Creating this series of videos, I am well aware that there would be instances of discrepancies, errors in facts, errors in general opinion, distortions and misleading information. Despite all that, I endeavor to bring you the history based on what I have researched, according to the information I have at hand, and also based on my understand and interpretation of what I have. I do apologize for any error that appears. I will add these to the description text when these are pointed out to be and can be substantiated. Consider each video as work in progress as we continue to expand on our knowledge. What is important is that these videos help us ignite conversations of our past, which others may not have stated. If you discover an error, please inform me in the common in the most courteous way. Any discourteous comment will be removed. It is not in my habit of responding to rude comments, my usual action is to scrub the comment section of any discourtesy, so that others enjoy a pleasant reading of one another's comments. Anyone who is rude may also be muted, so think twice before penning something offensive. It may result in your not being able to comment in the future. As a general rule, I address all as sir, unless I know you as a woman, then I will address you as madam. I will not be calling you brother, bro, sis, sister, miss, ms or mister. By this, you will have a good idea of the general tone of this platform.
From my own independent research, old Chinese is split into 4 variants which are Bai, Min, Ba-Shu, and Middle Chinese. Bai language is the first split from Old Chinese and are not consider Han Chinese. Ba-Shu Chinese (old Sichuan) went extinct during the Mongol conquest of Song China; although there is still a hybrid version Ba-Shu & Middle Chinese in Sichuan. Hokkien, Teochew, and Hainanese formed a dialectical continuum of Minnan. They are languages in their own right, but I also believed a Teochew and Hokkein speaker right on the border of Guangdong and Fujian can communicate with one another. Middle Chinese is the most numerous and produces many daughter languages. Hakka, Cantonese and Mandarin are dialects of Middle Chinese with Cantonese being more conservative and retain more Middle Chinese features. Northern Guangdong has a Chinese language that I can't figure out the origin. I dont know if anyone has any information of Shaozhou/Yuebei Chinese. It might be a fusion of different Middle Chinese languages such as proto Cantonese or proto Hakka.
I will in future publish my videos on Old Chinese, Middle Chinese, Classical Chinese, Literary Chinese. I can be sure whether my research will be the same as yours but we can certainly compare after that.
My ancestor is Hokkian, but our family adopted the Spanish culture and put aside our Chinese civilization. A huge loss for me... My Chinese ancestry is rescued by marrying my 2nd wife who is a Tae Chew and Hakka Chinese. Otherwise, I lived and grew up amongst White Middle class and many time I forget that I'm Chinese, much less Asian
Western Kwangtung has Gou Lou. Which is even older than Cantonese represent the older Chinese language from Han dynasty to the Chan Kingdom period before the ancestors of the Cantonese came over during the Tang period. Btw Kwangsai Baak Wah is mutually intelligble with Cantonese of the Pearl river delta with a strong accent. Unfortunately it will be endangered in 30 years as Chlidren under 15 are no longer proficient in it in China. Cantonese could still hold out in Pearl Delta region slighlty longer but the prognosis future is worrying. Cantonese will die out in Kay EL in 30 years time with only a handful ( only the original Cantonese people) could hold a conversatiion. Chinese people in Kay El is shifting to the creolised Malaysian Mandarin.
I'm a native Cantonese speaker and can also speak Mandarin fluently. For me, speaking Mandarin is just about mastering the sounds and tones of the words. Grammar and vocabulary I learned already at school and are not a problem. I remember travelling in northern China for about a month, and when I returned to Hong Kong, it took me more than a week to be able to speak Cantonese fluently again! Years ago I travelled regularly to Shanghai on business relating to a building project, and attended scheduled meetings with the local firm. I am not a Shanghainese speaker. We communicated in Mandarin, but at meetings, the locals would often diverge and speak Shanghainese among themselves, assuming that I could not understand a word of what they were talking about. Surprisingly, when they talked about subjects relating to the project, I could pretty well understand what they were saying. But when they talked about other things, such as everyday events, they were totally lost to me. It's all about sharing the same written language, Mandarin. That says it. Cantonese, Shanghainese, Fujianese, etc., may be separate languages linguistically, but they are also dialects in their relation with each other through the common written language. Until the end of the imperial Qing dynasty, Mandarin was like Latin in Europe in the Middle Ages. The modern reincarnation of Mandarin, through relentless promotion by the Chinese government, has become the unifying element among the Chinese nation, bridging across the nation's vast ethnic diversity.
