Category Archives: dialect

Mandarin’s ‘four languages’

Posted on by
Reply

Another back issue of Sino-Platonic Papers has been released: The Four Languages of “Mandarin”, by Robert M. Sanders of the University of Hawaii.

Here’s how it begins:

Many hours have been spent at scholarly meetings and many pages of academic writing have been expended discussing what is to be considered acceptable Mandarin. Very often these discussions degenerate into simplistic and narrow-minded statements such as “That’s not the way we say it in …!” or “We had better ask someone from Peking.” Objectively speaking, these disagreements on style reflect a less-than-rigorous definition of which type of Mandarin each party is referring to. Because there has been a failure by all concerned to define fully the linguistic and socio-linguistic parameters of their assumed language(s), Mandarin oranges are often unwittingly being compared with Mandarin apples. This paper is a preliminary attempt to articulate the fundamental differences distinguishing four major language types subsumed under the single English heading ‘Mandarin’. Though the Chinese terms putonghua/guoyu, guanhua, and difanghua help to accentuate the conceptual distinctions distinguishing our four types of Mandarin, it is arguable that even Chinese scholars are not immune from confusing one language with another.

Sanders goes on to indentify and discuss what he calls

  1. Idealized Mandarin
  2. Imperial Mandarin
  3. Geographical Mandarin
  4. Local Mandarin

The entire text is now online for free in both HTML and PDF (875 KB) formats.

Professor Sanders is also one of the associate editors of the excellent ABC Chinese-English Comprehensive Dictionary.

And they called for macaronic — groups seek new national anthem for Taiwan

Posted on by
Reply

The Taiwan Peace Foundation and the Taiwan Society, which are both non-governmental organizations, are holding a competition for a new national anthem for Taiwan. In the first stage, they are looking just for lyrics. They recommend the use of multiple languages of Taiwan in this and thus also recommend that the submission contain some romanization (“yǐ běnguó yǔyán wéizhǔ, fùzhù pīnyīn wéi jiā, kě jiāohù shǐyòng bùtóng yǔyán”). Given Taiwan’s linguistic situation, I think this is a reasonable approach. Of course, whether it has any chance of becoming officially enacted in the near future is another matter.

Táiwān Hépíng Jījīnhuì hé Táiwān Shè tuīdòng “xīn guógē yùndòng”, jīntiān gōng bù “xīn guógē” zhēng xuǎn bànfǎ, xīwàng jièyóu gōngkāi zhēngqiú hé shèhuì cānyù, xuǎnchū fúhé Táiwān mínzhòng qīpàn, néng gǎndòng mínzhòng de xīn guógē.

Táiwān Hépíng Jījīnhuì biǎoshì, “xīn guógē” yùndòng dì-yī jiēduàn jiāng jìnxíng gēcí zhēng xuǎn, Liùyuè shí’èr rì jiézhǐ shōujiàn, zìshù yǐ wǔshí dào yībǎi zì wéiyí, yǐ běnguó yǔyán wéizhǔ, fùzhù pīnyīn wéi jiā, kě jiāohù shǐyòng bùtóng yǔyán. Jiāng píngxuǎn yōushèng yīzhì wǔ míng, jiǎngjīn xīn tái bì shíwàn yuán, jiāzuò ruògān míng, jiǎngjīn yīwàn yuán.

Dì-èr jiēduàn wéi gēqǔ zhēng xuǎn, bìxū cóng dì-yī jiēduàn yōushèng gēcí zhōng, xuǎnzé yīzhì liǎng shǒu pǔqǔ, chángdù liǎng zhì sān fēnzhōng wéiyí, wǔ fēnzhōng wéixiàn, Bāyuè sānshíyī rì jiézhǐ shōujiàn. Dì-yī míng jiǎngjīn èrshí wàn yuán, dì-èr míng jiǎngjīn shíwàn yuán, dì-sān míng jiǎngjīn wǔwàn yuán, jiāzuò ruògān míng, jiǎngjīn gè yīwàn yuán.

