The fangyan/topolect distinction reminds me of Italy. The Tuscan language of the renaissance and Dante was deemed "Italian" following unification in the mid 19t

The fangyan/topolect distinction reminds me of Italy. The Tuscan language of the renaissance and Dante was deemed "Italian" following unification in the mid 19th century. Yet the regional topolects of Italy derive not from a unified standard Italian but dating back two millennia to the time of Caesar. Here in Australia, children will learn standard Italian as a foreign language, if only to communicate with their grandparents speaking a fossilized 1940-50s "dialect" from the villages they fled post the war, with an implied stigma that said octogenarians aren't speaking 'properly'. Here's an interesting clip sampling regional Italian languages: [0] This article was written last decade, before the age of the ubiquitous smartphone in which the Latin alphabet is used to suggest Chinese characters [1]. Perhaps then a new application of Taiwanese 'church romanization' emerges, with character suggestions specific to that romanization - though not if the prevailing low prestige of fangyan languages remains. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qEEPyE-nR58 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qEEPyE-nR58 [1] http://pinpinchinese.com/blog/how-to-type-chinese-with-pinyin-android/ http://pinpinchinese.com/blog/how-to-type-chinese-with-pinyi...