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> Of the 70% of the population who can speak Mandarin, many do not do it well enough, a ministry spokeswoman told Xinhua news agency on Thursday. Keep in mind

by afreak 13y ago

> Of the 70% of the population who can speak Mandarin, many do not do it well enough, a ministry spokeswoman told Xinhua news agency on Thursday. Keep in mind that there are many dialects of Mandarin and what this ministry is referring to is the fact that people do not speak the Beijing dialect well, which is the national standard.

speeder 13y ago
He said that 70% do not speak Mandarin, and most of these do not speak "well". I guess only the "speak well enough" is related to dialects. The other 30% I think he is referring to people that speak cantonese, and all other interesting languages that exists there, including the mongolian languages (almost everything in China west of the great wall, was originally part of mongolia, like Tibet for example... and thus they have not much to do with China actually, specially Han people). I hope someday people will figure a way to keep mongolians peaceful without erasing their culture or resorting to extreme tyranny.
- flanbiscuit 13y ago
  I knew China had different languages but wow there are quite a lot of them http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_China#Spoken_languages http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_China#Spoken_langu...
  - laumars 13y ago
    The history of the language is quite an interesting one, in my opinion: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_Chinese_phonology http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_Chinese_phonology
  - gaoshan 13y ago
    And some of them sound rather radically different from Mandarin. My wife speaks something called Hangzhou dialect (spoken just a few hours away from Shanghai) and when other Chinese hear it they sometimes think she is visiting from another country. On one occasion some people thought she was speaking English (it sounds nothing like English). An example of the differences... in Mandarin to say "It is." you would say "Shi de." but in Hangzhou dialect you would say something that sounds like "Zede ye." The adverb "very" is "hen" in Mandarin but sounds like "molaolao" (though colloquially people often just say "mo") in Hangzhou dialect. The differences between the various dialects are fascinating sometimes radical and they must have developed for many centuries in near isolation from one another to get where they are today.
    - laumars 13y ago
      I'm no expert, but I always wondered if it was a result of the language being tonal. In England, you have dialects that can sound so different that it could be another language to the untrained ear. However as English isn't tonal, there's a larger margin for error (so to speak) - accents can exist without transforming the word. Whereas with a tonal language, an accent could change the language more dramatically. Though what's also interesting is some of the different languages and dialects in China also have different sentence structures (eg verb placements).
      - notahacker 13y ago
        The multisyllabic nature of English and relatively complex sentence structure probably aids comprehension with different accents too.
      - gaoshan 13y ago
        >However as English isn't tonal, there's a larger margin for error True. The tones are critical in a way that can be very difficult for non-native speakers to grasp. Here are the four tones used with the words mā (mother), má (hemp), mǎ (horse) and mà (to curse) with an extra for ma indicating a question http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QRkCf6Djprs http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QRkCf6Djprs. And in that video she pronounces them far clearer than would be used in actual conversation.
- cwhy 13y ago
  Han people take part of about 91% percent... This 70% may refer to the "standard" mandarin, more like comparing to accents of the same language.
  - speeder 13y ago
