4 ms·

Hokkien is a type of Chinese dialect. The only reason people rush to call it "Taiwanese" is because of politics, not cultural.

by volgo 9y ago

dwohnitmok 9y ago
There's certainly a ton of political baggage around the Chinese language and layered on top of that there's a crazy amount of political baggage around China and Taiwan (e.g. is it called 正体字 or 繁体字?). I don't think that's the case here though. Plenty of Taiwanese people I've spoken to are happy to (and often do) call it Hokkien (or Taiwanese Hokkien). Taiwanese as an adjective is usually ambiguous (Taiwanese Mandarin, Hokkien, or aboriginal Taiwanese languages are all possibilities). Taiwanese as a noun is usually less ambiguous (although the confusion in this thread makes me rethink that). Hokkien (Fujianese) is to Southern Min what Cantonese is to Yue and to some extent Shanghainese is to Wu. They are place-name terms that nominally refer to a specific subset of a dialect family that are now used in informal speech to refer to the entire dialect family. But for example Macaonese (澳门话) is still a place-name term you'll hear even though it's within the Yue family and therefore you could (and people do) call it Cantonese. Taiwanese is a similar case (place-name term) here.
- volgo 9y ago
  There's certainly a fair amount of people from Taiwan who call it Hokkien as a matter of accuracy I don't think that's the case here though. There's nothing specifically different from the Hokkien spoken in Taiwan. It's a dialect of Chinese and certainly cannot be called linguistically different. It would be like saying someone spoke Texan instead of English with a Texas accent. The written language is traditional Chinese, nothing else. This is a common misunderstanding
  - dwohnitmok 9y ago
    Chinese has a long tradition of using place-names to refer to regional specific dialects that in English we might just call, as you put it, "English with an X accent." In the same way that you'll hear 重庆话 (Chongqingnese) and 成都话 (Chengdunese) both used to refer to region-specific dialects of Sichuanese (which in turn is really a member of the greater Mandarin (官话) dialect family) and 上海话 (Shanghainese) and 苏州话 (Suzhounese) used to refer to different region-specific dialects of Wu, Taiwanese is being used in a similar fashion here. It is indeed a dialect of Hokkien that is mutually intelligible with and very similar to other varieties of Hokkien. The differences are, as you imply, on par with the differences you might find between a Texan accent and a New York accent. But there's nothing special about Taiwanese here. This is just the way all region-specific dialects of Chinese are named. The written language is kind of sort of traditional Chinese (depending on how liberally we're defining "traditional Chinese" here), but it's a stretch. The grammar is not the same as modern Mandarin (nor is it the same as Classical Chinese). Moreover not all the characters used are attested to in official Chinese sources (for example, the first character that the original comment way way up circled in his Flickr image is not found in any ancient Chinese dictionaries I know of (Guangyun/广韵, Shuowenjiezi/说文解字, Qieyun/切韵, Kangxi Dictionary/康熙字典) nor is it found in the modern Xinhua Dictionary 新华字典. And I don't have a copy handy but I wouldn't be surprised if I couldn't find it in the evocatively named Cihai/辞海 (Word Ocean). This is presumably why they are not in Unihan. A much larger set of characters are those that very very few Mandarin speakers recognize. And another (independent) large set of characters do not and have never had the meaning they have in Hokkien in other varieties of Chinese. That's not to say there's not a lot of overlap with written Mandarin. A Mandarin speaker could probably muddle their way through this Bible if they tried, but then again, a French speaker could muddle their way through Haitian Creole. And even an English speaker could maybe get through a French newspaper given enough cognates. This is a far far cry from the "embedded Mandarin" situation I talked about in another comment though. Maybe it's not quite something like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhuang_logogram https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhuang_logogram which is Chinese-looking, but definitely not what people would normally call Chinese characters, but for a few of these characters, it's getting pretty damn close.
- jessriedel 9y ago
  Thanks very much for sharing some of the detailed background here. Stuff like this is what keeps HN a big magical.
jhanschoo 9y ago
Not really, many Taiwan residents conduct business in Standard Mandarin, but speak in Taiwanese Hokkien at home. It's called Taiwanese because it has since drifted from mainland Hokkien, and sociolinguists consider Taiwanese a prestige dialect of Hokkien due to its cultural output and Japanisms.