Your interpretation is biased towards Mandarin being what everything Chinese, linguistically, would "start from". Things link back to their origins, not the other way around. It is like saying that Modern Italian IS Latin, and one must understand the Romance Language group from the point of view that modern day and recent historical Italian would be the starting point to understand Latin linguistically. Of course, this is incorrect. This interpretation is incorrect; it is actually *backwards*. Mandarin, itself is a dialect of an area in Northern China, the tongue of "Han" China region.
Mandarin was NOT like Latin in Europe. Classical Chinese was. & it's NOT Putonghua. Whatever "Mandarin" it was depended on where the capital was. So the "mandarins" spoke Nanjing dialect when the capital was there. When it was Luoyang, it was the Luoyang language that was the prestige dialect.
@@SunnyIlhaBased on the original northern Chinese, Mandarin/PuTongHua developed via great modification from the Mongols (eliminating the entry tone), and then completely mutated by the Manchurians, adding the linguistic features of the Altaic language family (retroflex sound). Therefore, Zhang Taiyan章太炎, a famous master of Chinese scholar, said that it was the sound of Hulu胡虜, the nomads invaders from the north frigid zone.
Well before the founding of the Republic of China in 1912, China had 7 official languages; Cantonese, Hokkien, Hakka, Shanghaiese, Tibetan, Wu and Mandarin. Because of politics and expediency, Mandarin was chosen as the official language as the Beijing dialect was most commonly spoken language in the capital.
In my future videos, I will elaborate on this, in particular, on how Mandarin was chosen. I do not know how you derive the statement that "China had 7 official languages", but I will explain to you China's official language, prior to Mandarin, based on my own research.
Not very accurate. Those languages were never made official in China during dynatic period. During Qing there were 5 languages that were written in official documents. Classical Han, Manchurian, Mongolian, Tibetan and Uighur. But later it was reduced to just two for major Documents. Manchurian and Classical Han.
I think whichever dialects, the Chinese writings or Chinese characters are more or less understood by all dialect groups with some variations here and there.
From what I’ve heard, but please don’t quote me 😂, Cantonese was the main official national language during the Ming and Tang Dynasties. 唐詩三百首 is a collection of Tang poems that are best read out in Cantonese. These poems were selected and compiled during the Qing dynasty by a guy called 蘅塘 and he picked some of the most famous poems by 李白, a 詩仙. These poems proved the importance of the Cantonese language. When CCP was formed in 1949, the top guys in Beijing were debating should they make Cantonese or mandarin as their national language, the south would prefer Cantonese but the north preferred mandarin. The rest is history. Cantonese has been an official language for millenniums in China but mandarin is just a hybrid language, a mixture of Cantonese and Manchurian spoken only during the Qing dynasty
孫中山, Sun Yat Sen led the 1911 Revolution that overthrew the Qing dynasty and made China a republic. He was born in Zhongshan, a Canton province. Though he’s Hakka but he spoke Cantonese and he studied in Hong Kong. His followers in the south would prefer Cantonese was being made the national language but for whatever political reasons, the people in the north selected mandarin. Now more than 1.4 billion Chinese speak mandarin, but let’s hope Cantonese is kept alive and do not ever let it die out….
Very good video on the different Chinese Languages and dialects. Thoroughly enjoy your video. Well done. PS__ I am Singapore Chinese Hokkien of Quanzhou group.!👍💪
It is definitely Langiage as there is no similarity in sound nor understanding. Dialects are like Loghat in Malay. We have Penang Loghat and Johor loghat. Both are Malay dialecta and you can hear similarity. Another example is UK English dialect vs US English Dialect
Actually Malay variants sounded nothing like each other as well, you put Kedah person and Kelantan person next to each other it's like talking with a chicken and a duck. "Hang pi mana" (Kedah) and "Demo gi khuano" (Kelantan) is very different. Not to mention more differences between those groups (Pahangese have at least 30 dialects which are very different from each other). Mind you that Peninsular Malaysia is only the size of Guangdong, to have that much diversity in such small area is mindboggling to say the least, even Russian with its vast expanse of land doesn't have dialects.
