These mostly get called “dialects” for political reasons: the Chinese government doesn’t want to acknowledge that they are separate mutually unintelligible languages. Media in Chinese languages other than Mandarin is restricted, children are forced to use Mandarin in school, all official business is done in Mandarin, etc. There is a concerted effort to make other languages economically unviable, and generally to disempower and discourage regional / minority cultures. The grandparent poster’s experience is evidence that this strategy is working out.
It is similar to the way the Chinese government assigns non-native political officials to rule each region, and severely censors any politically controversial communication/media. That is, it is yet another tool of authoritarian social control, an effort to forestall any political opposition to the central government and its unresponsive top-down decision-making process.
India does not have the same kind of authoritarian governing institutions, so similar forced homogenization would not be politically viable.
> the Chinese government doesn’t want to acknowledge that they are separate mutually unintelligible languages.
Except they are not mutually unintelligible. Put someone from heilongjiang province in Sichuan and they will still be able to understand the language, albeit with more difficulty.
Though there are dialects that do have completely different pronunciation, they all use the same underlying script, save a select few minority languages. Mandarin Chinese is taught in school, but everyone still uses the local dialect to speak with each other.
I'm not even denying the CCP has ulterior motives in doing this, but your original claim was simply incorrect and disingenuous.
Heilongjiang is part of the Northeast, aka former Manchuria and was settled in the mid to late 1800s from the North Chinese plain. The entire North Chinese plain speaks variants of Mandarin for the same reason North American English is far less diverse than British and Irish English, there was a relatively small recent founder population.
Wu (Shanghainese and the other related dialects of the Yangtze river delta), Yue (Cantonese), Hakka, Xiang and Min are absolutely languages. They're at least as divergent as the Romance languages or the different "dialects" of Arabic. Having a single written standard does not make the spoken varieties one language. And even if it did Cantonese has a written standard even if it's not used much, so there are at least two Chinese languages.
I speak a branch of Wu myself, and it's ABSOLUTELY not a different language from other dialects of Chinese. There are small parts (also commonly used) of the dialects that's dramatically different from Mandarin, but most parts are still the same. Especially if you need to speak about things in a more formal context, or describe concepts that are more abstract, the dialects has no difference with each other if written down
The pronunciation of words in Wu Chinese and Mandarin is systematically different, and many common words are entirely unrelated. Typical Mandarin speakers can’t understand Wu Chinese at all.
The relationship is similar to that between English and German or French and Italian.
Cantonese, Hokkien, and Mandarin are not at all mutually intelligible. Mandarin speakers can't even read Hong Kong newspapers fluently.
Only Mandarin and Cantonese even have a fully developed way of writing with characters. Up until relatively recently Mandarin itself was considered a spoken language, until a written standard (ie correspondence of characters with the words people actually spoke) was developed. Hokkien is in the process of this now in Taiwan, they literally have a government department choosing characters for words (They started off with 900 or something, not sure where they are up to now).
> Only Mandarin and Cantonese even have a fully developed way of writing with characters. Up until relatively recently Mandarin itself was considered a spoken language
Native speaker here. I have absolutely no idea where you get that.
Cantonese is just one of many dialects, and in fact, it is not a single dialect: People from different parts of Guadong province actually speak Cantonese very differently. Should you consider those different languages?
Cantonese, Hokkien and Mandarin do sound like different languages, but not all dialects are. Most Chinese speaker can understand dialects spoken in central, and north parts of China, even though they usually can't speak those dialects.
Even though some of the dialects sounds very differently, the words, syntax, sentences being used are actually the same. That's how people can read what other people speaking other dialects write, with no problem.
To complicate the issue even more, there're not one, but two writing systems currently being used: Simplified Chinese is used in China mainland and Singapore, while Traditional Chinese is used in Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan. That's the reason people from mainland China (no matter what dialect they speak, even Cantonese) cannot read Hong Kong newspaper fluently
The two writing systems are different but they have one to one mapping for each character. So it's also not two unrelated system.
> Native speaker here. I have absolutely no idea where you get that.
Mandarin wasn't really written until about 120 years ago. Before people would write classical Chinese. It's a "written vernacular/白話文".
> Cantonese is just one of many dialects, and in fact, it is not a single dialect: People from different parts of Guadong province actually speak Cantonese very differently. Should you consider those different languages?
No, I'd consider them different dialects of a language called Cantonese.
> Even though some of the dialects sounds very differently, the words, syntax, sentences being used are actually the same.
Nonsense. Hokkien has a different grammar, even the personal pronouns don't match up 1:1. They're clearly in the same language family, sure, but so are English and German.
> That's the reason people from mainland China (no matter what dialect they speak, even Cantonese) cannot read Hong Kong newspaper fluently
No, it's not. I've seen Taiwanese people try and read Hong Kong newspapers, and they can't do it fluently.
