Dialect closer to other Asian languages?

[slyreference]

I've read before that Mandarin has actually lost a lot of features that existed in older forms of Chinese, and that southern dialects of Chinese are actually much more conservative and maintain some structures that are more like older Chinese.

I've also read that a lot of the Chinese that influenced other Asian languages, like Korean, Japanese and Vietnamese, was older Chinese, especially that of the Tang dynasty.

I was wondering, for those who have studied other dialects of Chinese, do you find that they are more similar to the Chinese words found in Japanese, Korean or Vietnamese than Mandarin? I played around some with Taiwanese before, and I kind of felt that way, but I never learned enough to really say with certainty. Do any of you have opinions?

[Hofmann]

I imagine that it requires familiarity with many Chinese languages and Sinoxenic languages in order to answer your question well. Good luck.

[trien27]

Korean borrows from Cantonese & Mandarin.

Japanese borrows from Mandarin, Hakka, Cantonese and Wu [shanghainese] and possibly Fujianese too.

Vietnamese borrows from Cantonese.

Japan sent their scholars to Tang China in the 6th century when Buddhism started to be the new state religion instead of Confucianism & Taoism. Before this, the Japanese had gotten Chinese Buddhist texts from Koreans.

The Vietnamese were ruled by the Chinese for 1000 years.

Edited February 21, 2010 at 03:27 AM by trien27

[Hofmann]

Korean borrows from Cantonese & Mandarin.

Japanese borrows from Mandarin, Hakka, Cantonese and Wu [shanghainese] and possibly Fujianese too. Vietnamese borrows from Cantonese.

There is some borrowing from modern Chinese languages, such as Japanese 飲茶 [ja̠mu͍tɕa̠] from Cantonese [jɐm˧˥ tɕʰa˨˩], but by this criterion one can say Japanese borrows from English as well. Most Sinoxenic vocabulary was borrowed from premodern Chinese languages.

Anyway, I think the OP is asking about similarities and not origins.

[HashiriKata]

Korean borrows from Cantonese & Mandarin.

Japanese borrows from Mandarin, Hakka, Cantonese and Wu [shanghainese] and possibly Fujianese too.

Vietnamese borrows from Cantonese.

This is what I'd call "easy-going knowledge!"

With regarding borrowing Chinese: Japan, Korea, Vietnam were all similar in that they would borrow features from which ever language variety that was dominant in the Chinese court at a particular time, and as a result of which, what they have borrowed appears to be features from a mixture of Chinese dialects (and not Cantonese, Mandarin, Hakka,...as such).

[anonymoose]

I'm not sure if it's just a coincidence or not, but 二 is pronounced ni in both Shanghainese and Japanese.

[Hofmann]

...and Middle Chinese. Anyone wanna take a wild guess why?

[Ah-Bin]

Korean borrows from Cantonese & Mandarin.

Japanese borrows from Mandarin, Hakka, Cantonese and Wu [shanghainese] and possibly Fujianese too.

Vietnamese borrows from Cantonese.

Hashirikata you are too kind. This not just "easy-going knowledge", it's unsubstantiated rubbish, unless he is referring to words borrowed within the last 200 years, which I doubt.

Here is a piece on loan words in Vietnamese by someone who has actually researched the subject and knows what he's talking about.

http://sealang.net/sala/archives/pdf4/alves2001what.pdf

See also the wikipedia articles on Sino-Japanese

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-Japanese_vocabulary

Nothing much on Sino-Korean unfortunately.

My own experience is that a knowledge of Hokkien and Cantonese helps you remember Korean vocab very well.

Korean has final -p -l and -k

Which correspond to final

-p -t and -k

in Cantonese

and final -p/? -t/? and k/?

in Hokkien (two different periods of borrowing)

and final -u -tsu/chi ku/ki in

in Japanese (two different periods of borrowing)

as for initals Japanese, Korean, Cantonese and Hokkien (and Liuzhou dialect) preserve the difference between initial k- (pinyin would write it g-) and z- which have merged in northern Mandarin.

Examples 京 jing and 精 jing in mandarin

kyoo/kei and sei in Japanese

keng and tseng in Cantonese

kiaN/keng and cheng/chiN in Hokkien

gen and zen in Liuzhou