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>We're speaking English, and we can be brave enough to call mutually unintelligible languages what they are - languages. I'm not super familiar with the specif

>We're speaking English, and we can be brave enough to call mutually unintelligible languages what they are - languages. I'm not super familiar with the specifics of Mandarin, so I could be wrong here, but it's quite common to come across English words that have fallen out of common use by native speakers but are adopted by non-native speakers as a vehicle for expressing a concept that exists in their native language but doesn't have a precise translation into English. Especially since they're talking about the evolution of Chinese pronunciation, "topolect", while jargon-y, seems to be a far more precise vehicle for expressing their sentiment.

magicsmoke 5y ago
Topolect was specifically invented in 1991 by Victor Mair as a translation of 方言 (fangyan) to get around the whole language/dialect bombshell when it comes to Chinese. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/topolect https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/topolect http://sino-platonic.org/complete/spp029_chinese_dialect.pdf http://sino-platonic.org/complete/spp029_chinese_dialect.pdf It's a way to take 方言 and decouple it from linguistic terms like language and dialects so a proper study and classification of the Chinese language family and its various languages and dialects can take place without interference from Chinese politics. When someone points out that Cantonese, Hokkien, and Mandarin are 方言 then linguists can nod politely, agree that they are in fact "topolects", then continue classifying them as Sinitic languages within the Sino-Tibetan language family each with their own collection of dialects. Would be interesting to know if the study of Arabic has similar issues because from a layman's cursory knowledge Arabic has similar diversity when it comes to mutual intelligibility.
- AussieWog93 5y ago
  Thanks for the links and explanations. It seems political definitions of what is an isn't a "language" are more political than I realised. On a side note, I actually found it a little bit ironic that Afrikaans was listed as a dialect of Dutch in his paper. Many South Africans would disagree with that classification quite strongly, especially since Afrikaans has its own literature and regional dialects. In turn, there's a movement to classify the coloured dialect of Afrikaans as its own language (Kaaps), in fear that it will be swallowed up by the more standard "white" form and erode their cultural identity.
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magicsmoke 5y ago

Topolect was specifically invented in 1991 by Victor Mair as a translation of 方言 (fangyan) to get around the whole language/dialect bombshell when it comes to Chinese. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/topolect https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/topolect http://sino-platonic.org/complete/spp029_chinese_dialect.pdf http://sino-platonic.org/complete/spp029_chinese_dialect.pdf It's a way to take 方言 and decouple it from linguistic terms like language and dialects so a proper study and classification of the Chinese language family and its various languages and dialects can take place without interference from Chinese politics. When someone points out that Cantonese, Hokkien, and Mandarin are 方言 then linguists can nod politely, agree that they are in fact "topolects", then continue classifying them as Sinitic languages within the Sino-Tibetan language family each with their own collection of dialects. Would be interesting to know if the study of Arabic has similar issues because from a layman's cursory knowledge Arabic has similar diversity when it comes to mutual intelligibility.

AussieWog93 5y ago
Thanks for the links and explanations. It seems political definitions of what is an isn't a "language" are more political than I realised. On a side note, I actually found it a little bit ironic that Afrikaans was listed as a dialect of Dutch in his paper. Many South Africans would disagree with that classification quite strongly, especially since Afrikaans has its own literature and regional dialects. In turn, there's a movement to classify the coloured dialect of Afrikaans as its own language (Kaaps), in fear that it will be swallowed up by the more standard "white" form and erode their cultural identity.
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