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While the different dialects of Chinese (Mandarin/普通话/putonghua being the most common, followed by Cantonese/广东话/Guangdonghua, etc.) sound entirely different sp

by beisner 11y ago

While the different dialects of Chinese (Mandarin/普通话/putonghua being the most common, followed by Cantonese/广东话/Guangdonghua, etc.) sound entirely different spoken, the written character representations of the dialects are essentially the same. That means that the syntax, grammar, and other conventions of written Chinese underpin all spoken dialects. This extends to both written Traditional and Simplified Chinese, which are just two parallel character sets that represent the same fundamental characters (Simplified characters are just simplified versions of the Traditional characters, and were introduced in the 1940's and '50s to promote literacy). So while two people speaking different dialects may not be able to speak to each other because the tones and pronunciations of words are different, they most certainly can communicate by writing with each other because each dialect is just a different vocal representation of the same underlying language.

mc32 11y ago
Not only that (well, ignoring traditional Chinese characters versus simplified --where someone versed in traditional can make out simplified, but those versed in simplified normally have a harder time reading traditional characters) but everyone learns the Beijing dialect in school --it's, after all, the official language.
DougMerritt 11y ago
This is a good comment, but oddly leaves out the fact that, for many decades, it has been quite infamous that there is no universal agreement -- indeed it has been quite controversial -- as to whether the the different Chinese languages/dialects are in fact languages or dialects. The by-now ancient joke is that a "language is a dialect with an army and navy". Less jokingly, the different Chinese "dialects" share a written language, as above, but the other spoken "dialects" are largely unintelligible to those who have been exposed to only one of those spoken "dialects".
mchaver 11y ago
>> So while two people speaking different dialects may not be able to speak to each other because the tones and pronunciations of words are different, they most certainly can communicate by writing with each other because each dialect is just a different vocal representation of the same underlying language. That's actually not true. Modern written Chinese is pretty much Mandarin Chinese. You can pronounce written Chinese with a non-Mandarin dialect but most of the times that is not how the dialect is spoken, and if you write the spoken form of a non-Mandarin dialect, there is a good chance that a lot of pieces of it won't make sense to someone who doesn't speak that dialect, on top of the fact that most dialects don't have a standardized written form in Chinese Characters. Most people speaking two different dialects can communicate via characters because they have learned written Mandarin.
- deleted 11y ago
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- beisner 11y ago
  Interesting - thanks for the correction. I have been learning Mandarin for a few years now, and made the assumption that since the accepted writing system was standard nationally (and practiced by all literate Chinese speakers, regardless of regional dialect) that the spoken languages were all underpinned grammatically by the same writing system. As you pointed out, this is not the case. Adding to what you said (and correct me if I'm wrong here, this is based on some quick research [1]), while written Mandarin is by far the most common - and official - writing system, most dialects have completely different sets (i.e. non-1-to-1 mappings) of words than Mandarin, and many have supplemental character sets that wouldn't make any sense to someone reading Mandarin. The Hong Kong Supplementary Character Set, for instance, is a set of characters that are specific to the Cantonese dialect, and don't have close/exact relatives in standard written Mandarin [2]. Additionally, while the grammar of the different dialects seem rather close (similar to the relationships between Romance languages), the number of syllables used to represent vocabulary varies from dialect to dialect, which suggests vastly different etymology between the dialects. What I find particularly interesting is that given these substantial differences in vocabulary, one's native spoken language and one's native written language can be at odds with one another. Perhaps this is mitigated by the fact that spoken Mandarin is so widespread, but I wonder how this affects written communication for those who don't speak Mandarin natively. [1] https://www.quora.com/Linguistically-speaking-how-similar-are-the-various-dialects-of-Chinese https://www.quora.com/Linguistically-speaking-how-similar-ar... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Written_Cantonese https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Written_Cantonese
  - mchaver 11y ago
    >> most dialects have completely different sets (i.e. non-1-to-1 mappings) of words than Mandarin, and many have supplemental character sets that wouldn't make any sense to someone reading Mandarin Yes, that is correct. Cantonese is probably the non-Mandarin dialect with the most writing going on, and that is mostly informal writing like facebook, blogs, gossip magazines, although there is some modern literature written in Cantonese characters, wikipedia in Cantonese probably counts as well for more formal writing. >> The Hong Kong Supplementary Character Set, for instance, is a set of characters that are specific to the Cantonese dialect, and don't have close/exact relatives in standard written Mandarin Yes, though I don't know if there are Unicode code points for all the Cantonese characters. You often see this like o的,o個,o即 instead of 啲,嗰,嘅. I know a lot of people in Hong Kong use Cangjie for character input and a lot of the Cantonese characters don't have (or didn't have) Cangjie mappings. >> I wonder how this affects written communication for those who don't speak Mandarin natively When speaking Taiwanese it is common to use Mandarin words for more educated topics or if you don't know the word in Taiwanese just use the Mandarin term. Probably because Taiwanese is not generally used in higher education and there are varying levels of Taiwanese fluency in Taiwan. I would imagine it's similar for a lot of dialects in China since speaking dialects is often discouraged and a lot of younger people abandon their native dialects.