@blueshirt26 Nonsense..30 over dialects..Not many variation..As clearly seen in history that Paramewara was elected as Sultan Melaka in1400 in Peminsulsr Siam.The Melala Port build by Emperor Ming got famous as Admiral Zheng He promote this port through out the world The port bevame succesful.and Malays Palembang migrated into peninsular Siam and ovet populated the Siam town and Ciities. They migrated North towards Kedah and East toeards Pahang Terenganu. That is why Sultan of various states are actally brother and Uncles of Paramewara...Thry are the sane groip of palembang Malays. The difference is the Mix with Siam language.
@@yours_sincerely48 clearly you are here to provoke and being racist instead of learning from each other. You have absolutely no qualifications about Malay language and history. Stupid is as stupid does.
I wish it is available, and I do not know why it isn't. Maybe because they have not developed Google Translate for Cantonese yet, nor have they done it for Hokkien and other Sinitic languages. Time will tell whether they add Cantonese translation in the future.
It is kinda similar to the situation of Malays where various groups of people closely related to each other but at the same time different enough to have noticeable regional differences in culture, clothing and language/dialect. For example, Kedah people cannot understand Kelantanese without exposure because the languages are distinct enough to not be intelligible to each other and have to communicate in Standard Malay. When I first went to Negeri Sembilan as someone from Terengganu, I also could not understand a word of what they're saying and have to communicate in Standard Malay, when I do research the Malays actually speak different but closely related languages, kinda like Romance languages where there is strong similarities in terms of vocabulary and grammar but also different enough to be considered distinct mainly due to differences in phonology and syntax (lots of false friends too, for example "selalu" in Selangor means "always" but in Terengganu it means "Right now"). The reason why they are called dialects are mainly political, similar to the situation of Sinitic languages. But of course China being bigger and more populous it has longer history of these languages to developed much further apart from each other.
TQ for your research. Is it true that when SunYatSen established ROC, the KMT juggled whether to use Mandarin or Cantonese or ?? as the official or national language?
@@Jin-e7q I had this feeling Qin Shi Huang was a Hakka as it came from the northern side of China....LOL. Hakka are more politically involved than other group. It was said Hakka are from the royal lineage so they were familiar with military structure like they build the Fujian Tulou incorporated with military defence.
Went to Taiwan. Their Hokkien is very difficult to understand. They said they added Japanese loan words but in reality, those loan words are few and far between. Are they from different region of Fujian?
They are in fact from the same Fujian seaports that provided settlers to the rest of Southeast Asia. The language has branched away through the generations.
@@learnpenanghokkienTaiwan Minnan accent is 泉漳滥. Nearer to Penang Hokien. In 台南and Southern Taiwan iT is more 偏漳. The Quanzhou vowel of er- 短,坐,还，和（ 尚）, 转( seh- 漳音）are all lost They have their own vocabulary like 共款，Jima( 现在）, 便所, guleixi 牛丽施うれしい - happy etc. Some are Japanese words. It is not to the extent of difficulty cited by the above commentor. with so many 台语songs and dramas that are free to watch on line. It also depends on the standard of Hokien of the individual.
I had a lecturer who comes into Uni class and plays a 30min video from UA-cam as his lesson. The video is ok maybe but he kept doing it for every lesson. This was at least 10 years ago. I dare say your videos are a joy to watch and I hope to attend your lecture in person one day!
I did offer in-person lectures, but that was some ten years ago, usually to tour guides at tour guide associations, but it is too time consuming, and can only reach a small audience size, about 100 person. I would rather use videos, like this one, as I can reach out to thousands, and I don't have to keep doing the same lecture over and over.
