dialects or languages?

pluiepoco, I like the concept of people who speak languages with alphabets representing sounds rather than ideographs having phonetic minds - it's an interesting concept! I have to think about it (with my phonetic mind).

My understanding about Chinese, and I'll admit that I don't know as much as I should, is that the sound system changes quite a bit from area to area, to the point where the speakers of different varieties of Chinese cannot understand one another, but the written representation is quite standard. Is that correct?

As for the mixing of linguistics and politics, there's that famous quote (from whom?), "A language is a dialect with an army."

... and navy.

I have given Cisa a detailed explanation when she asked me for that in private message about what is Chinese, before this topic happened, I can show this:
Hello, Cisa

Chinese has two meanings, one is Chinese people, the other is Chinese language.

As to Chinese Language, it is not a single language, but a group of languages spoken by the majority of Chinese citizens, it is a mother tongue for a race, named Han, so Chinese language is also called Han Yu, where Yu means language, and Han is the nation who speak it.

As you know, different provinces in China speak differently, like different provinces in ancient Rome speak differently, but Rome fell and China no.

Since different Chinese speak Differently, we must create an artificial language to communicate, that is Mandarin. Mandarin is only one kind of Chinese language, not all. So is Cantonese.

You know Chinese language has characters, that the way we write it. It is different from latin letters which pronounce, but ideograms which give you think and logic.

But characters are changed with governments, and New China uses a simplified system of characters, while Old literature and Taiwan use the traditional one.

So traditional and simplified Chinese are the same language, only in different styles of writing.

The most complicated is that, almost all dialectual Chinese languages don't have its own characters, except Cantonese which is too far from the control under central Government, and due to historical reasons, it has its own characters, but other dialectual Chinese langauges are not so lucky, they are not recorded in literature but only spoken. What Chinese people write is the artificial language.


Please remember that Mandarin is an artificial language, the official Chinese language is not mother tougue of any known Chinese Han people. It was determined in two lines, one is phonetic line, which applied the Capital Beijing's phonetic system, and the other line is lexical line, which absorbed vocabulary of North Chinese dialects. So North China (North of Yangtze River) can understand this artificial language without study, but South China will not be used to listening to it without study or TV propaganda. Yet, today's multimedia is advanced, no one does not watch TV, listen to radio, and go to work, so every one can understand Mandarin if s/he can not speak it.

The fact is, almost no Chinese can speak the purest Mandarin except TV or Radio Broadcasters, since it is artificial, and different Chinese Han people speak different Chinese, and when they meet, they will automatically speak a quasi-Mandarin Chinese, to faciliate the communication, but each of them is blended with their local dialectual phones and lexcos.

No one is born from stone, and no language is born independant, so Chinese is not isolated, but it is very hard to retrieve its origin, do you know why? Because of characters. History tells us, Chinese is related to Altaic, tibetan, and Altaic is always nomandic, and their languages change so many times, and writtings also change, so their languages don't deposit, you can imagine that it floods everything away, but Chinese is different, even if in very archaic times, it might be proto-altaic language, and this is almost true according to some sinologists who recovered the further ancient Chinese phonetic system from literature comparison and modern western linguistics, but the problem is, even if Chinese phonetic languages changed thousands of times, our writting ones are not changed so much, today's people can read through literature of 2000 years ago quite easily if s/he is not an illiterate. The information is contained in a medium, our characters, not in recorded voices like today's recorder. Many Chinese literature lovers own and exchange ancient dictionaries compiled 1-2 thousand years ago, there is no problem reading them.
Our guess about the past is not right always, so we cannot affirm that ancient Chinese speak the same as we do today, but it is obvious that we can write the same. That needs deposit of language, that needs a culture that is enough stable and not ruined by wars. But how do nomandics do, and how do many Europeans do, if they are immigrants and they are newborn nations and they are tranformed or organized or separated or consolidated from other nations? Some people lived on the land, and passed and replaced by other people who claimed to be their descedents, like ancient Egypt, Ancient India, but some retained, like ancient China. A language needs to be mature, but it costs time, costs history.