Táiwān Hépíng Jījīnhuì dìzhǐ wéi Táiběi Shì Sōngjiāng Lù yībǎi liùshíbā hào sì lóu, wǎngzhǐ www.twpeace.org.tw.

source: Táiwān Hépíng Jījīnhuì hé Táiwān Shè zhēngqiú xīn guógē (台灣和平基金會和台灣社徵求新國歌), CNA, April 20, 2007

further reading: ROC National Anthem, Wikipedia

early recording of mock Cantonese

Posted on by
Reply

Last month a recording of Cal Stewart’s 1904 comic monologue “Uncle Josh and the Insurance Agent” was added to the Library of Congress’s National Recording Registry of 2006.

Here’s the LC’s description:

Cal Stewart was among the most prolific and popular recording artists of the first 20 years of commercial recording. His “Uncle Josh” monologues offer humorous commentary on American life at the turn of the 20th century, reflecting major themes and fashions of the time. His “rural comedy” describes life in the imaginary New England village of Pumpkin Center, painting humorous pictures of Uncle Josh’s encounters with new technologies, and comic contrasts between agrarian and urban life in America. Stewart’s influence can be heard in the comedy of Will Rogers, in Fred Allen’s character, Titus Moody, and in Garrison Keillor’s stories about Lake Wobegon.

Comedies of the time often featured “ethnic humor.” Whether anyone still finds such things funny or even bearable without wincing is of course another matter.

Stewart has an example of this in his Uncle Josh in a Chinese Laundry (audio), found in a slightly different version in Uncle Josh’s Punkin Centre Stories (text). This is the tale of Uncle Josh, told in the first person, getting into a fight with someone working in a Chinese laundry — though this is because Uncle Josh is cheated by a presumably white man, not by anyone in the laundry. “Uncle Josh in a Chinese Laundry” also contains what might be one of the first recorded snippets of mock Cantonese, which would probably have been the Sinitic language most heard in the United States then.

further reading:

‘dialect’ and ‘Chinese’ from a linguistic point of view

Posted on by
5

Another back issue of Sino-Platonic Papers has been released, this one of particular relevance to the themes of this site: What Is a Chinese “Dialect/Topolect”? Reflections on Some Key Sino-English Linguistic Terms (1991), by Professor Victor H. Mair of the University of Pennsylvania’s Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations.

Here is the abstract:

Words like fangyan, putonghua, Hanyu, Guoyu, and Zhongwen have been the source of considerable perplexity and dissension among students of Chinese language(s) in recent years. The controversies they engender are compounded enormously when attempts are made to render these terms into English and other Western languages. Unfortunate arguments have erupted, for example, over whether Taiwanese is a Chinese language or a Chinese dialect. In an attempt to bring some degree of clarity and harmony to the demonstrably international fields of Sino-Tibetan and Chinese linguistics, this article examines these and related terms from both historical and semantic perspectives. By being careful to understand precisely what these words have meant to whom and during which period of time, needlessly explosive situations may be defused and, an added benefit, perhaps the beginnings of a new classification scheme for Chinese language(s) may be achieved. As an initial step in the right direction, the author proposes the adoption of “topolect” as an exact, neutral translation of fangyan.

The entire text is now online as a 2.2 MB PDF: What Is a Chinese “Dialect/Topolect”? Reflections on Some Key Sino-English Linguistic Terms.

Strongly recommended.

Taiwanese couplet

Posted on by
4

a chunlian written in Taiwanese, as described in this post

This photo of a chūnlián (春聯 / 春联) — couplet for Chinese New Year — has been making the e-mail rounds. (I don’t know the original source.) What’s interesting about this set is that they’re written in Taiwanese, not Mandarin.

I’ve written these left to right. But the orders in the original are

  1. to the right of the doorway, top to bottom
  2. to the left of the doorway, top to bottom

The writing above the doorway can be seen as separate from the other two or together with them. In the latter case it would be read first, from right to left. It reads 身體顧乎勇, which means “take care of health.”)

The one on the right reads 重情重義嗎著重粉味, which means “attach importance to relationships and brotherhood, but [people] also need to attach importance to powder’s smell” (i.e., to those who wear scented face power: women).