It is the writing unified all Chinese by Qin Shi Huang more than 2000 years ago. So it works as one family. (Common language) 普通话 is just a spoken language that work on every Chinese communication whatever province you are, it has never called a National language.
I am fluent in Spanish. I have many Brazilian friends, and Italian colleagues. Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese are dialects descended from a common language. French is further apart from the above mentioned 3 dialects. So it’s a different language. I am also fluent in English and German. English and German have evolved too far apart from each other to qualify as different dialects of a common language. I speak Hokkien and Mandarin. They are dialects, because they have common grammar and too many common vocabulary.
I LOVE how you preface that you're Malaysian Chinese & that automatically means you're an expert in Chinese languages. Oh yeah they're different LANGUAGES by the way. I'm a linguist.
@@Jumpoable he's kinda right, Cantonese and Mandarin's main difference is phonology rather than vocabulary. Their vocabulary remains similar but pronunciations are completely different. "I am a Norwegian" Mandarin: Wo shi nuo wei ren Cantonese: Ngo hai no wai jan Mandarin: Gong xi fa chai Cantonese: Kung hey fat choi You can tell they share the same root word, just different pronunciation.
Bravo to your hard work? TQ 4 sharing. Had learned much. Mandarin being the national or official language in China, hence it is called 'PU TONG HUA' (common language). Am I right? Mandarin has its written form & verbal sound (hanyupinyin). Cantonese has its own too, HK is an eg. Do Hakka, Hokkien, Teochew, FooChow, HengHua, etc., have their own? TQ Sir.
@@jameslohtaikan8796 wow ! great topic !!! :) also were there different writing systems and then they got rid of them ? ... because online I see wenzhounese even has their own kind of way to use chinese characters to write their language
Shih Huang ti did not speak Mandarin. Mandarin is the language spoken in the north . It has several dialects. Mandarin itself is not very old. Probably emerged during the Yuan dynasty. Modern Mandarin was called Guan Hua. That is the language of the Mandarins those who run the adminstration. It came with the Manchurians especially the Emperor who could not understand officials from the provinces when they are posted in the Capital Peking . Therefore higher ranks Mandarins have to learn to speak or at least pronounced Classical Chinese to the Emperor in speech of Peking. And the speech spoken by in Peking and its pronuciation of Chinese characters were modified by the Manchus and Bannermen both Manchus and Han. Manchurian influenced Peking Mandarin pronouciation. Therefore standard Mandarin uses Peking pronuciatiob and tones as its standard although Peking colloquail dialect should not be confused with standard Mandarin.
Chinese is a civilization not just a nation. From my observation, a language comes out of the mouth to communicate, whereas a writing codex is what people put down in a visual form. Chinese characters is completely visual as it can be understood by visual inspection, where as languages have letters that represent sounds as if it is a aural represention. Chinese represent meaning through a visual understanding of the characters and many people need to ask others more knowledgeable for pronunciation, although looking at the character, they have understanding from its construct. Indoeuropean languages all use sound representation for understnding. Aural versus visual is the big difference and that also implies that Indoeuropean languages like English require more written words to say the same thing. A two step process, read, hear, then understand. Whereas Chinese is read, then understad, don't need to hear. Since almost all dialects use Han Zi for meaningful communication at the sociopolitical level, it is a visual language that makes up the communication of the Chinese civilization. The Koreans simplified the Han Zi to simplify communication, however, they have reduced their ability to communicate with their big neighbour, whereas, the Japanese can still read a significant number of Han Zi eventhough they have simpified many characters. All their hiraganas were deduced from Han Zi to become the aural component of Japanese. Just food for thought...!
Actual in the reality, today all the countries official languages had been transformed and modified by the ex-Dynasty. Oldest Korea uses Mandarin as official languages but changed to Korean Languages by one of the Dynasty decade because the rural wants their citizens literate. In the oldiest Malaya, Indonesia and Borneo all spoke Kelantan Melayu and Indonesian Melayu languages. Remember they called it :"Bahasa Pasar" after modern Bahasa Melayu officially launched. This part was same with the history of Mandarin and Korean Languages. So in the today each state, they all are speak different pronounce of Melayu and our Malay friends also call it Perak Dialect or Kelantan Dialect but in the official letter, uses modern Bahasa Malayu. Indonesia also same. India also has many different dialects but their official languages was English. 😊
I have come across different people explain this differently. I will explain this matter also, in a future video, so that -- with luck -- I can help people understand the role of Literary Chinese, not only in China proper, but also in Korea, Vietnam and Japan.
