6 ms·

Isn't Mandarin Chinese understood on all China, from Xinjiang to Canton?

by shp0ngle 8y ago

theli0nheart 8y ago
Mandarin is about as pervasive in China as English is in Europe. The USA is definitely more linguistically homogeneous.
- TulliusCicero 8y ago
  Depends on the area. You'll find speakers of lots of foreign languages all over in NYC or coastal California. What might be unusual in the US though is that it's a big country in both population and geographic size, and yet the amount of regional variation in the primary tongue is quite limited. I think the UK and Germany have considerably more variation, even though they're smaller countries.
dmckeon 8y ago
Written, mostly, but spoken, not so much. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_language https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_language
- echaozh 8y ago
  Well, isn't it a wonder more than a billion people can understand each other's writings even if they speak different dialects. To some extent, a Chinese and a Japanese can communicate with Hanzi/Kanji even if they don't understand the other language.
lainga 8y ago
Yes, but it exists alongside other dialects spoken locally which are sort of mutually intelligible, but in some cases only when written (cf. Cantonese). It's analogous to large parts of the US outside the Northeast Corridor using various dialects of American Sign Language, which is written the exact same as American English, but only among people from their home city, and also having varying degrees of command over spoken English.
- robocat 8y ago
  > American Sign Language, which is written the exact same as American English ASL is an utterly different language from English. Your sentence is equivalent to saying that because a person speaks Cantonese but writes English, Cantonese is the same as English. "English can be represented through fingerspelling or artificial systems like Signed Exact English or Cued Speech. But these are codes for spoken or written language, not languages themselves." from http://mentalfloss.com/article/13107/7-things-you-should-know-about-sign-language http://mentalfloss.com/article/13107/7-things-you-should-kno... It is a common misconception, because English speaking people are generally taught Signed Exact English and see it used for real time translation, but that has no grammatical crossover with ASL. Oliver Sacks wrote a fabulous book on the subject: Seeing Voices.
imjustsaying 8y ago
Glad you asked, as this article reminded me of that. Outside of Northern China, where Mandarin is original dialect, the answer is no, Mandarin is not understood throughout the country on a level that English is in the US. It's a kind of second language for many, with younger generations generally being more fluent than their elders. Like the Indonesian dialect, it's somewhat forced by recent government mandate except for the North where it's from. The frequency of overhearing people asking each other for more clarification showed me that language barriers existed, even among university students. English by contrast is much more consistent and far less ambiguous among accents and dialects across the globe. At first when people complimented me on my English, I didn't really understand why until I realized most Chinese are not fluent in Mandarin in the way I am fluent in English. It seemed they thought the same fluency disparity would exist among US natives with English.
- pandler 8y ago
  I experienced the same in India a few month ago, when I traveled the length of the west coast with an Indian friend of mine. Coming from the US, I never appreciated how diverse the country is, especially with language. In the south especially, he often struggled just as much as me to communicate with people from his own country, despite being fluent in both Hindi and English. It blew my mind a little bit, especially realizing the administrative nightmare it must be to run a country of over 1.3 billion people with so many languages.
  - wtmt 8y ago
    If you look at any Indian currency bill (Rupee), you'd see the denomination written in words in 22 languages, though in a smaller font. Those are the official languages of India. The official languages of the central government are Hindi and English. All government communications between the central government and state governments or between state governments commonly happen in English because India does not have one language identified as a "national language". Administrative nightmares are avoided by the use of English, which then gets translated to local languages as required. Apart from the 22 official languages, there are nearly a thousand languages/dialects (the distinctions are quite hazy) spoken in the country. What your Indian friend experienced could be because of an assumption that many people in the north make about Hindi being the lingua franca around the country. The truth is that while Bollywood has made Hindi more widespread than it otherwise would be, every section of the country its non-Hindi languages, be it west, east, north east or the south, resists the imposition of Hindi by governments. People in many states, not just in the south, may not even understand Hindi or speak it even if their languages are closer to Hindi. Among Indians, only someone from some of the northern states (where Hindi is the official language) would mistakenly think of Hindi as a "national language" or a bridge language.
arghwhat 8y ago
Think of Mandarin like English. Many regions only have it as second language, with not everyone speaking it well (and just like with English, younger generations do better on average). In regions where it is the first language, it is usually a dialect differing from Standard Mandarin. Canton (guangzhou) speaks Cantonese, Shanghai speaks Shanghainese, and so it goes, with none of these languages having much at all to do with Mandarin (The Shanghainese use of tones is closer to Scandinavian languages than other Chinese languages!). In Hong Kong, Mandarin would be your third language in school, unused in public except to communicate with visiting mainlanders. Writing is basically isolated from the spoken language, so there the primary concern is that some areas use traditional Chinese, whereas others use simplified.
- sidibe 8y ago
  That's exaggerated, outside of Cantonese-speaking areas Mandarin is the native language of the younger generations.
  - seanmcdirmid 8y ago
    That isn't true. Many people will speak their local dialect as a native language, even outside of cantonese speaking areas. My wife is from a town in Hunan, her mandarin is native, but that's because her mom and dad were from different places in Hunan. But there are still many kids in that area who speak Mandarin with a heavy accent... Cantonese isn't very special as Chinese dialects go; e.g. Taiwanese/Fujianese (Min Chinese) are just as proud of their dialect (more so in Taiwan where the push for mandarin is not as strong as on the mainland).
  - arghwhat 8y ago
    I disagree, but I'd like to add that just like everywhere else in the world, the younger generations have a higher average level of education and linguistic skill, thus being better at both second and third languages than the previous generations. Mandarin words are also adopted in local languages to fill gaps by the younger generations, just like English words are often put to use in the west. Not as fully incorporated loan-words, but just as a Mandarin word randomly injected into a foreign language sentence (Those speaking Cantonese use English words instead). However, the native tongue of the younger generations is not Mandarin, at least not in any of the areas I have knowledge of. Source: Married to a native Shanghainese (who is in the 20-30 range) who spend half her life in Hong Kong, and thus spoke Cantonese, Shanghainese, Mandarin and English fluently out of necessity (more western languages have been added to the list later on).
seanmcdirmid 8y ago
It depends. I've been in the middle of Sichuan (in Tibetan counties), many of the older people don't understand mandarin while the younger people do. The same applies to rural Xinjiang. Definitely Mandarin will get you farther in China than English, but it isn't quite universal yet.

