Mandarin - dialect ratio in dialect provinces in China

[atitarev]

Can someone describe the Mandarin - dialect ratio in dialect provinces in China - provinces where Mandarin is not considered the main dialect - e.g. Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Fujiang, Hainan, Guangdong, Guangxi, etc.

I wonder if you need to learn the local dialect to get by in this provinces. According to wikipedia and Lonely Planet guide on China, they just say - they just mention local dialects as if Mandarin is not spoken at all but it's probably not exactly right because Mandarin is being promoted and there are a lot of immigrants. If you live in South-Eastern provinces what are your experiences on the matter.

Also, some people say if you want to learn Mandarin, you need to go to Mandarin speaking Northern provinces. How true is it?

The linked image is from Wikipedia:

[geraldc]

I'd say that most people in Guangdong understand Mandarin.

With immigrants to the region, those who work in the service industries, waitresses, shop assistants etc will understand Cantonese, as they'll have picked it up from customers etc, but they may or may not be able to speak to it.

People higher up who've moved into the region, teachers, managers etc, probably won't understand any Cantonese and will rely solely on Mandarin.

[badr]

Some of the dialects can be drastically different from mandarin, especially in pronunciation, without having a "name" so to speak.

Northern Chinese have as many problems as we do when they go to town like Hangzhou (fairly popular tourist destination). In fact, it's gotten so bad that the government is making all public workers go through mandarin classes. They've also passed a law in Hangzhou that say bus drivers and ticket clercks will be fines 500RMB if they're caught talking in their local dialect.

I have a few friends that have just moved to Suzhou and they complain that they have a hard time with the local dialect. The folks there can speak mandarin when they need to but they'd rather just use their own "hua"

[atitarev]

I am aware of Hangzhou and Suzhou - they are in the non-Mandarin dialect provinces I listed above (Jiangsu and Zhejiang). I guess, my question is how important is to know Mandarin in these places and how important is to know the local dialect(s). Do foreigners learn dialects when they stay there? As Geraldc said most people understand Mandarin in Guangdong. What about other regions where Mandarin is not the main dialect? I read here that in Shanghai everybody speaks good Mandarin but locals speak Wu with each other. Is it similar in Fuzhou, Guangzhou, Kunming, Najing, Haikou or Hangzhou? Although Kunming is in Mandarin dialect are - it's a dialect non-comprehensible to Northern Mandarin speakers, so my question applies to Yunnan province as well.

[hakkaboy]

atitarev, as far as I know SouthWestern Mandarin is **not** incomprehensible to Northern Mandarin speakers. They just need to get a little bit used to it, much as US English speakers might find some British accents a little off-centre at first. In answer to your question: people understand Mandarin all over China. The only places where you might get really stuck are Xinjiang and Tibet, where a lot of ethnic minority people don't understand Mandarin. Official figures show something like 98% of Chinese understand Mandarin, but only 53% can speak it. But suffice to say that if you are in city, and not a village, then, no matter if you are in Zhejiang, Fujian, Guangdong, Hunan, or whatever: most of the locals will be able to speak reasonable Mandarin. It is only if you are going to visit villages and talk to the peasants that the question of poorly educated not being able to reply in Mandarin arises.

[atitarev]

Interesting how 53% of spoken Mandarin compare with literacy levels in China. Mandarin is the language of instruction. Over 90% of Chinese (don't know the exact figure) can read and write in Chinese (obviously using their own dialect in many cases) and most of them learned at public schools where only Mandarin is used. Inetersting phenomenon. Also 53% is pretty low for a national official language, isn't it? I've heard about this figure too.

[Ncao]

I might be won't about this, but don't most village schools use dialects instead of Mandarin?

[liuzhou]

Here in Guangxi, the vast majority of people understand Putonghua. They may not speak it at home, or among friends but they certainly understand it. I am currently undertaking a survey into which languages / dialects a sample of locals use in varying social situations. I will post some details once I have analysed the data

Also 53% is pretty low for a national official language, isn't it?

Not really. Many countries have official languages which are spoken only by a minority of people. English in India or Cameroon, for example.

[gougou]

Many countries have official languages which are spoken only by a minority of people. English in India or Cameroon, for example.

That's not quite the same, though, as those countries have more than one official language (French in Cameroon, 22 other languages, including Hindi, in India.)