@visHan8 as an Indian who speaks four different Indian languages let me assure you that the diversity of languages in India are most certainly not dialects of each other. These are all independent languages many with their own scripts and all with their own literature. I sense a pejorative tone in your final comment but once again India has multiple official languages. Hindi and English are most commonly used at a federal and national level.
@@flyingzone356 Or anyone with sense & an EAR. Some Mandarin speakers cannot comprehend a single Cantonese phrase without context, yet they MAINTAIN that Cantonese is a "dialect" So how come you cannot understand or pronounce a Cantonese sentence properly leh?
Fascinating, thanks!! I just wondered how the Chinese travelled overseas and do trade??? ....utterance of words, foreign to one another, but by pointing to items of interest, form a basic common understanding and communication!!! 😅😅
Another point to look at: Imagine the times of chunqiu or sanguo, these were multi-nations eras in the land of China and people possibly spoke differently within each nation but somehow still share the root of the previous language.
You can argue that they're dialects of Chinese, but you shouldn't say that only Mandarin is the language but throw all the others under. Even by precedence that's messed up. Mandarin is the last guy to show up.
There is another aspect of analysis. All languages have several different sociolinguistic register level-- highly formal semi-‘formal regular semi-formal definitional informal slang vulgar swear/curse Between 2 speech systems, the more formal, like highly formal levels, have most similarities, like 2 dialects, with maximum no. of similar words, more like dialects, but swear levels use most different words, more like 2 different languages. Perhaps such 2 or more speech systems can be called langlects? or diaguages!
Certainly sir! But broadly speaking, we split it into two, being the high and low registers. With just two, we can show the greatest difference between one to the other.
good if you can interview oldies in penang whilst they are still around, sharing old photos, in a way immortalising their memories for future generations. asking them about how life was during their youth and adulthood .. capturing those memories for us all !!! :)
I am of the opinion that, there should be more people interested in our local history to do something. So while I embark on my research, there will be someone else who are into interviewing the elderly. Often the work is so vast, it requires more than one person to help fully uncover our past.
I think when spoken, Hokkien, Cantonese and Hakka are languages; if written, these communication systems can be called dialects because their written words are the same.
I will explain the spoken and written languages in future videos. Right now, so many people are confused, and out of the confusion, they add their opinion, which leads to more confusion.
They dont write in different languages they either wrote in a standardised classical Chinese or in modern times they all actually write using Mandarin standard. Cantonese the other hand has developed its own non formal vernacular literary tradition with specialised characters to write dialogues in Movie scripts Comics advertising and Text and email messages. Although the characters are far from standardised but Ive learnt it through HK movie subtitles and reading comics. Other Chinese would be quite flummoxed with written colloquial Cantonese.
@@learnpenanghokkien problems is we have people who cannlt except that there is no one Chinese language because it has been taught the oneness of the "Chinese Nation" and whether we in the people outside of the political borders of the PRC are part of the " Chinese Nation " is a different matter. I dont want to go into the politics of that. Linguitically Cantonese and Hokkien are different languages not dialects of a same language which exist 2000 years ago.
@@desmondlim5836 of course there nuances in the language or dialect due to geographical, historical and cultural differences and development but the script is largely the same. Cuneiform was the script used in the Levant by many of those lost kingdoms that spoke Babylonian, Sumerian, Akkadian, Hittite and Elam
Dialects in Language refers to *spoken* language, not writing. Dialect refers to *speech* , not symbols (written; writing system). Take for example, that the Vietnamese Language *uses* the romance language *script* . (Writing). However the Vietnamese Language is *not* a romance language, *nor* is it a dialect of the romance language group.
