There's a lot of complexities and politically-motivated reasons behind calling various varieties of Chinese "dialects" but this article swings way too far the other direction.
There has been a single lingua franca across all of China since at least the Han Dynasty, perhaps even the Warring States period or earlier. It has variously been called 通語 (the mass/common/omnipresent/intelligible language, 通 is a bit difficult to translate here), 官話 (the official language), potentially 雅言 (elegant speech, this is more controversial and earliest mention) and now 普通话 or 國語.
> Indeed, before the 20th century the idea of a singular, spoken Chinese language was a foreign concept
Matteo Ricci explicitly talks about a single language he can use to talk with everyone in every province (in his time this was the 官話). And indeed he used the same language as he made his way across the entire coast of China. There is an entire Han Dynasty compendium of the vocabulary of various regions that compares it against the official lingua franca. Indeed the title of this work is exactly Fangyan!
> But while Chinese thinkers frequently mentioned ‘official languages’, this was by no means synonymous with a ‘national language’ – a language unified in its sound and script used by and representative of a Chinese nation.
These "official languages" were exactly unified in sound and script and representative of a Chinese nation! The language Ricci encountered was the descendent of one whose pronunciation was explicitly codified (there are some asterisks here I can elaborate on if people are interested) in the 14th century 洪武正韻 (Hongwu Proper Sound), and was passed to neighboring kingdoms as the official language (and is e.g. preserved in Korean rime books on the Chinese language).
The difference in the last 100 years has been a difference in degree rather than kind. With the advent of near-universal education and literacy and the technological tools offered by mass media, the PRC, ROC, and to a lesser extent places like Singapore and Malaysia can more effectively carry out the language programs that have been attempted in the millennia past.
Granted the difference in degree is vast: the tools at the disposal of political regimes today absolutely dwarfs those of the past. This also means the effects of standardization are far more keenly felt. However, the motivation and policy is one with a long and winding history.
It follows a standard story of varying unification and disunity both linguistically and politically that has played out many times in China's history.
> There is an entire Han Dynasty compendium of the vocabulary of various regions that compares it against the official lingua franca. Indeed the title of this work is exactly Fangyan!
I would caution against using the existence of the Fangyan as firm evidence of a single language intelligible across Han China. It's important to remember the political context of the Western Han under which Yang Xiong wrote the Fangyan: a declining central state which was embarking on a project of "soft" power in order to project influence which it didn't really have (e.g, the canonization of many of the early masterworks into the received texts that we have today). Even the received literature of the Han Dynasty and Northern and Southern Dynasties is rich with extremely rare words and hapax legomena which may speak to a great regional diversity of language (there's other reasons for this too of course).
I know significantly less about Tang and post-Tang China, but I think it's probably likely that a stronger central state apparatus and the advent of the printing press may have played a big role in standardizing language at least at the official level.
> I would caution against using the existence of the Fangyan as firm evidence of a single language intelligible across Han China.
This is a good point. In particular it's a bit difficult to evaluate how much of 通語 was aspirational vs reality, especially as we don't have good documents outlining what the process of learning Chinese was like, but it clearly reflects a desire for a lingua franca (rather than it being a completely foreign concept). But it is clear that as soon as we have outside observers who are learning Chinese for the first time (an extremely valuable resource for tracking uniformity of language!), that at various times in China's history there was a single lingua franca.
E.g. Ricci says this, which is pretty much a direct refutation of the original article's point that a unified lingua franca was a 20th century invention,
> The Chinese have different languages in different provinces, to such an extent that they can not understand each other... The Chinese also have another language which is like a universal and common language...[much later] With all the varieties of languages, there is one that we call cuonhoa [官話], that is to say, the forensic language (lingua forense); it is used in audiences and tribunals; and, if one learns this, he could use it in all the provinces; in addition, even the children and women knew enough of it to be able to communicate with the people of another province. [Excerpted and translated by Paul Yang in The Portuguese-Chinese Dictionary of Matteo Ricci: A Historical and Linguistic Tradition, Proceedings of 2nd International Conference on Sinology, pg. 198-199]
Even allowing for the fact that Ricci is almost certainly experiencing some sort of selection bias (probably mainly talking to people with a certain amount of educational background), it's a pretty clear statement of a single language used across all of Ming China that superseded regional languages.
> Even the received literature of the Han Dynasty and Northern and Southern Dynasties is rich with extremely rare words and hapax legomena which may speak to a great regional diversity of language (there's other reasons for this too of course).
The whole post-Han pre-Tang time period is a bit of a crazy minefield to get through from a language perspective because of political (and consequently linguistic) disunity. There's also a bit of craziness in the Qing with competing standards (the old Ming Mandarin standard based off the Nanjing standard and the Beijing Mandarin standard, the competition extended up all the way into Beijing itself!) that also lead to a significant amount of fragmentation (and why e.g. there was a perceived need to make what would become the 老國音).
I don't mean to say that there was always a standardized, unified language, but I do mean to say that the idea of having one is very ancient, and convincing evidence that one was created and basically "worked" is also much older than the 20th century.
> In particular it's a bit difficult to evaluate how much of 通語 was aspirational vs reality.
This is definitely a complicated debate with regards to all aspects of the Han, ideas about language included. There was certainly a strong tendency - particularly in the late Western Han - to take a huge variety of cultural inputs and try to synthesize them into something "canonical." (Another way of putting this is - to what extent is most of what we know about early China a reflection of what the Western Han elite believed/understood about early China?) As Yang Xiong worked at the Imperial Library with Liu Xiang and Liu Xin, he would have been part of this process. The other thing to remember about Yang Xiong and the Fangyan is that he was a real polymath - we don't necessarily have to boil his writings down to this or that political end. In particular, he claims to have strongly favored something called the "glosses and exegesis" (xungu 訓詁) approach to studying the classics, which is a bit murky but seems related to trying to understand the original meanings of words. I think there's a strong possibility that this was tied up with his philological interests, rather than some notion of a lingua franca. (I did my graduate research on Yang Xiong, FWIW.) More broadly, the problem with making any strong conclusions about early medieval China is that most of our sources are by elites, for elites, and aren't really concerned with questions like "how did ordinary folks interact with each other?" We don't even get to the level of interest found in, say, Tang chuanqi.
> Even allowing for the fact that Ricci is almost certainly experiencing some sort of selection bias (probably mainly talking to people with a certain amount of educational background), it's a pretty clear statement of a single language used across all of Ming China that superseded regional languages.
I'm not a political scientist and I don't know nearly as much about the last thousand years of Chinese literary history, so perhaps I'm about to step into a minefield, but I'm not 100% convinced that the average Ming peasant really conceptualized themself as a member of a "national" polity with certain customs (like an "official" language). Which is quite different from China today. I guess another way of putting this is whether a "national" language is top-down or bottom-up.
> The whole post-Han pre-Tang time period is a bit of a crazy minefield to get through from a language perspective
Beautifully put: the official language of the Franks! I'm not joking either. There are some fundamental concepts that get given a particular epithet and gradually it becomes a errr "thing". It doesn't really matter what that epithet is, provided we all agree on what it means. It doesn't really matter which language it is in either. English is particularly flexible in this regard.
The British isles have seen quite a lot of coming and going over the last few thousand years and the locals have always been welcoming of incoming ... income. The mineral wealth is all mined out now but the outward looking attitude that has characterized the place for millennia due to trade links and easy access via longboat and later the Empire thing is still lingering for now. Anyway, English happily appropriates foreign words wholesale.
So we have the Latin phrase: "lingua franca" The language of the Franks. The Franks are roughly France these days. So very old French was the interchange language in Europe for quite a while. Thanks to the invasion of 1066 in England, French really did become the lingua franca hereabouts but as it turns out it largely lost out eventually to a more Saxon (German) language. We ended up with a Germanic language base that had huge dollops of French, pots of Latin and wodges of Greek interspersed with lashings of nearly every other language spoke on the planet.
English is a relative newcomer to the game of communicating what is going on behind your eyes to making the air vibrate and causing tiny hairs on tympanic membranes to vibrate and finally making neurons fire in another brain. I think it is quite good at it.
However, I never want to see the demise of other languages or them becoming secondary or whatever. English is not perfect. Language like all other things needs diversity. English in its current form could not possible exist without all its predecessors and frankly (lol) all other languages. Modern English has a simplicity and fluidity that is probably due to becoming the language of the Franks - the lingua franca.
I suspect that its fluidity is actually due to foreign speakers and not built in. I think that English has been shaped more by foreigners than locals (whatever that means).
The lingua franca wasn't "the language of the Franks", it was an elaborate pidgin used for Mediterranean trade that encompassed a lot of broadly Romance features with a vastly simplified grammar and a vocabulary core that could be described as most closely resembling a mixture of Occitan southern France and Savoyard (which are both, admittedly, umbrella terms that incorporate rather a large number of dialects). The term lingua franca has gone on to mean any (usually simplified) language that's used to communicate between groups - like Swahili in large parts of east Africa (it is by far the simplest of the Bantu languages, and has only a relatively small population of native speakers).
Thanks for your's and whakim's thorough conversation about this -- some of the nuance is really hard to articulate without the historical geopolitical context and you summed it up really well!
As a Chinese native and Han people, I have no idea of these historical records! Just to say how rich and complex the Chinese history is and how profound is this legacy and heritage.
> Cantonese even almost became the official language of China
X almost became the official language of China is an urban myth that just will not die. There were votes on individual sounds and those either swung one way or another depending on votes.
There was never any doubt that Mandarin would form the foundation of the spoken standard (as had been the case for > 1000 years at this point) or that its Beijing-variety would play an important (but not absolute) part. The votes were over the particulars of individual sounds and pronunciations of single characters.
EDIT: the idea that Cantonese is more faithful to Middle Chinese (itself a weird, amorphous concept) and therefore better for reading ancient poems also is suspect. There are ancient poems that continue to rhyme in modern Mandarin but don't in Cantonese and vice versa. Heck you could make the case that Wu varieties are the most faithful because they preserve the voicing of the Qieyun System (note I don't believe they are the most faithful).
All of these varieties have their own innovations, and there is no clear "most conservative" variety (unlike e.g. Icelandic and Norse).
> Mandarin would form the foundation of the spoken standard (as had been the case for > 1000 years at this point)...
The Old Mandarin had its root from Jin (1115-1234) and Yuan (Mongol) dynasties [1], coming from “foreign ethnicity” 外族 (from a Han-centric view point). The history is less than 1000 years, less than the ancient poems (唐詩) that we are discussing.
One main reason for Mandarin to be the standard of Chinese is because of the influence of Mongolia (Yuan) and Manchurian (Qing), that is, non-Han ruling dynasties.
No Mandarin goes way further back than Old Mandarin (which despite its naming in that Wikipedia article, is far from standardized, I don't know where it's sourced as Yuan, as the Chinese version of the article states it sometimes is defined as being the language of the Northern Song Dynasty and in the literature sometimes even the Tang dynasty).
