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> English has grossly grouped together Chinese as one unified language, when in actuality it is not. English? Do you mean the UK? US? My perception was that C

by rat87 2y ago

> English has grossly grouped together Chinese as one unified language, when in actuality it is not. English? Do you mean the UK? US? My perception was that China said Chinese was one language and that most westerners agreed. Is this not the case?

seanmcdirmid 2y ago
newbie take: there is one Chinese language intermediate take: there are many Chinese languages expert take: there is one Chinese language There are also plenty of languages in China that are not Chinese or a dialect of Chinese. Tibetan and Mongolian (and their many dialects) are obviously not Chinese. Chinese written language is used as a phonetic script for some minority languages (although many are based on uighur script is used a lot also, Uighur itself uses arabic).
- ThePowerOfFuet 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - j16sdiz 2y ago
    How how Yi? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuosu_language https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuosu_language
  - seanmcdirmid 2y ago
    Tibet is a part of China today. Whether Tibet should be a part of China is up for debate, but the fact that it has been completely integrated into the PRC for at least 70 years now isn't really. I'll be the first one to argue that the PRC's moral claim to the territory comes from it being conquered by the Mongolians during the Yuan dynasty is lame. But it still doesn't mean anything when China controls it today. And that's just the TAR, there are plenty of Tibetans living in areas of China that aren't very contested as not being part of China.
raincole 2y ago
The difference between a langauge and a dialet is political, not linguistic.
- Aloha 2y ago
  "A language is a dialect with an army and navy" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_language_is_a_dialect_with_an_army_and_navy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_language_is_a_dialect_with_a...
  - dllthomas 2y ago
    It's cute, and gets at something real, but it's overstated. The first question is "are these things mutually intelligible", with an answer on a spectrum between "yes, perfectly, obviously" and "no, not at all, obviously". There is a huge gray area that stretches pretty far from the middle in which contingency, identity, community, and nation building projects (both military and literary) move the lines around quite a bit... but as we near either pole that factual question dominates. I think. I'd be interested to learn of counterexamples.
    - DiogenesKynikos 2y ago
      There are German "dialects" that are completely mutually unintelligible. Take someone who speaks the standard German dialect and drop them into the Swiss Alps, and they will understand next to nothing. It will be much easier for them to learn to understand Swiss German (linguists call it "Allemannic") than it would be for someone who doesn't speak German, but it will still take time and effort to adapt. Why are they both called German?
      - School-Cotton 2y ago
        People do typically consider German and Swiss German to be separate languages, I think.
      - samus 2y ago
        There is Luxembourgish, which is basically the local dialect codified as one of the official languages of Luxembourg. It's otherwise perfectly understandable for people from adjacent parts of Belgium and Germany. But I guess the locals would see that it really is almost the same. Similarly to Chinese, Germans see themselves as mostly the same culture. Standarddeutsch is pretty much a fusion between the different varieties and has evolved along with them for a long time; differently from 普通話, which is much younger and the standardized form of a northern variety of Chinese. Germans also really cling to their dialects, and Switzerland and Austria both use slightly different versions of Standarddeutsch. The opposite example are the varieties of Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian, and Montenegrin, which are quite inter-intelligible, but which are considered as different languages by their speakers.
dllthomas 2y ago
It seems pretty well known that Mandarin and Cantonese are different languages. It turns out there are a whole bunch.

by rat87 2y ago

seanmcdirmid 2y ago

newbie take: there is one Chinese language intermediate take: there are many Chinese languages expert take: there is one Chinese language There are also plenty of languages in China that are not Chinese or a dialect of Chinese. Tibetan and Mongolian (and their many dialects) are obviously not Chinese. Chinese written language is used as a phonetic script for some minority languages (although many are based on uighur script is used a lot also, Uighur itself uses arabic).

ThePowerOfFuet 2y ago
[flagged]
- j16sdiz 2y ago
  How how Yi? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuosu_language https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuosu_language
- seanmcdirmid 2y ago
  Tibet is a part of China today. Whether Tibet should be a part of China is up for debate, but the fact that it has been completely integrated into the PRC for at least 70 years now isn't really. I'll be the first one to argue that the PRC's moral claim to the territory comes from it being conquered by the Mongolians during the Yuan dynasty is lame. But it still doesn't mean anything when China controls it today. And that's just the TAR, there are plenty of Tibetans living in areas of China that aren't very contested as not being part of China.

raincole 2y ago

The difference between a langauge and a dialet is political, not linguistic.

Aloha 2y ago
"A language is a dialect with an army and navy" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_language_is_a_dialect_with_an_army_and_navy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_language_is_a_dialect_with_a...
- dllthomas 2y ago
  It's cute, and gets at something real, but it's overstated. The first question is "are these things mutually intelligible", with an answer on a spectrum between "yes, perfectly, obviously" and "no, not at all, obviously". There is a huge gray area that stretches pretty far from the middle in which contingency, identity, community, and nation building projects (both military and literary) move the lines around quite a bit... but as we near either pole that factual question dominates. I think. I'd be interested to learn of counterexamples.
  - DiogenesKynikos 2y ago
    There are German "dialects" that are completely mutually unintelligible. Take someone who speaks the standard German dialect and drop them into the Swiss Alps, and they will understand next to nothing. It will be much easier for them to learn to understand Swiss German (linguists call it "Allemannic") than it would be for someone who doesn't speak German, but it will still take time and effort to adapt. Why are they both called German?
    - School-Cotton 2y ago
      People do typically consider German and Swiss German to be separate languages, I think.
    - samus 2y ago
      There is Luxembourgish, which is basically the local dialect codified as one of the official languages of Luxembourg. It's otherwise perfectly understandable for people from adjacent parts of Belgium and Germany. But I guess the locals would see that it really is almost the same. Similarly to Chinese, Germans see themselves as mostly the same culture. Standarddeutsch is pretty much a fusion between the different varieties and has evolved along with them for a long time; differently from 普通話, which is much younger and the standardized form of a northern variety of Chinese. Germans also really cling to their dialects, and Switzerland and Austria both use slightly different versions of Standarddeutsch. The opposite example are the varieties of Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian, and Montenegrin, which are quite inter-intelligible, but which are considered as different languages by their speakers.

dllthomas 2y ago

It seems pretty well known that Mandarin and Cantonese are different languages. It turns out there are a whole bunch.