Mandarin or Chinese?

[外国赤佬]

How is it not standardized?

[Kobo-Daishi]

外国赤佬 wrote:

How is it not standardized?

Actually that book is to help teach Cantonese-speakers standard Chinese (Mandarin).

http://i46.tinypic.com/30bo0av.jpg

There are no Cantonese-specific characters.

See what they have for "you (plural)" in the graphic above.

It's nei5 mun4 not nei5 dei(sorry don't know the tone.).

The good thing is that they have the correct way of pronouncing "nei" instead of the more popular (?) lazy pronunciation way of pronouncing it "lei".

Try looking for the characters "dei" the pluralizer for pronouns, "ngam" meaning "correct", "fan" meaning "sleep", "keuih" meaning "he/she", or any other Cantonese-only characters.

The only thing Cantonese about the book is the pronunciation for the characters in Cantonese next to the Putonghua.

Kobo.

[陳德聰]

This may sound ridiculous... (Usually an indication that perhaps I should not say it at all)

But HK is kind of lucky to have been able to retain so much (despite all efforts to the contrary) of its language. If we compare with speakers of other Chinese language families like 吴 and 闽 ... They have clearly been 普通化'd already to the point where the language distinction is so blurry.

[mcgau]

This is why the local languages were classified as "dialects" and people are now pretty much shamed for speaking them in public.

I think I did mention that HK is one big exception to this rule. Cantonese is standardized and taught in schools, unlike the other dialects/topolects.

I think the word "shame" is a bit much for the situation. In Yunnan and Sichuan, I can hear a speech in local dialect when an activity is attended by local people but in a more official venue, I expect to hear mandarin though.

[skylee]

Re #60-62. Because Chinese lessons are taught in Cantonese (in most schools Putonghua is a separate subject), HK students do get taught the Cantonese pronunciation of Chinese characters. And because dictionaries published in HK list the Cantonese pronunciation of Chinese characters next to Pinyin I guess you can say that the Cantonese pronunciation of Chinese characters is standardised.

[imron]

I think the word "shame" is a bit much for the situation.

It depends a lot on the dialect and the situation. I think shame applies perfectly in some situations, especially for people who come from a rural area, there is a big stigma associated with speaking their local dialect when outside of their hometown.

[malanting]

That's possibly the weirdest thing I have known about how the Chinese interpret English. Spring is spring. The English spelling cannot be confused with the Chinese pinyin equivalent!

Of course not. You need to re-read my post (rather than take the single sentence out of context) . I used this as an example of how Shanghainese is misunderstood.

He does confuse it!

Read my post more carefully.

[外国赤佬]

I think shame applies perfectly in some situations, especially for people who come from a rural area, there is a big stigma associated with speaking their local dialect when outside of their hometown.

Yes, very true. While many Shanghainese prefer to speak Shanghainese as much as possible (to the point that it sometimes gets forced onto 外地人, especially in small companies), speakers of other dialects may feel a bit 自卑 about them. E.g. I know a girl from 西安, who refuses to speak 陕西话, because it's apparently too 土... And it looks like her situation is more rule than exception, in that area.

[HusbandOfWuhan]

Well, technically, you cannot speak 中文 because strictly speaking 中文 is written language and also the study of Chinese literature.

Technically speaking, you cannot "write Mandarin" because Mandarin refers to the current national "spoken" language of P.R.China. Mandarin was originally what the intellectuals in Beijing spoke prior to the government making it the official spoken language. In other words, the purest form of Mandarin was a type of Chinese dialect spoken by Beijing intellectuals. It could have been known as 北京官话。So it is not correct to say I can write 北京官话 because 话 is spoken and 字 is written (汉字 or 中文字）。

However, you can write Chinese because "Chinese" refers to either spoken Mandarin 普通话 or Chinese characters 汉字。

Furthermore, it also refers to Chinese people 中国人，华人等等.

[Hofmann]

See this. From rough searching, Cantonese has been standardized since at least the 1800's in the Chalmers dictionary.

[陳德聰]

=T It seems that "standard" is a very loosely defined term, that according to Finegan (2007) c/o Wikipedia only requires use in public and public discourse...

[xiaocai]

@OP: It's not a big deal, really. I used to get confused when people asked me whether I speak Chinese or Cantonese. Now I understand that not everyone knows the difference between written and spoken Chinese and the relationship among Chinese dialects. It seems to me that the words Mandarin and Standard Chinese are interchangeable in English sometimes (which I personally think may not be the best practice, though), and this could be where all the confusion stems from.

[Ah-Bin]

To bring it back to the beginning topic.

I've noticed that many people here use Mandarin instead of Chinese. That really sounds weird.

I guess the reason why it sounds weird is because the English you learnt was not actually what native English speakers use, but a weird brand cooked up in the Ministry of Education in the PRC. This standard teahces that 普通话 is "Chinese" whereas many native speakers will refer to it as "Mandarin". Another example is "Spring Festival" which native speakers of English will usually refer to as "Chinese New Year". For some reason the PRC standard pretends these words (Mandarin and Chinese New Year) do not exist in English, and the result is that those who go overseas have to learn them very quickly.

Many native speakers use the word Mandarin, it doesn't sound weird to them at all, it's just common English usage, just like 普通话 is common usage in your own language.

[creamyhorror]

Another example is "Spring Festival" which native speakers of English will usually refer to as "Chinese New Year".

This might possibly be because overseas Chinese communities might use another term to refer to it. In Singapore, Chinese speakers don't say 春节, but only (农历)新年 (and we say "Chinese New Year" in English). "Spring Festival" is a transliteration of the mainland term and doesn't strike me as an established English term at all.

However, many of us do say "Chinese" when we mean Mandarin, because of our pro-Mandarin educational policies. I've corrected myself and only say Mandarin nowadays.

[陳德聰]

We get a lock of flack for saying "Chinese New Year" here, because of the overwhelmingly large populations of people from other countries/ethnicities that traditionally used the 农历, it's considered more more PC to say "Lunar New Year". That was a hard habit to break and I still say Chinese New Year when talking to my Chinese friends and Lunar New Year when talking to anyone else haha.

[creamyhorror]

Actually Lunar New Year is the official English term here in Singapore, but everyone says Chinese New Year (or more commonly, "CNY") in normal conversation.

I still say Chinese New Year when talking to my Chinese friends and Lunar New Year when talking to anyone else haha.

Yeah I did that too when I lived for a short while in the US. I don't mind it though, it can express a nice sense of Pan-Asianness/shared cultural elements. It's always nice to attend other cultures' Lunar New Year celebrations.

[RedCloud]

I started of learning Cantonese for some time before I started learning "Mandarin". Amongst the community of Hong Kong speakers I know they always refer to it as Mandarin, usually never as Chinese. Interesting discussion though...