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OK, that's a good point, but IMHO the question still stands. If Cantonese is as different from Mandarin as French is from Italian (though, IIRC, both are Latin
by taway2012 13y ago
OK, that's a good point, but IMHO the question still stands.
If Cantonese is as different from Mandarin as French is from Italian (though, IIRC, both are Latin languages), then why are they still called dialects?
I see from the rest of the comments that dialect vs. language is political and arbitrary rather than an objective difference.
- dragonwriter 13y ago> If Cantonese is as different from Mandarin as French is from Italian (though, IIRC, both are Latin languages), then why are they still called dialects? If France and Italy weren't different countries, we might well not call French and Italian languages rather than dialects of the same language. The dialect/language distinction isn't particularly clear cut.
- SeanLuke 13y ago> then why are they still called dialects? Things have changed for Mandarin nowadays. But traditionally: Chinese dialects are only spoken and are regional, whereas Chinese the language (the written symbols) is national -- and very different from the dialects. The case can be made that Mandarin is now a language and has subsumed Chinese; but the rest are still dialects.
- pxue 13y agoyou may say that French and Italian are "dialects" of Romance Languages. Just like how people wrote commonly in Latin, people in China share a similar writing system but differ when spoken.