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> China is one more country which is preserving its culture by speaking chinese "chinese" isn't one language. It's a set of many languages which share some gra

> China is one more country which is preserving its culture by speaking chinese "chinese" isn't one language. It's a set of many languages which share some grammar and a common logographic script (though the script isn't used in exactly the same way for each, e.g. Beijing will write/say 哪儿 instead of 哪里 for "where?" -- there are many other differences but I don't know enough to give a clear idea of its scale). The spoken languages are quite different otherwise, at least as different as European romance languages. There is a "Standard Mandarin (普通话)" however; which the government has pushed and is spoken by most residents of Mainland China. I'm skeptical that this is a good way preserving the culture. If language does have an effect of preserving the culture; this move would also have effect of killing subcultures from regions (which may indeed have happened in China; though I don't know). China and India are both pretty diverse culturally. You're making the argument that the popularity of English is detrimental to the preservation of Indian Culture and in the same breath suggesting forcing Hindi on everyone as a solution, as if it wouldn't have exactly the same effect on a culturally diverse country.

HumanDrivenDev 9y ago
"chinese" isn't one language. It's a set of many languages which share some grammar and a common logographic script I don't think that's true for any chinese languages other than mandarin and cantonese. I've been in Taiwan for the past few weeks and dipped my toes into Hokkien/Taiwanese/Souther Min, and the situation there is fascinating. In every day normal situations it's never written, if two native hokkien speakers want to send an email or text it will be done in mandarin. In the rare occasion Hokkien is written, it will be done haphazardly. Sometimes you'll choose a mandarin character that kind of means the same thing as a hokkien morpheme, and sometimes they'll choose the mandarin character that kind of sounds the same the same as a hokkien morpheme. Native speakers will be able to read this, but often struggle. I have read that people used to be able to write Hokkien in characters, but that's lost now. I'm confidently told by native speakers today that the language has no written component (沒有文字). There's romanisation system that seems to be able to represent every sound prefectly, and more has actually been written in romanised hokkien than by any other methods, but Taiwanese people have a bit of a phobia of the latin alphabet, and no one uses it.
- Cyph0n 9y ago
  So it's similar to the regional forms of Arabic in the Middle East. People will speak with each other using a dialect, but all official and educational writing is in standard Arabic. When people chat informally (e.g. on WhatsApp), they would typically use Arabic characters to build words that can usually only be understood by speakers familiar with the dialect in question.
  - HumanDrivenDev 9y ago
    The different chinese languages don't seem to be dialects in any objective sense. I have no idea how it started being called that in english (bad translation of 語/話 maybe?), but Hokkien and Mandarin seem about as different from each other as English and French, maybe more. No mutual intelligibility. What's the case with Arabic dialects? I am completely ignorant there. And that's the thing, they use characters when they have to write it, but even then native speakers struggle to read it because there's no commonly used standard way to do it. In practice, they just write in mandarin.
    - Cyph0n 9y ago
      > What's the case with Arabic dialects? I am completely ignorant there. I call them dialects for lack of a better word. For example, an Algerian Arabic speaker would not be understood by an Egyptian, and a Kuwaiti Arabic speaker would not be understood by a Syrian, etc. Regional dialects may have an accent, but more importantly use different words and may even have different, informal grammatical rules. When it comes to writing, everyone uses Arabic letters, but each region may write different words depending on the regional dialect. The entry on Tunisian Arabic[1], which is my native dialect, may provide an idea on how it differs from other dialects. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunisian_Arabic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunisian_Arabic
  - Manishearth 9y ago
    The different Chinese languages are not dialects.

HumanDrivenDev 9y ago

"chinese" isn't one language. It's a set of many languages which share some grammar and a common logographic script I don't think that's true for any chinese languages other than mandarin and cantonese. I've been in Taiwan for the past few weeks and dipped my toes into Hokkien/Taiwanese/Souther Min, and the situation there is fascinating. In every day normal situations it's never written, if two native hokkien speakers want to send an email or text it will be done in mandarin. In the rare occasion Hokkien is written, it will be done haphazardly. Sometimes you'll choose a mandarin character that kind of means the same thing as a hokkien morpheme, and sometimes they'll choose the mandarin character that kind of sounds the same the same as a hokkien morpheme. Native speakers will be able to read this, but often struggle. I have read that people used to be able to write Hokkien in characters, but that's lost now. I'm confidently told by native speakers today that the language has no written component (沒有文字). There's romanisation system that seems to be able to represent every sound prefectly, and more has actually been written in romanised hokkien than by any other methods, but Taiwanese people have a bit of a phobia of the latin alphabet, and no one uses it.

Cyph0n 9y ago
So it's similar to the regional forms of Arabic in the Middle East. People will speak with each other using a dialect, but all official and educational writing is in standard Arabic. When people chat informally (e.g. on WhatsApp), they would typically use Arabic characters to build words that can usually only be understood by speakers familiar with the dialect in question.
- HumanDrivenDev 9y ago
  The different chinese languages don't seem to be dialects in any objective sense. I have no idea how it started being called that in english (bad translation of 語/話 maybe?), but Hokkien and Mandarin seem about as different from each other as English and French, maybe more. No mutual intelligibility. What's the case with Arabic dialects? I am completely ignorant there. And that's the thing, they use characters when they have to write it, but even then native speakers struggle to read it because there's no commonly used standard way to do it. In practice, they just write in mandarin.
  - Cyph0n 9y ago
    > What's the case with Arabic dialects? I am completely ignorant there. I call them dialects for lack of a better word. For example, an Algerian Arabic speaker would not be understood by an Egyptian, and a Kuwaiti Arabic speaker would not be understood by a Syrian, etc. Regional dialects may have an accent, but more importantly use different words and may even have different, informal grammatical rules. When it comes to writing, everyone uses Arabic letters, but each region may write different words depending on the regional dialect. The entry on Tunisian Arabic[1], which is my native dialect, may provide an idea on how it differs from other dialects. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunisian_Arabic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunisian_Arabic
- Manishearth 9y ago
  The different Chinese languages are not dialects.