As to Chinese to Japanese, Chinese to Vietnamese, and Chinese to Korean, the reason is very simple, because in Japanese, Vietamese and Korean histories, they gave up themselves to China, and learned Chinese languages both phonetically and lexicologically and literal, do you know that the three countries' histories were recorded in Chinese language, and their ancestors spoke Chinese?

A language will develp faster if its speakers are many, think how is the comparison between basque and Chinese, you will understand who is more enduring and rich. North Chinese is the most populated Chinese region, so Chinese is developed very fast in north China, but Japan, Vietnam and Korea develop slower, so they have late language evolutions, and for that reason, if you are linguists or sinologists, you should never miss the chance to study these three quasi Chinese languages to compare modern Chinese and conclude on something like: Ancient Chinese Phonetic System or so. Because of delayed linguistic evolution, the Chinese languages not spoken in North China retain more ancient elements of Chinese language in phonetics. And every year, many vietnamese. Korean and Japanese students will come to China and Chinese universities to study Chinese and compare their own language with Chinese, we called comparative linguistics, and many of these foreigners even know more Chinese language knowledge than I do, especially in middle and further ancient Chinese and its phonetic or vocabulary system.

And why did the Far East latinize their "Chinese"? You can review history, because Chinese regime was taken by rude nomandics, like mongol and manchu, so these small subordinate countries would not like to obey to the rude new rulers, and they thought they would better retain what was real Chinese they persisted in, but not Chinese slaved by nomandics, so they maintained Chinese costumes, that are what you see of today's Japanese, Vietamese and Korean traditional clothese, and their weapons and everything, but Chinese in motherland was taught to dress themselves like nomandics. And China was under these external regimes for more than 500 years, it became very weak economically and politically, so its former followers became to seek other examples, like stronger country from the West, and some still obeyed that they would like to follow nomandic ruled China, but the mother China was too weak to protect them from invaders's attacks, so Vietname was taken by France, Korea was taken by Japan, and Japan was not taken, but it was defeated by Dutch, and so it decided to learn the West, and then became stronger and invaded Korea first, then mother China.
In a historical point of view, Japan did this because it wanted to reunite the Ancient Chinese dream, and it believed that it inherited the purest Chinese elements, but the mother China was coloured by nomandics, becoming not pure.

The attempt failed finally, since the war of Japan against China (invasion during eight years from 1937 to 1945), but the history does not end so, it will give another chance for uniting these Chinese and quasi-Chinese.

Wow, this was a long explanation... ! Anyway, it was really interesting.

I can see it now how can be a bridge even between cultures. I think this was a good lesson to see how differently people think!

Anyway, may I have another quiestion, Pluiepoco? About how many characters do you have to learn in school to achieve general literacy? Somewhere I´ve read that about 6 ooo but I´m not really sure.... Another: do you have a favourite character you like to write or you find escpecially nice??

I agree - I found this fascinating - there's so much I disagree with that I don't know where to start, but I'll just say this: Do you disagree with the language family division as presented in the ethnologue?

So, pluiepoco, are you suggesting that Japanese, Vietnamese and Korean are nothing but dialects of the mother Chinese language? Because that is not what linguists have always said (and I mean also Eastern linguists, not just "narrow-minded Western linguists who only think phonetically" They claim instead that those three languages are not related to Chinese even though many nonessential borrowings took place through History.

As for Japanese people, do they call themselves and their language Chinese?

Whaaaat?

And by the way, if we have phonetic minds and we don't get what you are talking about, why don't you just try and explain the same thing to our thinking minds, I think we are not that slow, are we? We might even happen to be aware of what an ideographic language is. Your treatment of this topic makes me think of you as an imperialist who dreams about his country's supremacy. Is that what you are? You don't look like that. And please, don't get me wrong, I don't mean to be derogatory, just somehow ironic.

Just from a historical point of view, and empire and subordinates was real history, I referred to that period of history because that was true, you must face the historical reality, instead of bury your heads under sands, Like Christians who don't believe that their Bible is modified and they should have the same god as Muslim. In a further attempt of mine, I referred to the former empire because it is like today's Europe, with languages rooted in latin but developed on the basis of vulgar dialects.

