[colordrops]

This article definitely has a political subtext. Spoken Cantonese and mandarin are mutually unintelligible, but in written form, at least without colloquialisms, they are basically the same language. I'm a non-chinese that studied Chinese, so I have no horse in this race. I do think they should support the Cantonese input method, but there's no reason the pinyin method wouldn't work just as well, other than lack of familiarity. I'm sure Apple is excluding it at the behest of the mainland government, which sucks, but just this isn't as cut and dried as the article makes it.

[inkyoto]

> Spoken Cantonese and mandarin are mutually unintelligible, but in written form, at least without colloquialisms, they are basically the same language.

They are not. Written Cantonese, in fact, uses the Mandarin grammar and the Mandarin lexicon and is, essentially, Mandarin, not Cantonese. There are substantial differences in the grammar and in the basic lexicon between the two to make them distinct languages. Written Cantonese that uses the Cantonese lexicon is incomprehensible to a Mandarin speaker, either, just as the spoken Cantonese is.

[tasogare]

> but in written form, at least without colloquialisms, they are basically the same language.

No they're not. Time to go studying linguistic before writing false statements on the internet. Even if most characters and words are shared in-between Sinitic languages, there are difference in lexicon, grammar, syntax and other subtle grammatical phenomena. Phonology is also distinct. It would be incredibly painful for someone the write its native language using an input method made for another language.

[fredwu]

My assumption is that Apple _is_ referring to the colloquialisms.

The confusing part for me as a Shanghainese speaker though is that we don't have a way to write Shanghainese, this "spelling" concept AFAIK simply doesn't exist. So I'm very curious to see who actually designed this functionality and what does it actually do.

[rado]

There are written differences. HK, Taiwan = Traditional, Mainland = Simplified.

[colordrops]

Traditional and simplified are interchangeable, and not tied to the dialect or language. You can enter simplified or traditional with pinyin.