[lg policy] "In Chinatown, Sound of the Future is Mandarin" (NYT)

Fri Oct 23 20:33:21 UTC 2009

Dear Harold,

the link leads to all posts by Victor Mair. I believe you meant the
post "Mutual Intelligibility of Sinitic Languages"
(http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=1211). I alread linked to it,
btw :)

bulbul

On Fri, Oct 23, 2009 at 9:52 PM, Harold Schiffman <haroldfs at gmail.com> wrote:
> All:
>
> I've heard from Victor Mair, who is real busy right now, and may send
> us a reply later.  But in the meantime, go to Language Log and see what
> he has said there.
>
> http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?author=13
>
> This is a long post with many comments; very interestin!
>
> HS
>
>
> On Fri, Oct 23, 2009 at 1:47 PM, Al Haraka <alharaka at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Harold,
>>
>> Not mutually intelligible at all, coming from someone who failed to
>> learn either dialect/language when in country.  Former Chinese
>> students did tell me that when the communist government took power and
>> began regulating, there was a discussion of which dialect would be
>> that of government and education.  I was told the debate was actually
>> between Guangdonghua (Cantonese) and Putonghua (Mandarin), and that
>> the former was a serious contender because of its socioeconomic
>> prestige and its relative (excuse me, very relative) higher similarity
>> to classical Chinese varieties (what was meant there I am not really
>> sure, no one gave further elaboration in the anecdote).  Can anyone
>> with background in the subject elaborate?  Excuse me for the
>> generalization and errors, but I have been out of the loop on this
>> particular subject for a long, long time.
>>
>> Best,
>> _AJS
>>
>> On Fri, Oct 23, 2009 at 10:11 AM, Harold Schiffman <haroldfs at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> All,
>>>
>>> I have forwarded this discussion to Victor Mair, here at Penn.  From what I
>>> have experienced over the years (e.g. by serving on Ph.D. committees with
>>> Victor and others from East Asian Lgs.), it is my impression that Cantonese and
>>> Putonghua are indeed not mutually intelligible, but that Chinese dialects
>>> (topolects, whatever) are treated as "dialects" of one language merely
>>> because they use one writing system (which isn't "phonetic").  But we'll see
>>> what Victor has to say.
>>>
>>> That this article might contain a grain of truth is the reason I
>>> distributed it in
>>> the first place. I.e. it's not just some "dumb" journalist writing...
>>>
>>> HS
>>>
>>> 2009/10/23 Slavomír Čéplö <bulbulthegreat at gmail.com>:
>>>> Damien,
>>>>
>>>> in my mind, this is a question of taxonomy and the politics involved.
>>>> China is a perfect example of what Weinreich meant in his famous
>>>> bonmot about the difference between language and dialect. Most
>>>> linguists recognize Mandarin, Cantonese, Hokkien and Wu as individual
>>>> languages, members of the Sinitic branch of the Sino-Tibetan language
>>>> family, much like, say German, Dutch, English and Swedish are
>>>> individual languages and members of the Germanic branch of the
>>>> Indo-European language family. To the PRC government, however, there
>>>> is only one Chinese nation and therefore one Chinese language. All the
>>>> Sinitic languages that are not pǔtōnghuà (standard Mandarin) are
>>>> referred to as fāngyán. That word is usually translated as "dialect",
>>>> but some scholars (notably Victor Mair, see his
>>>> http://sino-platonic.org/complete/spp029_chinese_dialect.pdf) prefer
>>>> the more precise "topolect" or "regionalect" (so John DeFrancis in his
>>>> "The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy"). When discussing purely
>>>> linguistic questions (if there is such a thing), a scholar would be
>>>> well advised to use the precise linguistic terminology. But pressing
>>>> the issue can have political repercussion (see this comment by Victor
>>>> Mair himself http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=1211#comment-25161)
>>>> and so while I would normally insist on correct terminology even from
>>>> someone as sloppy and dumb as your average journalist, due to the
>>>> complexity of the issues involved, not to mention the somewhat
>>>> confusing terminology, I don't think there is anything that wrong with
>>>> using the term "dialect" in referrence to one of the Sinitic languages
>>>> such as Cantonese in a human-interest newspaper story.
>>>>
>>>> Yours,
>>>>
>>>> bulbul
>>>>
>>>> On Fri, Oct 23, 2009 at 11:21 AM, Damien Hall <djh514 at york.ac.uk> wrote:
>>>>>> Question to the list members...Do you have some recommended sources that
>>>>>> touch on the designation/conversation of Cantonese as a "dialect"?
>>>>>>
>>>>>> "In Chinatown, Sound of the Future is Mandarin"
>>>>>
>>>>> [...]
>>>>>
>>>>>> Cantonese, a dialect from southern China [...]
>>>>>
>>>>> I don't know the sociolinguistics of China particularly, but this just looks
>>>>> to me like the writing of a journalist who doesn't know them either! There
>>>>> is a tendency for people from more-or-less monolingual societies who are
>>>>> confronted with countries with complex linguistic situations (ie more than
>>>>> one variety spoken) to call the individual varieties 'dialects', maybe
>>>>> because they feel that they must in some way be subdivisions of some larger
>>>>> national 'language'. So, in this case, I imagine that the journalist
>>>>> described Cantonese as a 'dialect' because they thought of it as a
>>>>> subdivision of 'Chinese', which is a 'language' (quotes to mark off what the
>>>>> journalist might have thought, not to call the terms into question
>>>>> generally). In other words, this piece in the _NYT_ doesn't mark any general
>>>>> designation of Cantonese as a 'dialect' - it's simply sloppy writing. I
>>>>> might have expected better from the _NYT_, but even the great Homer nods
>>>>> occasionally, I suppose.
>>>>>
>>>>> Does anyone else know different?
>>>>>
>>>>> Damien
>>>>>
>>>>> --
>>>>> Damien Hall
>>>>>
>>>>> University of York
>>>>> Department of Language and Linguistic Science
>>>>> Heslington
>>>>> YORK
>>>>> YO10 5DD
>>>>> UK
>>>>>
>>>>> Tel. (office) +44 (0)1904 432665
>>>>>    (mobile) +44 (0)771 853 5634
>>>>> Fax  +44 (0)1904 432673
>>>>>
>>>>> BORDERS AND IDENTITIES CONFERENCE, JAN 2010:
>>>>> http://www.york.ac.uk/res/aiseb/bic2010/
>>>>>
>>>>> http://www.york.ac.uk/depts/lang/people/pages/hall.htm
>>>>> _______________________________________________
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>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> =+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+
>>>
>>>  Harold F. Schiffman
>>>
>>> Professor Emeritus of
>>>  Dravidian Linguistics and Culture
>>> Dept. of South Asia Studies
>>> University of Pennsylvania
>>> Philadelphia, PA 19104-6305
>>>
>>> Phone:  (215) 898-7475
>>> Fax:  (215) 573-2138
>>>
>>> Email:  haroldfs at gmail.com
>>> http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/
>>>
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>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Alexander J. Stein
>> Cell:  (201) 412-9479
>> Email: alharaka at gmail.com
>> Skype: alexander.j.stein
>> AIM:   elduderino6886
>>
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>
>
>
> --
> =+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+
>
>  Harold F. Schiffman
>
> Professor Emeritus of
>  Dravidian Linguistics and Culture
> Dept. of South Asia Studies
> University of Pennsylvania
> Philadelphia, PA 19104-6305
>
> Phone:  (215) 898-7475
> Fax:  (215) 573-2138
>
> Email:  haroldfs at gmail.com
> http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/
>
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