And as to how is Japanese to be Chinese, you can ask Japanese people directly, don't ask me. But I can disclose a little, Japanese does call their language Chinese, but in another way, in their phonetic system.

And to language the name itself, I must say the name restricts your imagination, for centuries, tens of centuries, but do you know that, here in China, we never refer to languages. You have your linguistics (Yu Yan Xue), but we have our *** (Wen Zi Xue), I don't know how can I depict such a thing to your minds, but I know that you will never know, it is translated by some former Chinese linguists as "philology", but I know it is not true.

I can tell you that there is no Eastern Linguistics, if any, that must be son of Western Linguistics, so all over the world, what you are talking about linguistics are all the modern linguistics built several years ago. But in building the theory, the builders never thought of Chinese and other far east language, they avoided, why? They had their own west centralism. Am I right?

And in westerner's minds, there is only one indian language, am I right? in today's India, but in all Chinese's minds who is not illiteral, Indian languages do have another meaning, that is the languages of european-massacred primary residents of today's Americas, do you agree?

Yes, you may agree that what I talked is mess or shit, and I can tell you that, many Chinese linguists think the same as you even before 1910s, when the linguistics knowledge was ever founded. So they recognized that "Chinese language is backaward because it is ideographic language", that is the conclusion, and if you are good at languages and linguistics (yours western), you must admit that phonetical language is more developed than ideographic languages, if you don't think so, you will be twart or at least toddler in linguistics. I can tell you that, communist leader Marx and Engel also thought the same, and they contained their language theory in their capitalism theory, so when soviet founded, it wanted to change cyrillic russian to latin, and change all its minority languages in to latin, and in China, we followed Marxism and followed brother Russia, so we latinized our languages too, and at that time, many former Chinese Han people were catetorized into other ethnic groups than Han people, if you really know what is history, for example, amongst the 56 minority ethnic groups of modern China, there is a race called Zhuang, they spoke Chinese and wrote Chinese, but in a dialect, and the governmental lingusitists forced them to write in a pinyin program which is a try of total Chinese latinization, that is to say, if this small group can practice this system, later the whole country will use it. But the language experiment was totally a failure, the Zhuang people (in fact Han people) didn't like this new latin writting language at all, it is only an alternative pinyin program of Chinese. but because of that experiment, the group of Zhuang people became a new race, a new ethonic group, called Zhuang, they are excluded from Han. We call their language offically Zhuang language, but in fact, it is Chinese, or at most Chinese dialect.

And what is more, many Chinese linguists supported by the communist governments begun to replace our language (not your language, but our writtings) into latin, but the public people just cound't accept it, so they adopted a transitional model, to give up traditional Chinese writting, and found a simplified one, that is what you can see today, and that is cultural separation, it does not stop, but develop in many forms on the theory of or under the name of linguistics.

The language reform has its final task, that is give up Chinese, and adopt latin, give up our national identity, but redeem ourselves as europeans, because europeans everything is white, as white as latin's butt.

But I must say, in the history, latin and grecos had their face and butt not as white as today's claimings, they were as black as africa or india.

The white gene was from wild persons who lived in deep forests and mountains in vast west and middle and north europe which at that time were wildness. That is your history.

I am not racist, but the linguistics itself contains racism, and claiming that all the europeans is the advanced, others wild. If this was really so, how could these merciful and godblessed europeans went to the New world and killed natives and grasped land and silver and gold and.... but they were civilised, and the natives were wild.....

They are modern and developed, ok?

Pluiepoco, you have the strangest ideas about what you call "Western Linguistics".

If you look at the website I linked to above (the ethnologue), you will see that, quite in contrast to what you just said, they list the Sino-Tibetan language family with 399 member languages, including Chinese, Tibetan, and Vietnamese, among others, but not Japanese or Korean, and also that the Indoeuropean language family includes as one of its sub-groups the Indo-Aryan family, which includes the 219 languages of the Indian sub-continent.

Where on Earth did you get the idea that so-called Western linguists think that there is only one language in India? India itself has 32 official languages!

If what you were talking about was the languages of the aboriginal people of the Americas, these are generally known by linguists as the Amerindian languages (this has absolutely nothing to do with India), but which are recognized as belonging to several unrelated language families.

