Are you a native speaker of a language or a dialect?

On 2003-01-08 16:30, AlwaysMoving wrote:

I was raised and lived in a small state in Spain, Asturias, which they talk a dialect of spanish, BABLE.


Bable is very similar to spanish and as you move west very similar to Gallego, which is a \"Language\", now my question is. Why Gallego is a \"language and Bable a \"dialect\"?the diference between Gallego and Bable is that they WANTED to become a language, because, having \"your own\" language give you political power.


Anyone with money and time(because you have to show, somewhat that you have written literature,bal,bal,bal) and a political agenda can \"make\" a language.






[ This Message was edited by: Rick Henry on 2003-05-05 20:38] ▲ Collapse

On 2003-01-08 15:25, Parrot wrote:

The UN language service calls Chinese a language, so how come the Chinese Students\' Association in Spain have to speak Spanish during their meetings? (It always flabbergasts me to learn they don\'t understand each other).





oh yes, the situation for chinese is very complicated indeed. There is much debate on whether a number of Chinese \"dialects\" are in fact \"languages\".



The official \"speech\" (to avoid confusion between language and dialect) in the People\'s Republic and the Republic of China is Mandarin, based on pronunciation in the northern region (around Beijing). Since the establishment of the official speech, the standard way of writing (ie: grammar, lexicon) is suppose to following the Mandarin way, hence the Mandarin speech is the closest to what is supposed to be the STANDARD of written chinese.



That\'s all good and well, no debate about it, but. The script is an other story, however. Simplified characters were introduced by the government in the 50s as the STANDARD implemented throughout the People\'s Republic in an effort to lower illiteracy (they claim the simplified script is easier to learn). Eventually Singapore has also adopted the use of simplified script. The \"traditional\" scripts remain in use in Hong Kong, Macao, Taiwan and among most oversea Chinese.



In southern China, the main speech is Cantonese, which is the 2nd most popular Chinese speech after Mandarin. This is also the speech used popular in HK, Macao and among the majority of oversea Chinese. The standard Cantonese speech is said to be from Guangzhou (formally known in the West as Canton), the capital of the Guangdong province. Now many linguists have found that Cantonese is, in fact, much older than Mandarin, since Cantonese is said to be linked with vietnamese and even japanese phonologically. Cantonese also contains much more phonetic features not found in Mandarin. So did mandarin evolved into something simpler? or did cantonese got more complex through the ages?



In that case, aren\'t Cantonese and Mandarin both dialects? and \"a standard Chinese speech\" simply doesn\'t exist? What happened to the proto-language?



other well-known chinese speeches that i can think of include Wu (shanghainese) and Min (fukinese).



If that\'s not confusing enough, there are over 30 (or is it 300?) \"dialects\" spoken in Guangdong province alone, such as Taishan, Xinhui, etc. Are they really dialects of Cantonese? Most would consider them so since a cantonese speaker can understand Taishan, Xinhui without too much difficulty.



Also, is using a different script considered a different language? i think not. But considering the case when a Taiwanese and a Mainlander may converse with each other in Mandarin without problem, but they may not readily recognise ALL the characters in each other\'s writing.



But thanks to Qin Emperor who had unified the use of chinese characters (even though they may now be in simplified or traditional form) who have made communication possible between people speaking different speeches.



So even though we may not know if \"standard Chinese\" really exist, we at least know we have a \"common\" writing system, may it be in simplified or traditional form!



-kvasir ▲ Collapse