by beisner 11y ago

mc32 11y ago

Not only that (well, ignoring traditional Chinese characters versus simplified --where someone versed in traditional can make out simplified, but those versed in simplified normally have a harder time reading traditional characters) but everyone learns the Beijing dialect in school --it's, after all, the official language.

DougMerritt 11y ago

This is a good comment, but oddly leaves out the fact that, for many decades, it has been quite infamous that there is no universal agreement -- indeed it has been quite controversial -- as to whether the the different Chinese languages/dialects are in fact languages or dialects. The by-now ancient joke is that a "language is a dialect with an army and navy". Less jokingly, the different Chinese "dialects" share a written language, as above, but the other spoken "dialects" are largely unintelligible to those who have been exposed to only one of those spoken "dialects".

mchaver 11y ago

>> So while two people speaking different dialects may not be able to speak to each other because the tones and pronunciations of words are different, they most certainly can communicate by writing with each other because each dialect is just a different vocal representation of the same underlying language. That's actually not true. Modern written Chinese is pretty much Mandarin Chinese. You can pronounce written Chinese with a non-Mandarin dialect but most of the times that is not how the dialect is spoken, and if you write the spoken form of a non-Mandarin dialect, there is a good chance that a lot of pieces of it won't make sense to someone who doesn't speak that dialect, on top of the fact that most dialects don't have a standardized written form in Chinese Characters. Most people speaking two different dialects can communicate via characters because they have learned written Mandarin.

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
beisner 11y ago
Interesting - thanks for the correction. I have been learning Mandarin for a few years now, and made the assumption that since the accepted writing system was standard nationally (and practiced by all literate Chinese speakers, regardless of regional dialect) that the spoken languages were all underpinned grammatically by the same writing system. As you pointed out, this is not the case. Adding to what you said (and correct me if I'm wrong here, this is based on some quick research [1]), while written Mandarin is by far the most common - and official - writing system, most dialects have completely different sets (i.e. non-1-to-1 mappings) of words than Mandarin, and many have supplemental character sets that wouldn't make any sense to someone reading Mandarin. The Hong Kong Supplementary Character Set, for instance, is a set of characters that are specific to the Cantonese dialect, and don't have close/exact relatives in standard written Mandarin [2]. Additionally, while the grammar of the different dialects seem rather close (similar to the relationships between Romance languages), the number of syllables used to represent vocabulary varies from dialect to dialect, which suggests vastly different etymology between the dialects. What I find particularly interesting is that given these substantial differences in vocabulary, one's native spoken language and one's native written language can be at odds with one another. Perhaps this is mitigated by the fact that spoken Mandarin is so widespread, but I wonder how this affects written communication for those who don't speak Mandarin natively. [1] https://www.quora.com/Linguistically-speaking-how-similar-are-the-various-dialects-of-Chinese https://www.quora.com/Linguistically-speaking-how-similar-ar... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Written_Cantonese https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Written_Cantonese
- mchaver 11y ago
  >> most dialects have completely different sets (i.e. non-1-to-1 mappings) of words than Mandarin, and many have supplemental character sets that wouldn't make any sense to someone reading Mandarin Yes, that is correct. Cantonese is probably the non-Mandarin dialect with the most writing going on, and that is mostly informal writing like facebook, blogs, gossip magazines, although there is some modern literature written in Cantonese characters, wikipedia in Cantonese probably counts as well for more formal writing. >> The Hong Kong Supplementary Character Set, for instance, is a set of characters that are specific to the Cantonese dialect, and don't have close/exact relatives in standard written Mandarin Yes, though I don't know if there are Unicode code points for all the Cantonese characters. You often see this like o的,o個,o即 instead of 啲,嗰,嘅. I know a lot of people in Hong Kong use Cangjie for character input and a lot of the Cantonese characters don't have (or didn't have) Cangjie mappings. >> I wonder how this affects written communication for those who don't speak Mandarin natively When speaking Taiwanese it is common to use Mandarin words for more educated topics or if you don't know the word in Taiwanese just use the Mandarin term. Probably because Taiwanese is not generally used in higher education and there are varying levels of Taiwanese fluency in Taiwan. I would imagine it's similar for a lot of dialects in China since speaking dialects is often discouraged and a lot of younger people abandon their native dialects.