I don't know where you got your ideas about so-called Western linguistics, but they are really very strange misconceptions.

Also, where did you read/hear that Western people think that languages written with ideograms are "backwards"? What an odd idea!

That is the same case with Bible, because Bible is modified and developed, so believers of different verions in different stages will disagree with each other, or even fight and kill the heterodoxies. What I said of western lingusitcal criterion did and does exist in today's lingustical circle, if you are in it.

That is a vast and great campaign to latinze all ideographic languages, that is true, if you know lingusitics and know what is the history and program, you will understand me. It is real cultural invasion and massacre. But you outside of linguistical insides just don't believe the plot.

AS to indian, Yes I wanted to point out the american indian languages, but we all called them "yin di an yu", literally "Indian languages", I know that languages in indian are very complicated, because there was complicated history, and even Srilanka and Pakistan. But we Chinese call the official indi languages usually not in such a precise definition as you in lingusitics. That is we follow the Columb's mistake.

But other Chinese linguists (not in your linguistics which is Yu Yuan Xue based on phonetics, but our Wen Zi Xue based on characters research) found that Columb was right, he did not make a mistake at all. Because the "Indians" did call themselves "Indian", not the indian which Columb undestood, but it did exist at that time, that is Land of Yin People, You know that Yin (Shang) Empire was founded in Anyang city, Henan (China). what is Yin then? It is far ancient empire before Chinese Qin Dynastry, when the Zhou Dynasty founder drove Yin (Shang) emperor away, Yin people left China to America, so during more than a century, there are many Chinese intellectuells and scholars wbo went to Americas and found our former brothers and in the period of Qing Dynasty (Manchu regime), and in the later Republic of China (Kuomintung regime at that time ruling in Mainland), there were petitions to the central government that we should send armies and at least donations or foundations to help our former brothers and sisters there, to protect their lives from european massacres, but at that times, China was very weak both economically and politically, so the programs were delayed infinitely. And if you know history, you will know that there are tomb stones in Americas which were carved in the ideographs of Oracle, which told that they were descedents from China Yin and Shang Dynasties.

And I think you admit that the native american indians are from Asia, in an anthropological point of view.

But behind sciences, there are bleeding reality and history. Do you know?

Yes, Kafetzou, I agree with you on the point that the Linguistics is scientifically right. But what is the history of linguistics, is it a newborn? Has it experienced tests and times and surpassed races?

I heard that, one of the modern linguistics founders said that, Linguistics stop at the foot of Himalaya.

And what is more, there are crazier ideas about philosophies, religions and sciences in China or even the world, like:

Philosopher is nothing but beggar;
religion is nothing but stupifying trick;
sciences is nothing but modern religion.

And finally, especially to guilon who seemed so disgusted about imperialism,

China is imperialism? and I ask you a question, did every empire practice imperialism? did small kingdoms practice imperialism?

interesting. For exmaple, England was small kingdom but it conquered Britain and try to conquer Irland and worldwide controlled almost all the world in past centuries, so was Spain empire and Portugal empire (are ES and Pt the same empire in different ages of the iberia?), wow, you can see that geographically small kingdoms did imperialisms. so was Japan, it invaded South and East Asia including its weak mother China, so it was imperialism, right?

But how was and is China. all the mankinds know that China was a big empire, but did empire necessarily be imperialism? I tell you that, imperilisms applied wars and forces and colonies and conquests, but do you know that Chinese "imperialism" came from the obedience of other small lands, the kings of small lands visited China and wanted to join in the trade with it and make money. That was not built on military forces, if you know history, yet we had to keep armies to drive the invaders from northwest and northeast (Huns and Hunos and all those turko and mongol and many nomandics) away.

If China were imperialism, then what come after WWII when the invader japan was defeated and gave up to China and US troops?