For example this is how the Song philosopher 朱熹, a Fujian native, spoke in public:
若只是自了，便待工夫做得二十分到，終不足以應變。到那時，卻怕人說道不能應變，也牽強去應
(From the 朱子語類·朱子六)
That's pretty recognizably Mandarin. Even earlier from the beginning of the Tang Dynasty, we have poems that are recognizably vernacular Mandarin.
我見那漢死，肚裡熱如火。不是惜那漢，恐畏還到我。
(by 王梵志)
> The tones (esp. 平仄) are better preserved in Cantonese, I don’t think this is disputed
Ah yes I read your reply too quickly and thought you meant all rhyming. Whether the tones as a whole are better preserved is controversial (a lot of Cantonese tones have come from the loss or change in certain sounds of the QYS, so it's hard to say they're "preserved") but 平仄 is definitely way easier in Cantonese than Mandarin.
The demonstrative 那 and 是 as a copula are the most obvious ones as well as the exclusive use of 不. Individually they are each found in some Wu varieties and other varieties, but that is often a bleed-over from Mandarin.
More generally, the following are a small sampling of dominant, geographically independent characteristics of Song written vernacular that make me say that it is clearly Mandarin.
1. The standard pronouns are all the same. We have 我, 你, 他, with the appropriate 們 (often also spelled many different ways just as 門 or later on as we get to the Yuan and Ming dynasty 每). Note that unlike the Tang dynasty 他 and 你 are far and away clearly the dominant, geographically-independent pronouns of the standard vernacular.
2. The near demonstrative is 這 (also spelled 者, 遮, or otherwise) and the far demonstrative is 那. While other demonstratives exist (as is the case even in modern Mandarin) these are far and away the most popular, regardless of region.
3. The order of words is effectively always the same as modern Mandarin.
4. The copula is always 是.
5. The various uses of 個 as an auxiliary word apart from just a 量詞 are generally a superset of modern Mandarin.
6. The interrogative for "where" is 哪 (spelled 那) that is paired in all the same ways as in modern Mandarin (那裏, 那個, etc.).
7. The interrogative for "what" is variations of 什麼/甚麼 (e.g. literally those or 甚底 or other things involving 甚).
And so so many other auxiliary words (著, 正, etc.).
In fact, if anything, a general rule of thumb for Song vernacular is that modern Mandarin represents a subset of the usages of various function words in the Song vernacular (e.g. 著 has all the uses it does in modern Mandarin in addition to being something more similar to 被 and other things) and modern Mandarin has simply gotten more "strict" (this is of course a simplification).
I mean if the personal pronouns, copula, word order, core auxiliary and particle words, interrogatives and the like are the same between two languages separated by time that's pretty good evidence that one is the ancestor of the other.
More specifically to Chinese, if you read any comparative text on different Sinitic families, these word categories are the usual starting points of comparison between them and used to identify each. I haven't done the equivalent of examine 100 different word categories and only pick the 10 that prove my point. And every single Sinitic family other than Mandarin diverges from this list (as I explain in slightly more detail here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29533678).
> No Mandarin goes way further back than Old Mandarin
Can you provide credible references that support your statement as historical studies of phonological and tonal changes in Old (Ancient) and, later, Middle Chinese assertively point to emergence of various Chinese languages that we identify today as Wu, Yue, Mandarin etc to Late Middle Chinese (LMC) (with only exception being Min that had split off from the Old Chinese before Middle Chinese emerged)? In Western linguistics, Late Middle Chinese is identified with late Tang-early Song periods.
Interestingly, Tang imperial annals do, in fact, note already emerging regional pronunociation differences in Middle Chinese across the empire, and, ironically, it was perhaps the first and the last point in the history of all Chinese languages where there existed true dialects of the Middle Chinese language – in the Western sense, anyway.
Even the earliest occurence of what we identify as Mandarin today already indicates the beginning of profound phonological changes, the process that took the next few centuries, namely: a complete loss of checked syllables/contour tones, arbitrary tone changes owing to a loss of nearly all Middle Chinese finals which has also led to an emergence of polysyllabic words in Mandarin: Old Chinese words were nearly entirely monosyllabic and atonic, Middle Chinese words were mostly monosylabic and the tonogenesis had yielded four tones. Conservative varieties of Chinese, e.g. Yue, still have a largely monosyllabic core vocabulary, and Mandarin words, owing to the reduction of phonemic and tone pallettes, are remarkable for having two or three syllables on average. Later influence of Mongolian and Jurchen languages has also had profound effects on Mandarin as we know it today, phonetically and morphologically.
> For example this is how the Song philosopher 朱熹, a Fujian native, spoke in public:
> That's pretty recognizably Mandarin. Even earlier from the beginning of the Tang Dynasty, we have poems that are recognizably vernacular Mandarin.
What distinguishing qualities of the two cited texts make you state your assertions? My paleolinguistic knowledge of Chinese languages is insufficient to discern differences, therefore it is a genuine enquiry on my behalf.
Also, with respect to the Song era, the work «THE NATURE OF THE MIDDLE CHINESE TONES AND THEIR DEVELOPMENT TO EARLY MANDARIN / 中古汉语声调的本质和到早期官话的演变» (https://www.jstor.org/stable/23752830) specifically notes the following (page 187):
3. NORTHERN SONG.
Somewhat paradoxically, independent sources for the synchronic state of the language in Song are less satisfactory than for either the preceding Tang or the following Yuan periods. The great Song rhyme dictionaries, such as the Guang-yun and Ji-yun, were revisions and enlargements of the Qie-yun, preserving many distinctions which had long been obsolete. The existing versions of the earliest rhyme table, the Yun-jing, date from Southern Song but the work itself must have originated in late Tang times and its categories are those of LMC rather than the more evolved standard language of Song. Later rhyme tables such as the Qie-yun zhi-zhang tu show some contemporary influence but it is not always easy to distinguish what is merely traditional and what is strictly synchronic. Rhyming in poetry, especially «ci», as opposed to «shi» which continued to be dominated by Tang norms, gives important information but only on limited parts of the phonology.
It would be interesting if you could shed the light on the available evidence (with references) that has shaped your point of view.
So first off I'm explicitly downplaying the phonological side of things here. This entire thread has been about the fundamental grammatical and vocabulary differences rather than phonological differences, i.e. realizing that different varieties of Chinese are not just the same language with different pronunciations sprinkled on top. I'll get to the phonological side later because the story there is more complicated than you're making it out to be.
> Conservative varieties of Chinese, e.g. Yue, still have a largely monosyllabic core vocabulary, and Mandarin words, owing to the reduction of phonemic and tone pallettes, are remarkable for having two or three syllables on average.
I don't believe this, at least not without more research. The core vocabulary of modern Mandarin is about as monosyllabic as Yue (pronouns, core verbs, core adjectives, etc. are all primarily monosyllabic). The reason Mandarin is primarily polysyllabic is because of non-core vocabulary, but that is shared with Yue as well.
It is by no means settled in modern Western scholarship or in Chinese scholarship that all varieties other than Min are descended from Middle Chinese. It is best to think of the concept of Middle Chinese (as exemplified by the Qieyun System) as a useful fiction, which works to provide a framework to analyze a lot of historical and modern Chinese varieties, but which does not exist either as a synchronic language ever actually spoken by anybody nor is accurately thought of as a true linguistic ancestor to modern varieties.
I unfortunately am shooting from the hip here and don't have time at the moment to lay out sources and thoughts in more detail. Please let me know if you'd like them and I'll lay them out more thoroughly when I next can get to a computer.
> So first off I'm explicitly downplaying the phonological side of things here. This entire thread has been about the fundamental grammatical and vocabulary differences rather than phonological differences
You are single-handedly dismissing the whole body of research that has allowed us to arrive at the realisation and evidence of the historical progression of Chinese languages (please do note the use of plural) in the first place. Owing to the isolating nature of all Sino-Tibetic languages and, critically, a millenia long use of the logographic script that has no other known precedents, the phonological and comparative regional linguistic studies have been the single main instrument that has made the reconstruction of Old (Ancient) and Middle Chinese languages possible. Which also includes the understanding of the grammar of Old Chinese and which was vastly different even from that of Middle Chinese.
No. In the context of this particular conversation, leaving out the phonology is not possible due to the peculiarities I have mentioned above. It is also not possible to provide a self-reference as a reputable reference or a proof of your own claims.
I have collated a couple of responses you are self-referencing to in another thread below, anyway.
> 2. The near demonstrative is 這 (also spelled 者, 遮, or otherwise) and the far demonstrative is 那. While other demonstratives exist (as is the case even in modern Mandarin) these are far and away the most popular, regardless of region.
The source of https://humanum.arts.cuhk.edu.hk/Lexis/lexi-mf/search.php?wo... does not support your assertion concerning 那 and states that the use of 那 as a distal demonstrative had been established by the Tang era, i.e. before the emergence of Middle Chinese.
> I don't believe this, at least not without more research. The core vocabulary of…
Please do provide references to peer reviewed scholar views and research that can substantiate your beliefs. I am eager to read through them and contemplate.
Summing it up, so far you have presented an alternative timeline of the history of Mandarin that has had a supposedly continuous history of existence starting from (or even predating) early Middle Chinese. Mainstream scholar views and scientic studies as well as existing evidence do not support your theory which is a fringe theory at best. You have also eschewed any reputable references that would add credibility to statements you have made so far. Therefore, I propose we settle on this: you have provided opinions that are of your own, and that is that. Which is not to say that your knowledge of Mandarin appears to be remarkable and is commendable irrespective of however you choose to use it to suit your narrative.
> Please do provide references to peer reviewed scholar views and research that can substantiate your beliefs. I am eager to read through them and contemplate.
I have to go so I don't have time at the moment to give you a thorough set of citations for this, but the easiest off-hand reference for "core vocabulary" I can think of is to just look at the 207 word Swadesh list for Chinese. I'd try to give you more authoritative links, but I don't have time at the moment. Maybe I'll circle back if there's interest.
There's two versions a quick search brought up. Either the 207 word list here https://zh.wikipedia.org/zh-hans/%E6%96%AF%E7%93%A6%E8%BF%AA... or the one here https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Appendix:Mandarin_Swadesh_lis.... The former in my opinion undercounts the number of polysyllabic words, and the latter overcounts it (by using pretty formal language such as 恒星 for star), but between the two you're looking at something like 65-80% of the core Swadesh vocabulary being monosyllabic in modern Mandarin.
Going off votes, it appears that there are other folks interested in this thread so I'll add an addendum here.
Let's begin with
> historical studies of phonological and tonal changes in Old (Ancient) and, later, Middle Chinese assertively point to emergence of various Chinese languages that we identify today as Wu, Yue, Mandarin etc to Late Middle Chinese (LMC) (with only exception being Min that had split off from the Old Chinese before Middle Chinese emerged)
I'm going to need to see citations from you in turn for this. In particular I'd be shocked to see any scholar in the last 50 years postulate that Wu split from LMC (again keeping in mind that "Middle Chinese" is basically more of an analytical shorthand than a real language).
