Re:The Cheesy Charm of the Clapper
by gwd on Tuesday January 02, 2024 @08:20AM
(#38841332)
> The US has dominated the global cultural conversation and the "other americans" have given up or never thought to challenge it.
To be equivalent, it would have to be the US saying that Canadians and Mexicans were "really" just "states" of America (as Beijing insists that Cantonese is "really" just a "dialect" of Chinese) and intentionally attempting to marginalize Canadian / Mexican distinctives.
I don't think I'd mind calling Mandarin "Chinese" if they didn't then insist that Cantonese is also "Chinese", use that to gaslight Cantonese speakers into thinking that their spoken language wasn't a real language, but "full of slang", and that their written language needed to be closer to Mandarin to be "correct Chinese".
To be equivalent, it would have to be the US saying that Canadians and Mexicans were "really" just "states" of America (as Beijing insists that Cantonese is "really" just a "dialect" of Chinese) and intentionally attempting to marginalize Canadian / Mexican distinctives.
I don't think I'd mind calling Mandarin "Chinese" if they didn't then insist that Cantonese is also "Chinese", use that to gaslight Cantonese speakers into thinking that their spoken language wasn't a real language, but "full of slang", and that their written language needed to be closer to Mandarin to be "correct Chinese".