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> Those who refer to themselves as Cantonese do not feel superior People who call themselves cantonese and not chinese are mostly from Hong Kong. People in Hon
by dragonsh 5y ago
> Those who refer to themselves as Cantonese do not feel superior
People who call themselves cantonese and not chinese are mostly from Hong Kong. People in Hong Kong always thought of themselves as superior to mainland Chinese and not just that they openly discriminated against them and darker skin people from south asia many of whom hold Hong Kong passport.
If you want to talk about regional differences like Newyorker or Californian then it does exist in China today where Shanghainese consider themselves at top and mostly disliked by Beijinger or HongKonger and others.
Efforts for unification of China started in Qin empire (221–206 BC) [0], which includes language standardisation and still a work in progress given there are still large number of dialects and ethnic groups in China. Lucky for China many of its historical culture remains along with language, cannot say the same for native Americans, whose language is not even part of official languages in North or South America.
[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qin_dynasty https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qin_dynasty
- enkid 5y agoWhy do we have to bring Native Americans into it? This seems at best a non-sequitur, and at worst whataboutism to hide China's many issues with suppressing minority cultures. No one claims states in the Americas have a good history with this, why bring it up when it has nothing to do with the conversation? Both China and many other countries need to do better. Bringing up complaints about other countries does nothing but trying to distract.
- LAC-Tech 5y agoI'm assuming you're chinese. Can you explain to me why chinese people - not just in the PRC but also Taiwan, Singapore and Malaysia - seem so eager to eliminate every chinese language that isn't Mandarin? It's truly bizarre to me. Even people who want the EU to become a super state don't do things like call Dutch and French 'dialects' and demand the whole thing standardise to one language.
- _tik_ 5y agoNot OP. For the Singapore case. The main reason is practicality. Mandarin and English considered more important in Global Business. English educated political leaders assumed learning Mandarin was hindered by speaking dialect at home. Singapore is a young nation then.
- LAC-Tech 5y agoIn Singapores case my more cynical take is they wanted to ensure that Chinese formed a linguistic majority, not just an ethnic one. China was an economic backwater when the Speak Mandarin policy came about, and Singapore already had and continues to have a real lingua franca - English.
- mistrial9 5y agomy understanding is that the written language is already standardized as Simplified Chinese, readable by almost all, but that Traditional Chinese written language exists, importantly in Taiwan. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traditional_Chinese_characters https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traditional_Chinese_characters https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debate_on_traditional_and_simplified_Chinese_characters https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debate_on_traditional_and_simp...
- Taniwha 5y agoAnd also Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, and various 'china town' enclaves in other western countries
- k_sze 5y agoIt's not elimination. It's called "having a standard language so people can communicate". People still speak their non-Mandarin mother tongues at home and in general. Local dialects are still used at the bank, at government service centers, etc. It's just that you must _be able_ to communicate in Mandarin in case somebody from another province walks in. Some local schools, especially for minorities, still teach their mother tongue in school as a subject, on purpose - e.g. schools in Xinjiang.
- randomhodler84 5y agoHistory teaches us that is is exactly how an authoritarian state goes about eliminating local cultural identity and language.
- blondin 5y agoah come on guys, let's take a step back before making comments such as this one.
- CogitoCogito 5y ago> ah come on guys, let's take a step back before making comments such as this one. Care to explain what part of the comment you take issue with?
- randomhodler84 5y agoOr open one’s eyes to the cultural engineering that is occurring. Am I wrong?
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- LAC-Tech 5y agoIf you look at any language that got wiped out, or nearly got wiped out, the story is always the same: "they punished us at school if we spoke $MOTHER_TONGUE instead of $NATIONAL_LANGUAGE".
- bene_legionary 5y agoNow I don't know enough about 'dialects' in the sinosphere but I think that a dominant 'national' language is an expected outcome of globalisation. For example, French threatening to wipe out Occitan, Corsican and Breton, Castillian Spanish with Catalonian and other Iberian languages, Hindi and Urdu in India and Pakistan, etc. That's not to say that it's a good thing, just that it has happened in other places too. French policy on language might just be as strict from what I've read.
- cjbprime 5y agoMany people in Latin America totally do this about every living native language which is not Spanish. I'd say the EU is the odd case rather than China here.
- c_o_n_v_e_x 5y agoHaving a single language for Chinese diaspora functionally makes sense. Similarly (kind of), Bahasa Indonesia was created to help address the linguistic challenges of having an archipelago nation. I've lived in Singapore for 10+ years. I work with a mix of Singaporeans (native and naturalized HK'r's) and Malay Chinese (coincidentally all from Penang). Day to day chats in the office is English/Singlish and hokkien. Calls with vendors in Penang are in English and Hokkien. Calls with Taiwanese vendors are in Mandarin. When we have calls with our Taiwanese vendors, one of my older Singaporean colleagues always attends because he has the strongest mandarin on the team.
- another_story 5y agoAs someone who has lived, worked, and has family in Guangdong/Guangzhou, a large number identify as Cantonese. I feel like your idea of what people think in these regions is just repeating the same stereotypes repeated in China, stating perception of feelings as fact. Language standardization was for the written form, not spoken.
- dragonsh 5y agoYes within China people from Shanghai also call themselves Shanghainese and their dialect is also very different like Cantonese so its nothing special. Shanghainese consider themselves, like New Yorker more cultured than anyone else in China including Cantonese. But people of Chinese ethnicity will first always identify themselves as Chinese not Cantonese or Shanghainese or Beijinger or Fujianese except for some people who prefer to think they are superior then being Chinese. Its like saying New Yorker is different from a Californian and they are not American. When they are outside USA they will prefer to be called New Yorker not American.