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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
by 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