Isn't Mandarin Chinese understood on all China, from Xinjiang to Canton?

theli0nheart 8y ago

Mandarin is about as pervasive in China as English is in Europe. The USA is definitely more linguistically homogeneous.

TulliusCicero 8y ago
Depends on the area. You'll find speakers of lots of foreign languages all over in NYC or coastal California. What might be unusual in the US though is that it's a big country in both population and geographic size, and yet the amount of regional variation in the primary tongue is quite limited. I think the UK and Germany have considerably more variation, even though they're smaller countries.

dmckeon 8y ago

Written, mostly, but spoken, not so much. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_language https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_language

echaozh 8y ago
Well, isn't it a wonder more than a billion people can understand each other's writings even if they speak different dialects. To some extent, a Chinese and a Japanese can communicate with Hanzi/Kanji even if they don't understand the other language.

lainga 8y ago

Yes, but it exists alongside other dialects spoken locally which are sort of mutually intelligible, but in some cases only when written (cf. Cantonese). It's analogous to large parts of the US outside the Northeast Corridor using various dialects of American Sign Language, which is written the exact same as American English, but only among people from their home city, and also having varying degrees of command over spoken English.

robocat 8y ago
> American Sign Language, which is written the exact same as American English ASL is an utterly different language from English. Your sentence is equivalent to saying that because a person speaks Cantonese but writes English, Cantonese is the same as English. "English can be represented through fingerspelling or artificial systems like Signed Exact English or Cued Speech. But these are codes for spoken or written language, not languages themselves." from http://mentalfloss.com/article/13107/7-things-you-should-know-about-sign-language http://mentalfloss.com/article/13107/7-things-you-should-kno... It is a common misconception, because English speaking people are generally taught Signed Exact English and see it used for real time translation, but that has no grammatical crossover with ASL. Oliver Sacks wrote a fabulous book on the subject: Seeing Voices.