When looking at the 53%, keep in mind that Mandarin is an artificial national language. It cannot be compared to, say, Germany, which throughout most of its history has been united by language only.

[skylee]

keep in mind that Mandarin is an artificial national language.

Is it?

[gougou]

I might be wrong on that, but what I mean is that it is not the language that would be spoken throughout the country without governmental regulation.

[Battosai]

atitarev :

Interesting how 53% of spoken Mandarin compare with literacy levels in China. Mandarin is the language of instruction. Over 90% of Chinese (don't know the exact figure) can read and write in Chinese (obviously using their own dialect in many cases) and most of them learned at public schools where only Mandarin is used. Inetersting phenomenon. Also 53% is pretty low for a national official language, isn't it? I've heard about this figure too.

I think most chinese read and write in Mandarin.My Shanghainese friends read most texts in Mandarin, they might send an occasional SMS in SHanghainese but most of the time they will write in Mandarin. I think that even Cantonese speakers in Hong Kong who can't speak Mandarin still write in Mandarin.

I think most people in Shanghai can communicate in Mandarin but prefer Shanghainese.

Is 53% the official figure? I remeber 70% of the population speak a northern dialect. What counts as Mandarin anyway? is Beijinghua Mandarin?

[liuzhou]

In what way is 普通话 an artificial national national language?

What is a non-artificial national language?

By "national" do you mean "official"?

[gougou]

In what way is 普通话 an artificial national national language?

As I said above: it is not the language that would be spoken throughout the country without governmental regulation (well, in fact it isn't even after governmental regulation)

By "national" do you mean "official"?

Maybe, what's the difference?

[ala]

In what way is 普通话 an artificial national national language?

What is a non-artificial national language?

Modern German and Putonghua were artificial languages, whereas English is not.

Putonghua isn't even Beijing Mandarin, it's merely based on Beijing Mandarin.

[liuzhou]

Quote:

By "national" do you mean "official"?

Maybe, what's the difference?

I would say that a national language is one which is spoken throughout the country. An official language is one which has been given a special status by government. There are several countries in which the offical language(s) are spoken by only a minority of people.

Modern German and Putonghua were artificial languages, whereas English is not.

Putonghua isn't even Beijing Mandarin, it's merely based on Beijing Mandarin.

And what is standard (British) English based on? Londonhua?

Neither German nor Putonghua are artificial languages. Esperanto is an artificial language.

What do you mean by "artificial language"?

[gougou]

I would say that a national language is one which is spoken throughout the country. An official language is one which has been given a special status by government.

Yeah, that's what I thought as well. So, no, I did not mean official...

Maybe I should explain like this: Ideally, an official language would become national language in the long run (that's ideally from the government's point of view, not from a cultural one.) Whether or not a national language is artificial or not then is determined whether it was national language before it became official language, or after it was imposed as official language. So the artificial refers to how the language became national, not to the language itself.

But that's just what I make of the terms, maybe there are some conventions I am not aware of.

[ala]

Neither German nor Putonghua are artificial languages. Esperanto is an artificial language.

What do you mean by "artificial language"?

I obviously didn't mean "artificial language" as in Esperanto. Esperanto has no government support' date=' no official status. By artificial I mean a language that has a rather recent and major phonetic, grammatical standardization due to a recent establishment of a nation-state (this applies to both the German and Chinese nation-states during the late 19th century, early 20th century). Standard German, like Putonghua, are commonly perceived as very sterile languages, and for good reason.

Before the 1900's, no one spoke Guoyu/Putonghua, not a single person. Guoyu/Putonghua is a mix of various Mandarin and Wu dialects' literary vernacular vocabulary and sentence constructions (from semi-vernacular works such as Water Margin, Dream of the Red Chamber, etc) with Chinese CHARACTER READINGS roughly based on the pronunciation of Beijinghua, but Putonghua definitely wasn't Beijinghua. Putonghua was only phonetically based on Beijinghua.

Standard German was only a WRITTEN language until the latter 1800's. Standard German today has grammar similar to Low German dialects, and pronunciation more similar to High German dialects. Standard German is a compromise standard language.

Standard German

In the 19th century, interest in the German language shifted towards its purification by eliminating unnecessary foreign words, an endeavour during which many useful words of today's German language were coined, whereas the attempt to replace well-established loanwords by inventing awkward "German" circumlocutions for them rightly failed.

