Cantonese popular in Tibet?

[Ian_Lee]

Lonely Planet listed Cantonese as one of the three most common languages spoken in Tibet:

http://www.lonelyplanet.com/destinations/north_east_asia/tibet/

Hmmm......Does that mean Tibetan Lamas like to hum Cantopop?

[roddy]

I worked with a woman, not the most well-informed of people, whose daughter had just got engaged to a Tibetan guy she'd met in India. Phone conversation . . .

Oh, so his family are still in Tibet . . . right . . .God, sounds really remote . . . so do they speak Mandarin? . . . . no? . . . . oh well, we'll just have to learn Cantonese then . . .

Having said that, what else would be the third most common language? If there're a lot of people moved in from Cantonese speaking areas, maybe it is . . .

Roddy

[skylee]

This is really surprising.

[wix]

Lonely Planet is typically filled with factual errors. The authors have limited time and resources and don't get paid a lot so a lot of the research they do is superficial and the results inaccurate.

Most people around the world simply believe there are two Chinese languages, Mandarin and Cantonese. They have little idea about the actual linguistic diversity that exists in China and elsewhere. I guess the author simply inferred that Cantonese was the third most common language in Tibet from this myth. Or perhaps he (or she) heard people listening to Canto-pop and made an assumption based on that. In the past most Lonely Planet authors were not proficient in the local languages, however I think LP is now making more effort to employ writers whose linguistic skills go beyond English.

Given the number of Tibetans that have spent time in India, Nepal and other foreign countries I wouldn't be surprised if Hindi or Nepali was the third most common language in Tibet. At least among the Tibet population.

[bhchao]

Lonely Planet is typically filled with factual errors. The authors have limited time and resources and don't get paid a lot so a lot of the research they do is superficial and the results inaccurate.

I have visited Lonely Planet a couple times in the past when trying to find more info on specific vacation locales, and found the site a big disappointment. The information provided is too general.

[Harpoon]

I was watching a program on TV about these Tibetan towers and stuff, anyways it was mentioned that there are tons of Tiban "dialects" throughout the region (some very close to origional Tibetan), often times if you speak a dialect in one village you will be mostly unintillegible in the next village over. A traveller's language is used, either that or Mandarin (which they all have to learn in school by law, right?)

[kelly]

I an a cantonese.I was astonished when I first read these!

I an curious that why cantonese will be one of the three main languages in Tibet?

[ala]

Maybe they meant Sichuan/Southwestern Mandarin? and assumed it to be Cantonese because it's southern?

Tibetans speak Mandarin without tones, imagine if they had to speak the 9-tone Cantonese.

[Harpoon]

Maybe they meant Sichuan/Southwestern Mandarin? and assumed it to be Cantonese because it's southern?

Tibetans speak Mandarin without tones' date=' imagine if they had to speak the 9-tone Cantonese.[/quote']

seriously?

tones are so wierd. I mean, some people are saying that tones are extremely important in Chinese and should never be ignored, but then again you have them not being used at all in Chinese music and entire ethnic groups getting along just fine without using them either.

[wai ming]

but then again you have them not being used at all in Chinese music

Not quite. It's true that Mandarin nowdays is sung pretty much ignoring tones, but apparently Cantonese songs are structured so that the tones of the words fit the melody line.

And while you can often get away without (the correct) tones thanks to context, there are times when using the wrong tones can cause a lot of confusion...

[beirne]

tones are so wierd. I mean, some people are saying that tones are extremely important in Chinese and should never be ignored, but then again you have them not being used at all in Chinese music and entire ethnic groups getting along just fine without using them either.

Tones aren't as weird as one might think. They are a part of about half of the world's languages. Often in language when something is dropped something else takes its place. For example, in some languages consonants are dropped from words. Tones are then used to compensate for the missing consonants. In the case of the Tibetans I'd be curious to know if they speak pure standard Mandarin without the tones or if they add other features like consonants or extra context words to make up for their removal.

[Altair]

I know nothing about how Tibetans speak Chinese, but I think too much may be made of the lack of some tones in modern music.

As I understand it, much of traditional Chinese music did and does tend to accommodate the tones of words. Certainly the little Beijing opera I have heard does this.As the Chinese music scene has been altered by foreign music standards, intelligibility has been sacrificied to accommodate the new styles of foreign origin or inspiration.

One of the issues may be that the tones that work in one region may have always sounded strange in other regions. Listeners may have always been somewhat accommodated to hearing strange match-ups between musical pitch and what they would expect to hear in speech.