Hokkien is a type of Chinese dialect. The only reason people rush to call it "Taiwanese" is because of politics, not cultural.

by volgo 9y ago

Hokkien is a type of Chinese dialect. The only reason people rush to call it "Taiwanese" is because of politics, not cultural.

dwohnitmok 9y ago

There's certainly a ton of political baggage around the Chinese language and layered on top of that there's a crazy amount of political baggage around China and Taiwan (e.g. is it called 正体字 or 繁体字?). I don't think that's the case here though. Plenty of Taiwanese people I've spoken to are happy to (and often do) call it Hokkien (or Taiwanese Hokkien). Taiwanese as an adjective is usually ambiguous (Taiwanese Mandarin, Hokkien, or aboriginal Taiwanese languages are all possibilities). Taiwanese as a noun is usually less ambiguous (although the confusion in this thread makes me rethink that). Hokkien (Fujianese) is to Southern Min what Cantonese is to Yue and to some extent Shanghainese is to Wu. They are place-name terms that nominally refer to a specific subset of a dialect family that are now used in informal speech to refer to the entire dialect family. But for example Macaonese (澳门话) is still a place-name term you'll hear even though it's within the Yue family and therefore you could (and people do) call it Cantonese. Taiwanese is a similar case (place-name term) here.

volgo 9y ago
There's certainly a fair amount of people from Taiwan who call it Hokkien as a matter of accuracy I don't think that's the case here though. There's nothing specifically different from the Hokkien spoken in Taiwan. It's a dialect of Chinese and certainly cannot be called linguistically different. It would be like saying someone spoke Texan instead of English with a Texas accent. The written language is traditional Chinese, nothing else. This is a common misunderstanding
- dwohnitmok 9y ago
  Chinese has a long tradition of using place-names to refer to regional specific dialects that in English we might just call, as you put it, "English with an X accent." In the same way that you'll hear 重庆话 (Chongqingnese) and 成都话 (Chengdunese) both used to refer to region-specific dialects of Sichuanese (which in turn is really a member of the greater Mandarin (官话) dialect family) and 上海话 (Shanghainese) and 苏州话 (Suzhounese) used to refer to different region-specific dialects of Wu, Taiwanese is being used in a similar fashion here. It is indeed a dialect of Hokkien that is mutually intelligible with and very similar to other varieties of Hokkien. The differences are, as you imply, on par with the differences you might find between a Texan accent and a New York accent. But there's nothing special about Taiwanese here. This is just the way all region-specific dialects of Chinese are named. The written language is kind of sort of traditional Chinese (depending on how liberally we're defining "traditional Chinese" here), but it's a stretch. The grammar is not the same as modern Mandarin (nor is it the same as Classical Chinese). Moreover not all the characters used are attested to in official Chinese sources (for example, the first character that the original comment way way up circled in his Flickr image is not found in any ancient Chinese dictionaries I know of (Guangyun/广韵, Shuowenjiezi/说文解字, Qieyun/切韵, Kangxi Dictionary/康熙字典) nor is it found in the modern Xinhua Dictionary 新华字典. And I don't have a copy handy but I wouldn't be surprised if I couldn't find it in the evocatively named Cihai/辞海 (Word Ocean). This is presumably why they are not in Unihan. A much larger set of characters are those that very very few Mandarin speakers recognize. And another (independent) large set of characters do not and have never had the meaning they have in Hokkien in other varieties of Chinese. That's not to say there's not a lot of overlap with written Mandarin. A Mandarin speaker could probably muddle their way through this Bible if they tried, but then again, a French speaker could muddle their way through Haitian Creole. And even an English speaker could maybe get through a French newspaper given enough cognates. This is a far far cry from the "embedded Mandarin" situation I talked about in another comment though. Maybe it's not quite something like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhuang_logogram https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhuang_logogram which is Chinese-looking, but definitely not what people would normally call Chinese characters, but for a few of these characters, it's getting pretty damn close.
jessriedel 9y ago
Thanks very much for sharing some of the detailed background here. Stuff like this is what keeps HN a big magical.

jhanschoo 9y ago

Not really, many Taiwan residents conduct business in Standard Mandarin, but speak in Taiwanese Hokkien at home. It's called Taiwanese because it has since drifted from mainland Hokkien, and sociolinguists consider Taiwanese a prestige dialect of Hokkien due to its cultural output and Japanisms.