Difference Between Mod. Stand. Chinese in Mainland, HK & TW

[Kobo-Daishi]

Is there a great difference between the modern standard Chinese between the mainland, Hong Kong and Taiwan.

Not just the obvious communist terminology that might seem like stilted speech from the mainland but other stuff.

For instance, are subtitled programs out of Hong Kong tinged with cantonese vocabulary? Taiwan dramas with Taiwanese Minnan-isms?

Is a mainlander able to view programs from Hong Kong and Taiwan without having to resort to a dictionary and vice versa?

Kobo.

[jkhsu]

Is a mainlander able to view programs from Hong Kong and Taiwan without having to resort to a dictionary and vice versa?

I doubt a native of mainland China, Taiwan or Hong Kong will need to resort to a dictionary to read Chinese subtitles (not as a written dialect) when viewing shows from one of the other regions. There are differences but those are mostly related to "Same thing, different names". With the availability of media from around the world, it's hard to find a literate native Chinese who has never watched a TV show or sung a song at a KTV having to read subtitles from one of the other regions.

[大肚男]

I think most mainlanders can watch Taiwanese TV shows without subtitles. Many of the unique Taiwanese words are understood by virtue of mainlanders exposure to Taiwanese pop culture.

As to Hong Kong shows, I believe that without subtitles a mainlander would not understand it, unless he/she also spoke Cantonese.

[OneEye]

Your thread title refers to Modern Standard Chinese, while in your post you mention Cantonese vocabulary and Taiwanese Minnan-isms. Those are mutually exclusive. Standard Chinese, by virtue of the fact that it is standardized, does not contain dialectal vocabulary. But if you're asking whether Taiwanese shows (I'll stick with that since it's what I'm familiar with) will contain Taiwanese, the answer is yes. Not very much if you're talking about TVBS news, and a good bit more if you're talking about 綜藝節目 and such. Of course, that isn't even counting the shows here that are entirely or almost entirely in Taiwanese. And you'll also find that when speaking Mandarin, many Taiwanese people's speech contains a lot of Taiwanese influence. More so outside of Taipei I'd guess, but you do still hear a lot of Taiwanese influences.

This article Victor Mair posted a few months ago, and the comments, contain some relevant information.

As an aside, when Taiwanese people say 台灣國語, they mean Min-influenced Mandarin. When they mean Taiwanese Mandarin (as in standard 國語), they just say 國語.

[Kobo-Daishi]

I might not be making myself clear so here is a "for instance".

http://static.youku.com/v1.0.0254/v/swf/loader.swf?VideoIDS=XOTQ5NzQzMzY%3D&embedid=NzUuNjIuMTUyLjM5AjIzNzQzNTg0And3dy5jYW50b25lc2Uuc2hlaWsuY28udWsCL3Bob3J1bS9yZWFkLnBocA%3D%3D&wd=

It's a drama from Taiwan, based on a Japanese manga that was turned into a Japanese anime, that was dubbed into Cantonese and broadcast on Hong Kong's TVB television station and has now been uploaded to youku.com.

I think the subtitles were provided by the producers of the show and are not fan subbed.

At about the 11:20 mark, there is a Cantonese word. I think it's exclusive to Cantonese but it might also be used in Taishanese, Chaozhou, Hakka, Minnan or any other of the myriad southern Chinese regionolects/topolects for all I know.

Granted this program was shown in Hong Kong but would a Beijinger who knows no Cantonese watching this program off of Youku by only reading the subtitles know the Cantonese word?

Okay, from the context of the dialogue, he or she might be able to guess. But if the two characters of the word were given in isolation would the Beijinger have seen it before?

And if the subtitlers were typing out Modern Standard Chinese, why would they use a non-standard word, expecially since the drama has nothing to do with Hong Kong or Cantonese?

Kobo, spending too much time on these mindless teen dramas.

[skylee]

Which word did you mean? 拍拖? It is listed in Xiandai Hanyu Cidian.

Such mindless teen dramas are wonderful time-killers.

[OneEye]

There's a difference between what's standard and what's actually used, and I think that's where the disconnect is here.

Anyway, I don't know what "Cantonese word" you're talking about. I didn't have any trouble understanding that, and I don't know any Cantonese. But in my experience, there are some words that people will know just from exposure to media from other Chinese-speaking areas/countries. These words get "leaked in" just by virtue of the fact that there are many Chinese speakers whose mother tongue is not Mandarin.