> Mandarin wasn't really written until about 120 years ago. Before people would write classical Chinese. It's a "written vernacular/白話文
This is true, but it's a separate issue from having various dialects. Language evolves as time goes by, and in the case of Chinese before "written vernacular", people would write in the same form of ancient Chinese (regardless of pronunciation) which diverged a lot from what people actually speak. With the promotion of "written vernacular", people started to write what they speak, irrelevant of dialects.
Even though each of the dialects have some special vocabulary, and even different grammar, that doesn't mean they're not still "MOSTLY" the same.
I speak a southern Chinese dialect myself (I don't know what to call it in English) which is also dramatically different from Mandarin. Yes it has a few words that we commonly used, that I thought to be unique, but it turns out all of the characters and words exist in standard Chinese dictionary. Those words actually existed for a long time, and they are just no longer commonly used by other people. That said, learning to speak Mandarin is no where close to be like learning a new language. Vast majority parts of the language are still the same. Hokkien might be slightly more different but still no where close to being a separate language.
On the other hand, Japanese is undoubtedly a separate language, even though it also use Chinese characters (plus about 100 characters of their own), and many of the Chinese characters and words in Japanese actually means the same as they do in Chinese. No one would claim Japanese as a dialect of Chinese, because the difference is both significant and clear.
I think you also agree that both Taiwanese and people from mainland China CAN read Hong Kong newspapers, just not as fluently. Part of the reason is what I said, different writing systems. The other reason is that people do use some different words, especially for new concepts. Since Taiwan, Hong Kong and mainland China has been fairly separated for a long time, divergence is inevitable. For example, new words like "program" is translated in different ways: "程序" in mainland China, and "程式“ in Taiwan. Again, this has nothing to do with dialects. Mandarin speakers form mainland China would not be able to read Taiwan newspapers as fluently even though it's also Mandarin. Cantonese speakers from Guangdong province couldn't read Hong Kong newspaper as fluently even though it's also Cantonese.
On the other hand, I grew up watching many Hong Kong movies that were spoken in Cantonese but with Chinese captions. The captions needed no translation at all - They were just what the actors were saying. After watching many of those, I could even understand some Cantonese though I still couldn't speak those. I admit there are occasionally some word that seems unfamiliar to me, but it didn't impacted much. I don't believe you can do that with a different language.
Its just typical chinese nationalist mythology. 'We all speak the same language' is just another fairy tale they drill into their heads, along with '5000 years of culture'
When youve talked to one of them youve talked to all of them.
A few dialects are unintelligible indeed, and they're mostly spoken in southern parts of China. But most people can understand dialects spoken in central and east (north of Changjiang river) fairly easily even though they cannot speak those dialects.
I don't see any part of your comment being correct.
First of all, "Mandarin" is spoken not only in China mainland, but also the standard in Singapore and Taiwan. It was a creation by the Republic of China (which later became Taiwan government) back in 1923, long before the current Chinese government came into power.
Children use Mandarin in school because they have to learn it to be able to communicate with people coming from other parts of China, which would have become a huge disadvantage to themselves. (I can't imagine how I would communicate with other people in college otherwise) It doesn't mean people will forget how to speak their own dialect. In fact, people from the same region almost always speak their own dialects.
Regional / minority cultures are generally protected by the government. The minority are almost always over-represented in all kinds of national events. Being a minority in China means you can get tons of advantage (lower score required to enter good colleges, financial aid, etc.)
The language we call Mandarin has been the native language of some parts of northern China for thousands of years, and was certainly not “created” any time recently. Some people speaking dialects of that language migrated to other parts of China. But there are various other languages natively spoken elsewhere in the country.
Singapore is a cosmopolitan port city, there are several Chinese languages spoken there, and Mandarin was not the dominant one until recently. There are also many other languages spoken in Singapore, and from what I understand English is the primary language used for official business. Taiwan was not natively Mandarin speaking but speaks it now because it was taken over (from the Japanese) by the fleeing Mandarin-speaking KMT after they were beaten militarily by the Communists during the Chinese Civil War. Both Singapore and Taiwan were ruled for decades by authoritarian governments. I’m not sure about Singapore but in Taiwan other Chinese languages were forcefully suppressed.
Plenty of other parts of the world manage to communicate across regional/national borders without restricting people’s ability to produce/distribute local media in their native languages.
There are many countries where students learn several languages in school (including their native regional language and a national language) from an early age.
(Disclaimer again: I’m not an expert in the history, politics, or comparative linguistics of China. I recommend Wikipedia as a better first summary, if you are curious to learn about these subjects.)
