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Not sure why you're getting downvoted, this is correct. Mandarin and Cantonese are regional dialects, Mandarin gained prominence because emperors from about th

Not sure why you're getting downvoted, this is correct. Mandarin and Cantonese are regional dialects, Mandarin gained prominence because emperors from about the 1600s resided in Northern China and in Beijing which used a lot of Mandarin Chinese, thus it spread due to being a prestige language used by the royal family and their courtiers. Cantonese is prominent in certain areas of Southern China in the Guangdong and Guangxi provinces. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandarin_Chinese https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandarin_Chinese https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cantonese https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cantonese Hong Kong and Taiwan uses Traditional Chinese, Mainland China and Singapore/Malaysian Chinese uses Simplified Chinese for their text. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simplified_Chinese_characters https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simplified_Chinese_characters https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traditional_Chinese_characters https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traditional_Chinese_characters I personally find fangyan as a better descriptor than dialect: http://dictionary.pinpinchinese.com/definitions/s/%E6%96%B9%E8%A8%80-fangyan http://dictionary.pinpinchinese.com/definitions/s/%E6%96%B9%...

yorwba 8y ago
> Not sure why you're getting downvoted, this is correct. No it's not, because it's fundamentally confused about what it means to write a language down. > I personally find fangyan as a better descriptor than dialect The literal translation of fangyan is "topolect", i.e. "the way people talk in a certain place". It only came to mean "dialect" due to some weird miscommunication when Western linguistic terminology was introduced in China. So that's the translation dictionaries give, and it's correct except when it's used to describe languages within China, where the traditional meaning of "topolect" continues to be used.

yorwba 8y ago

> Not sure why you're getting downvoted, this is correct. No it's not, because it's fundamentally confused about what it means to write a language down. > I personally find fangyan as a better descriptor than dialect The literal translation of fangyan is "topolect", i.e. "the way people talk in a certain place". It only came to mean "dialect" due to some weird miscommunication when Western linguistic terminology was introduced in China. So that's the translation dictionaries give, and it's correct except when it's used to describe languages within China, where the traditional meaning of "topolect" continues to be used.