However, that sort of thing has nothing to do with each country's standard. It has to do with people borrowing words from other Chinese languages. Differences in standard are things like 星期 being xīngqī in China and xīngqí in Taiwan. Or police being 公安 in China and 警察 in Taiwan and elsewhere.

[jkhsu]

Actually, there is a difference in the subtitles between the Mandarin and Cantonese versions of that show.

Here's the Mandarin version:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=exOxJgqiaEw

Watch from 1:40 - 1:47.

It's worded a bit differently and 拍拖 is not there.

As a side note, "It Started With a Kiss" is a great show. I believe that series launched Ariel Lin to stardom. She's like on every other billboard in Taiwan. Highly recommended teen drama time sucker.

[skylee]

I enjoyed watching that show a lot, although it was quite silly.

[Kobo-Daishi]

Jshsu wrote:

As a side note, "It Started With a Kiss" is a great show.

Skylee wrote:

I enjoyed watching that show a lot, although it was quite silly.

I know!!!! I first discovered it about 4 months back by accident while searching Wikipedia for something else.

I tried looking all over for the Cantonese version since that's the one I discovered from the youku site. Unfortunately the rest of the series is geo-blocked for us outside the mainland.

So I was forced to download the original in Mandarin.

I finally was able to get the entire series in Cantonese from torrents but it took a long time. Then a few weeks back I found the entire series from direct download links. No use to me now.

I can't believe they panned it when it was a first episode here. I've watched it dozens of times both in Mandarin and Cantonese.

I enjoyed it so much that I was going to deconstruct the entire series for my blog. But I'm such a lazy.

Haven't updated my blog in over 2 years.

Jshsu wrote:

Actually, there is a difference in the subtitles between the Mandarin and Cantonese versions of that show.

I know. I figure the version at your link is to how the series originally aired on Taiwan so the subtitles are those of the production company but here's an error.

http://www.youtube.c...ture=plpp_video

Can anybody spot the error? It's found somewhere between 8:40 to 8:50.

Skylee wrote:

Which word did you mean? 拍拖? It is listed in Xiandai Hanyu Cidian.

Yeah, that's the word. When I watched it and saw it in the subs, I wondered why is that included? Isn't that Cantonese?

So, I decided to look it up using the Golden Dict.

It not only allows for lookup in the Xiandai Hanyu Cidian but also the vastly superior KoboDict.

Just kidding. I just copied the entry from the Chinese/English version of the Xiandai Hanyu Cidian. Readily available in pirate form on the Internet.

I remember reading in the Chinese-English Dictionary of Colloquial Terms Used in Modern Chinese Literature put out by the Yale University Press that the Xiandai "took special note of colloquialisms and regionalisms".

It seems that following the May 4th movement and the change from literary Chinese to vernacular that a lot of writers were throwing in bits and pieces from common speech of particular regions to spice up their writing. To make it sound more authentic but it was difficult for readers not from those regions to pick up so a bunch of dictionaries sprung up to meet the need.

But since 拍拖 is included in the Xiandai and it's supposed to be the authoritative dictionary of Chinese as used on the mainland (excluding those multi-volume sets that strive for usuage of Chinese down through the ages), I guess 拍拖 should be recognizeable to most Chinese? Or not

Oh, speaking of the Xiandai. They've got a new edition out. Can't wait for the pirates to scan a copy for me to download.

Amazed nobody's mentioned it at these forums.

Kobo.

[liuzhou]

Standard Chinese, by virtue of the fact that it is standardized, does not contain dialectal vocabulary.

No. "Standard Chinese" is a dialect. Just one with some sort of official recognition.

[OneEye]

That's cute, but not exactly accurate. It is a standard that was artificially created (and in several slightly different versions, as we've discussed here), not a naturally-occurring dialect that gained approval. I didn't think I'd need to define "dialectal vocabulary" because it ought to be obvious, but for the purposes of that post let's call it "vocabulary from various Chinese languages and dialects that does not exist in Standard Chinese". Or I could rephrase that sentence and say "Standard Chinese by definition does not contain nonstandard vocabulary".

One interesting thing this reminded me of is that when they were creating the standard, some people pushed for something like what we have today, but with 入聲 preserved. That would have been pretty cool, and I believe I remember reading that it nearly became the standard. There was also some push for a non-palatalized (no x-, j-, q) version of Mandarin, and even for something based on Shanghainese.

