And yeah, most Chinese are bi-lingual by default. Now I know I can speak tons of northern Chinese languages. That's a big upgrade!
We all learn classical Chinese at school, and that must be a completely different language. Wait, are "classical Chinese" a single language? Should we count each of those spoken in different dynasty and different regions all as different language? Oh man, I can't even count how many languages I can speak
We all learn classical Chinese at school, and that must be a completely different language.
Of course it's a different language. It's not completely different. Languages can be related to each other. Old English is a different language than English. If English was written in Logograms instead of a phonetic alphabet, many of us could probably read Beowulf the same many of you can read the works of 老子.
Again, if I had the Chinese mindset, there would be a language called "Indo European" which would have various dialects like "Persian" and "Russian" and "Icelandic". There would also be "Standard Indo-European" - aka, English. It makes no sense.
If you don't like the translation form 方言 to dialect, should I just call it fangyan or 方言? Or is there a more precise linguistic term for that?
Our definition for "Language" is also different then. Should we call it "Yuyan" instead?
I'd translate "方言" to "dialect" when it's mutually understandable, and "language" when it's not. So Singapore Hokkien and Taiwan Hokkien are both dialects of the Hokkien language. But I'd translate 方言 to "language" when talking about Mandarin and Hokkien. They're languages not dialects in English because you cannot have a conversation - but they are part of the same language family.
But hundreds of millions of other people in China natively speak hundreds of other mutually unintelligible Chinese languages. Most of them are (at least) bilingual.
Here is a grossly simplified map showing major language groups: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Map_of_sinitic_languages_...
For that reason, we define them as dialects not languages. We can "speak" other dialects but we can certainly "read" and understand them.
If you find that definition unsatisfying, sure you can call them different languages. We just call them dialects and that's not going to change.
Sure, if you want to speak Chinglish, keep calling them dialects. If you want to speak English, listen to what people here are telling you.
No, people started to write down what they spoke in Mandarin. It wasn't irrelevant to the language they spoke, it was tailor made for Mandarin. Hong Kong went through this exact same process, and came out with a different written language. Which is why you have a cantonese wikipedia and a mandarin (w/ traditional chinese characters) wikipedia. And which is why Taiwanese people who can read mandarin in traditional characters fluently can't read cantonese in traditional characters fluently.
French and Spanish are 'mostly the same'. Same alphabet and everything. And they're not dialects. With languages like Hokkien it's more like the difference between English and German.
I speak a southern Chinese dialect myself (I don't know what to call it in English) which is also dramatically different from Mandarin. Yes it has a few words that we commonly used, that I thought to be unique, but it turns out all of the characters and words exist in standard Chinese dictionary.
That's because you never learned to write your language, because people don't consider it worth writing. You would have hammered mandarin characters into the right shape, because - presumably - that was the only thing your family was literate in. Of course it turned out the characters matched fairly well.
Again, that's like me finding out that "bonjour" in French actually literally translates to "Good day" in English - doesn't mean they are the same language.
I think you also agree that both Taiwanese and people from mainland China CAN read Hong Kong newspapers, just not as fluently.
Sure. I'm an English speaker that doesn't speak French or Dutch, but I can follow a French or Dutch newspaper well enough, if not all the details. Are French and Dutch just dialects of English? Goede Dag is just Good Day after all...