To refresh my memory I decided to look at Chappell's introduction to Sinitic grammar: Synchronic and diachronic perspectives (2001), "Synchrony and Diachrony of Sinitic Languages: A Brief History of Chinese Dialects" (which conveniently is included in many course syllabi and hence the introduction can be found online in many places such as here: http://bartos.web.elte.hu/ma/chappell-dial-intro.pdf) and the situation is as crazy as I remember.
This is her summary of Xiang:
> The language of the Chu kingdom, an important dialect before the Jin dynasty was established in the third century CE, was spoken in the area of modern-day Hunan and Hubei. It appears not to have been mutually intelligible with the court language of the Zhou, Xià 夏, the goal of reconstruction for Archaic Chinese. You (1992) regards Old Chu as the basis for Old Xiang which probably split off from Medieval Chinese some time prior to the Tang dynasty. [pg. 10]
This is her summary of Northern Gan:
> Northern Gan was probably formed during the period between the end of the Eastern Han and the beginning of the Tang dynasty (third to seventh centuries CE) [pg. 11]
This is her summary of Wu and Min:
> The less contentious standpoint would be to posit a common ancestor for Wu and Min, formed by the first century CE, from which both split off. [pg. 12]
This is her summary of Mandarin (which she uses interchangeably with 北方話)
> The concept of běifānghuà 北方話 ‘northern speech’ is first mentioned in the dialect work by Guo Pu 郭璞 known as Fāngyán Zhù 方言注 (Commentary on the Fāngyán) and compiled during the Eastern Jin dynasty (317-420 CE). Certain dialect words, listed in earlier works such as the first century Fāngyán 方言(Dialects) by Yang Xiong, are given in this later work by Guo Pu as the common term in northern speech (You 1992: 94). This is interesting in that it suggests some unification of the northern dialects of Chinese had already taken place by this time - the period of Early Medieval Chinese in the fourth and fifth centuries CE. [pg. 10]
This is her summary of Hakka:
> In the first view, espoused by Lo (1933), Hakka was already formed in the north in the area of present-day Henan province, before the first southwards migration took place in the fourth century CE following the fall of the Western Jin dynasty in 313... In the second more plausible view, Hakka evolved in the south in the period of the Song dynasty, specifically in southeastern Jiangxi and western Fujian, after migration had taken place [pg. 15 - 16]
This is her summary of Yue:
> The Yue dialects were thus formed in a language contact situation with non-Han peoples in a frontier area, first annexed as Chinese territory in the Qin dynasty (late 3rd century BCE), as outlined above. [pg. 16]
The language situation is both far older and less well-ordered than you are making it out to be. Also just to underscore how "Middle Chinese" is really just an analytical tool than a real language, note that Chappell also almost never talks of "Middle Chinese" other than the "Middle Chinese phonological system" and instead is careful to talk about "Medieval Chinese" instead.
Also profuse apologies to Sagart! I apparently have been misremembering his position and have been confusing it with authors he was arguing against!
But to sum it all up yes, I will stand by what you are asserting is a "fringe theory," but which ample evidence suggests is fairly mainstream, or as you put it
> Summing it up, so far you have presented an alternative timeline of the history of Mandarin that has had a supposedly continuous history of existence starting from (or even predating) early Middle Chinese.
The only contention is to what degree what we call Mandarin existed pre-Tang (as Chappell suggests, there is evidence, but it gets very fragmentary very quickly). But Norman provides clear evidence by the 8th century (which he hedges with 8th or 9th, but a lot of the texts that he is transitively citing are 8th century texts) there is clear evidence of a mature and distinct Mandarin family and there is fragmentary evidence that would push the beginnings of the Mandarin family even earlier (Norman believes no earlier than the beginning of the Tang, which I can accept, but again other authors will find glimmers of early Mandarin even earlier).
And I stand by my original comment to hker, which is that Mandarin has been the spoken standard (or different varieties have been simultaneous standards depending on specific times) for literate speakers across the Chinese empire for > 1000 years (certainly by the Northern Song).
P.S.
There is one clarification I'll make to Chappell's summary here:
> By the time of the Southern Song, early Mandarin extended only as far south as the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze, apart from one small pocket where Northern speakers had crossed the Yangtze into the Northwest Xiang area after the Ānshǐ 安史 turmoil of the mid-Tang dynasty [pg. 11]
Apart from the implication here that Mandarin was distinct and already existed by the mid-Tang dynasty, the reason why I brought up the fact that 朱熹 is a Fujian native (and spent the overwhelming majority of his life there) is that he is a good demonstration that while Mandarin may not have been the first language of a lot of people in China during the Song, it was the lingua franca. Indeed while Fujian does lie outside the region Chappell is talking about, and 朱熹 does make reference to a distinction between proper speech and the local language, the fact that his vernacular writing is effectively the same as elsewhere in the empire is strong evidence for a Mandarin-based lingua franca among at least literate speakers.
And finally for a more authoritative source that the core of Mandarin vocabulary remains mostly monosyllabic than "look at Swadesh word lists", there's 论汉语的单音词 (2009) by 李如龙 who states in no uncertain terms:
So let's return to my assertion that often times Mandarin is studied as the standard Song vernacular and has roots that date back much further.
Norman explicitly calls out Mandarin as the predominant language of the Song Dynasty and dating to the Tang.
"The first type includes the Jianghuai dialects and Southwest Mandarin and may be traced to the southern type of Mandarin which flourished during the Song-Yuan Period. The second type includes the rest and may be traced to the northern type of Mandarin of earlier times.... It is also shown that Mandarin as a dialect group was already in existence in the eighth or ninth century, that is, in the middle of the Tang dynasty." [Norman, "Some Thoughts on the Early Development of Mandarin", In Memory of Mantaro Hashimoto, 1997, pg. 21-28]
But I believe you are also missing my point in linking to my other comment.
Everything I've listed there indeed has a pre-Song history (most from Sui/Tang, some from the Northern/Southern Dynasties, 是 as a copula Mair will argue comes even from the Warring States period). They are also why some studies of Mandarin will take Mandarin to have started in the Tang (or earlier!). But taken as an ensemble they are the DNA of what structurally (rather than just phonologically) distinguishes Mandarin from the other Sinitic families and the fact that they are ubiquitous across Song vernacular from all parts of China make it pretty overwhelming that the standard Song vernacular is structurally a Mandarin language, rather than any other Sinitic family. This is a harder case to make pre-Song (but still can be and has been made), but it's very clear by the Song.
yorwba's question is a very reasonable one precisely because the things you've raised are not uniform across all Sinitic families. 那 is not the usual demonstrative in a lot of these families (rather we have in various cases including Min and Wu, where we have demonstratives such as 彼 or 許 alongside some varieties of 爾). Likewise 是 is not the usual copula in some Sinitic families (e.g. Yue where the usual copula is 係). Another hallmark is pronouns where 你 and especially 他 are not the usual second and third person pronouns (the third person is especially different, where it is 佢 in Yue or other various versions of 渠 or 伊 in other families).
This is what we mean when we say that the different Sinitic families differ in grammar and structure rather than just phonology, and why it is possible on the basis of this grammar and structure alone to identify something as Mandarin.
More to the point we can and do analyze the grammar and structure of various medieval Sinitic families separate from their phonology. Open up any post-Tang period-specific textbook and that is exactly how it is laid out (usually the first chapter is phonology and then the rest, vast majority of the book is grammar and structure). We can do this as soon as we have a flourishing vernacular body of writing, which starts roughly in the Tang (with fits and starts before that starting in the Three Kingdoms), but really hits its stride in the Song. The only reason we have to resort to phonological-specific measures for OC is because it is unclear whether we have any vernacular writing from that time period and thus we have to use phonological hints to try to deduce to what extent a diglossia existed.
And what of the particulars of my other comment? My assertions about the pronouns, demonstratives, etc? Well you can find those in any intro Song vernacular textbook. For example I happen to have 宋代語言研究 (2001) by 李文澤 on my bookshelf at the moment and I can back up everything I wrote off the cuff there in his 語法編 chapter starting on page 214. You could also cross-check against the 近代汉语概论 by 袁宾 (which regretfully I do not have on-hand at the moment so I can't give you specific page citations). It's also blatantly obvious as soon as you start reading various Song Buddhist dialogues, 理學 dialogues (not their Classical Chinese prose works but their vernacular dialogue collections), 話本, particularly vernacular 宋詞, or any other Song vernacular works that what I'm saying there is borne out.
> the phonological and comparative regional linguistic studies have been the single main instrument that has made the reconstruction of Old (Ancient) and Middle Chinese languages possible. Which also includes the understanding of the grammar of Old Chinese and which was vastly different even from that of Middle Chinese.
First a correction: The knowledge we have of OC as a living language is extremely limited. Hence it is debatable whether we have any good understanding of the grammar of OC (the Chinese side of scholarship usually rejects this and says we do have a good understanding of OC through Zhou texts) in the same we have for MC. What Wikipedia often calls OC is debated whether it was actually ever spoken by anyone, or is just an artifact of a Classical Chinese that was in fact never a living language. Mair makes this argument forcefully in his seminal 1994 article "Buddhism and the Rise of Written Vernacular in East Asia:"
> Linguistic data that LS [Literary Sinitic, i.e. Old Chinese as represented by Warring States and Sprint-Autumn texts] and VS [Vernacular Sinitic, i.e. the true living, spoken language] have been distinct systems as far back as they can be traced. This is certainly true from the Warring States period on, but I suspect that eventually we will be able to demonstrate conclusively that LS, starting with its earliest stage in the oracle shell and bone inscriptions (around 1200 B.C.E.), was so obviously abbreviated and so replete with obligatory nonvernacular conventions used only in writing that it never came close to reflecting any contemporary living variety of Sinitic speech. [Mair, "Buddhism and the Rise of the Written Vernacular in East Asia," 1994]
Now I'm personally not sure how much I believe that (and e.g. the Chinese side of scholarship generally rejects this argument), but I bring it up to underscore again the reason we cannot do a phonologically independent analysis of living (at the time) Sinitic varieties before the Tang era (well kind of, we have some vernacular before then, but certainly by the Han) is because it's not clear we have any direct written evidence of them, whereas by the Song it's extremely obvious that we have a fairly true-to-life structural reflection in writing of how people actually spoke, and hence we do not need to rely solely, or even mostly, on phonological analyses.
> You are single-handedly dismissing the whole body of research that has allowed us to arrive at the realisation and evidence of the historical progression of Chinese languages (please do note the use of plural) in the first place.
PART 1:
Oof. Fighting words. Nothing I've said here is outside the bounds of mainstream Sinology. Now that I'm in front of my computer and bookshelf I can break out the citations.
Let's restate my original assertion about MC. MC (as traditionally represented by the Qieyun System/QYS) is a convenient analytic fiction, which provides a useful and comprehensive set of categories to study the history of various Sinitic families. However, MC itself was unlikely to ever exist as a real, synchronic language spoken by anyone and likewise any talk of a genetic linguistic relationship in the classical root-stem linguistic sense between non-Min Sinitic families and MC is also a convenient analytic fiction. The idea that MC was a real spoken language and represented a true linguistic ancestor of today's non-Min Sinitic families was an idea championed by Karlgen in the 19th century but has fallen out of favor in the last 50 years.