[liuzhou]

That is one of the most circular arguments I've ever read.

Who are 'they' and 'some people'?

This is turning into Wikipedia.

[jkhsu]

Can anybody spot the error? It's found somewhere between 8:40 to 8:50.

I found two actually:

1. In the subtitles (8:42), 江直樹's mom says "以後啊，我們譬如說中秋節啊", but I didn't hear her say "譬如". It sounds like she said "就"

2. (8:44) subtitles say "萬盛節" (for Halloween) when it should be "萬聖節".

[OneEye]

That is one of the most circular arguments I've ever read.

Hard to know since you didn't mention which part of my post you're referring to, but maybe my attempt at humor didn't come through. It tends to be dry. Next time I'll add a smiley face.

Who are 'they' and 'some people'?

Do I need to give you a citation? I was just recalling something interesting I remembered reading. Take it for what it is. I'm not interested in hunting it down for you.

This is turning into Wikipedia.

Indeed.

Edit: I'm willing to admit being wrong about anything I post here. I'd just prefer to be shown/told why rather reading a few vague, snide, unhelpful remarks. If we're going to have a discussion on this, let's have one. If you're not willing to, why even bother posting in the first place?

Edited August 2, 2012 at 05:53 PM by OneEye

[陳德聰]

@OneEye

You're correct that Standard Chinese was artificially created, but let's not pretend that the word "Standard" in the name of the language is any indication of its actual claim to standard-hood. Dialect vocabulary may be by definition non-standard, but I think it is a bit naive to believe that Standard Chinese is not perpetually changing and evolving to include various new and widely used "dialect" vocabulary.

It is not unreasonable to assume, and I would say it is actually quite likely, that further vocabulary from Chinese languages like Cantonese or Shanghainese or Hakka (and so on) will attain standard-hood based on usage. That's generally how things find their way into the dictionary.

I think at the heart of the OP is this assumption that the differing linguistic communities (HK, Taiwan, Big 6) will likely see different paths of evolution in their Standard Chinese.

[OneEye]

That's a fair call. But with respect to this thread, we can say the people who subtitled the TV show didn't use any non-standard, dialect, or (strictly) Cantonese vocabulary. It may have come from Cantonese, but it is now part of Standard Chinese. In much the same way (though further removed in time), 'ketchup' is considered an English word, not a Chinese one, although it (likely) was borrowed from some Chinese language or another.

[Kobo-Daishi]

Jkhsu wrote:

I found two actually:

1. In the subtitles (8:42), 江直樹's mom says "以後啊，我們譬如說中秋節啊", but I didn't hear her say "譬如". It sounds like she said "就"

2. (8:44) subtitles say "萬盛節" (for Halloween) when it should be "萬聖節".

I find that a lot of times there are contractions and such and sometimes bits are left out and other times bits are said that aren't in the subs. But the one I was thinking of was the All Saint's Day (or at least 10,000 of them) one.

Now, here's another Canonese-ism. Can anyone spot it?

http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XNDIxNDk0ODAw.html

It's found at the 1:29 mark and again at the 11:11 mark.

This is a guess since the video is banned in the USA.

http://i46.tinypic.com/33az4b7.jpg

So, it might be geo-blocked where you are as well.

It's the fan-subbed version of the Japanese anime.

While searching for the Cantonese version of Kiss I downloaded this episode since it just had the title with no mention of which version it was.

So, the times are from the copy I've got off the peer-to-peer networks and might not be the same as the one for streaming.

I'll post the answer and graphic when I've time if no one gets the answer.

And I don't think this one has become a part of standard Chinese yet.

Kobo.

[skylee]

Both links at #18 don't work for me.

But why do we have to spot/ guess it? If this is a genuine question, posting a screenshot would make clear what the question is.

[Kobo-Daishi]

Skylee wrote:

Both links at #18 don't work for me.

That's news to me. I thought Hong Kong surely would be able to access Youku.

I do remember someone in Canada once said they couldn't acess tinypic though.

Skylee wrote:

But why do we have to spot/ guess it? If this is a genuine question, posting a screenshot would make clear what the question is.

Well, I made a boo boo, anyway. The link I had was to the first episode and it turns out the episode I had downloaded is the 13th episode.

So here goes.

And I didn't really want a native speaker to try to guess but here it is. And not the usual characters I would expect.

Kobo.