There is actually quite a lot of variation in tone realization even between many closely related dialects. For instance, the Cantonese tone patterns of Guangzhou and Honkong are slightly different, despite their closeness. This sort of thing is apparently typical for all Chinese dialects.

I think what is going on is something that happened with English as well. English has its own patterns of rhythm, vowel length, stress, and pitch that tend to be respected in folk music. In adaptations of Gregorian Chant, which was based on Italian patterns, the English patterns were completely ignored. Intelligibiliy suffers greatly as a result.

Rap music is based on English patterns and requires frequent stressed beats within short phases. This pattern is normal in English, but alien to many languages. It is nonetheless being introduced to the music of these languages along with the musical form.

In considering how dispensable Chinese tones might be in music and what this does to understanding, it might help to consider how opera in English sounds. Some stuff is easy to understand; but when the music takes priority over the words, you really need to know in advance what the words are to follow along.

[Jim]

Plus Lhasa or Tsang Tibetan - the 'putonghua' of Tibetan' - is itself a tonal language. My text book (Essentials of Modern Literary Tibetan, M.Goldstein, Gelek Rinpoche and Lobsang Phuntsog) describes a high and a low tone and also a 'released glottal stop' they call a falling tone. For example, ma low tone means 'mother', but high tone means 'sore'.

[Quest]

tones are so wierd. I mean, some people are saying that tones are extremely important in Chinese and should never be ignored, but then again you have them not being used at all in Chinese music and entire ethnic groups getting along just fine without using them either.

You can still be understood without tones, but you would sound like a robot. Tones, just like English intonation, are part of the language, and not something that can be ignored or lost.

Chinese tones are not ignored even when one speaks fast. It might just be that your ears are not well trained enough to pick up tones in a fast speech perhaps?

In music, tones are often ignored, and intelligibility only takes a minor role. That said, though, most songs are quite comprehensible, and when there's confusion, we can always look up the lyric online or in printed material.

[beirne]

You can still be understood without tones' date=' but you would sound like a robot. Tones, just like English intonation, are part of the language, and not something that can be ignored or lost.

Chinese tones are not ignored even when one speaks fast. It's just that your ears are not well trained enough to pick up tones in a fast speech.

[/quote']

Wouldn't speaking without the tones be more like dropping consonants since the tones serve a phonetic purpose? One might still be able to figure out what the person is saying based on the remaining phonemes but it would be trickier.

[wix]

I was watching a program on TV about these Tibetan towers and stuff, anyways it was mentioned that there are tons of Tiban "dialects" throughout the region (some very close to origional Tibetan), often times if you speak a dialect in one village you will be mostly unintillegible in the next village over. A traveller's language is used, either that or Mandarin (which they all have to learn in school by law, right?)

I am no expert on Tibetan linguistics, but Tibet was historically divided into three regions U-Tsang (central Tibet), Kham and Amdo. The dialects may not be mutually intelligible. However, the Lhasa dialect is considered the standard form of Tibetan.

Plus Lhasa or Tsang Tibetan - the 'putonghua' of Tibetan' - is itself a tonal language. My text book (Essentials of Modern Literary Tibetan, M.Goldstein, Gelek Rinpoche and Lobsang Phuntsog) describes a high and a low tone and also a 'released glottal stop' they call a falling tone. For example, ma low tone means 'mother', but high tone means 'sore'.

I believe Tibetan is classified as a semi-tonal language. Some tones exist but are not an essential part of the language as they are in Mandarin or other Chinese languages.

[Ian_Lee]

Let's go back to the original question:

Is it possible that some Native Tibetans are keen to learn Cantonese so that the language is kind of popular in Tibet as Lonelyplanet said?

Even the Asiaweek magazine had such depiction of Tibetan monk humming Cantopop: A MONK HURRIES BY, his maroon robe moving in time to the Cantopop on his walkman.

http://www.asiaweek.com/asiaweek/99/0528/nat6.html

[xng]

The way that the western media gives out information is misleading ! Tibet was not part of china for only 40 years. It was part of the ching dynasty for few hundred years.

The tibetans, burmese come from the same genetic stock as the proto-sino people as their languages are similar .

[msittig]

entire ethnic groups getting along just fine without using [tones] either.

I think that the person you quoted was implying that Tibetans speak bad Mandarin, and probably only to people who don't speak their Tibetan dialect, ie outsiders.

This tone-less Mandarin is also typical of Xinjiangren, and Americans. (hehe, sorry ;-) )

[Lu]

How would the reporter know if it was Cantopop the monk was listening to? And even if he was listening to Cantopop, that doesn't make him a speaker of Cantonese.

I heard some Tibetan dialects have tones, and some don't.