3 ms·

If by "Chinese" you mean all of the languages in China today, such as Cantonese, Amoy, Hakkanese, etc... then you're talking about separate languages more disti

by xiaoma 9y ago

If by "Chinese" you mean all of the languages in China today, such as Cantonese, Amoy, Hakkanese, etc... then you're talking about separate languages more distinct than modern French and Italian are from each other.

meric 9y ago
Yes that's right - 2000 years ago I'm guessing they all sounded the same. I note Cantonese and Mandarin "dialects" have a common (formal) written form.
- adrianN 9y ago
  What makes you think that the languages sounded more similar in a time when communication was much slower and regional dialects could develop easily without outside influence?
  - thaumasiotes 9y ago
    For the same reason that English and Swedish sounded much more similar a long time ago, when communication was slow, than they do now -- they are descended from a common source, and at the time of that source they would obviously have been identical. After the time of the source, shortly after diverging[1], they would still have been more similar than they are now because they hadn't had much time to differentiate. [1] Unlike "the time of the source", you can rigorously defend the existence of the period shortly after divergence.
  - meric 9y ago
    Because the net difference between dialects are the sum of all differences from 2000 years ago to now, while 2000 years ago, less time was elapsed, the net difference was much smaller. The net difference today is the net difference 2000 years ago plus all the new variations since then.
- xiaoma 9y ago
  That guess is not just wrong but somewhat startling. Why would everyone living in what is now China have spoken the same language 2000 years ago? The people living in what is now the US didn't. Neither did the people living in what's now the EU. Even small territories, such as just the islands of Okinawa had multiple language communities 2000 years ago. National borders and the language communities within and across them fluctuate wildly over the course of a thousand years. >" I note Cantonese and Mandarin "dialects" have a common (formal) written form." They don't even have the same grammar. Cantonese includes characters that don't exist in Mandarin. You might find this piece on Language Log interesting: http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=548 http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=548 "Just as Europeans who spoke various languages could communicate in Latin, so until recently all literate Chinese people could communicate in the somewhat artificial written standard. With the shift over the last century to a written language that is closer to the colloquial, the differences among dialects have increased."
  - thaumasiotes 9y ago
    > Why would everyone living in what is now China have spoken the same language 2000 years ago? That's not really the right question. 2500 years ago, the people in what is currently Spain spoke a language that was distinct from the language then spoken by the people in what is currently Italy. But it's still true that Spanish and Italian sounded exactly the same 2500 years ago.
  - meric 9y ago
    >" I note Cantonese and Mandarin "dialects" have a common (formal) written form." I don't know spoken mandarin but I can read written Mandarin, I grew up knowing Cantonese. So I do think they have a common formal written form. And I did specify formal, that strips away the slang Cantonese characters. It's interesting to see the paper compared the written form to Latin.
mcguire 9y ago
That's not what the Chinese government wants you to think. :-) For nationalistic reasons, China views those as dialects, or did when John DeFrancis was writing about the issue. In the other hand, they share more of a culture (IIUC) and government than Italian and French do.

by xiaoma 9y ago

meric 9y ago

Yes that's right - 2000 years ago I'm guessing they all sounded the same. I note Cantonese and Mandarin "dialects" have a common (formal) written form.

adrianN 9y ago
What makes you think that the languages sounded more similar in a time when communication was much slower and regional dialects could develop easily without outside influence?
- thaumasiotes 9y ago
  For the same reason that English and Swedish sounded much more similar a long time ago, when communication was slow, than they do now -- they are descended from a common source, and at the time of that source they would obviously have been identical. After the time of the source, shortly after diverging[1], they would still have been more similar than they are now because they hadn't had much time to differentiate. [1] Unlike "the time of the source", you can rigorously defend the existence of the period shortly after divergence.
- meric 9y ago
  Because the net difference between dialects are the sum of all differences from 2000 years ago to now, while 2000 years ago, less time was elapsed, the net difference was much smaller. The net difference today is the net difference 2000 years ago plus all the new variations since then.
xiaoma 9y ago
That guess is not just wrong but somewhat startling. Why would everyone living in what is now China have spoken the same language 2000 years ago? The people living in what is now the US didn't. Neither did the people living in what's now the EU. Even small territories, such as just the islands of Okinawa had multiple language communities 2000 years ago. National borders and the language communities within and across them fluctuate wildly over the course of a thousand years. >" I note Cantonese and Mandarin "dialects" have a common (formal) written form." They don't even have the same grammar. Cantonese includes characters that don't exist in Mandarin. You might find this piece on Language Log interesting: http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=548 http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=548 "Just as Europeans who spoke various languages could communicate in Latin, so until recently all literate Chinese people could communicate in the somewhat artificial written standard. With the shift over the last century to a written language that is closer to the colloquial, the differences among dialects have increased."
- thaumasiotes 9y ago
  > Why would everyone living in what is now China have spoken the same language 2000 years ago? That's not really the right question. 2500 years ago, the people in what is currently Spain spoke a language that was distinct from the language then spoken by the people in what is currently Italy. But it's still true that Spanish and Italian sounded exactly the same 2500 years ago.
- meric 9y ago
  >" I note Cantonese and Mandarin "dialects" have a common (formal) written form." I don't know spoken mandarin but I can read written Mandarin, I grew up knowing Cantonese. So I do think they have a common formal written form. And I did specify formal, that strips away the slang Cantonese characters. It's interesting to see the paper compared the written form to Latin.

mcguire 9y ago

That's not what the Chinese government wants you to think. :-) For nationalistic reasons, China views those as dialects, or did when John DeFrancis was writing about the issue. In the other hand, they share more of a culture (IIUC) and government than Italian and French do.