So let's begin with the citations from various giants in the field of Sinology.
First, Baxter in his treatment of Middle Chinese explicitly calls this out:
> I emphasize again that the Middle Chinese transcription proposed here is not intended as a reconstruction of any synchronic state of the Chinese language. A number of its notations are merely representations, more or less arbitrary, of distinctions which are preserved in the Chinese phonological tradition. Indeed, given the fact that the Qieyun probably represented more distinctions than were preserved in any single dialect, it may be that no true linguistic reconstruction should include all of its distinctions. [Baxter, "A Handbook of Old Chinese Phonology", 2010, pg. 30]
What of the notion that there exists a true, traditional root-stem genetic relationship between non-Min Sinitic families and MC in a similar sense of Latin and the Romance languages? Pulleyblank and Hashimoto basically reject the idea that thinking of a genetic relationship is productive at all, or that at least it should be tempered with extreme caution. Even authors who try to study genetic relationships will acknowledge that it is an analytic convenience to think of some entity known as MC as the genetic ancestor and that on closer inspection, the genetic relationship often goes back to OC or further.
From Pulleyblank:
> This [various influences of Old Chinese] suggests that the effort to delimit clear boundaries between proto-Min, proto-Wu, proto-Yue, etc., to which several of the conference papers address themselves may be misguided. I agree with Mantaro Hashimoto that a strict Stammbaum model [i.e. genetic model] is quite inappropriate for studying the history of Chinese dialects. Some kind of network model, with provincial and regional centers of influence as well as successive national centers of influence in the form of standard languages based on imperial capitals, seems to be called for. [Pulleyblank, "Chinese Dialect Studies," 1991]
Ballard goes further and says to the extent that you can apply the genetic model, the various Sinitic families are best thought of as descending from proto-Sinitic, not anything at all in the vicinity of Middle Chinese.
> Thus, Wu, Cantonese, Chu, and Min, traditionally regarded as being divergent dialects derived from Ancient Chinese [Middle Chinese] (Archaic [Old Chinese] in the case of Min) actually represent separate linguistic traditions that have incorporated much Chinese material. [Ballard, "Aspects of the Linguistic History of South China", 1981]
Indeed to the extent that people are willing to talk about genetic relationships, it is a much more confused and crazy story than "non-Min languages are descended from MC." Sagart claims that Wu, Xiang, Yue, and Gan predate Min. Chappell claims that Wu and Min split in the Han Dynasty, but the other families split in the Sui-Tang. (Going off memory, I don't have the time to look them up at the moment, but I can if you're interested) I'm inclined to agree with Pulleyblank and Hashimoto here and say that a genetic model is simply inadequate and obscures more than it clarifies, all the more so because we don't believe anyone actually spoke MC!
I'm going to stop there because I hit the comment length and then return to the question of whether the standard Song vernacular is justifiably called Mandarin.
Icelandic is truly very very conservative. Most Icelandic speakers can understand reconstructed Old Norse, either written or spoken, with only a moderate amount of difficulty.
Primarily Mandarin speakers I have known were taught, and believed, that the "dialects" were basically the same as Mandarin, just with different pronunciation.
They sincerely believed that when (e.g.) Cantonese speakers read and wrote, they were not wholesale translating from and to Mandarin, but simply, when writing, transcribing Cantonese using the universal ideographic calligraphy.
In fact, writing in dialect languages is not taught. The extremely elaborate system dictating which of usually several, often many syllabary characters that sound identical must be used in writing a word in Mandarin (very commonly mistaken for ideographic writing) cannot work for the other sinitic languages.
(Sinitic languages admit about 1200 distinct syllables, but the syllabary writing system uses many times that number, so many necessarily sound alike. Mandarin speakers are taught that the characters are not merely syllables with attached historical rules, but ideograms that represent distinct thoughts. (Numerous just-so examples are used to support the notion.) This has often led to belief that ancient documents using the characters could be read and understood without deep knowledge of the actual language and world of the writer, resulting in, at best, comical translations.)
I'm a native Mandarin speaker. I don't know why you need to stress "taught" or "believe" so much. I'm not taught by anyone, nor believe that dialects are mostly similar. I experienced it. Most dialects, Cantonese included, use the same Chinese character system. In writing, we would use either simplified or traditional character sets. Note I'm only talking about modern communication.
> could be read and understood without deep knowledge of the actual language and world of the writer, resulting in, at best, comical translations
I don't know who you are talking about. I wouldn't say that at all. Chinese students would spent 1/3 of their high school studying complex ancient Chinese languages (文言文). Nobody would say it's not deep knowledge - it's so damn hard.
While the Sinitic languages are similar, they definitely have distinctions not only in pronunciations but also in grammar and vocabulary, even if you do approximate the writing using Mandarinized characters.
Just as an example, the placement of adjectives in Cantonese vs Mandarin differs. Consider the sentence "I eat first":
- Mandarin: 我[subj] 先[adv] 吃[v]。
- Cantonese: 我[subj] 食[v, Cantonese equivalent of 吃] 先[adv]。
Another example is that some terms that exist in one Sinitic language simply do not exist in another one, e.g. the word for "good night" in Mandarin is 晚安, but there is simply no way to say this at all in Wu (e.g. Shanghainese, Suzhounese) Chinese!
I find that a lot of Mandarin speakers aren't aware of this due to the extensive Mandarinization of Sinitic languages as a whole, and there are a lot of distinctions between a lot of them (e.g. Min Chinese is a lot more closer to Old Chinese and preserves a lot of its traits compared to Mandarin), and perhaps this is a testament to the point the article makes.
I think the point still stands, right? The word was only loaned into the Mandarin lexicon and doesn't exist in the Wu lexicon: not even as a loanword from Mandarin.
> Most dialects, Cantonese included, use the same Chinese character system.
I don’t think GP is arguing about this. The question is about whether they use the same sounds, whether they have the same grammar, and whether people from different dialects can understand each other without special training. Even though Cantonese uses the same character set as other dialects, my understanding is that you can’t just transcribe Cantonese word-by-word onto a page without it becoming unintelligible to a speaker of other dialects — all of which implies that the ‘dialects’ are actually separate languages.
As a mandarin speaker (not from northern China though), I feel that the OP's anecdotes seem a bit extreme and appeared to imply ignorance in most speakers. Anecdotally I know none to few people who would claim that dialects can be written and then read back in another dialect. It also would strike me and all the mandarin speakers I know as fairly obvious that most dialects don't even have well-defined characters to use. Rather, written Cantonese (or Shanghainese etc.) often use characters for phonetic purposes rather than true etymological meaning (e.g., 海-sea is pronounced "hai" in many dialects, and 嗨 with a 口-mouth character hints that this is now a sound word to represent the "hai" sound, and no longer has any relation to the ocean). And that is if the dialect mainstream enough to actually have a writing convention. A lack of popular non-mandarin convention today is tough, hence the dominance of written mandarin grammar, to the extent that a lot of Cantonese news programs will actually provide captions in written mandarin.
> Rather, written Cantonese (or Shanghainese etc.) often use characters for phonetic purposes rather than true etymological meaning
This is where the mistake is. Written Chinese does have all those characters - it is the adoption of a "standard Chinese" that caused those characters not to be taught when mass education was introduced. The people were left to transliterate or create new characters for their spoken native tongue, and the correct characters are now known only to researchers.
One very annoying part of Mandarin's effect on modern Chinese is that many words are being replaced by transliterations of/in Mandarin, even when the Chinese word itself exists. Often this is because the source of the word was foreign. To a non-Mandarin speaker, written Chinese is very slowly turning into complete nonsense, and written Chinese is losing its edge in longevity by no longer being a ideograph-based language.
Chinese was never an ideograph based language to begin with. Yes, most characters have that somewhere in their origin, but there's so much corruption, change of meaning and borrowing of sound going on all through history that you really don't get anywhere using ideographs.
Example in Mandarin: 我不知道 : I don't know. But in ideographs: weapon flower root arrow mouth foot head.
The ideographs were important in that they could tie together vastly different spoken languages in the same family. Because the writing was unified, all the spoken variants had their own influence on it by way of traders and administrators, and successful changes by proxy affected the speech of other regions. This meant that all the different places effectively evolved their languages around a virtual core based on the communications of the literate class - even the phonetic-based parts; and they could do it peacefully and continuously, constantly realigning their definitions without legal or violent coercion, uninterrupted by the constant evolution of the whole group of spoken languages.
For example, French has had a great influence on English, and they both use the Latin alphabet. Would such influence have been possible in the same time without violent conquest, given the alphabetic system of writing?
> written Cantonese (or Shanghainese etc.) often use characters for phonetic purposes rather than true etymological meaning
This is the case for all Chinese writing, and has been for a very long time. But complicated rules for which character may be used to spell which Mandarin word obscure the fact.
It's the case for about 80% of characters by my very unscientific estimate -- there are of course some logograms and ideographs left even if the meanings have also shifted. But the difference (and maybe one awkward part) in written non-Mandarin today is the flagrant use of 口 + similar sounding word with zero meaning, just as foreign words are sometimes imported for pure sound reasons. Chinese is far from a pure language, but I'd argue that whatever "rules" that created 清，情，晴 are better attempts at capturing both sound and meaning.
I'm in Hong Kong (majority Cantonese), my wife cant for her life help me navigate taobao in Mandarin, even when she transcribes the simplified into traditional without getting annoyed and frustrated.
So while it's not totally unintelligle to her, because it's sort of similar, I think for her to read mandarin is like for me, French, to read Spanish. I can grasp it, it's sort of the same thing, but there are so many little details in divergence it takes me ages just to get a grasp of what it's saying.
I wouldnt dare call Spanish or French a dialect of Italian and I think it's weird to call Cantonese a dialect of Mandarin just like saying humans descendend from modern monkeys: these things are trees with common ancestors but also diverging influences that make them break away further from each other.
I think americans exagerate the oppressive nature of language teaching in China since the guy you replied to has a point: they experience it and they very well must see it's not 1:1 sound transcription.
Just the fact Mandarin has four tones and Cantonese has between six and nine depending on the location is enough for me to fall on the "separate languages" side of the opinion.
Cantonese is not a dialect of Mandarin, rather it is a dialect of Chinese. The fact is that Cantonese is close to classical written Chinese than northern dialects. The writing system was unified thousands years go, but not the spoken language. A classic text written by a Cantonese a thousand years ago could be understandable by someone in Beijing that time. Mandarin was created afterwards and was mainly based on northern dialects.
The difference is that traditional written language was very formal, and far from spoken language. Now whatever written online are very close to spoken language. I wouldn't understand many words the kids in my city use.
Then would you say French and Italian are dialects of Latin - clearly derived bastardized version for a Latin person at the time, same writing ?
Or would you say French and Italian are dialect of "Westernese", the same imaginary concept as "Chinese" would be as a language ?