imjustsaying 8y ago

Glad you asked, as this article reminded me of that. Outside of Northern China, where Mandarin is original dialect, the answer is no, Mandarin is not understood throughout the country on a level that English is in the US. It's a kind of second language for many, with younger generations generally being more fluent than their elders. Like the Indonesian dialect, it's somewhat forced by recent government mandate except for the North where it's from. The frequency of overhearing people asking each other for more clarification showed me that language barriers existed, even among university students. English by contrast is much more consistent and far less ambiguous among accents and dialects across the globe. At first when people complimented me on my English, I didn't really understand why until I realized most Chinese are not fluent in Mandarin in the way I am fluent in English. It seemed they thought the same fluency disparity would exist among US natives with English.

pandler 8y ago
I experienced the same in India a few month ago, when I traveled the length of the west coast with an Indian friend of mine. Coming from the US, I never appreciated how diverse the country is, especially with language. In the south especially, he often struggled just as much as me to communicate with people from his own country, despite being fluent in both Hindi and English. It blew my mind a little bit, especially realizing the administrative nightmare it must be to run a country of over 1.3 billion people with so many languages.
- wtmt 8y ago
  If you look at any Indian currency bill (Rupee), you'd see the denomination written in words in 22 languages, though in a smaller font. Those are the official languages of India. The official languages of the central government are Hindi and English. All government communications between the central government and state governments or between state governments commonly happen in English because India does not have one language identified as a "national language". Administrative nightmares are avoided by the use of English, which then gets translated to local languages as required. Apart from the 22 official languages, there are nearly a thousand languages/dialects (the distinctions are quite hazy) spoken in the country. What your Indian friend experienced could be because of an assumption that many people in the north make about Hindi being the lingua franca around the country. The truth is that while Bollywood has made Hindi more widespread than it otherwise would be, every section of the country its non-Hindi languages, be it west, east, north east or the south, resists the imposition of Hindi by governments. People in many states, not just in the south, may not even understand Hindi or speak it even if their languages are closer to Hindi. Among Indians, only someone from some of the northern states (where Hindi is the official language) would mistakenly think of Hindi as a "national language" or a bridge language.

arghwhat 8y ago

Think of Mandarin like English. Many regions only have it as second language, with not everyone speaking it well (and just like with English, younger generations do better on average). In regions where it is the first language, it is usually a dialect differing from Standard Mandarin. Canton (guangzhou) speaks Cantonese, Shanghai speaks Shanghainese, and so it goes, with none of these languages having much at all to do with Mandarin (The Shanghainese use of tones is closer to Scandinavian languages than other Chinese languages!). In Hong Kong, Mandarin would be your third language in school, unused in public except to communicate with visiting mainlanders. Writing is basically isolated from the spoken language, so there the primary concern is that some areas use traditional Chinese, whereas others use simplified.

sidibe 8y ago
That's exaggerated, outside of Cantonese-speaking areas Mandarin is the native language of the younger generations.
- seanmcdirmid 8y ago
  That isn't true. Many people will speak their local dialect as a native language, even outside of cantonese speaking areas. My wife is from a town in Hunan, her mandarin is native, but that's because her mom and dad were from different places in Hunan. But there are still many kids in that area who speak Mandarin with a heavy accent... Cantonese isn't very special as Chinese dialects go; e.g. Taiwanese/Fujianese (Min Chinese) are just as proud of their dialect (more so in Taiwan where the push for mandarin is not as strong as on the mainland).
- arghwhat 8y ago
  I disagree, but I'd like to add that just like everywhere else in the world, the younger generations have a higher average level of education and linguistic skill, thus being better at both second and third languages than the previous generations. Mandarin words are also adopted in local languages to fill gaps by the younger generations, just like English words are often put to use in the west. Not as fully incorporated loan-words, but just as a Mandarin word randomly injected into a foreign language sentence (Those speaking Cantonese use English words instead). However, the native tongue of the younger generations is not Mandarin, at least not in any of the areas I have knowledge of. Source: Married to a native Shanghainese (who is in the 20-30 range) who spend half her life in Hong Kong, and thus spoke Cantonese, Shanghainese, Mandarin and English fluently out of necessity (more western languages have been added to the list later on).

seanmcdirmid 8y ago

It depends. I've been in the middle of Sichuan (in Tibetan counties), many of the older people don't understand mandarin while the younger people do. The same applies to rural Xinjiang. Definitely Mandarin will get you farther in China than English, but it isn't quite universal yet.