    I guess my comment confused people... Cantonese for example is a Han language. There are lots of non-mandarin but Han languages, and beside those.there are the languages of non-Han people.
- abayer 13y ago
  Tibet is not Mongolian - they've now got connections in terms of their religious background, but Tibetan is part of the Sino-Tibetan language family, while Mongolian is, unsurprisingly, in the Mongol language family (or if you accept the Altaic hypothesis, it's also part of the larger Altaic family with Turkic and Tungusic languages). And what's more, take a look at the current state of Mongolia some time - it's a functioning democracy with pretty decent respect for civil liberties and no tendency to invade their neighbors. Yes, there's a long history of semi-nomadic tribes coming out of Central Asia and invading the civilized cultures along the edges of the Eurasian steppes, but that pattern wasn't unique to the Mongols (various Indo-European, Turkic, Tungusic (i.e., Manchu), Magyar and other peoples have played that role over the millennia), and that's been a thing of the past since horse archers became ineffective in war (i.e., once firearms were widespread).
jamesli 13y ago
"Keep in mind that there are many dialects of Mandarin and what this ministry is referring to is the fact that people do not speak the Beijing dialect well, which is the national standard." Strictly speaking, 1) there are many dialects of Chinese, not Mandarin. 2) the language many Beijing people speak is not a dialect. It is an accent. Cantonese is a dialect. Wu Chinese is a dialect. Beijing Chinese is an accent. It is definitely not the national standard, although it is the closest to the national standard, compared to other accents.
- abayer 13y ago
  Generally, linguists would disagree with that - Cantonese is not mutually intelligible with Mandarin, so it's not a dialect, it's a different language, as are Wu, Hakka, etc... There are fairly profound differences between these languages in their spoken form. It is true that they all share a single written language, and a common language ancestry, but Cantonese (the spoken language) is at least as different from Mandarin (the spoken language) as Spanish and Portuguese, or Dutch and German.
  - deleted 13y ago
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  - mmorris 13y ago
    I am not a linguist, per se, but my understanding is that there is no formal definition (or even agreement) on what constitutes a separate language versus a separate dialect. Rather, a number of factors are taken into consideration (including political factors), and the distinction is almost always debatable. While it is desperate for citations, it looks like the Wikipedia article supports that: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialect#Dialect_or_language http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialect#Dialect_or_language There is also an episode of one of my favorite podcasts (Slate's Lexicon Valley) that focuses on this issue, particularly in regards to what has sometimes been called "Ebonics": http://www.slate.com/articles/podcasts/lexicon_valley/2012/02/lexicon_valley_is_black_english_a_dialect_or_a_language_.html http://www.slate.com/articles/podcasts/lexicon_valley/2012/0...
    - 13y ago
melling 13y ago
I see 400 million potential customers that I didn't have before. :-) https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/h4-chinese-lite/id689851382?mt=8 https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/h4-chinese-lite/id689851382?... I'll have audio in 2-3 months. Now I just need that cheaper iPhone for emerging markets.
- jarek 13y ago
  And to compete with the Chinese state, which has always made an enormous effort to get its subjects to speak a common language. But iPhone!
schuke 13y ago
I think you mean Beijing accent. By Chinese standards if one speaks Mandarin with an accent as heavy as Scottish accent is to English, she is deemed to speak Madarin not well enough.
- newman314 13y ago
  But I like the Scottish accent! Understanding someone from Arberdeen is tough though.
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by afreak 13y ago