I don't really know what's the right boundary between dialect and language. I know I use it in a French context when I want to speak of the peasant's language in my region which has no literature, doesn't expand beyond the villages in Normandy, cannot be written and has a grammar that can fluctuate between villages. Then I call that a dialect because I would discourage someone from using it too much lol
What's your definition ? Should we say French is a dialect of Latin if Canto is a dialect of "Chinese" ? And what value would it have, since the Latin world is as divided as the "Chinese" one, politically or linguistically ?
Interestingly, I think French people are a bit more "proud" or happy about the Latin link than Hong Kong people are about the Chinese link. At least, each time we discuss the subject, they get mad fast about how their language (and broader "culture" whatever they think that means) is being a little bit dismissed by the mainland to the profit of a more efficient lingua franca they feel loses some features they like (the butchered simplified writing is to them an anathema). I think they overestimate the value of keeping a culture/language and underestimate the benefit of unity but... touchy subject to say the least :D
"Dialect" normally requires substantial mutual intelligibility. In English we have a Scots dialect with many unique words (many fallen out of common English, but preserved in Scots), that could become a distinct language with a little encouragement and time, but probably won't. American and British English are mutually intelligible dialects with variant pronunciation and small variations in spelling and vocabulary. English and Dutch sound similar, but have little vocabulary in common. Romanian and Portuguese, likewise. Romanian went through a recent scrubbing make it more like Latin.
The Romance languages all started out as local dialects of Latin. After casting loose they have evolved mostly independently, and lost inter-intelligibility. But idioms often cross over, with constituent words substituted literally.
Well it changed the last 7 years. When I arrived, they didnt care and I was surprised they vehemently told me "we're Chinese through and through we just dont like the communists", fast forward 7 years, I m married to a local etc, she's religiously renewing her British National Overseas passport, like most people who are eligible, talk now of the "mainlanders" as the problem more than the communists, and 2 years ago the British flag was flying higher than the red flag...
As a french it annoys me you can imagine so Im not neutral on the subject, but I d say this Britsh link expanded. China managed to make the HK people regress by their mismanagement of the Taiwan murder issue (which turned into insane anti extraditions protests - how the hell did they screw up that much) and I lost many friends and colleagues to the anglosphere (many moved to Canada and US, some UK but life isnt as good there). I hear them say it was better with the UK, forgetting a bit their grandma sleeping on the streets of Sham Shui Po during the worst of the colonial era... but it was probably also the communists' fault if so many left Canton at that time.
Could also be me integrating deeper and seeing the issue as it always was, so take my comment with a grain of salt :D
Oh and linguistically, they're surprisingly less fluent than Singapore weirdly, and there are large pockets of HK where it's impossible to use English (usually poorer parts or more mainland populated) so it's very much a political link, not a love or influence of English as a language itself, unlike Latin in France where random grassroot people would fight against grammar reform to keep the Latin influence even if it's irrational, confusing or hard to write.
There's a saying that a language is a dialect with an army and a navy. What people choose to call the communications of a specific language community is often a very political thing.
> I'm not taught by anyone, nor believe that dialects are mostly similar. I experienced it. Most dialects, Cantonese included, use the same Chinese character system. In writing, we would use either simplified or traditional character sets.
Yes, that's true in writing. But it's only true because there are only written forms of Classical Chinese, Modern Vernacular Mandarin and Modern Vernacular Cantonese and the last one is only really used for newscasting and court reporting. Everyone who reads and writs Chinese is thinking in Manadarin, even if they can't speak it. The different Sinitic topolects are as divergent as the Romance languages or the Arabic "dialects". They're mutually unintelligible. FuSha or Modern Standard Arabic, is a foreign language to basically every Arabic speaker, as Latin is to Romance language speakers or Mandarin is to the 60% of Sinitic language speakers who don't speak Mandarin at home.
I say "taught" and "believe" because these things are not, in fact, true.
Yes, Cantonese speakers write using the same syllabary, but they are not (with occasional exceptions) writing Cantonese, but Mandarin, translating to it as they go.
Yes, Cantonese speakers write using the same syllabary, but they are not (with occasional exceptions) writing Cantonese, but Mandarin, translating to it as they go.
I assume you are aware that there are millions of people in Hong Kong who can't speak Mandarin, correct?
How exactly are these people "translating as they go" when many have a total lack of any mandarin?
> Most dialects, Cantonese included, use the same Chinese character system.
It depends a bit on what you mean by "the same". The sentence "佢唔喺呢度。" clearly uses Chinese characters, but none of them appears in the translation "他不在這裏。"
This demonstrate an lack of understanding of Chinese writing. Everything in "佢唔喺呢度" are used as phonetics in an informal setting, the same way that Pinyin work. Meanwhile "他不在這裏" are the written formal version used universally.
The pronunciation between various Chinese dialects are very different, often not mutually intelligible. The written form however is universal. Obviously, you can't use pinyin to spell out Cantonese (as pinyin is a phonetic representation of Mandarin) so that's why cantonese gets represented phonetically like "佢唔喺呢度".
There were talks about using pinyin (i.e. latin script) to replace written characters a couple decades back, they weren't that popular and was not carried out. Vietnam is an example that did.
他不在這裏 is a Mandarin sentence, and Mandarin is taught as the universal common language in China. If Cantonese had been chosen as the standard (which was a possibility in the early 20th century), then you'd be saying that 他不在這裏 is informal and 佢唔喺呢度 is the "universal" written form.
The idea that "written Chinese" just happens to be identical to written Mandarin whereas written Cantonese is also the same and we actually translate our spoken words into a different written form is just historical revisionism and linguistic chauvinism.
The plain reality is that modern written Chinese is the way it is because the CCP standardized Mandarin as the national dialect.
Mandarin or this kind of standardized written Chinese was formalized by a National Commission and chosen during the Republic of China era, this is the document from 1932 now digitally stored in the archives of Taiwan, see: https://taiwanebook.ncl.edu.tw/zh-tw/book/NCCULIB-9900012902...
Even without the CCP, Mandarin would have become the national dialect and dominated Chinese speech, etc. The CCP merely continued on the work because it was so useful and the easiest route to go as there had been so much work done and a system put in place by the previous regime.
^this link loaded better, its the same document, seems to be from Georgia Tech.
For non-Chinese readers, the document says that the dialect from Beiping (aka Beijing) should be adopted as the standard and then lists rules on pronunciation, how to pronunce using a Latin-based script, etc.
> 他不在這裏 is a phrase that I could imagine being used in official written text in past dynastie
In informal correspondence, imperial officials may have written things like this, because modern Standard Mandarin is based in part on 官话, the "court dialect" [1]. But any official text would almost certainly have been written in Classical Chinese.
Thanks, I’m not too knowledgeable on this subject, but given that the phrase 他不在這裏 can be understood entirely by looking up the definitions of the individual characters (which I don’t think have changed much over time), but not so for 佢唔喺呢度, it seems like your original assertion is false, and the root problem is Cantonese just differs too much from traditional written Chinese.
You would not interpret the Mandarin sentence correctly if you just looked up each character in a Classical Chinese dictionary. 他 was not a pronoun in Classical Chinese, but rather meant “other.” 這 was the verb “to meet.”
If you look it up character by character in a Mandarin dictionary, you can interpret it. And if you look up the Cantonese sentence character by character in a Cantonese dictionary, you can interpret it.
I'm not sure I understand, could you confirm/object to this?:
- The Chinese characters have no fixed meaning, but they do have fixed pronunciation, so 佢唔喺呢度 sounds like spoken Cantonese when any Chinese pronounces it, but the meaning can only be understood by Cantonese?
- The government declared the Mandarin meaning to be the only meaning of the Chinese characters?
> The Chinese characters have no fixed meaning, but they do have fixed pronunciation
No, neither pronunciation nor meaning are fixed, and phonetic drift in general is faster than semantic drift, i.e. people from different parts of China are more likely to ascribe different pronunciations to the same character than different meanings, although the latter is not uncommon. Canjobear above gave two examples where the Mandarin meaning has changed relative to the Classical Chinese meaning.
When people want to write something for which they don't know a character (either because none has ever been defined or they just haven't learned it or the pronunciation differs based on context and they feel this should be reflected by using different characters) they can create a new one based on whatever makes sense to them. The character 佢 was chosen because the word sounds similar to that written 巨 in Cantonese. Nowadays so many more people are literate in Mandarin that they're likely to substitute a character whose pronunciation in Mandarin is similar to what they want to write.
No, it is not.
Do you have a better term for the concept?
Or
Do you disagree with the concept?
Or
Aren't you satisfied with the concept being applied in this situation?
To elaborate, there's formal written Chinese (which is close but not identical to spoken Mandarin) and then there's written Cantonese (or other dialects), which is writing the characters as they would be spoken verbatim.
Written Chinese is used for anything official or formal, written Cantonese is often used online informally (like using text/SMS language in English)
> "他不在這裏" are the written formal version used universally.
You could also say "他不在這兒。" or "他非在此處。" and they're written differently because they're pronounced differently. It stands to reason that if someone has a fourth way of saying the same thing with different words, they might also want to write it differently.
A mature language can express one thing with many different styles. Finding many ways to say the same thing don't means you find many unintelligible languages.
Australian say "G'day" rather than "Hello", does the difference of greeting makes Australian-English a standalone language?
Besides, you didn't refute his main idea: phonetic symbol is not equivalent to formal writing.
Cantonese has different styles and registers, both formal and informal, within itself. 他不在這裏 is Mandarin; it is not a grammatical sentence in Cantonese.
Not only that, but every one of the characters in 佢唔喺呢度 can be properly written as 其無在爾道. Just because people have decided to write phonetically (even transparently with the 口 radical construction) doesn't say anything about the commonality of the written form of Chinese which from its inception was already multilingual.
The earliest known dictionary of Chinese was 爾雅, meaning "Near refinement". It is common for languages to use "near" and "far" to indicate "this" and "that". Of course it would take somebody literate to know this, which most internet junkies today are unfortunately not.
It might be unfortunate that I'm illiterate in classical Chinese, but I thank you, who are literate, for proving my point that all of these dialects have common underpinnings.
I don't think anybody is arguing that Cantonese and Mandarin doesn't have common underpinnings, but rather that they are not mutually intelligible.
French and Spanish, as romance languages, have a lot in common but they are separate languages. Writing Cantonese in standard written Chinese is similar to asking Spanish speakers not to write phonetically, but to rather write in French.
The American Mandarin Society has courses for Professionals. I guess they make quality judgement on what to keep or throwout in use of the Chinese language in their curated walled garden for snooty State official use.
As characters are not married to pronounciations, both old (i.e. classical) texts and newer memes can be hard to understand or misunderstood despite knowing all characters. Guesses are often close enough, which is a feature of the logogram.
Well, 呢 is unambiguous where 爾 is not. Similar reasoning as introducing 你 as a separate character for "you".
Out of curiosity, do you speak a variety other than Mandarin? And if so, do you think you'd be able to find "proper" characters for everything you could say, like pishpash did above?
> you think you'd be able to find "proper" characters for everything you could say
The matter isn't whether I can find the proper character for everything you could say, but rather whether the spoken variety themselves can be based on written characters. In the example case you gave, it does.