Another important step towards the standardisation of the language was the creation of a generally binding orthography by the kingdom of Bavaria in 1879; the kingdom of Prussia followed one year later when Konrad Duden (1829-1911) created his famous dictionary "according to the new Prussian and Bavarian rules" which has been continued and adapted to language changes until today. This dictionary was regarded as the de-facto standard (and sometimes even the de-jure standard) of German orthography. Since 1880, the orthography has been subjected to two reforms in the first and the last years of the 20th century: In 1901, there was a three-day administrative conference accepting and continuing Duden's innovations, most notably abandoning writing th in German words such as Thal or Rath. The reform in the 1990ies consisted of a long series of academic and bureaucratic debates whose results have remained controversial because they were not an attempt to codify changes already in use but to invent new changes to orthography.

While the orthography followed a compromise between Northern and Southern language, this was not the case for the pronunciation. In 1898, Theodor Siebs (1862-1941) fixed rules for the "Deutsche Bühnenaussprache" (German stage pronunciation) which are still regarded as binding until today. In his work, Siebs declared more or less exclusive Northern pronunciation to be the German standard: voiced s (like English z) and labiodental w (like English v) in syllable-initial positions; long vowels in words like Städte or Husten; initial st less consistently spoken as scht; Honig pronounced as if it were written with -ich; voiced b, d, g; the Schwa (unstressed e) spoken a bit more rounded than in the South. More examples are given here Siebs always favoured the more distinctive pronunciation, e.g. Fliesen distinct from fließen, Städte distinct from Stätte (spoken alike in the South) or Ehre distinct from Ähre (spoken alike in the North).

To sum up: today's standard German is the language of the Southerners in the pronunciation of the Northerners - in principle a reasonably fair compromise. The effect is, however, that North German language is often nearer to the standard (because it does not so easily mix with the dialect, and because of Siebs's preference of Northern pronunciation), and we observe a tendency that Northern regionalisms are often regarded as "more standard" than Southern ones.

The Chinese case is even more "artificial" as the language standardizations during the early 20th century were almost entirely decreed by government commissions. Cultural works came afterwards.

[wushijiao]

And what is standard (British) English based on? Londonhua?

Not to digress too much, but this made me think of the similarities between Putonghua and RP.

I think to some degree, the situation of Putonghua can be compared to RP (Received Pronunciation. For background information see:http://www.usingenglish.com/glossary/received-pronunciation.html )

Like Putonghua, RP seemed to be a semi-artificial form of spoken speech that was meant to unify the various dialects and regional speaking styles in England. However, after a while there was somewhat of a backlash against RP, as many people see it as elitist and stuck up. Yet, at least with educated speakers, some people say that RP did blend with local speaking styles, and thus its original function has died away. Today, according to the Economist, only 3-5% of English people speak RP.

It seems to me that Putonghua plays a similar unifying role that RP once did. Through the media, Putonghua has blended with local dialectical pronunciations of Putonghua to the point that mutual communication is possible. But at the same time, I think it is fair to say that Putonghua is slightly artificial. It seems to me that when people are speaking Putonghua, a very, very small percentage speak Putonghua in the “purest” form, like radio broadcasters, with the crisp and artificially clear pronunciation of tones and pinyin. I’d predict that as time goes on, the need for a strictly enforced Putonghua in the media will decrease as China’s modern “nation building” stage comes to an end. At that point, people will speak in the most prestigious form in order to demonstrate their social status and level of education. A government mandate won’t be necessary.

(Although this analogy with RP breaks down when compared with Wu, Yue, Hakka…etc. Also, the linguistic and historical factors in China are different).

[HashiriKata]

I'd like to add a bit to wushijiao's post above:

And what is standard (British) English based on? Londonhua?

No, Londonhua is Cockney, which is very different from Standard English.

Standard English is loosely based on that of England's South-East region, so you can't pinpoint its geographical origin; and it's often referred to not as a regional dialect but a social dialect. This aspect makes English very different from Putonghua in that there are no decrees or prescriptions from the government to regulate its form or function. Since it's the language variety spoken by the well-off/ well-educated middle class, aspired people just adopt it regardless where within the UK they come from. As a result, there are more similarities in the language used by educated people of similar social class, say, in Edinburgh and London than those between Londoners and Londoners of different social backgrounds.