Hokkien (Minnan), Cantonese (Yue) and Hakka (Khek) are languages but they are subdivided into different dialects varying in accents and some words during to historical, cultural and geographical factors. Teachew, Hainnanese and Luichew are sub-languages of Minnan, and Minnan is a sub-language of Min along with Hockchew and Henghwa. Szeyap dialects including Hoishan seems to be Cantonese sub-languages or dialects. However, there are many minnan elements in these languages oe dialects too. Hakka even has more sub-lamguage. Most kheks in Singapore are from Teochew Prefecrure such Taipu and there are overlapping with Cantonese and Teoochew. There are also Kheks of Eng Teng of Hokkien Province. I believe Khek, YUE, Min and Wu were once from the same language.
Well in order to establish one as a language it has to have it's written characters, spoken form and literature, like Mandarin, which other Chinese forms don't have hence they are merely dialects though they may have evolved over the years. Like for instance, bahasa kelate is a dialect and so is bahasa Perak etc. These are all dialects as they don't have literature and characters of their own but just the way of speaking. Unlike bahasa Melayu that had evolved to what it is today as a standalone language. Interestingly the scenario in India is different. All states have their own written form, spoken form and literature. They stand on their own. And they are languages not dialects.
I personally think that we should look at the historical aspect as well. Also, the grammar and character-use preference in Cantonese / Hokkien are quite different from mandarin. In mandarin, the same character used in Cantonese/Hokkien sometimes also have very different meaning and usage. For example, He/She in mandarin is 他/她/它， whereas in cantonese 渠/佢 and in hokkien it's 伊。Also there are many classical chinese literature that can be understood more easily using cantonese and hokkien than mandarin. This is also why I see some similarity between Hokkien/Cantonese is to Mandarin (also partially in Japanese) and Bahasa Melayu is to Bahasa Indonesia.
Yes sir. Fukien is in fact derived from the Hakka Sixian pronunciation of Hokkien (福建), which is also pronounced Fújiàn in Mandarin. Thus, different Chinese language/dialect pronounce the same Chinese characters differently.
Throughout Chinese history, the language used by emperors varied with the dynasties and the ethnic origins of the ruling family. I will elaborate that in future videos.
Anyone who has even the most basic training in linguistics can tell you that those are all Sinitic LANGUAGES that belong to the Sino-Tibetan language family. There are various Mandarin, Cantonese, Hokkien, Shanghaiese, etc. dialects that are mutually intelligible. But Mandarin, Cantonese, Hokkien, Hakka, Shanghaiese, etc. themselves are not mutually intelligible. Mutual intelligibiliy is the best (but not the only) criterion to decide whether two tongues are languages or dialects. Of course, dialects could evolve into languages over time if sufficient linguistic isolation has taken place.
It's NOT mutual intelligibility that sets out those variants of Chinese, nor their origin. It's their linguistic system, mainly with respect to sounds and especially tonal systems. Within one dialectgroup (= language) these features are more or less similar (though not identical). Tonal systems within Mandarin are quite similar, although the tones themselves are not. The dialects of Cantonese have more tones like all Southern dialects. But the tonal system of Southern Min (Hokkien) is different from that of Cantonese mainly because of its "flipflops". Besides this, the development of initials in the latter two groups was quite different, which is true of Mandarin as well (and especially the Wu-dialects which kept a degree of voicing). Their respective grammars differ as well, though the patterns are more or less the same. But almost all the grammatical words differ between dialectgroups. And then there is vocabulary. Certain words are peculiar to a dialectgroup, and many of those words have come to be written in characters invented for that peculiar dialectgroup (Cantonese, Hokkien and Wu all have their own vernacular characters, which are, however, almost never used). However, to a Chinese citizen it sounds horrible to speak of Chinese languages, as if China were not a unified country. There is but one motherland ("ancestral land" in Chinese) and to denounce this is one of the most disrespectful deeds of blasphemy towards one's ancestors. So Chinese politics / mentality decides that one should speak of dialects (fangyan) and of local speech (tuhua). All Chinese dialects are officially grouped together as Hanyu. although most of the time by Hanyu only standard Mandarin (Putonghua / Guoyu) is meant.
