Icky

I understand. These very same words in Thai have only one word, while in English we have separate words. But that's why I said groups of characters. You will have the character for open and the character for light, and then in English we can read the first caracter one way when it is with light and another way when it is with door. Just as we read "Lead" two different ways in two different situations.

Loren Pechtel

Once you get that sort of difference I don't think it classes as the same language.

conkermaniac

Oh, I was unaware of that. I thought that the poster was merely speaking about certain Taiwanese idioms and phrases sounding awkward in Mandarin.

Thesto Neroses

This is my first post, so be gentle!

Cantonese and Mandarin are about as closely related as Spanish and French are to each other. There are many similarities and borrowings, but a native speaker of one will, upon encountering the other spoken language for the first time, find it unintelligible.

Chinese characters were historically used by officials and other persons of rank, and as such represent a kind of "officialese" that became closely associated with the local language of Beijing.

As this thread is about Chinese *culture*, it might be worth noting that the complexity of the Chinese writing system meant than it was an exclusive rather than an inclusive system: only those with sufficient leisure time or extensive professional training could use it. This meant that over time the barriers between Confucian castes became increasingly impermeable. The current levels of literacy in the Chinese speaking world are therefore remarkable, and a great credit to the education systems. The rigour and determination required to memorize the thousands of characters is impressive, although I worry that the rote learning techniques used might stifle creativity in other areas.

Taiwanese (or Hokkien, or Minnanhua or whatever you want to call it) was originally brought over by Fujianese immigrants who in recent centuries displaced the indigenous population, of whom 10 remaining tribes each retain a unique language, all of which are usually considered to be of Malayo-Polynesian origin. Thus, Taiwanese is a very recent offshoot of Fujianese.

Cantonese, Mandarin and Fujianese/Taiwanese are completely different languages in that they have different grammar and vocabularies from each other. Only Mandarin can be directly represented by characters (according to my co-workers).

An example of the differences is in the pronunciation of names:

Thesto Neroses

Mr. Wong in Hong Kong would find his name pronounced "Wee" in Fujian, and "Huang" in Beijing.

Thesto Neroses

Chinese languages make heavy use of idiom, so any problems with representing these would render perhaps 50% of the language unintelligible. (again, a figure suggested by my coworkers).

Some of my students have noticed that they have great difficulty reading a newspaper designed for Cantonese speakers, as the idioms are different, and there are a significant number of non-standard characters used. Apparently, verbal innovation is much more prevalent in Cantonese than Mandarin. which prefers idiomatic innovation.

Sarpedon

I assume the grammar of these dialects are identical? The words are interchanged and the pronounciation is different?

And keep in mind that modern japanese uses three distinct alphabets, the chinese, or kanji was a direct copy of the chinese alphabet as used at the time when the japanese imperial court modelled itself entirely on the chinese court (Tang dynasty? 800-1000 AD?? I'm not sure) These, of course, are ideogaphs, and were used in official communication. then there is the japanese alphabet (I'm not sure what its called) (and, in fact, there are more than one variant of this in use) which is phonetic, but slightly cubersome due to the similarity of some of its shapes makes it difficult to reduce to a small type. Finally, the use of the Latin alphabet is growing more common in Japan.

Idioms, punning, and wordplay seem to be one of China's favorite passtimes. In my favorite book, "The romance of the three kingdoms." characters take time out of their busy schedules of combat, intrigue, and pointless cruelty to trade riddles and puns. At one point, a man gets his head cut off for divining the reason that the king selected a certain password for the day. Skill in wordplay is highly valued

Thesto Neroses

If they were dialects, then the grammar would be largely interchangeable - however, China has around 8-10 separate major languages of which Mandarin, Cantonese and Fujianese are examples. I will ask my co-workers today for some examples of the grammatical differences.
In addition to the Kanji (borrowed Chinese characters), there are the Kana which, strictly speaking, are not alphabets but syllabaries, (i.e. they each represent an initial consonant and following vowel/diphthong: a, i, u, e , o, sa, shi, su , se , so and so forth. There are two flavours of Kana, Hiragana, which are used predominantly for words of Chinese origin, and Katakana which are used for words borrowed from European/Western languages. It is common to find kanji, hiragana, and katakana all used in the same sentence

If I recall correctly, Japanese people refer to Japanese written in the European alphabet as Romanji.

Absolutely agreed - skilled wordplay is as much a feature of Chinese culture as capricious rulers.

Thesto Neroses

The local phonetic system (commonly referred to as "bo po mo fo") is much more sensible than horrible hanyu pinyin.

Vorkosigan

Taiwanese (or Hokkien, or Minnanhua or whatever you want to call it) was originally brought over by Fujianese immigrants who in recent centuries displaced the indigenous population, of whom 10 remaining tribes each retain a unique language, all of which are usually considered to be of Malayo-Polynesian origin.

Actually, the local aborigine "tribes" are modern constructions, of Japanese colonial administration. There used to be a lot more than 10 but they all disappeared during the 18th and 19th centuries. I think the government just registered the 12th tribe the other day, but I can't remember....

The local phonetic system (commonly referred to as "bo po mo fo") is much more sensible than horrible hanyu pinyin.

Now you've done it.....