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+After following this presentation, you will be able to understand why…
Chinese is NOT just one language.
+Table of Content
Chapter 1: Spoken Languages
Chapter 2: The Similarities and Differences between Chinese Languages
Chapter 3: Classical Chinese (The Latin of East Asia)
Chapter 4: The Replacement of Classical Chinese with Mandarin Chinese
Chapter 5: The Chinese Writing System
Summary: How Chinese languages were taught in schools: the historical change
+
Chapter 1: Spoken Languages
+Linguistic Diversity in China
Each Chinese language sounds very different and they have different grammatical rules.
We can compare the diversity of Chinese languages to the Germanic or Latin branch of European languages.
They share some lexical and grammatical features with each other, but are roughly as similar only as English is to Swedish or Portuguese is to Romanian.
+Linguistic Diversity in China
+
Chapter 2: The Similarities and Differences between Chinese Languages
+Similarities in Vocabularies
Sometimes, some Chinese languages share the same vocabularies. These vocabularies have the same root.
They sound similar (but not exactly the same) throughout China. Therefore they can share the same characters.
An Analogy:
House (English) and Haus (German) have the same root so they can share the same character.
+Imagine these different pronunciations represented by just one character…
FR: L’ histoire du système d’ ecriture chinois
CA: La història del sistema d’ escriptura xinesa
ES: La historia del sistema de escritura china
PT: A história do sistema de escrita chinês
IT: La storia del sistema di scrittura cinese
史 之 字
Latin
EN: The history of the Chinese writing system
DE: Die Geschichte des Chinesischen Schreibsystems
SV: Det kinesiska skriftsystemets historia
Germanic
+Differences in Vocabularies
However, there are many words that do not share the same root.
The word ‘male’ is ‘nan’ in Mandarin Chinese but ‘cha po’ in Hokkien Chinese. It has one syllable in Mandarin but two syllables in Hokkien. Therefore, they cannot share the same character.
The Mandarin speakers created the character ‘ 男’ to mean ‘male’ whereas the Hokkiens created two characters ‘ 查甫’ to mean the same thing.
An analogy:
Train (English) and Bahn (German) have different roots so cannot share the same character.
+
People speaking different Chinese languages do not necessary understand each other. Mandarin speakers do not understand what ‘cha po/ 查甫’ (in Hokkien) means and Hokkien speakers do not understand what ‘nan/ 男’ (in Mandarin) means.
Owing to the fact that Mandarin language is the official written language of China, everyone in China is trained to recognise ‘ 男’ (in Mandarin) but not ‘ 查甫’ (in Hokkien).
+Grammatical Differences
Noun Modifier
Hen
ke bo Hokkiengai la Cantonese
gà mái Vietnamese
chicken female Meaning in English
Guest
lang kheh Hokkienyan hak Cantonese
người khách Vietnamese
person guest Meaning in English
Modifier Noun
Henmu ji
female chicken
Guestke ren
guest person
Northern Languages Southern Languages
The Southern Chinese languages
more closely resemble
Vietnamese than the Chinese
languages in the north!
How come?
+Grammatical Differences
Subject Verb Adverb
Cantonese Koei hoei sin
Thai khao pai gornEnglish He eats first.
Subjec
t Adverb Verb
Mandarin Ta xian qu
meaning He/she first goEnglish He goes first.
Northern Languages Southern Languages
Indirect
object
Direct object
Mandarin gei wo fan chi
meaning Give me rice eat
English (Someone) gives me rice to eat.
Direct object
Indirect
objectHokkien hoo png goa chiah
Cantonese bei faan ngo sik
Thai hai khao rao ginmeaning give rice me eat
English (Someone) gives me rice to eat.
+Tai-Kadai and Austro-asiatic Substratum in Southern Chinese
Many of the early Southern states (first millennium B.C) mentioned in Chinese history […] were actually Tai kingdoms. These kingdoms were Sinified and gradually swallowed up by the expanding Chinese civilisation.
Most of the local Tai people became Chinese themselves through cultural and linguistic assimilation.
One ethnographer has estimated that at least 60 percent of the Cantonese people must be descended from an aboriginal Tai-speaking population.
The Tai people shifted to speak Chinese but there are still remnants of Tai influences in southern Chinese languages.
+
Chapter 3:Classical Chinese(The Latin of East Asia)
+Classical Chinese: the Latin of East Asia Classical Chinese is an archaic language believed to resemble the
spoken language of the inhabitants along the Yellow River, thousands of years ago.
It was the lexifier for many Asian languages. It provided vocabularies to Korean, Vietnamese, Japanese and all other Chinese languages. This is why these East Asian languages share many common vocabularies.
Its grammatical structure is different from any Chinese languages spoken today.
It was the officially recognised written language in China until 1919.
Before 1919, the use of spoken language in writing was not encouraged. The government only promoted Classical Chinese.
People in East Asia read Classical Chinese text in their own accent and with their own pronunciations.
