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There's a lot of complexities and politically-motivated reasons behind calling various varieties of Chinese "dialects" but this article swings way too far the o
by dwohnitmok 5y ago
There's a lot of complexities and politically-motivated reasons behind calling various varieties of Chinese "dialects" but this article swings way too far the other direction.
There has been a single lingua franca across all of China since at least the Han Dynasty, perhaps even the Warring States period or earlier. It has variously been called 通語 (the mass/common/omnipresent/intelligible language, 通 is a bit difficult to translate here), 官話 (the official language), potentially 雅言 (elegant speech, this is more controversial and earliest mention) and now 普通话 or 國語.
> Indeed, before the 20th century the idea of a singular, spoken Chinese language was a foreign concept
Matteo Ricci explicitly talks about a single language he can use to talk with everyone in every province (in his time this was the 官話). And indeed he used the same language as he made his way across the entire coast of China. There is an entire Han Dynasty compendium of the vocabulary of various regions that compares it against the official lingua franca. Indeed the title of this work is exactly Fangyan!
> But while Chinese thinkers frequently mentioned ‘official languages’, this was by no means synonymous with a ‘national language’ – a language unified in its sound and script used by and representative of a Chinese nation.
These "official languages" were exactly unified in sound and script and representative of a Chinese nation! The language Ricci encountered was the descendent of one whose pronunciation was explicitly codified (there are some asterisks here I can elaborate on if people are interested) in the 14th century 洪武正韻 (Hongwu Proper Sound), and was passed to neighboring kingdoms as the official language (and is e.g. preserved in Korean rime books on the Chinese language).
The difference in the last 100 years has been a difference in degree rather than kind. With the advent of near-universal education and literacy and the technological tools offered by mass media, the PRC, ROC, and to a lesser extent places like Singapore and Malaysia can more effectively carry out the language programs that have been attempted in the millennia past.
Granted the difference in degree is vast: the tools at the disposal of political regimes today absolutely dwarfs those of the past. This also means the effects of standardization are far more keenly felt. However, the motivation and policy is one with a long and winding history.
It follows a standard story of varying unification and disunity both linguistically and politically that has played out many times in China's history.
- binarysolo 5y agoThanks for your's and whakim's thorough conversation about this -- some of the nuance is really hard to articulate without the historical geopolitical context and you summed it up really well!
- justicezyx 5y agoNice summary! As a Chinese native and Han people, I have no idea of these historical records! Just to say how rich and complex the Chinese history is and how profound is this legacy and heritage.
- gerdesj 5y ago"against the official lingua franca" Beautifully put: the official language of the Franks! I'm not joking either. There are some fundamental concepts that get given a particular epithet and gradually it becomes a errr "thing". It doesn't really matter what that epithet is, provided we all agree on what it means. It doesn't really matter which language it is in either. English is particularly flexible in this regard. The British isles have seen quite a lot of coming and going over the last few thousand years and the locals have always been welcoming of incoming ... income. The mineral wealth is all mined out now but the outward looking attitude that has characterized the place for millennia due to trade links and easy access via longboat and later the Empire thing is still lingering for now. Anyway, English happily appropriates foreign words wholesale. So we have the Latin phrase: "lingua franca" The language of the Franks. The Franks are roughly France these days. So very old French was the interchange language in Europe for quite a while. Thanks to the invasion of 1066 in England, French really did become the lingua franca hereabouts but as it turns out it largely lost out eventually to a more Saxon (German) language. We ended up with a Germanic language base that had huge dollops of French, pots of Latin and wodges of Greek interspersed with lashings of nearly every other language spoke on the planet. English is a relative newcomer to the game of communicating what is going on behind your eyes to making the air vibrate and causing tiny hairs on tympanic membranes to vibrate and finally making neurons fire in another brain. I think it is quite good at it. However, I never want to see the demise of other languages or them becoming secondary or whatever. English is not perfect. Language like all other things needs diversity. English in its current form could not possible exist without all its predecessors and frankly (lol) all other languages. Modern English has a simplicity and fluidity that is probably due to becoming the language of the Franks - the lingua franca. I suspect that its fluidity is actually due to foreign speakers and not built in. I think that English has been shaped more by foreigners than locals (whatever that means). EDIT: Removed silly nonsense (sorry).