> Primarily Mandarin speakers I have known were taught, and believed, that the "dialects" were basically the same as Mandarin, just with different pronunciation

> Primarily Mandarin speakers I have known were taught, and believed, that the "dialects" were basically the same as Mandarin, just with different pronunciation. I wonder where they got "taught" such an idea. I'm sure that many "believe" so, but mostly because they never interacted with the Cantonese language, and therefore have a naive misunderstanding. It's certainly not an idea that is taught in the most syllabus; (in fact, Chinese textbooks love to boast about how diverse the Chinese language is, despite not teaching anything specific about "dialects") > This has often led to belief that ancient documents using the characters could be read and understood without deep knowledge of the actual language and world of the writer, resulting in, at best, comical translations.) Again, I wonder where they went to school exactly. This is very different from what I experienced growing up (in mainland china). Every single ancient (sometimes not even ancient) passage in textbooks have heavy footnotes, and it is usually an entire independent topic in literature class, from elementary school all the way to college. In fact, from the perspective of most students (and a lot of parents, too), 文言文 (ancient Chinese) is the most impenetrable part of literature class.