Loren Pechtel

But a Portuguese speaker in Spain isn't going to read the signs without difficulty. A Cantonese speaker will not be able to tell the difference between a "Mandarin" sign and a "Cantonese" sign. The words and grammar are identical, it's just the way they say them that differs. Dialect, not language.

Sarpedon

I believe that the system of writing is uniform in china because of the institution of the imperial college that tested all scholars for admission into government employment. Writing beautifully was one of the most important skills test, and virtually all of the literate classes either took the exam or studied with someone who did.

Ace

No, Cantonese is separate from Mandarin. True, the written language is shared, but you have to remember that the Japanese also took part of the Chinese written language, but we still say their words for those characters are Japanese, a separate language, not a dialect of Chinese.

My parents came from Taiwan, and Mandarin is spoken at my home. I can understand it, but I can't really say things back, so I just reply in English. I'm sure people who would listen to it would find our exchanges amusing. My mom's family also knew Japanese, and when her parents are over, they sometimes talk in Japanese. Even crazier? THEY (not my mom) also know another Taiwanese dialect and talk in that and even my mom doesn't understand it...haha.

Sakpo

My understanding is that the Japanese took Chinese writing and hammered it out to record their own, seperate, language (and that Japanese written language is now very different from Chinese written language). That's not comperable to how Mandarin, Cantonese, and the other dialects are all exactly the same when written down. Mandarin and Cantonese, and other dialects, are very different, typically precluding oral communication, but they're still invariable classified by the experts as the same language. The written language is totally uniform, grammar rules are all the same, it's simply the pronunciation and rate of speech that change from Chinese dialect to dialect. The dialects are very much distinct, but they're the same language, and the comparison to Japanese is off base.

Icky

I can't agree with this. My Japanese friends in HK said that they have little trouble reading the HK Chinese papers (not the mainland papers because they use the simplified characters). But as they read they are hearing Japanese in their head, not any form of Chinese.

And even though my spoken Cantonese blows chicken feet, I can read a good number of characters, but for most of them I read them as English words. In fact, you could most likely learn English words for every character or character combination and then read any Chinese text in English. So because of this, I can't see how using the same characters prevents Cantonese from being a different language.

In fact, I've found a closer relationship between Thai and Cantonese, than Mandarin and Cantonese. (the Thais originated in Southern China). So if Thai used Chinese characters rather than its Sanskrit-based alphabet, would you call it a mere dialect of Chinese?

asvani

As a speaker of Mandarin and another Chinese 'dialect', sometimes called Taiwanese, other times Minnanhua, which is spoken in Taiwan and the adjacent Chinese province of Fujian, I will like to point out that that is not exactly true. There are many many colloquial expressions of Taiwanese that, if expressed in standard characters on print, would totally look out of place, very unstandardised. There is actually no one-to-one correspondence between the written script and actual spoken daily Taiwanese.

In fact, there are two standards for spoken Taiwanese - the literary type and the conversational type. The literary standard closely follows and reflects the standard written script which is the same across for all Chinese 'dialects' (it is the kind probably used by newscasters) whereas the conversational variety (the type used in soap operas and on the rest of TV programmes) does not. This is probably true for all Chinese 'dialects'.

Furthermore, there are many expressions peculiar to each 'dialect'. For example, if an colloquial expression in Cantonese is written out in the script, a Mandarin speaker may not understand it.

To understand why this is so, we have to remember that modern literary written Chinese is based on the vernacular spoken in Beijing and its surroundings and it is a fairly recent development which incorporated the vulgar development of that vernacular. A hundred years ago, written Chinese was quite different as it was used mainly for official communication; in other words, it was an archaic kind of 'officialese' which did not reflect at all how any Chinese 'dialect' was spoken. The various spoken varieties of Chinese had long diverged due to the vastness of China. In terms of phonology, Taiwanese, in certain respects, is more conservative than Cantonese which in turn is more conservative than Mandarin. By conservative, we mean closeness with respect to Middle Chinese and Old Chinese. This certainly does not mean that some Chinese languages are more pristine than others. There are marked linguistic innovations in Taiwanese that are not found in other Chinese languages.

The difference between 'dialects' is not just a matter of phonology. There is a good deal of linguistic differences as well as similarities which simply follows from their common descent from Middle and Old Chinese.

My 2 cents worth.

Loren Pechtel

Japanese took *SOME* signs from Chinese. When we were in Japan my wife was getting about 20% of what she saw. (She's a native speaker of Chinese, her Japanese is non-existant.)

If Mandarin and Cantonese were different languages she wouldn't have been able to teach herself a fair amount of Cantonese from some subtitled movies.

Loren Pechtel

No, because there isn't a one-to-one mapping. Is it "open" or "turn on"? "Close" or "turn off"? Is it "he", "she" or "it"? (These are just cases I happen to be aware of, I'm sure there are plenty morer.)

conkermaniac

The characters are all the same, whether it's Shanghainese, Mandarin, Taiwanese, Cantonese, etc. However, the languages sound totally different. A fluent speaker of Mandarin would not understand a word of Shanghainese, for example. However, a person from Shanghai should generally have no problem reading signs and newspapers in Taiwan or Hong Kong or Beijing, provided that they know both traditional and simplified Chinese, of course.

There are 56 ethnic groups, and 55 of them are minorities as rfwu pointed out. Each ethnic group speaks/writes an entirely different language and holds their own unique traditions. The Chinese government is trying to set up special schools where they learn their own language and customs, but some of these minorities desire a better education and a more modernized way of life. Many, for example, head into the cities where they intermarry with the Han Chinese -- thus posing a severe threat to the continued existence of minority traditions. It's sad to see that many of these youngsters in these minority ethnic groups are being heavily influenced by pop music and television, believing their traditional forms of entertainment to be inferior. Go watch the Naxi music festival someday, and you'll see that most of the performers are very old...some into their 70s and 80s.

Vorkosigan

The characters are all the same, whether it's Shanghainese, Mandarin, Taiwanese, Cantonese, etc. However, the languages sound totally different.

As the previous poster noted, it is possible for a Taiwanese, say, to read Mandarin in his own language, but the reverse is not possible -- Taiwanese cannot be written using Mandarin characters for meaning because some Taiwanese words have no Mandarin character equivalents. In many cases here Taiwanese use Mandarin characters for their sound to represent Taiwanese sounds, rendering the character's meaning irrelevant (and driving your friendly neighborhood translator to apoplexy). Additionally, they also use the local phonetic system to represent sounds in Taiwanese.

Vorkosigan