It is important to remember that the terms 'Sino-Tibetan' and 'Sinitic' are terms only, and in this case, this long-standing term (used to describe the languages across the expanse of the vastness of China) is a *geographic* description *only* , NOT based in *Linguistics* . There are two distinct prehistoric Language roots in China. They are not related. One has an epicenter in the northern edge of the Tropics, Northern Vietnam and Southern China, including the marine coastline. This includes all of the Guangdong region. This is the ancient, and prehistoric place of origin of the Hakka Tribes. Ancient Hakka lore, passed down through tens of thousands of generations tells of the origin of the Hakka being along a river there. They grew successfully without warfare peacefully so soundly that there were too many people in the village, so one bunch of people went across the river to the north side, from the south side. To expand to new land for people to start more village building and new agricultural land. (Expansion). The language that was spoken was is a proto-Austronesian root tongue that eventually through eons of Time, spread southward into and throughout Southeast Asia, Indonesia, the Filipino Archipelago, Taiwan, and ultimately out into and across the entire Pacific Ocean, and, eastward over the Indian Ocean to Madagascar. This ancient tongue is the ancestor tongue of modern day Hakka, Cantonese, and Tribal Languages of Yunnan. It's prehistoric tongue is the ancestor to the Austronesian language family. My B.A. is in Cultural Anthropology. I have also studied Linguistics and Physical Anthropology. My area of studies focused on Sunda-Sahul, Oceania, Far East Asia, Aboriginal North and South America, and Human Evolution in Africa.
@@SunnyIlha I thought most Hakka lore believed in the myth that they were all properly respectable Han refugees from "the north" & only settled in the savage south after escaping countless wars in different waves...? Where did you hear this tale? From your own clan? Seriously curious about it. My paternal grandmother is Hakka.
@Jumpoable My cousin, 3rd cousin. He's older than me, like an Uncle . He born in China. We talked one time about it length one day over coffee many years ago. He knew more than me and he informed me more, because he was born there.
Sorry Timothy, I'm afraid the longer you try to explain and distinguish the technical differences of the Chinese language and dialect, you have muddied the water and it's still as clear as mud.
You forgot See-Yup I don't know the spelling but it's pronounced that way. My grandmother was See-Yup and while my grandfather was away in the Pacific earning a living back around 1900, the Hakkas who were fierce robbers came and attack their home. So there was always ill feelings there. Bit like the Scottish clans. They are all Scottish but they battled each other and killed each other. So when my dad married my mum who is Hakka, she never had a chance. Without doing anything the animosity was there just because she was a Hakka. Mum learnt See-Yup. Hakka is not an easy dialect. In our town in Papua New Guinea up until 1965 the See-Yup, Hakkas and Cantonese communicated in Cantonese when in public. After 1966 the younger generation spoke English.
they can be called languages, but after formation of china, it become a dialect. Hakka is a subbranch from the Gan , there are smaller dialects , which are not a part of asean
You did explained that the illustrations used are all AI generated. I must say that they look very authentic, only a little too enhanced for their vintage. But I admire them👍🙂
Thank you. Keep up your interest. AI sounds very stupid, but I hope it will improve. I especially do not want to hear "dive in". Errr! As a Linguists grad and work in the language field in China 1979-80, including travel all over China, listening to the languages and dialects. There are a lot of non-Hans hidden by the CCP in China. My heart bleeds for Hong Kong and have little hope for Cantonese's survival.
None of the Chinese languages/dialects, however, is close enough to Old Chinese. If I were allowed to, I would pick Amdo Tibetan to be the official language of China, reasons being 1) it's one of the most conversative Sino-Tibetan languages, hence super classical, 2) it has decent number of speaking population and importantly 3) it has active productivity.