+
異口同聲Different-mouth-same-voice
(Unanimous)
Yi Kou Tong Sheng(Mandarin)
Dị Khẩu Đồng Thanh
(Vietnamese)Yi Hau Thung Seng
(Cantonese)
이구동성I Gu Dong
Seong(Korean)
いくどうせいI Ku Do Sei
(Japanese)
I Khau Tong Siann(Hokkien)
An Example of Classical Chinese Text
+
Chapter 4: The Replacement of Classical Chinese with Mandarin Chinese
+Mandarin was promoted as the ‘new Latin’ in 1919
It is not easy to learn an archaic written language.
Instead of using an archaic language when writing, Mandarin was promoted as the official written language in 1919 and Classical Chinese was abolished.
Mandarin was promoted because its speakers are the largest linguistic group in China.
The Mandarin language of Beijing (Beijing hua) was chosen as the official language.
+ It is important to note that people in East Asia had been reading Classical Chinese text in their own accents and their own pronunciations for thousands of years.
After Classical Chinese was replaced by Mandarin Chinese in 1919, people in non-Mandarin speaking regions of China carried on the same tradition.
They read Mandarin Chinese text in their own pronunciations as if they were reading Classical Chinese text. (See page 22 for more elaboration)
This continued until 1956 when the state council announced that everyone in China should read Mandarin Chinese text in Beijing’s pronunciation.
Due to political separation, Hong Kong wasn’t affected by this ruling and people in Hong Kong continue to learn/read Mandarin Chinese text in Cantonese pronunciation to this day. (See page 24 for more elaboration)
English He had a meal before work.Mandarin 他先吃了飯才工作。
Ta xian chi le fan cai gong zuo.Mandarin text read in Cantonese pronunciation
Taa sin hek liu faan coi gung zok.
Cantonese Keoi sik zo faan sin zi zou je.
佢食咗飯先至做嘢。
+
Many Cantonese, Hokkien, Hakka, Shanghaiese people etc. continue to write in their own languages, with distinctive sets of characters and grammatical rules (in blue), but these written languages are not recognised by the government and therefore have no official status.
These written languages only appear in unofficial publications such as comics, newspapers, magazines or TV programmes.
The Mandarin of Beijing (in green) with its own sets of characters and grammatical rules is the only widely recognised written language in China.
English He had a meal before work.Mandarin 他先吃了飯才工作。
Ta xian chi le fan cai gong zuo.Mandarin text read in Cantonese pronunciation
Taa sin hek liu faan coi gung zok.
Cantonese Keoi sik zo faan sin zi zou je.
佢食咗飯先至做嘢。
+
‘ 他先吃了飯才工作’ (Mandarin text) makes no sense in Cantonese but it can still be pronounced by a Cantonese speaker.
‘ 佢食咗飯先至做嘢’ (Cantonese text) makes no sense in Mandarin but it can still be pronounced by a Mandarin speaker.
NOTE: Due to the fact that Chinese characters are logographic (just symbols), people from different linguistic groups can pronounce
characters of other languages . They can have a rough guess of the pronunciations of a different language based on characters from their
own language.
Mandarin Text CantoneseText
他先吃了飯才工作 佢食咗飯先至做嘢Mandarin Pronunciation
Ta xian chi le fan cai gong zuo.
Qu shi zuo fan xian zhi zuo ye.
Cantonese Pronunciation
Taa sin hek liu faan coi gung zok.
Keoi sik zo faan sin zi zou je.
This makes no sense to a Mandarin speaker’s
ear because it is
Cantonese text read in Mandarin
pronunciationThis makes no sense to a
Cantonese speaker’s ear because it is Mandarin text read in Cantonese pronunciation.
+ Many people speak their local language as well as Beijing’s Mandarin (the official language).
When they read text written in their own language, they pronounce it in their own language.
When they read text written in Mandarin, they pronounce it in Mandarin.
A Wikipedia article written in
Shanghaiese.
A Wikipedia article written in Mandarin.
Shanghaiese people read the
Shanghainese language with Shanghainese pronunciation.
Shanghaiese people read the Mandarin
language with Mandarin
pronunciation.
+The peculiar linguistic phenomenon in Hong Kong
People in Hong Kong read both Mandarin and Cantonese texts with the Cantonese pronunciation. (See the 2nd bullet point on page 17 for the explanation.)
A Wikipedia article written in Cantonese.
A Wikipedia article written in Mandarin.
People in Hong Kong read the Cantonese
language with Cantonese
pronunciation.
People in Hong Kong read the Mandarin
language with Cantonese
pronunciation.
Note: When writing an official document in Mandarin, people in Hong Kong write in a language which does not resemble
how they speak.
+The Summary of the Historical Changes
Before 1919 1919-1956 After 1956Written
LanguageClassical Chinese Mandarin Mandarin
Pronunciation Local pronunciation
Local pronunciation
Beijing's Mandarin
Before 1919 1919-1956 After 1956Written
LanguageClassical Chinese Mandarin Mandarin
PronunciationLocal/
Cantonese pronunciation
Local/Cantonese
pronunciation
Local/Cantonese
pronunciationThe Rest of China
Hong Kong
+
Chapter 5: The Chinese Writing System
+The Chinese Writing System
+
Neither Mandarin nor Cantonese were written several hundred years ago.
