Gourt Home::Gourt :: Spoken Chinese
Spoken Chinese comprises many regional variants. Although the English word dialect is often used to translate the Chinese term 方言 fangyan (lit. regional speech), the differences between the major spoken variations of Chinese are such that they are mutually unintelligible. Whether these variants should be identified as dialects or languages is a contentious issue.
Classification
Chinese people make a very strong distinction between written language (文 wén) and spoken language (语/語 yǔ). They tend to conceptualize the variations of Chinese as different spoken languages which use a common written standard and share a literary and cultural tradition. Within Chinese, there is a collective term for the Chinese written language (中文 zhōngwén), while there is no collective term that encompasses all of the variations of the spoken language. Terms used to describe spoken Chinese, such as 汉语 hànyǔ or 国语 guóyǔ refer only to one specific variation of spoken Chinese, overwhelmingly Standard Chinese in modern usage.
When forced to conceptualize these variations in terms of language and dialect common in the West, most Chinese do not think of these variations as separate languages because they use a standard written language and share a common literary and cultural tradition. However, the linguistic distance between different Chinese dialects is often much greater than forms of speech in other parts of the world, and thus are unquestionably considered distinct languages.
Linguists divide the variations in spoken Chinese language into seven to ten groups. However, the fact that two people are speaking dialects within the same category does not necessarily mean that they can completely understand each other. The converse is also true in that the two people speaking dialects in different groups can sometimes understand each other. The general situation is one of dialect continuum where one can understand perfectly people speaking the local dialect and that the intelligibility decreases as the speaker comes from more and more distant regions. This results in the common situation where A can understand B, B can understand C, but A cannot understand C.
The linguistic diversity is particularly pronounced in southern variations such as Min, in which two towns which are five kilometers from each other can have types of speech that are completely unintelligible with one another. By contrast, there are areas in northern China that are several hundred kilometers apart but have mutually intelligible forms of Mandarin.
In addition, the categories that speakers use to self-classify the variety they are speaking may not correspond at all to a classification based strictly on linguistic features. For example, two speakers of Cantonese from different cities (say Taishan and Hong Kong) tend to think of themselves as speaking the same dialect, whereas speakers of Wu from Hangzhou and one from Shanghai would tend to think of themselves as speaking different dialects. Furthermore, a person speaking Sichuanese or Hunanese will think of themselves as speaking a variety of Chinese that is distinct from the national standard Putonghua, notwithstanding the fact that linguists place these forms of Chinese in the same linguistic category.
The various forms of Spoken Chinese are usually classified into the following broad groups. (See List of Chinese dialects for a comprehensive listing of individual dialects.)
- Mandarin 北方話/北方话: (c. 800 million) This is the mother dialect of Chinese living in northern and southwestern China. It is the basis for Standard Mandarin, the official spoken language of China.
- One distinctive feature of Mandarin is the employment of four categories of tonal types during word creation. This stands as a partial loss of tones employed, in comparison to Middle Chinese and the other dialects, however. Another is the loss of consonants on the ends of syllables, so that while Middle Chinese had an inventory of "-p, -t, -k, -m, -n, ng", Mandarin only has "-n, -ng". (A few dialects, such as that of Nanjing, also have the glottal stop.) In addition, Mandarin underwent fewer tone splits than the other dialects. As a result, many words which sound different in dialects such as Cantonese are homophones in Mandarin. Mandarin has adjusted by developing compound words in order to make up for the development of homophones. The use of compounds is generally less frequent in other dialects.
- Wu 吳語/吴语: (c. 90 million) spoken in the provinces of Jiangsu and Zhejiang Wu includes Shanghai dialect. Wu dialect is notable among Chinese dialects in having kept voiced consonants, such as /b/, /d/, /g/, /z/, /v/, /dZ/, /Z/ etc.
- Hakka/Kejia 客家話/客家话: (c. 35 million) spoken by the Hakka people in several provinces across southern China. The term "Hakka" itself translates as "guest families", and the Hakka people are descended from immigrants from North China in ancient times. Hakka has kept many features of northern Middle Chinese that have been lost in the North. It also has a full complement of nasal endings, -m -n ŋ and occlusive endings -p -t -k, maintaining the four categories of tonal types, with splitting in the ping and ru tones, giving six tones. Some dialects of Hakka have seven tones, due to splitting in the qu tone. One of the distinguishing features of Hakka phonology is that Middle Chinese voiced initials are transformed into Hakka voiceless aspirated initials.
- Min 閩語/闽语: (c. 50 million) spoken in Fujian, Taiwan, the Philippines, and Southeast Asia. Min is the only group of Chinese dialects that cannot be directly derived from Middle Chinese. Due to its great internal disparity, Min can be divided into seven groups of dialects: Min Nan (which includes Hokkien, Teochew (Chaozhou), and Taiwanese), Min Dong, Min Bei, Min Zhong, Pu Xian, Qiong Wen, and Shao Jiang.
- Yue(Cantonese) 粵語/粤语: (c. 80 million) spoken in Guangdong province, Guangxi Autonomous Region, Hong Kong, Macau, all over Southeast Asia and by many Overseas Chinese. Used by linguistics, "Cantonese" covers all the Yue dialects, such as Toishanese, though the term is also used to refer to just the Standard Cantonese of Guangzhou and Hong Kong. Some dialects of Yue have intricate sets of tone compared to other Chinese dialects—with varieties having up to nine or ten tones. Yue keeps a full complement of Middle Chinese word-final consonants (p, t, k, m, n, ng)
- Xiang 湘語/湘语:(c. 35 million) spoken in Hunan province. Xiang is usually divided into the "old" and "new" types, with the new type being significantly closer to Mandarin.