The Treaty after WWII designated Chinese armies (at that time, China is ruled by Kuomintung in the regime of Republic of China) to occupy and station in Japan, instead of today's US troops' reality. But the governmental leader Kiongjieshi, at that time, employed the designated occupying troops to get rid of communist forces who united with Kuomintung in the anti-japan campaigns, and who later became the new regime known as the People's Republic of China. Obviously, ROC consumed its well trained troops which would have been employed to occupy and supervise Japan after WWII, in the fields of civil wars. but the war failed. And ROC retreated to Taiwan, that is what you can see from today's China construction.

Are we imperialism? then I want to ask you, what is imperialism?

And am I imperialist? Did my ancestors and I occupy other people or race's lands and kill other people and grasp other people's gold and silver and .... everything including lives?

Linguistics as I know it, and I have studied linguistics, and worked in a linguistics department, although that is not what I do now, is a descriptive science, not a prescriptive science.

A linguist would never urge a country to change its alphabet - that is only done by politicians.

As for the idea that the Amerindians already called themselves something that sounded like "indian" before Columbus made the infamous mistake of thinking he had landed in India, that is just nonsense.

And yes, it has been shown that most of the Amerindians originally came from Asia.

And now I have just one more question: Are the ideas that you have outlined here widely held among linguists in China? Are you a linguist? We know you are a professional translator - and a very good one! Are you also a person who studies the origins of languages and publishes papers about them?

No. I am not linguist at all. I have never studied the origin of languages or published papers about them. Sorry, I am just influenced by other people who are studying languages or researching on linguistics. But I am sure that, in China there are always linguistical combats between Western Linguistics and Eastern Linguistics, and you know, the latinization campaign started in late Qing Dynasty, when it became a governmetnal campaign led by scholars who were sent by the government to study abroad in west Europe and North America, they came back to reform China regime and even Chinese languages, that is what we call "westernization", and this campaign is almost failing now, so more than 100 years have passed, the latinization almost fails, and people get to rethink it, whether it is right or not.

But anyway, this campaign has results, like pinyin, and simplified Chinese, the former will be the future Chinese language to totally replace the characters we are talking about nowadays, and the latter would be the transitional mode adopted both by kuomintung and communist party, which was and is to serve as a step from ideographic to phonetic Chinese.

There has been a language reform committee directly under the State council for so many years, and it is falling now, because our generation does not want latinization.

and from my poor linguistic knowledge and background, I can tell you that, in the minds or opinions of the linguists or the linguistic students and researchers, the extreme task of language movement is to get rid of ideogram.

Last but not least important, I find a very ridiculous but real phenomenon, that is, linguists support language separatism, nationalism and racism.

My objection to western linguistics is reasonable and realistic, because modern linguistics, as poor as I know, is constructed in three dimensions, phonetics, grammatics and lexicology. If Chinese people believe in this kind of linguisitcs as you westerners believe in god, we will apply phonetic writting system, so many Chinese dialects will become completely different languages, even without any relations between themselves. So what will happen?

Division and Separation. and new nations and countries, like the dead Roma.

Do you agree?

The reason why I gave you the old history of Korea, Japan and Vietnam is just to remind you that, they were from this kind of evolution. In fact, each province of China can form a new country with its proper "language" as you define based on phones, vocabularies, and grammars.

Understand?

To Cisa, for common Chinese, 3000 characters are enough, but to read literature, you need more, maybe above 6000 ones.

For general knowledge, think every Chinese pupil can be familiar with small dictionaries like:

Xinhua Dico

Could you please tell us where you get the idea that "linguists support language separatism, nationalism and racism"?

In my experience, linguists do not support anything, except for the preservation of languages that are dying out because their speakers have become assimilated into some mainstream. Field linguists go to places where there are only a few speakers left of a language or dialect and record them so that their language will not be forgotten.

I cannot imagine that any linguist would support the latinization of Chinese. The only people who would support that would be those who wanted to facilitate the communication between Chinese people and others, who cannot understand the Chinese characters, such as when Atatürk brought the alphabet reform to Turkey.

If anything, the linguists would be those who would fight against such a movement, as they support the preservation of languages, not the assimilation of them.