Classical Chinese was the only written language.
The written forms of Mandarin and other Chinese languages were created later on.
The classical Chinese characters serve as a resource to the modern Chinese languages.
+ Chinese characters were mainly used to write classical Chinese before 1919.
Chinese characters in their early formation period were mainly pictographic and ideographic, based on the drawing of concrete images.
However, it is difficult to represent abstract concepts by creating characters on these principles.
This lead to the prevalence of “phono-semantic compounds" (compound characters formed by other new characters for its sound).
The coinage of phonetic and semantic parts become an important strategy for the people in east Asia to create new characters.沖
Chong(to
flush)
氵(water)
中Zhong
(middle)
+Chinese character classification
Category Percentage of characters
Phono-semantic compounds 82%
Ideographic compounds 13%
Pictographic 4%
Ideographic Less than 1%
Pictographic: 木 (tree), 刀 (knife), 日 (sun), 月 (moon)
Ideographic: 刃 (blade), 上 (on top), 下 (below)
Ideographic compounds: 明 (bright), 好 (good)
Phono-semantic compounds: 侍 (serve), 時 (time), 功 (power), 空(empty)
+A case in point: Japanese
The vocabularies of the local languages that have different roots from classical Chinese could not/hardly be written with the Chinese characters.
Therefore, the Japanese language uses 3 different type of scripts at the same time: Kanji 漢字 , Hiragana ひらがな , Katakana カタカナ
Kanji 漢字 is generally used to write words that have their roots in classical Chinese.
Hiragana ひらがな is generally used to write word that originated in Japan.
Katakana カタカナ is generally used to write words that originated from outside Japan and China.
However, in some other parts of east Asia, people make use of several classical Chinese characters to create new phono-semantic
characters for local use.
+Japanese
+ Vietnamese Chữ Nôm text
Vietnamese functional words that are local to Vietnam are
written smaller.
The vocabularies that have the
same root with the classical
Chinese are written bigger.
However, in some other parts of east Asia, people make use of several classical Chinese characters to create new phono-semantic characters
for local use.
+Cantonese text in the 14th century
+Vernacular written forms are invented
Classical Chinese
之 乎 者 也
Mandarin Chinese
的 嗎 了 呢
Hokkien Chinese
兮 啊 了 咧
Cantonese Chinese
嘅 咩 咗 哩
The original meaning of this character, in Classical Chinese is the circular target of a dartboard. This word was
randomly taken from classical Chinese, by the Mandarin speakers, to represent the sound ‘de’ in Mandarin that
means something else.
The Cantonese speakers created this character by combining 口 (mouth) + 左 (left) to mean ‘already’.
+ When did people start to write Mandarin?
Written Mandarin has been developing since the 6th century. By the 9th century, it was used to record folk stories and mythologies.
This development led to the birth of some famous literary works such as Journey to The West ( 西遊記 ), Outlaws of the Marsh ( 水滸傳 ), Dream of the Red Chamber ( 紅樓夢 ) etc.
+When did people start to write in other Chinese languages?
The first written Cantonese was recorded in a genre of song books known as ‘wooden fish books’ ( 木魚書 ) from around 1368 to 1644.
The first written vernacular Hokkien publication was published in 1566 in a Southern Opera script called Nai Keng Ki( 荔鏡記 ).
+
Summary:The historical changes of how Chinese languages were taught in schools
+Classical Chinese was taught in schools before 1919
These forms which resemble the real spoken languages were not recognised by the
government and were regarded as ‘vulgar’
Mandarin Hokkien Cantonese
Zhang lang
蟑螂
Kat Choah
蟉蠽
Gaat Zaat
曱甴
Language taught in schools before 1919
Example: Cockroach
蜚蠊 (Classical Chinese)Mandarin pronunciation
Hokkienpronunciation
CantonesePronunciation
Pronunciations taught in schools
Fei lian Pui liam Fei lim
+ From 1919 to 1956
After the New Cultural Movement in 1919
Classical Mandarin Hokkien Cantonese
Writtenform
蜚蠊 蟑螂 蟉蠽 曱甴
Language taught in schools from 1919 to 1956
Cockroach
蟑螂 (Mandarin)Mandarin Pronunciation
HokkienPronunciation
CantonesePronuciation
Pronunciations taught in schools
Zhang lang Chiunn long Zeong longMandarin was taught in
Cantonese pronunciations.
Mandarin replaced classical Chinese as the national
language.
+Current situation
The language taught in schools after 1956
Cockroach
蟑螂 (Mandarin)Throughout mainland China since 1956
Taiwan since year 2001
Hong Kong since 1919
Pronunciations taught in schools
Zhang lang Kat Choah 蟉蠽(not Chiunn Long)
Zoeng long (not Kaat Zaat 曱 )The Taiwanese government
implemented the teaching of Hokkien as a second
language Native vocabularies are taught in
schools.
Hong Kong government policy supports the
continued teaching of Mandarin vocabularies with Cantonese pronunciation.
+
The End.