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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 W

by 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...
- abayer 13y ago
  Ok, then the linguists I read tend to be splitters rather than lumpers. =) This is particularly drama-prone in re: the Chinese languages/dialects due to the tendency for Beijing to attempt to cast all speakers of Chinese languages as in fact speakers of a single language, as part of their attempts to create a single unified Han identity. But in the end, I really believe that if it weren't for the common written language, no one would ever think of Cantonese as being just a dialect of the same language as Mandarin - the differences between the two spoken languages are so massive.
  - jamesli 13y ago
    It involves more than linguistic characteristics to distinguish language from dialect. One can argue for both cases. I personally prefer to think of Chinese as a language family. It would be a much larger, and very interesting, topic. For the discussion on this thread, I use "dialect" other than "separate languages", since Cantonese, We Chinese, etc. are described as dialects in most materials I read.
- kyllo 13y ago
  The common analogy is that Chinese "dialects" are really different languages in the same Chinese language family (they have a common ancestor), the same way that Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Corsican, Catalan, etc. are different languages in the Romance language family (their common ancestor is Latin). Where it gets confusing is when nationalism gets involved. Mandarin and Wu are different "dialects" of the same "language" because they're from the same country. Italian and Spanish are different "languages" because they're from different countries. It's a political distinction. Linguists tend toward using mutual intelligibility as the difference between a language and a dialect, but it's fuzzy. Beijing and Shanghai dialect are almost totally mutually unintelligible, but if you walked from Beijing down to Shanghai, each village, town, or city you pass will speak a dialect that's still mutually intelligible with the immediately neighboring village/town/city's. But really, the words "dialect" and "language" mean essentially the same thing in English.
  - jamesli 13y ago
    Agree. It is not sufficient to use mutual intelligibility to distinguish language from dialect.
  - dragonwriter 13y ago
    Linguists tend toward using mutual intelligibility as the difference between a language and a dialect, but it's fuzzy. Beijing and Shanghai dialect are almost totally mutually unintelligible, but if you walked from Beijing down to Shanghai, each village, town, or city you pass will speak a dialect that's still mutually intelligible with the immediately neighboring village/town/city's. So, its a "ring language" (by analogy to a "ring species" [1] in biology.) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring_species http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring_species
    - abayer 13y ago
      The equivalent term in linguistics is "dialect continuum" - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialect_continuum http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialect_continuum

by abayer 13y ago

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...

abayer 13y ago
Ok, then the linguists I read tend to be splitters rather than lumpers. =) This is particularly drama-prone in re: the Chinese languages/dialects due to the tendency for Beijing to attempt to cast all speakers of Chinese languages as in fact speakers of a single language, as part of their attempts to create a single unified Han identity. But in the end, I really believe that if it weren't for the common written language, no one would ever think of Cantonese as being just a dialect of the same language as Mandarin - the differences between the two spoken languages are so massive.
- jamesli 13y ago
  It involves more than linguistic characteristics to distinguish language from dialect. One can argue for both cases. I personally prefer to think of Chinese as a language family. It would be a much larger, and very interesting, topic. For the discussion on this thread, I use "dialect" other than "separate languages", since Cantonese, We Chinese, etc. are described as dialects in most materials I read.
kyllo 13y ago
The common analogy is that Chinese "dialects" are really different languages in the same Chinese language family (they have a common ancestor), the same way that Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Corsican, Catalan, etc. are different languages in the Romance language family (their common ancestor is Latin). Where it gets confusing is when nationalism gets involved. Mandarin and Wu are different "dialects" of the same "language" because they're from the same country. Italian and Spanish are different "languages" because they're from different countries. It's a political distinction. Linguists tend toward using mutual intelligibility as the difference between a language and a dialect, but it's fuzzy. Beijing and Shanghai dialect are almost totally mutually unintelligible, but if you walked from Beijing down to Shanghai, each village, town, or city you pass will speak a dialect that's still mutually intelligible with the immediately neighboring village/town/city's. But really, the words "dialect" and "language" mean essentially the same thing in English.
- jamesli 13y ago
  Agree. It is not sufficient to use mutual intelligibility to distinguish language from dialect.
- dragonwriter 13y ago
  Linguists tend toward using mutual intelligibility as the difference between a language and a dialect, but it's fuzzy. Beijing and Shanghai dialect are almost totally mutually unintelligible, but if you walked from Beijing down to Shanghai, each village, town, or city you pass will speak a dialect that's still mutually intelligible with the immediately neighboring village/town/city's. So, its a "ring language" (by analogy to a "ring species" [1] in biology.) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring_species http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring_species
  - abayer 13y ago
    The equivalent term in linguistics is "dialect continuum" - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialect_continuum http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialect_continuum