- Gan 贛語/赣语: (c. 20 million) spoken in Jiangxi province. In the past, it was viewed as closely related to Hakka dialects, because of the way Middle Chinese voiced initials have become voiceless aspirated initials, as in Hakka, and were hence called by the umbrella term "Hakka-Gan dialects". This grouping has, however, now become obsolete.
(The following three dialect groups are not always classed separately.)
- Hui 徽語/徽语: spoken in the southern parts of Anhui province—usually classified as a sub-branch of Gan.
- Jin 晉語/晋语: spoken in Shanxi province, as well as parts of Shaanxi, Hebei, Henan, and Inner Mongolia. It is often classed with Mandarin.
- Pinghua 平話/平话: spoken in parts of the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region. It is sometimes classed with Cantonese.
Some varieties remain unclassified. These include:
- Danzhou dialect 儋州話/儋州话: spoken in Danzhou, Hainan.
- Xianghua 鄉話/乡话: spoken in a small strip of land in western Hunan, this is a group of dialects that have not been conclusively classified.
- Shaozhou Tuhua 韶州土話/韶州土话: spoken at the border regions of Guangdong, Hunan, and Guangxi, this is an area of great linguistic diversity, and has not yet been conclusively described or classified.
In addition, the Dungan language (東干語/东干语) is a language descended from Chinese spoken in Kyrgyzstan, and is akin to northwestern dialects of Mandarin. However, it is written in the Cyrillic alphabet and may not be considered by all to be Chinese.
Sociolinguistics of spoken variations of Chinese
In southern China where the difference between Standard Mandarin and the local dialect is particularly pronounced, well-educated Chinese are generally fluent in Standard Mandarin, and most people have at least a good passive knowledge of it, in addition to being native speakers of the local dialect. The choice of dialect varies based on the social situation. Standard Mandarin is usually considered more formal and is required when speaking to a person who does not understand the local dialect. The local dialect (be it nonstandard Mandarin or non-Mandarin altogether) is generally considered more intimate and is used among close family members and friends and in everyday conversation within the local area. Chinese speakers will frequently code switch between Standard Mandarin and the local dialect. Parents will generally speak to their children in dialect, and the relationship between dialect and Mandarin appears to be mostly stable.
Knowing the local dialect is of considerable social benefit and most Chinese who permanently move to a new area will attempt to pick up the local dialect. Learning a new dialect is usually done informally through a process of immersion and recognizing sound shifts. Typically, a speaker of one dialect of Chinese will need about a year of immersion to understand the local dialect and about three to five years to become fluent in speaking it. Because of the variety of dialects spoken, there are usually few formal methods for learning a local dialect.
Within the People's Republic of China there has been a consistent drive towards promoting the standard language; for instance, the education system is entirely Mandarin-medium from the second year onwards. However, usage of local dialect is tolerated, and in many informal situations socially preferred. Unlike in Hong Kong, where colloquial Cantonese characters are often used for formal occasions, within the PRC a character set closer to Mandarin tends to be used. At the national level, differences in dialect generally do not correspond to political divisions or categories, and this has for the most part prevented dialect from becoming the basis of identity politics. Historically, many of the people who promoted Chinese nationalism were from southern China and did not natively speak the national standard language, and even leaders from northern China rarely spoke with the standard accent. For example, Mao Zedong often emphasized his Hunan origins in speaking, rendering much of what he said incomprehensible to many Chinese. One consequence of this is that China does not have a well developed tradition of spoken political rhetoric, and most Chinese political works are intended primarily as written works rather than spoken works.
Another factor that limits the political implications of dialect is that it is very common within an extended family for different people to know and use different dialects. In addition, while speaking similar dialect provides very strong group identity at the level of a city or county, the high degree of linguistic diversity limits the amount of group solidarity at larger levels. Finally, the linguistic diversity of southern China makes it likely that in any large group of Chinese, Standard Mandarin will be the only form of speech that everyone understands.
On the other hand, in the Republic of China on Taiwan, the government had a policy until the mid-1980s of promoting Standard Mandarin as high-status and the local languages—Taiwanese and Hakka—as low-status, a situation which caused much resentment and resulted in considerable backlash in the 1990s, manifested in the Taiwanese localization movement.
Examples of variations
The Min dialects are often regarded as being furthest removed linguistically from Standard Mandarin, in phonology, grammar, and vocabulary. To illustrate: in Taiwanese, a variety of Min, to express the idea that one is feeling a little ill, one might say (in Pe̍h-oē-jī )
- Goá kā-kī lâng ū tān-po̍h--á bô sóng-khoài.
which, when translated cognate-by-cognate into Mandarin would be something like:
- Wǒ zìjǐ rén yǒu dānbó a bù shuǎngkuài. (我自己人有單薄仔不爽快)
This is an awkward or even non-productive sentence. A little more colloquially it would be:
- Wǒ zìjǐ yǒu yīdiǎn bù shūfú. (我自己有一點不舒服.)
A little better would be:
- Wǒ yǒu yīdiǎn bù shūfú. (我有一點不舒服.)
which removes the reflexive pronoun (zìjǐ), not usually needed in Mandarin. Instead, some people, particularly in the north of China, would say:
- Wǒ yǒu yīdiǎr bù shūfú. (我有一点ㄦ不舒服.)
See also
- Demographics of China
- Demographics of Taiwan
- Languages of China
- Subgroups of the Han nationality
- Sinitic linguistic family
References
- DeFrancis, John. 1990. The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. ISBN 0824810686
- Hannas, William. C. 1997. Asia's Orthographic Dilemma. University of Hawaii Press. ISBN 082481892X (paperback); ISBN 0824818423 (hardcover)
External links
"Spoken Chinese"