The spoken varieties of Chinese can still be mapped to a set of characters, that still means there's a commonality underlying all of these variety. For instance, Beijing dialect/slang "颠儿" means '(he/she) is gone', which wouldn't be readily apparent or understandable to even mandarin speakers. but the first character has the meaning "run/trip".
> Beijing dialect/slang "颠儿" means '(he/she) is gone', which wouldn't be readily apparent or understandable to even mandarin speakers. but the first character has the meaning "run/trip".
Old dictionaries list 颠 as a synonym of 顶 only, without a "run/trip" meaning. Most likely the character was only used for this word because both are pronounced "diān" in Mandarin and people didn't bother to make a new character, e.g. by combining [足颠]. The -儿 suffix is also interesting, because the sound modification it represents is something Beijing Mandarin speakers picked up from the Manchu during the Qing dynasty, it has nothing to do with the meaning of 儿. So 颠儿 is a relatively new addition to the written language that is not shared with non-Mandarin varieties.
> The extremely elaborate system dictating which of usually several, often many syllabary characters that sound identical must be used in writing a word in Mandarin (very commonly mistaken for ideographic writing) cannot work for the other sinitic languages.
It can work pretty much the same way, Mandarin isn't special in that regard. The only difference is that the conventions for Mandarin are widely known and have been established for a long time.
But there was a time when writing in Mandarin was a radical new idea and people were unsure how to write many things, e.g. whether to use 的, 底 or 之 for the genitive particle de.
Most Sinitic languages are at a similar stage now: traditionally educated people know the pronunciations of many characters that are used e.g. in Classical Chinese poetry, but some frequently used words may not have any corresponding characters assigned, so people substitute others based on meaning and/or pronunciation, or make up new ones (this is easier when handwriting).
Most likely it will also stay that way for most people, since the benefits of literacy in Sinitic languages other than Mandarin aren't all that great, but there are also quite a few enthusiasts trying to make writing their mother tongues a thing, e.g. by developing input methods: https://hanhngiox.net/
> But there was a time when writing in Mandarin was a radical new idea and people were unsure how to write many things, e.g. whether to use 的, 底 or 之 for the genitive particle de.
The advent of writing in Mandarin has a long and gradual history, starting from the Three Kingdoms onwards. There was some orthographic variation, but nothing too crazy (in fact I'd wager that 80 to 90% of the Song written Mandarin vernacular can be read by a modern Mandarin reader with an hour or two of preparation, probably even Tang).
The radical idea of the 20th century was to effectively abolish Classical Chinese, rather than start writing in the vernacular ab initio.
> Primarily Mandarin speakers I have known were taught, and believed, that the "dialects" were basically the same as Mandarin, just with different pronunciation.
I wonder where they got "taught" such an idea. I'm sure that many "believe" so, but mostly because they never interacted with the Cantonese language, and therefore have a naive misunderstanding. It's certainly not an idea that is taught in the most syllabus; (in fact, Chinese textbooks love to boast about how diverse the Chinese language is, despite not teaching anything specific about "dialects")
> This has often led to belief that ancient documents using the characters could be read and understood without deep knowledge of the actual language and world of the writer, resulting in, at best, comical translations.)
Again, I wonder where they went to school exactly. This is very different from what I experienced growing up (in mainland china). Every single ancient (sometimes not even ancient) passage in textbooks have heavy footnotes, and it is usually an entire independent topic in literature class, from elementary school all the way to college. In fact, from the perspective of most students (and a lot of parents, too), 文言文 (ancient Chinese) is the most impenetrable part of literature class.
> I'm sure that many "believe" so, but mostly because they never interacted with the Cantonese language, and therefore have a naive misunderstanding.
This was my experience having learned only the Mandarin dialect as a child. I kind of assumed that other dialects were merely different pronunciations of the same sequence of characters—more a naive notion than something I was “taught” or “believed”. My naive notion dissipated as an adult as I traveled more and encountered more dialects.
I am a foreigner that has learned to speak/read/write Cantonese. I cannot understand most "formal written Chinese", also known as "standard written Chinese" as the characters used are almost entirely the same ones used in Mandarin. Indeed “佢喺邊度呀" (written/spoken Canto) is very different than "他在哪裡嗎" Mandarin/formal Chinese written form. I can read entire books or comics written in vernacular Canto but can't understand even basic stories written in "formal Chinese". The languages are mutually unintelligible and it's wild how different they can be.
> In fact, writing in dialect languages is not taught.
This is actually similar to Western Europe where there was a similar diglossia situation before the Renaissance. All formal writing by the few literate clergy at the time was in Latin, and there wasn't much writing in the vernacular languages spoken day to day.
It's different because in China the dialects are actively suppressed in favor of the standard language (which was also done in Europe in the 19th century for the various national languages).
While I understand the gist of what you're saying, there's quite a large body of work in French, Italian etc. that directly contradicts your point. Unless you consider state administration and literature to be « informal ». Most things switched to vernacular by the 14th c., and writing wasn't at all exclusive to the clergy. There was a healthy class of notary public, magistrates etc. among the laity of the urban societies of the later Middle Ages. The rise of written vernacular was concurrent to the rise of the middle class.
This happens in Spanish with 'vos' pronoun conjugations.
While speakers from Central and Southern South America conjugate verbs using the 'vos' pronoun, none of the keyboard apps I've used support it. And end up autocorrecting 'vos' for 'tú' conjugations.
I hope one day I have enough free time to fork a Spanish dictionary so it supports 'vos'.
> often many syllabary characters that sound identical must be used in writing a word in Mandarin (very commonly mistaken for ideographic writing) cannot work for the other sinitic languages.
It can and has, even historically (see e.g. the Ming Dynasty Min novel Tale of the Lychee Mirror 荔鏡記). The reason it falls flat is the lack of political willpower to really go for it, not fundamental linguistics ones. This is why calling Chinese characters a simple syllabary is also wrong.
The relationship among different Sinitic varieties is more complex than simply different languages. I've talked about this in the past: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16844074
The system designating which of many characters representing the same syllable is to be used in spelling each word obviously cannot be used for words that are not pronounced with that syllable. Analogous systems, one for each other sinitic language, could be invented, but would face barriers to adoption.
> obviously cannot be used for words that are not pronounced with that syllable. Analogous systems, one for each other sinitic language, could be invented, but would face barriers to adoption.
This is not how it is done. Generally the writing uses the underlying morphemes, and pronunciation is then fitted on after the fact (but indeed the pronunciations aren't arbitrarily fitted, there are regular sound correspondences that account for > 95% of the words). This is why the 荔鏡記 can be written (and why other variety-specific novels have also been written using the same script over the centuries). Indeed the simple fact is that variety-specific works have existed since at least the Ming Dynasty (and there are quite a few as soon as we hit the Qing Dynasty) and they have been written with the same script.
This is also why it's not a syllabary (and also why the varieties actually have a lot of similarities). This works precisely because varieties share an overwhelming number of cognates if not just straight up the same words.
This is why I think in China the history of the Chinese languages should be taught (I really do not know why some evolutionary tree of Homo sapiens is in the biology curriculum but this is not in some social science one. Seems like an oversight). Even from Chinese people, you still hear all these myth (debunked in some other comment) that X almost became Mandarin.
"Primarily Mandarin speakers I have known were taught, and believed, that the "dialects" were basically the same as Mandarin, just with different pronunciation."
I am going to take a guess that you do not know many mandarin speakers?
if you did, you would know this is utter nonsense.
My ex speaks English/Mandarin/Cantonese. She is well aware these are not "different pronunciations".
Her Cousin speaks Mandarin and Fuzhou dialect. Once we were all out and he bumped into a friend from Fuzhou and they started talking. I asked the ex to translate as I often did, and she turned to me and said she's in the same position as I am, she can't understand any of it.
It isn't a "pronunciation" issue, or she would have been able to guess some of what was being said.
Most people who are fluent in more than one sinitic language know the whole notion is bollocks. But there are plenty of Chinese who know only Mandarin; many of them entertain, and espouse, falsehoods about what they call dialects and their relationship with Mandarin. You see some of them posting such falsehoods in this very thread, and even insisting after they have been corrected.
What is amazing to me is people who know Mandarin and one or more "dialects" yet still promote the falsehoods. George Orwell called this "doublethink".
It's a shame that people think that having a common national language has to come at the expense of local languages/dialects.
Compare the language policy of China with that of India, where even though Hindi and English are nominally the languages on a national level and all students are in theory taught at least one of them, the government doesn't try to actively suppress other local languages in schools or media.
As a result, an educated Indian is often trilingual in English, Hindi, and their local language, whereas in mainland China, knowledge of non-Mandarin dialects is decreasing in the younger generations.
Worth noting that many Chinese languages are facing extinction, including Mongolian, Manchu, Bouyei [1]. In particular, Manchu, the imperial language a little more than a century ago, was known by less than 100 people and mastered by less than 10 in 2013 [2].
Indian language / multiculturalism is exactly the basketcase PRC wants to avoid.
>an educated Indian is often trilingual in English, Hindi, and their local language
An uneducated Chinese is still going to be fluent in mandarin going forward, the national language. 50% of Indian youth are bilingual 20% are trilingual. That's a lingua franca failure.
You're pushing it too far. Trilingualism is expected in the EU for University educated people, which are a minority. In the Indian system not being trilingual means you are at a severe disadvantage, whereas you can do pretty well in the EU knowing only English, let alone being bilingual.
Nobody is actually expected (emphasis on expected) to really know the third taught language beyond a couple phrases later in life. Many do, but it's not a universal fact.
It's more common for people to know two "local" languages (living near a border) and English, than the third language taught in school.
Nah. The expected level at the third language is not sufficient for you to live in it, and you will forget most of it. I took Spanish too and I now barely remember anything.
Less about collapse and more about progress. Having common language/culture facilitates rapid development which PRC did relative to India. Also facilitates common market and conditions for supporting national champions which EU struggles with relative to PRC. India/EU embrace multiculturalism because it has no choice, system is too weak / politics to fraught to meaningfully unify, even if they wanted to. They're not going to collapse or even stagnate, but they're also not going anywhere fast.
It is a side effect. You should see that young kids will not speak their local language, but they will be able to speak Mandarin and English so much better than their parents. It is more a natural selection. Why do you want to keep local dialects when no one is going to use it? It is like watching a village living in remote area, romantically we wish they stay that way forever, but they will change, modernize and find a better way for themselves.
I think the written Chinese language is way more flexible than what most people think it can be.
The most extreme example of this is Japanese Kanji, and while Japanese is its own language, native chinese speakers would note the similarities between it and Hainanese/Cantonese dialect, and with some 文言文 knowledge, one can read Japanese without much effort, even if one cannot speak it.
Contemporary Chinese has roots in the version used among the masses, it deliberately eschews the official version used in the palace to make it easier for the masses to understand and learn it. One may notice the difference between Taiwan official language and Mainland official language in official declarations, the Taiwanese one is considerably more ... "poetic" but comes at a cost of understanding for the masses who may not be educated as highly, like most of the villages in Mainland China, likewise for Hong Kong.
