4 ms·

The coastal urbanites (respectively their children) learn foreign languages because they can afford the teachers. The rurals do not benefit.

by bmn__ 5y ago

SamReidHughes 5y ago
I'm talking about the various Chinese dialects, which my understanding is share a written language.
- thaumasiotes 5y ago
  They don't; what do you think it would mean for two different languages to "share a written language"? Everyone is trained to read and write Mandarin; writing other dialects is not encouraged. But more than that, China is hard at work at ensuring that all Chinese speak Mandarin.
  - coupdejarnac 5y ago
    Mandarin isn't the written language fyi.
    - thaumasiotes 5y ago
      Yes, it is.
      - whoevercares 5y ago
        Mandarin is not written Chinese to my knowledge. There are simplified and traditional Chinese in written form. Mandarin is close to how Northern Chinese speak and can be written in both form without any difficulty and most of times equivalent Edit: perhaps you mean other Chinese dialects use different words to describe something - commonly seen in Southern dialects which inherits more from ancient Chinese. However for many common esp professional sentence the written form is universal Source: I’m native Chinese
        bmn__ 5y ago
        > Mandarin is not written Chinese to my knowledge. […] Source: I’m native Chinese You are confusing written language with writing system, probably due to domestic and global propaganda efforts that have been going on for 70 years. This really undermines the scientific effort of linguists and just sows confusion, as evidenced by your mislabelling languages as dialects, and forcing the rest of the world to invent new words like "topolect" for existing concepts that the communist party does not like to be true. My writing system is the Latin alphabet. I can write the languages Danish, English, French, German, Hungarian, Italian etc. etc. with it. Another writing system is the Cyrillic alphabet. I can write Bulgarian, Russian, Serbian etc. with it. So the writing system is an orthogonal concept to the written language. As an analogue, the writing system we are discussing is the Chinese characters. One can write with it for example Cantonese, classical Chinese, Hokkien, Japanese, Mandarin, Zhuang, among others. The distinction between traditional and simplified you mentioned is minor and not a fundamental property of the language written with it. Example: Cantonese can be and is written in both simplified and traditional. > the written form is universal That's not true. The languages Cantonese, Hokkien, Mandarin belong to the same family (Sinitic) but have different grammar, lexicon and word order; these differences are also reflected in writing.
        thaumasiotes 5y ago
        > My writing system is the Latin alphabet. I can write the languages Danish, English, French, German, Hungarian, Italian etc. etc. with it. This is only true in a very strained sense of "the Latin alphabet". No two of the languages you mention have an alphabet in common. The Latin alphabet has no U or J, and while Y and Z were known to Latin speakers they do not appear in any Latin words. Compare ø, ç , ß, and ő. Even alphabets that appear visually similar may be quite different. The Spanish alphabet I was taught went: A B C CH D E F G H I J K L LL M N Ñ O P Q R RR S T U V W X Y Z The Ñ is not the only difference there. Something analogous is true for the different varieties of Chinese; there are a handful of "regional" characters with no standard use.
        bmn__ 5y ago
        I made a mistake, I meant to write Latin script.
- ncmncm 5y ago
  People who speak other Chinese languages are translating to and from written Mandarin. They are not taught to write their spoken language. Nobody would read it if they did. Spelling with Chinese characters is a tricky business. It is not enough to write the syllables; for each of ~1200 syllables there are several characters to choose from. Which to use in each word is purely a product of history, but the rules people learn are only for Mandarin. It is funny that Chinese people who only know Mandarin mostly don't know this; it is not safe to talk about in China. So, Cantonese speakers let them continue to believe that Cantonese is "just pronounced differently", rather than being a whole language of its own. (Are French and Spanish just dialects of Latin?)
  - angelzen 5y ago
    'Are French and Spanish just dialects of Latin?' Yes :)
    - DFHippie 5y ago
      "Dialect" here means mutually intelligible. Mutual intelligibility is a fuzzy threshold, incidentally. I was in Spain once hanging out with an Italian guy. The Spanish speakers around could make sense of his Italian but he couldn't make sense of their Spanish. I think the essential problem was that they were more interested in understanding him than he was in understanding them, so they put in more effort.
      - angelzen 5y ago
        Hypothesis: The Italian guy might have a better chance of picking up Spanish if the Spaniards were to speak a bit slower than usual :) Especially at the fuzzy mutual intelligibility boundary, a lower communication speed helps. Italian syllables/minute: 405 Spanish syllables/minute: 526 https://irisreading.com/average-reading-speed-in-various-languages/ https://irisreading.com/average-reading-speed-in-various-lan...
        thaumasiotes 5y ago

The coastal urbanites (respectively their children) learn foreign languages because they can afford the teachers. The rurals do not benefit.

by bmn__ 5y ago

The coastal urbanites (respectively their children) learn foreign languages because they can afford the teachers. The rurals do not benefit.