Pluiepoco, I acknowledge that China is one of the oldest continuos cultures throughout the world, your culture and your history are widely admired and I don’t think it is a country practicing imperialism nowadays (but don’t fool yourself, every culture having the means to do it will expand its power and its influence). When I talked about imperialism I was alluding to you, not to your country’s current or former status in the world nor to your ancestors’ behaviour. You are the one who is trying to bring us around to assuming the Chinese dream, the Chinese superiority over wild, barbarous Western civilizations.

You make the strangest reviews on most topics. Roman and Greek were black? Have you ever seen ancient Roman and Greek statuary? Mediterranean races were and still are darker than the Northern blonds, but “as black as Africa”?

Spain and Portugal the same empire in different ages of Iberia? No, they were two contemporary empires spawned within the peninsula called Iberia by Greeks and Hispania by Romans. They are now nice places for anybody to spend a summertime, but I don't dream of Spanish hegemony, neither I regard Spain as being mother of any American countries where Spanish is actually and not only hypothetically spoken. Those empires are largely over now.

A linguistic plot to latinize ideographic languages by massacring and invading? Do you happen to have more information about this campaign? This could be a fascinating subject matter for a best seller.

So, Amerindians did call themselves Indian before Columbus arrival, Yin people. Let’s do a compendia: Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, Amerindian (that is to say Incas, Aztecs, Mayas, Araucanians, even Navajos or Sioux ).

Your ideas are weird, man.

We are talking of different things, but it seems that we are talking on the same topic, but this topic is based on the terms that have different meanings with different people.

For exmaple, when I say "grandpa", literally, in Chinese, it means father's father, not including mother's father. See?

or , when you say "cousin", you will include mother's brothers or sisters' children. But litereally, we Chinese don't think so.

also, when you say "uncle" or "aunt", you mean this thing, but we means that thing.

Our respective meanings have coincidence, but not one thing. So is language ideas, because a hen is different from a cock, even though they are both chicks.

I agree with Kafetzou. Liguists are for languages as they are, not against them and for changing them!

I can´t even imagine romanizing Chinese. Of course, there is pinyin but that is only for guidance, help etc. Actually, the romanization would also be problematic, because of the many homonyms there are.

E.g. Japanese can be romanized without any problem, but they still don´t do it as many words are the same and only the character tells you what is it about.

It is a pity if you want to discuss Chinese language status without knowing how to read Chinese, because most materials are in Chinese. but I will try to find some in other languages:

Zhou Youguang Zhou youguang is one of the founders of pinyin, which has more than 400 years history of development, starting from Matteo Ricci‎ in Ming Dynasty or so.

Chinese romanization

Chinese latinization

pinyin history

chinese simplification

Chinese language reform

Cisa, don't be naive, do you know pinyin's real name in Chinese? It is "Chinese Phonetic Language", because it almost failed, the promoters become to call it "Chinese pinyin", so pinyin is an ambiguous word. It had and has ambition. And frankly, different to Cisa's opinion, I think and most linguists think, latinzing Chinese does not have technical problems, but challenges public endurance,, consent, satisfaction, identity, and belief.

Yes,the Japanese experience you know is true, but that does not work in Korea and Vietnam, which have already changed to phonetic languages; today, you will see Korean and Vietnamese very different languages between themselves and with Chinese, but if you are a real linguist, you will know, they three have connections not only in loan words which is lexcos in the three lines of linguistics as you say it.

To Kafetzou the evidence of linguistics supporting nationalism, racism and separatism, can also be found in Europe, in consideration of guilon's Spain, basque is of course an isolated language because in your linguistics there is no method to classify it, right? so basque or vasque seems a ungodblessed race. Volencia, Catalonia, am I right, are booming in nationalisms? Do you know that in international community, vast countries call Spanish not the national language of Spain, call what? you must know it. isn't it? Do you like this dialectual name of Spanish yourself, Senior Guilon.

Linguistics is so stupid or the linguists are so eager to participate in politics that many campaigns are carried out under the name or for the purpose of linguistics. The Romanization is not a legend, but cold reality, but what is the origin of it? do you know, Kafetzou?

Quite ridiculous and ironic (I learn from guilon's English), it is from the colonialism, when the foreign christians travelled the world backed up with or following their armies and navies, they came to a land, and began to Romanize the native language, and used it firstly in religion promotion, am I right?