is another option which is to romanize the subtitles in pe̍h-ōe-jī.
Both approaches have fanatical adherents and this is a senstive subject. The last thing Taiwanese want to hear is someone from Hong Kong telling them how they should write their language. I would stay out of this in real life if I were you.
Besides, it takes a few hours tops for anyone who speaks Taiwanese to learn the special characters that are used. Why shouldn’t the subtitles accurately reflect the language that is being spoken?
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Sensitive, really? It seems to me, by far most Taiwanese don’t have any opinion or knowledge about how Taiwanese is or should be written. In almost every conversation I’ve had on the topic, I’ve been the one with the most overt “book” knowledge and that was recognized along with a mixture of surprise and more often than not some level of disinterest.
That’s like saying English is written in Latin but people are just calling it English. Also, Hokkien has grammar like every other language and it’s been written about extensively.
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Did I? My point was that written Chinese is called Chinese and not Mandarin, because other Chinese languages and dialects that share the same grammar as Mandarin also use it.
A separate written grammar that’s different from spoken grammar?
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I see, but I’m not quite sure what you mean. Do you mean a type of formal writing separate from the spoken language? Chinese has this along with other languages, but written language can simply follow spoken grammar.
Don’t get caught up about Hokkein. My main point all along was that written Chinese is called Chinese and not Mandarin, because other Chinese languages/dialects that share the same grammar also use it.
As I understand it, you had classical Chinese which had nothing to do with Mandarin, and forms of modern written Chinese dating to much more recently which are based to greater or lesser degrees on colloquial Mandarin. Learning to read modern written Chinese is learning Mandarin, to an extent. Writing in Hokkien for example can use characters but will not need to follow the same conventions, nor will it be optimal to.
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Situations like this can happen when outsiders (in this case, the Chiang regime) come in and try to kill off their language, at least in terms of the education system. Push down has led to push back, and I suppose the commitment to using a specific romanized form of Taiwan Hokkien would be one example.
Guy
Everything you said is true, but Mandarin still refers to the spoken language which was my original point. The written language is just called Chinese.
Try Googling “written Mandarin”.
Although @contrafluixi is also right because when “written Mandarin” was first invented, it was referred to by linguists as 官話白話文 or written colloquial Mandarin.
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If we’re going back to the start, it’s accurate to say “Mandarin subtitles” when they are a direct transcription of spoken Mandarin, in my opinion. I wouldn’t say it about newspaper Chinese, for example.
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I used to work with a Catalan who regularly peppered his English with lisps.