However, one might notice how written Chinese has relatively little "hard" grammar rules that must be followed to ensure legibility. As a translator I find it easier sometimes to translate something into Chinese, which is not my first language, and then to the target language, especially for Sinitic languages, because the written language can capture most of the meaning while being flexible enough to be restructured in the target.
The converse, on the other hand may be tougher, for example if Hong Kongers were to use Cantonese as a base to understand other dialects they will face a lot of problems in doing so because its not flexible enough to fit in the quirks of other languages, which is why in this sense written Putonghua is a successful invention because its minimal enough to convey meaning while being able to fit it all the weird quirks for various "dialects", which is why its used widely across the world.
> The most extreme example of this is Japanese Kanji, and while Japanese is its own language, native chinese speakers would note the similarities between it and Hainanese/Cantonese dialect, and with some 文言文 knowledge, one can read Japanese without much effort, even if one cannot speak it.
This is slightly misleading. Kanji (lit. Hanzi i.e. Chinese character(s)) is the Chinese writing system. The native Chinese speaker observes not any similarities in the languages beyond picking out logograms which are familiar and used in the same way. Of course, there are a large amount of logograms which are not used the same way, on top of the divergence caused by the different simplification schemes used in the two countries, so it is by no means straightforward to read Japanese as a Chinese speaker. The existence of languages as diverse as Turkish, Serbian, Finnish and English all using latin script does not imply that "the written Latin language is flexible".
Just as an example, I've taken a paragraph from a recent news article from NHK and converted the kanji to kana. This is of course legible to native Japanese speakers but completely unintelligible to even a scholar in classical Chinese.
With the Kanji in place, a Chinese speaker may pick out individual words but the whole sentence would still be unintelligible. As an analogy, I can replace the kanji with roughly equivalent English words, and what an average English speaker gets out of the sentence is what a Chinese speaker gets out of the original. The English speaker doing this should not be under the illusion of "understanding" the language thus.
The meaning is what it means usually from a 文言文 point of view, so it's not as familiar to the Chinese now. Japanese more or less maintains the meanings as it should during the Tang and Song dynasty.
> I think the written Chinese language is way more flexible than what most people think it can be.
I wish I had enough time to properly learn a couple of CJK languages.
I find the characters cool, and while I only know a few of them it is really fun to accidentally figure out the meanings of written words without being able to read or speak them.
Like how fire and mountain when written together becomes volcano: 火山
"Chinese phrases" that come from Japan attests to how flexible written Chinese is to accept and use a foreign language while still being understandable to the native speaker once the lexicon is understood.
There are a lot lost in translation. When Chinese people say "fangyan" it could mean anything, as long as it is a language used in specific region, as opposite to Mandarin, which is the official language used in the country. And that's what it is. It does not say a language is close to Mandarin or not. Of course, in translation, everything is lost. I have a lot problem with translations. For example, Chinese "loong" is translated into dragon, which are very different thing. It would be better people do not translate and find a close approximation for words, rather, introduce a new word. Like Banzai, Sushi, those words are good translations. Unfortunately it happened too many times in the history, now we are stuck with many words don't mean the same thing in two cultures.
In Arabic region, news organisations start to use MSA (Modern Standard Arabic) so that news can be broadcast to different regions, and schools are teaching in MSA, so that knowledge can be shared more effectively. There aren't much about which dialect is superior than others, any for or against discussion about these are super political, not about the use of the language at all.
The campaign in Singapore to wipe out 'dialects' is also interesting, as it existed outside the ROC or PRC. Presumably done for ethnic/nation building reasons, to have a dominant chinese majority speaking one language - otherwise you'd have some chinese communities being similar or size or even smaller than the Tamil or Malay speakers.
Though I've also read recently that after stamping out non-Mandarin languages, even proficiency in Mandarin is now fallen behind, as English is more practical.
One final irony in Singapore is that all Chinese are now taught Mandarin as their "mother tongue" (the official term) in school. This is despite virtually all Singaporeans being of southern Chinese descent, meaning they actually spoke Hokkien, Teochew, Hakka, Cantonese etc, but nothing even close to northern Mandarin.
Linguistically, the distinction between languages and dialects is debated; often, reasonably so, all languages are simply dialects of each other. The reason is that if you have two languages which don't understand each other, you can find "intermediary steps" between the two that each understand each other, s.t. you reach the other language. And often, you have two "languages" that are clearly dialects but considered different languages because they each have their own army and navy. [1]
As somebody that does not speak or read Chinese I am surprised that a simpler script has not been developed and widely used. Is it fast to read? I can understand to an extent if reading speed is at par with simpler alphabetic or phonetic scripts. But surely writing speed must be slower. How do chinese people even type?
That's a political hornets' nest that you're poking there.
There is Pinyin, the official romanisation of Mandarin Chinese, in which for example "汉语拼音" becomes "hànyǔ pīnyīn". So, one could write using that. The argument typically is that Chinese has too many homonyms to make that practicable. I'm not sure I buy that, as spoken Mandarin is presumably intellegible, despite those homonyms.
There's a lot of info in the informative book The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy by John DeFrancis, and on this website: http://www.pinyin.info
> But surely writing speed must be slower.
I've found that that is not the case. While a typical character is more complex than a typical letter, you need fewer of them. At uni, I tested that with a native Chinese speaker and a native German speaker. We chose several random English sentences, they translated them into their respective language, and then we timed how long they took to write them down (by hand, in Chinese, German, English). It was basically the same, no systematic difference.
> How do chinese people even type?
There are several input systems, some based on pronunciation, some based on the shape or strokes.
A speaker at Stanford on the topic of early keyboards used for Chinese noted graph structure such as the one you find in Canjie input method was what they used before soundspelling. Today, hypergraphtext autocompletion influences message contruction on flatscreen devices in a kind of mind-machine blend mode on a massive scale.
A lot of the discussions here seem to forget one thing for the Chinese language. The written and spoken Chinese were different from early on, and the spoken spoken language for the administration or office was not the same as that for locals' chitchat.
The Han script was really a unified VM bytecode and serialization format, not a language spec.
The fangyans are various languages compiles to it.
The Chinese standardized its written form very early, and is the only "language" survived today without an alphabet, many native speakers learn "Chinese" as the text rather than a spoken tone. Even Cantonese and Hakka are really a family of mutually unintelligible dialects clustered by geographic proximity.
Related [1] [2]: the Han race was really only constructed in the last 100 years, along with the national mythos of several millennia of uninterrupted dynastic civilization.
I've never understood the fascination with these narratives. Many of my relatives are adamant about China's dynastic streak. Also, the idea that different languages are dialects of Mandarin, when in truth many of them, like Cantonese, developed earlier or in parallel.
It serves the interests of a political elite to promulgate a feeling of great utility to them that “we’ve always been here, we are ever-present now, and there is no reason to suspect we will always exist into the future”. It serves to bolster legitimacy assertions upon geographic locales, based upon “ancient claims” or at least “claims older than yours”. This continuous-unbroken-culture-thousands-of-years-old notion I find peculiarly culturally specific. It is an amalgamation made up of Confucian respect-to-elders and venerate-the-dead I don’t agree with when the venerate-the-dead aspect comes at the expense of those living in the geographic locale, and those at the top peculiarly benefit in their pocketbooks to enforce this “ancient tradition”.
The US and indeed most major nation states also use this kind of myth making as well, this kind of behavior isn’t specific to China. It’s just not taught in schools.
> the idea that different languages are dialects of Mandarin
I believe most Chinese do think Mandarin and Cantonese are parallel and won't consider Cantonese a dialect of Mandarin. It's better to put it this way: both Mandarin and Cantonese (and many others) are "dialects" of a fictional, idealized language "Chinese". Hence, "dialect" here might be an incorrect translation of "fangyan", which literally just means "regional language".
Colonial Europeans tend to be obsessed with race -- historically it's how they rationalize imperialism and expansionism -- and may project that obsession on other groups that don't even think about race.
> an ethnically integrated China is, in fact, a modern invention linked to the rise of nationalism at the end of the nineteenth century.
This idea is a very sensible one in the context of China being forced to open up to the world. It's like a man, living in wild, has assume he was alone, and have no idea he was actually a male. Until one day he run into a similar creature that is a female.
The undernote of this is that Chinese society is extremely complex. Easily orders of magnitude more complex. Comparing to the US continental, the geographical diversity and the cultural heritage shows such a vast range of changes that one should feel US is probably culturally only equivalent to a typical province in China! They eat differently, speak different in accent and words of expression, have different customs in almost every aspects of the life (child birth, birthdag, marriage, funerals etc etc)...
China is indeed a humongous collective of diverse human communities that defies any singular or universal interpretation.
> > an ethnically integrated China is, in fact, a modern invention linked to the rise of nationalism at the end of the nineteenth century.
> This idea is a very sensible one in the context of China being forced to open up to the world.
The narrative of “China being forced to open up to the world” is also a social construct, and in this case a political construct.
For examples, Mao Zedong supported the Hunan self-government movement even as late as the 1920’s [1][2], quite some time after the end of the Qing dynasty in 1911. This clearly ran against the convention that China should be politically integrated as it is today.
Mao’s 1920 proposal to split China showed that an ethnically integrated China, or a politically integrated China, was not a very sensible one in the context of China at that time.
Mao disproved your claim.
And that was my point: viewing certain historical events from a certain perspective is a social and political construct (the nationalism is a modern invention). The facts (Mao’s proposal) are supporting this view point: there could be alternative social constructs (for example, a split China).
Mao’s 1920 proposal disagreed with your social construct (that an integrated China was a sensible thing at that time, due to being forced to open to the world).
Appreciate your efforts of laying our additional contexts. You led the discussion into a debate of conception or definition of words... I seem no fruitful results from this.
Let me reword the article and the discussion to highlight what is happening, this time try to reuse existing terms.
1. Chinese (the official language) is an invention [1].
The article explains its title with the history and development of different language families and dialects in China.
2. The Han race (the identity) is an invention. The united Chinese history (the view point of uninterrupted dynastic civilization) is an invention [2].
> ... the Han race was really only constructed in the last 100 years, along with the national mythos of several millennia of uninterrupted dynastic civilization.
3. An ethnically integrated China (the identity and political system) is an invention. The Chinese nationalism (the ideology) is an invention.
> an ethnically integrated China is, in fact, a modern invention linked to the rise of nationalism at the end of the nineteenth century.
4. The invention of an integrated China is sensible, because history [3].
> This idea is a very sensible one in the context of China being forced to open up to the world.
5. The invention of an integrated China is NOT sensible, because history [4].
> Mao Zedong supported the Hunan self-government movement even as late as the 1920’s.
Clear thinking of different concepts, and understanding what is being discussed, is needed for a fruitful discussion.
Calling unfamiliar concepts as “a debate of definition of words”, and not understanding what is being discussed, is not fruitful for discussion.
Note that throughout the discussion, we are using “invention”, “construction”, or “convention” as the same concept, and study their consequences to the society, to politics, and to history.
Here, we are talking about created languages (Chinese official language), identity (Han), history (national mythos, narratives), ideology (nationalism), and politics (integrated China).