SamReidHughes 5y ago

I'm talking about the various Chinese dialects, which my understanding is share a written language.

thaumasiotes 5y ago
They don't; what do you think it would mean for two different languages to "share a written language"? Everyone is trained to read and write Mandarin; writing other dialects is not encouraged. But more than that, China is hard at work at ensuring that all Chinese speak Mandarin.
- coupdejarnac 5y ago
  Mandarin isn't the written language fyi.
  - thaumasiotes 5y ago
    Yes, it is.
    - whoevercares 5y ago
      Mandarin is not written Chinese to my knowledge. There are simplified and traditional Chinese in written form. Mandarin is close to how Northern Chinese speak and can be written in both form without any difficulty and most of times equivalent Edit: perhaps you mean other Chinese dialects use different words to describe something - commonly seen in Southern dialects which inherits more from ancient Chinese. However for many common esp professional sentence the written form is universal Source: I’m native Chinese
      - bmn__ 5y ago
        > Mandarin is not written Chinese to my knowledge. […] Source: I’m native Chinese You are confusing written language with writing system, probably due to domestic and global propaganda efforts that have been going on for 70 years. This really undermines the scientific effort of linguists and just sows confusion, as evidenced by your mislabelling languages as dialects, and forcing the rest of the world to invent new words like "topolect" for existing concepts that the communist party does not like to be true. My writing system is the Latin alphabet. I can write the languages Danish, English, French, German, Hungarian, Italian etc. etc. with it. Another writing system is the Cyrillic alphabet. I can write Bulgarian, Russian, Serbian etc. with it. So the writing system is an orthogonal concept to the written language. As an analogue, the writing system we are discussing is the Chinese characters. One can write with it for example Cantonese, classical Chinese, Hokkien, Japanese, Mandarin, Zhuang, among others. The distinction between traditional and simplified you mentioned is minor and not a fundamental property of the language written with it. Example: Cantonese can be and is written in both simplified and traditional. > the written form is universal That's not true. The languages Cantonese, Hokkien, Mandarin belong to the same family (Sinitic) but have different grammar, lexicon and word order; these differences are also reflected in writing.
        thaumasiotes 5y ago
        > My writing system is the Latin alphabet. I can write the languages Danish, English, French, German, Hungarian, Italian etc. etc. with it. This is only true in a very strained sense of "the Latin alphabet". No two of the languages you mention have an alphabet in common. The Latin alphabet has no U or J, and while Y and Z were known to Latin speakers they do not appear in any Latin words. Compare ø, ç , ß, and ő. Even alphabets that appear visually similar may be quite different. The Spanish alphabet I was taught went: A B C CH D E F G H I J K L LL M N Ñ O P Q R RR S T U V W X Y Z The Ñ is not the only difference there. Something analogous is true for the different varieties of Chinese; there are a handful of "regional" characters with no standard use.
        bmn__ 5y ago
        I made a mistake, I meant to write Latin script.
ncmncm 5y ago
People who speak other Chinese languages are translating to and from written Mandarin. They are not taught to write their spoken language. Nobody would read it if they did. Spelling with Chinese characters is a tricky business. It is not enough to write the syllables; for each of ~1200 syllables there are several characters to choose from. Which to use in each word is purely a product of history, but the rules people learn are only for Mandarin. It is funny that Chinese people who only know Mandarin mostly don't know this; it is not safe to talk about in China. So, Cantonese speakers let them continue to believe that Cantonese is "just pronounced differently", rather than being a whole language of its own. (Are French and Spanish just dialects of Latin?)
- angelzen 5y ago
  'Are French and Spanish just dialects of Latin?' Yes :)
  - DFHippie 5y ago
    "Dialect" here means mutually intelligible. Mutual intelligibility is a fuzzy threshold, incidentally. I was in Spain once hanging out with an Italian guy. The Spanish speakers around could make sense of his Italian but he couldn't make sense of their Spanish. I think the essential problem was that they were more interested in understanding him than he was in understanding them, so they put in more effort.
    - angelzen 5y ago
      Hypothesis: The Italian guy might have a better chance of picking up Spanish if the Spaniards were to speak a bit slower than usual :) Especially at the fuzzy mutual intelligibility boundary, a lower communication speed helps. Italian syllables/minute: 405 Spanish syllables/minute: 526 https://irisreading.com/average-reading-speed-in-various-languages/ https://irisreading.com/average-reading-speed-in-various-lan...
      - thaumasiotes 5y ago