speeder 13y ago

He said that 70% do not speak Mandarin, and most of these do not speak "well". I guess only the "speak well enough" is related to dialects. The other 30% I think he is referring to people that speak cantonese, and all other interesting languages that exists there, including the mongolian languages (almost everything in China west of the great wall, was originally part of mongolia, like Tibet for example... and thus they have not much to do with China actually, specially Han people). I hope someday people will figure a way to keep mongolians peaceful without erasing their culture or resorting to extreme tyranny.

flanbiscuit 13y ago
I knew China had different languages but wow there are quite a lot of them http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_China#Spoken_languages http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_China#Spoken_langu...
- laumars 13y ago
  The history of the language is quite an interesting one, in my opinion: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_Chinese_phonology http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_Chinese_phonology
- gaoshan 13y ago
  And some of them sound rather radically different from Mandarin. My wife speaks something called Hangzhou dialect (spoken just a few hours away from Shanghai) and when other Chinese hear it they sometimes think she is visiting from another country. On one occasion some people thought she was speaking English (it sounds nothing like English). An example of the differences... in Mandarin to say "It is." you would say "Shi de." but in Hangzhou dialect you would say something that sounds like "Zede ye." The adverb "very" is "hen" in Mandarin but sounds like "molaolao" (though colloquially people often just say "mo") in Hangzhou dialect. The differences between the various dialects are fascinating sometimes radical and they must have developed for many centuries in near isolation from one another to get where they are today.
  - laumars 13y ago
    I'm no expert, but I always wondered if it was a result of the language being tonal. In England, you have dialects that can sound so different that it could be another language to the untrained ear. However as English isn't tonal, there's a larger margin for error (so to speak) - accents can exist without transforming the word. Whereas with a tonal language, an accent could change the language more dramatically. Though what's also interesting is some of the different languages and dialects in China also have different sentence structures (eg verb placements).
    - notahacker 13y ago
      The multisyllabic nature of English and relatively complex sentence structure probably aids comprehension with different accents too.
    - gaoshan 13y ago
      >However as English isn't tonal, there's a larger margin for error True. The tones are critical in a way that can be very difficult for non-native speakers to grasp. Here are the four tones used with the words mā (mother), má (hemp), mǎ (horse) and mà (to curse) with an extra for ma indicating a question http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QRkCf6Djprs http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QRkCf6Djprs. And in that video she pronounces them far clearer than would be used in actual conversation.
cwhy 13y ago
Han people take part of about 91% percent... This 70% may refer to the "standard" mandarin, more like comparing to accents of the same language.
- speeder 13y ago
  I guess my comment confused people... Cantonese for example is a Han language. There are lots of non-mandarin but Han languages, and beside those.there are the languages of non-Han people.
abayer 13y ago
Tibet is not Mongolian - they've now got connections in terms of their religious background, but Tibetan is part of the Sino-Tibetan language family, while Mongolian is, unsurprisingly, in the Mongol language family (or if you accept the Altaic hypothesis, it's also part of the larger Altaic family with Turkic and Tungusic languages). And what's more, take a look at the current state of Mongolia some time - it's a functioning democracy with pretty decent respect for civil liberties and no tendency to invade their neighbors. Yes, there's a long history of semi-nomadic tribes coming out of Central Asia and invading the civilized cultures along the edges of the Eurasian steppes, but that pattern wasn't unique to the Mongols (various Indo-European, Turkic, Tungusic (i.e., Manchu), Magyar and other peoples have played that role over the millennia), and that's been a thing of the past since horse archers became ineffective in war (i.e., once firearms were widespread).

jamesli 13y ago

"Keep in mind that there are many dialects of Mandarin and what this ministry is referring to is the fact that people do not speak the Beijing dialect well, which is the national standard." Strictly speaking, 1) there are many dialects of Chinese, not Mandarin. 2) the language many Beijing people speak is not a dialect. It is an accent. Cantonese is a dialect. Wu Chinese is a dialect. Beijing Chinese is an accent. It is definitely not the national standard, although it is the closest to the national standard, compared to other accents.

abayer 13y ago
Generally, linguists would disagree with that - Cantonese is not mutually intelligible with Mandarin, so it's not a dialect, it's a different language, as are Wu, Hakka, etc... There are fairly profound differences between these languages in their spoken form. It is true that they all share a single written language, and a common language ancestry, but Cantonese (the spoken language) is at least as different from Mandarin (the spoken language) as Spanish and Portuguese, or Dutch and German.
- deleted 13y ago
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- mmorris 13y ago
  I am not a linguist, per se, but my understanding is that there is no formal definition (or even agreement) on what constitutes a separate language versus a separate dialect. Rather, a number of factors are taken into consideration (including political factors), and the distinction is almost always debatable. While it is desperate for citations, it looks like the Wikipedia article supports that: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialect#Dialect_or_language http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialect#Dialect_or_language There is also an episode of one of my favorite podcasts (Slate's Lexicon Valley) that focuses on this issue, particularly in regards to what has sometimes been called "Ebonics": http://www.slate.com/articles/podcasts/lexicon_valley/2012/02/lexicon_valley_is_black_english_a_dialect_or_a_language_.html http://www.slate.com/articles/podcasts/lexicon_valley/2012/0...
  - 13y ago

melling 13y ago

I see 400 million potential customers that I didn't have before. :-) https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/h4-chinese-lite/id689851382?mt=8 https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/h4-chinese-lite/id689851382?... I'll have audio in 2-3 months. Now I just need that cheaper iPhone for emerging markets.

jarek 13y ago
And to compete with the Chinese state, which has always made an enormous effort to get its subjects to speak a common language. But iPhone!

schuke 13y ago

I think you mean Beijing accent. By Chinese standards if one speaks Mandarin with an accent as heavy as Scottish accent is to English, she is deemed to speak Madarin not well enough.

newman314 13y ago
But I like the Scottish accent! Understanding someone from Arberdeen is tough though.

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