The second one, the one on the left, reads 愛鄉愛土嗎著愛查某, which means “love your home town, love your motherland; but also love women.”

The language of the first half of each of the two vertical strips is formal and traditional. But the style of both second halves is more akin to a sales pitch for a Viagra-like patent medicine.

Bichhin, which looks like a promising blog on Taiwanese (and written in Taiwanese, too), has helpfully rendered this in both the Tai-Luo and church romanization systems. It’s easier to see the rhymes that way.

further reading:

Why ‘Beijing’ was spelled ‘Peking’

Posted on by
3

Sino-Platonic Papers has just released one of its popular back issues as a free PDF. This one, no. 19 (June 1990), deals with the common question of What’s up with that “Peking” spelling, anyway?

As Bosat Man explains in “Backhill / Peking / Beijing”:

The three main contributing factors to the discrepancy between Peking and Beijing are:

  1. a plethora of romanizations
  2. a welter of local pronunciations, and
  3. phonological change over time.

He then goes into detail, especially about the third point. The whole work is just six pages, single spaced. Here it is: “Backhill / Peking / Beijing” (1 MB PDF).

Percentage of China’s population that can speak Mandarin remains at 53%: PRC MOE

Posted on by
7

A total of 53.06 percent of China’s population can “effectively communicate orally in Mandarin,” according to China’s Ministry of Education, which recently conducted a survey of half a million people. The rate in cities was 66 percent, while in rural areas it was 45 percent, the ministry said.

The survey also found that 56.76 percent of Chinese men can speak Putonghua, while 49.22 percent of women speak it. About 70 percent of people between the age of 15 and 29 speak mandarin, while only 30.97 percent between the age of 60 and 69 can speak standard mandarin.

Although the stories on this do not mention this, the results are essentially identical with those of a similar survey in 2004. According to that survey:

  • “nearly 53 percent of the 1.3 billion Chinese in the country” can speak Mandarin
  • 66 percent of the citizens in China’s cities and towns can speak Mandarin (This wording may be an indication that China’s large “floating population” was not included.)
  • 45 percent of those in rural areas can speak Mandarin

resources:

Y.R. Chao works being reissued

Posted on by
3

cover of the book 'Linguistic Essays, by Yuenren Chao'The Commercial Press has begun issuing a set of the complete works of Y.R. Chao (Zhao Yuanren / 趙元任 / 赵元任). This project, which will comprise some twenty volumes, will contain works in both English and Mandarin Chinese. All of the many fields Chao wrote about will be covered. Letters and journals will also be included, as will sound recordings. Wonderful!

For those who don’t want to wait for the whole series or don’t feel the need to buy all of them, the Commercial Press has also two volumes of Chao’s selected essays on linguistics: one in English and one in Mandarin. These are, respectively, Linguistic Essays by Yuenren Chao (ISBN: 7-100-03385-3/H·860) and Zhào Yuánrèn yǔyánxué lùnwénjí (赵元任语言学论文集) (ISBN: 7-100-03127-3/H·789).

cover of the book '赵元任语言学论文集 Zhao Yuanren Yuyanxue Lunwenji'Note how the cover of Linguistic Essays, a book printed just last year in China, uses “Yuenren Chao,” the traditional spelling and Western order of his name, rather than “Zhao Yuanren,” the spelling used in Hanyu Pinyin. Also note how the Mandarin title is given in traditional, not simplified, characters: 趙元任語言學論文集, not 赵元任语言学论文集. A nice surprise, on both counts. On the other hand, the botched romanization on the cover of the Mandarin-language collection, which gives “ZHAOYUANREN YUYANXUELUNWENJI” instead of “Zhào Yuánrèn yǔyánxué lùnwénjí,” is particularly inappropriate and painful to look at on a collection of the works of this brilliant linguist. But don’t judge this book by its cover.

Here are links to all the volumes in the complete works that I’ve been able to locate information on:

cover of the first volume of Y.R. Chao's collected works