If you can read Chinese, the Chinese versions of wikipedia page on Mandarin Chinese has a lot more detail on its origination: https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/普通话
To summarize, Mandarin is not created out of nothing for sure, but the concept of "Mandarin Chinese" (or rather, Standard Chinese) started with an effort of newly established Republic of China in 1913, to develop a standard phonetic system and to use as the national language in China. They later published the standard around 1920s, which is essentially a modified version of phonetic system used in Beijing. The dialect now spoken in Beijing is very close to Mandarin, but not exactly the same.
I grew up in China and lived in Singapore for a long time. I can tell you for sure, that the different dialects spoken by Chinese should not be confused with completely different languages. First of all they share the same writing system, the words and syntax we use in various dialects are mostly the same. (Some dialects use a few words differently from others, but that's not surprising at all considering UK english and US english are not exactly the same)
I speak a southern dialect myself which sounds very different from Mandarin. But there is a somewhat systematic mapping from the dialect to Mandarin, so it was really not much an effort to learn Mandarin.
I can imagine there must have been some efforts there to promote the standard in the very beginning, maybe even "forcefully suppressing" other dialects are needed at some point, but considering the huge benefit, it undoubted is the best invention happened in the history of Chinese language.
> The language we call Mandarin has been the native language of some parts of northern China for thousands of years, and was certainly not “created” any time recently.
In the same way that Hindi has been the native language of northern India for thousands of years (which is to say that while the Mandarin of today has connections to earlier forms of Chinese, it is hardly a monolithic, unchanging remnant of thousands of years ago).
Yes, there was a promotion to speak Mandarin, but suppression of dialects was never a major part of the campaign and Hokkien is still spoken by many Singaporean.
> but suppression of dialects was never a major part of the campaign
From the article:
The initial goal of the campaign was for all young Chinese to stop speaking dialects in five years, and to establish Mandarin as the language of choice in public places within 10 years.
> Hokkien is still spoken by many Singaporean.
Again, the article shows that in 1980 81.4% of Chinese Singaporeans spoke a Chinese language at home that wasn't Mandarin. In 2015 it's 16.1%.
However, it's worth noting that you call the official language of China "Mandarin" for political reasons. The analogy would be if you called French "Bureaucratese" and said "Yes, but Breton and Occitan are not mutually intelligible with Bureaucratese".
The statements "Bureaucratese is not mutually intelligible with Occitan" and "Mandarin is not mutually intelligible with Cantonese" are both true, but we could just say "French is not mutually intelligible with Occitan" and "Chinese in not mutually intelligible with Cantonese".
I could call it Beijingese (or Pekingese) if you prefer. But many people might not know what I was talking about. Mandarin is the common name used in English to refer to this language.
I don’t have any problem if you want to talk about Parisian French (or pick your preferred other name for it), Castilian Spanish, etc.
Parisian French was pushed onto the people within the borders of the French nation-state by force, by a brutal authoritarian monarchy. Quoting Wikipedia,
‘The goals of the Public School System were made especially clear to the French speaking teachers sent to teach students in regions such as Occitania and Brittany; “And remember, Gents: you were given your position in order to kill the Breton language” were instructions given from a French official to teachers in the French department of Finistère (western Brittany).’
That's how languages form. You don't get a language like French just by hoping for it to emerge or by letting dialects run their own lives and continue to diverge; you take it by taking a bunch of Romance dialects including quite separate ones (Langue d'Oc and the Langue d'Oil groups) and pushing them together through a common system of mass media (printed for the time, but still), education and cultural acceptance of a "proper dialect" at the top end of the society. That's how you get a strong language that helps you to unify a country and reduce internal barriers of communication; and that's what the Chinese are doing.
By "that's how languages form", I assume you mean something like "standardized languages", which then becomes somewhat circular, because it's certainly not how languages form generally (and even standardized languages can form without mass media, and certainly did, even pre-writing).
That's also not how standard French formed. Standardized French is Parisian French, so just the 'dialect' of the politically-important centre. Not too dissimilar to Latin (which was originally narrowly the dialect of Rome) in that.
Whatever the propaganda, China still contains a number of non-mutually intelligible (though related) languages, but of course Mandarin enjoys much prominence and has an enormous number of speakers.
I never heard that the language was standardized taking langue d’oc elements or any other French languages or dialects. You should give some sources to affirm that. The standard French is based on the French spoken in Paris which was then extended (or imposed in some case) in the whole country via the administration and the public school (forbidding the use of dialects).
While this might be true for spoken language, luckily the Chinese writing system does represent how the the words are pronounced. All of these "dialects" share the same writing system. So it's much easier for someone speaking one of these dialects to learn and use Mandarin.
It is similar to the way the Chinese government assigns non-native political officials to rule each region, and severely censors any politically controversial communication/media. That is, it is yet another tool of authoritarian social control, an effort to forestall any political opposition to the central government and its unresponsive top-down decision-making process.
India does not have the same kind of authoritarian governing institutions, so similar forced homogenization would not be politically viable.