This branch of social science, which studies created and accepted concepts, deals with “social constructs” [5].
Before going into the details, one has to note the vastness of Chinese sphere has always been at least an order of magnitude bigger than any other national systems on earth. So it's often that one has no experience in their lifetime to intuitively appreciate the linage and internal logic of the Chinese history and heritage.
Applying sweeping statement like "X is an invention", following the premise in the previous paragraph, usually is wrong automatically. Because the invention as a concept in smaller national system is not possible to be comparable to a much larger one. One has to perceive from the larger scope to appreciate the invention in the larger scope.
Another thing, social construction is not invention. One has to build on foundation and use materials from history and culture to create some thing new yet deeply rooted in the society for it to be long enduring social construct.
No, Han race or group has been used dated at least back to Han dynasty. The concept of "people of hua xia (华夏)” was already a widely used term like in Hua Yi Zhi Bian (华夷之辩) I.e. the method of distinguish the hua xia people with the barbarian. The word Chinese is of course new, as Chinese consider then the center of mandate under haven, there is no sense to distinguish themselves as all others are barbarians.
> An ethnically integrated China (the identity and political system) is an invention. The Chinese nationalism (the ideology) is an invention.
No, ethnic integration happened volunterily and forcefully numerously over the history. From the early days of "Bavarians entering Hua Xia becomes part of Hua Xia" by Confucius in the spring autumn era. And Zhao WuLing Wang adopting babarian's horse riding and clothing custom https://zh.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E8%83%A1%E6%9C%8D%E9%A8%8E%... in the waring States era. And Sui dynasty's intermarriage between Xianbei and Han people in the north. This mingling ethnically and culturally have been happening constantly of the Chinese history.
> The invention of an integrated China is NOT sensible, because history
You supported this with Mao's statement when he was 27 (1893-1920), which himself througly discarded. That automatically price that the historical logic of unified Chinese and integrated China makes a lot of sense.
> Clear thinking of different concepts, and understanding what is being discussed, is needed for a fruitful discussion.
Sure.
But throwing new concetps constantly and without clear context and explanation, is not effective either.
> Calling unfamiliar concepts as “a debate of definition of words”, and not understanding what is being discussed, is not fruitful for discussion
I think it should be that arguing in novel concepts would make the counterpart feel the discussion becomes a debate of definition of words. For that I think we are talking same thing.
> Note that throughout the discussion, we are using “invention”, “construction”, or “convention” as the same concept, and study their consequences to the society, to politics, and to history.
No, I do not use invention construction and convention as the same concepts. If you are, then we indeed are in a debate of word definitions.
> This branch of social science, which studies created and accepted concepts, deals with “social constructs” [5].
Thanks for the pointer. I'll need to take a look after this post.
The US is not an appropriate comparison in terms of geographical diversity. The US + Canada is unusually homogenous because of its unique and very modern history.
Instead, compare China to Europe, which is far more rich and complex. Heck, there may be more dialects and recognized languages in Italy alone than in the large majority of China.
Is there English writings on Italian dialects? Sounds like a really interesting topic. Given Italy's linkage to anticent Roma (and Greek maybe not sure), language dialects probably have a lot to do with the history and culture. Must be full of quriks and surprises!
it's not true. Han Chinese are clearly genetically distinguishable from Yamato Japanese and Koreans, and internally the different Han Chinese subgroups are genetically closer to each other than any of them are to Koreans and Japanese.
This discussion isn't about the genetic validity of population groupings in East Asia, but rather the construction of Han identity which is a social phenomenon.
The concept of Chinese medicine was also created and promoted by Mao since they couldn’t afford much real medicine after the revolution. It simply didn’t exist as a unified thing before then.
What's the reasoning behind this theory that Mao invented Chinese medicine, which has been in existence for more than a thousand years? Are you a fan of Mao, or are you mocking his inability to create modern medicine out of thin air? Or his manipulation of Chinese culture?
I don't think he's saying that Mao invented Chinese herbology. I mean, who would seriously say that? I think he's saying that Mao pushed for the treatment of Traditional Chinese medicine as a unified discipline distinct from western medicine.
He invented the term, not the methods. Before, they were just a disparate set of folk medicine cultures spread throughout China. By unifying and standardizing them all under the umbrella of Chinese medicine and claiming that they were just as good as western medicine, they were able to stave off demand for western medicine, doctors, and hospitals that they didn’t have or couldn’t afford. See https://slate.com/technology/2013/10/traditional-chinese-med...
Chinese medicine includes more than just Han medicine, and also, according to the article at least, had no institution or universities dedicated to them. What the TCM concept did was create a new field on par with other fields of study, including TCM universities and such.
Why are you angry? Scamming was not invented in China, it comes built in in human nature. There are Shamans in South America, and Witch doctors in Africa.
western pharma sends chemists to talk to shamans and witch doctors in order to discover and isolate new medicines by the way, a large percentage of modern medicine started as or still is a plant extract, no need to diss old herbal medicine.
Any treatment should be considered a scam until proven effective.
Chinese medicine gets people to drink urine. A Shaman spits alcohol on people. A witch doctor conjures spells.
None can be considered effective until proven effective.
"Proven effective" means.
1) Follows the reliable method, results are published
2) The experiment can be verified and replicated by anyone anywhere anytime.
That is the difference between the scientific method (So called "western medicine") and scams.
Summarizing: A fungus can be medicine, when proven effective. The older you state Chinese medicine is, the worse for its cause. So much time to show proof of effectiveness, so little they can prove.
it’s not my intention to convince you that all traditional medicine is effective, just that some traditional medicine is effective, and testing the methods used by herbalists yields more results than starting from scratch in a chemistry lab (tho of course the chemistry lab comes in handy to isolate and eventually synthesize the molecules that are found to be effective)
You say “So little they can prove” but I’m saying they have proven a lot, and non-western medicine just becomes western by virtue of being adaquatelty studied. We may be agreeing more than you think.
“Plants, People, and Culture: The Science of Ethnobotany” is an excellent book on the topic.
Oh sorry! I don't meant to be rude. Hopefully you can understand my English is not native and can have many sharp edges in communication. Chinese medicine is a good thing. Don't need to link it with scamming. And as you said, scamming is universal, but Chinese medicine is not. Making it further an inappropriate analogy.
It's a long story to even make sense of this topic, especially on why Chinese governments (not only CCP, but also KMT, and all previous dynasties) have such an obsession with controlling the Chinese language. But here are some interesting historical topics worth exploring:
First, according to the legend, the Chinese character was created by 仓颉[0] (2667 – 2596 BC, don't you love it when the four-eyed legend even has a birth year...), who is an official work for the ancient Yellow Emperor[1]. But the legends were well known to all the following dynasties, that an official invented the Chinese character, might give later generations the legitimacy and confidence to moderate it.
The Zhou[2] dynasty (1046 – 256 BC), which laid the very foundation of the Chinese culture, occupied the vast fertile land of China, with is on par with the EU in size. It's arguably the only feudal dynasty in Chinese history. The problem of feudalism is subjects would gradually gain power, so the country would break into pieces just like Europe, or the later Eastern Zhou. As China breaks, the need for diplomacy between countless independent Duchies and Counties was booming. On paper, the King of Zhou was still their liege, so it's very natural to leverage the dialect from the capital of Zhou, plus several classics like 诗[3] (the Poetry - the first book of poetry is, of course, called the Poetry). People call it 雅言[4] which means the language of elegance. It's a bit like Latin, which European always learn because of the Vatican, but people don't use it much in real life. If China continued this way it would be more like Europe and there would be many independent languages.
Then there's Qin[5] (221 - 206 BC), which was originally a subject of Zhou, but eventually became too powerful and unified China. Qin was very radical, it killed feudalism, and launched massive standardization like unifying administrative units, all kinds of measurements, and even the wheelbases (there were no train but they did anyway), and of course the Chinese Characters. It's doable because 1) Chinese is hieroglyphic, the character and the sound are not coupled 2) writing was still a practice of elites, and elites are fewer in number and can afford education.
As vast as China is, and as many dialects there are/were, people can always perfectly communicate with the written language throughout most Chinese history. Because of the hieroglyphic nature of the language, most of the characters from the Qin dynasty, still make sense even today if you know modern traditional Chinese and to a lesser extent simplified Chinese. (aka. The single-responsibility principle[6] in software engineering, the pronunciation, and the graphical representation are different reasons to change, so the decoupling makes the characters less screwed when the pronunciation changes). It's so powerful so that Chinese and Japanese may have some quasi-understanding to each other by writing Hanzi/Kanji. To understand what does a regnal year of Japanese Emperor means, people often have to go back to ancient Chinese texts - the most difficult part of the Japanese and Korean for western people, sometimes are easiest for Chinese.
And for the following millenniums, those practices almost became a tradition: the dialect of the capital of that time would be the official language. And from time to time there were attempts to unify the vocal dialects during dynasties, but it was too hard because how people speak was always changing, until modern days that Guoyu[7] and Putonghua[7] could achieve the impossible through technologies.
So: 1) The language is not only seen by governments as a tool of communication but also a tie that binds everything together - loosening that tie might come with risks. 2) It's more or less a tradition so there are substantially fewer pushbacks than other countries, and legitimate Chinese governments throughout history see no reason to not leverage that.
There has been a single lingua franca across all of China since at least the Han Dynasty, perhaps even the Warring States period or earlier. It has variously been called 通語 (the mass/common/omnipresent/intelligible language, 通 is a bit difficult to translate here), 官話 (the official language), potentially 雅言 (elegant speech, this is more controversial and earliest mention) and now 普通话 or 國語.
> Indeed, before the 20th century the idea of a singular, spoken Chinese language was a foreign concept
Matteo Ricci explicitly talks about a single language he can use to talk with everyone in every province (in his time this was the 官話). And indeed he used the same language as he made his way across the entire coast of China. There is an entire Han Dynasty compendium of the vocabulary of various regions that compares it against the official lingua franca. Indeed the title of this work is exactly Fangyan!
> But while Chinese thinkers frequently mentioned ‘official languages’, this was by no means synonymous with a ‘national language’ – a language unified in its sound and script used by and representative of a Chinese nation.
These "official languages" were exactly unified in sound and script and representative of a Chinese nation! The language Ricci encountered was the descendent of one whose pronunciation was explicitly codified (there are some asterisks here I can elaborate on if people are interested) in the 14th century 洪武正韻 (Hongwu Proper Sound), and was passed to neighboring kingdoms as the official language (and is e.g. preserved in Korean rime books on the Chinese language).
The difference in the last 100 years has been a difference in degree rather than kind. With the advent of near-universal education and literacy and the technological tools offered by mass media, the PRC, ROC, and to a lesser extent places like Singapore and Malaysia can more effectively carry out the language programs that have been attempted in the millennia past.
Granted the difference in degree is vast: the tools at the disposal of political regimes today absolutely dwarfs those of the past. This also means the effects of standardization are far more keenly felt. However, the motivation and policy is one with a long and winding history.
It follows a standard story of varying unification and disunity both linguistically and politically that has played out many times in China's history.