Only using the shared writing system claims that the different languages across China are "dialects of one same language". Which is incorrect. The various spoken tongues in China are different languages, not dialects of a language. To illuminate the Malaysia example, the unofficial use of english does not mean it is a dialect of Malay. Another example is the Philippines, which is the second largest English speaking Country in the World second to only the USA. (It has more English speakers than the UK!!). However while English is officially the adopted second language there, it is NOT the Native Official standardized language (the Tagalog dialect) of an Island Archipelago Nation that has *different* *languages* spoken across it. Note that, though, unlike across China, the languages in the Philippine Archipelago, as across Indonesia, are all branches of Austronesian root tongue (which is also the same shared root as Malay and other Southeast Asian Countries, (and, *linguistically* the Peoples of Guangdong, Southern Coastal China and Yunnan. A "social political explanation of language" should not be ever used concerning Language. It is in error, and incorrect to use this "explanation" regarding *language* . Another example is regarding Native American languages in the United States. The different Native American languages are NOT dialects of the official language of the USA english (this is almost nearly a dumb thought; it is obvious it is not). Incidentally, it is absolutely true and correct that American standard english is a dialect of England english. This sounds even weird to even say, since it's completely stating the physical *obvious* and a bygone conclusion. In China, there are *different* *Languages* . These Languages, many of which have multiple *millions* of speakers *each* *separately* are *not* dialects of a single main language. That is to say, those are NOT dialects of Mandarin. Are they all the languages OF China? Are they the languages IN China? Well, it is stating the obvious and a bygone conclusion that they ARE. However it is a problem when it is confused and misinterpreted that all of those Languages are said to be "dialects of one language". This would be *incorrect* .
Yes, yes, I agree with you. Alas, though the "social political explanation" should not be used, it is used anyway! Not by us, but by the powers that be who want to explain it that way.
I will explain in future videos how the situation was before Modern Standard Mandarin became the common language. It is important that people -- the Chinese people of Malaysia and Singapore in particular -- understand this.
Hokkien, Hakka, Hainanese , Shanghainese, Cantonese n Teocheow are basically are dialects it derive from diffident province of the China mainland as far as I know ..maybe I’m wrong 😂
@marielim2519 Cantonese, Hakka, Teochew all come from the same Guangdong province.Are you Chinese? Maybe not Chinese culturally like Thai Chinese or Indonesian Chinese. You all put nationality ahead of ethnic culture and heritage. OMG.
Swedish, Norwegian and Danish are considered to be different languages, yet they are largely mutually intelligible. The same could be said for Spanish and Portuguese. But Hokkien is totally mutually unintelligible with Mandarin, yet is called a dialect. The podcast used the example of the difference in pronunciation between Mandarin and Cantonese of the word for “horse”. At least, the two have a similar sound, “ma” (albeit different tones). A more striking difference would be the pronunciation for “horse” in Hokkien, which is “beh”. The reason why the fiction that Hokkien, Cantonese and Hakka (and others) are dialects is because the central government wanted to downgrade them, since dialects are considered to be an inferior version of the standard language.
What's important is not about saying whether they are dialects or languages, but in fully understanding why they are dialects and why they are languages.
He saying the linguistics perspective not the written form. Cantonese people can understand the Mandarin written form but cannot be completely understood by the Hokkien people as certain Hokkien words cannot be express in Mandarin.
No one calls modern European languages as dialects of Proto Indo-European. Division in languages or dialects are more often based on politics rather than linguistics.
Do you call English, French, Italian, and Chinese dialects? To me, any form of communication, that can be written, read, and printed is a language. Try writing down Hokkien, when have you last read Hokkien text, or read a printed newsletter in Hokkien?
Some people use characters to write Hokkien some ar commonly agreed upon, but others have varied choices There are several Romanized alphabets by different people & of course International Phonetic Alohabets Hokkien letters.
Keep it up the goodwork fr penang,very knowledgeable,most young generation todak speak madarin n forget their mother tongue,my own children cant even talk hokkien randon only unless taiwan/singapore show that is in hokkien old people love watching it on the stageplay,even in penang the vendor also speak madarin due to the chinese tourist fr oversea ,let keep it up Ah Ba you doing a good job,keeping up penang baba hokkien alive n it is still there for our younger generation to appreciate it.
There is so much misinformation flying all over the place. The younger generation, who grew up on Mandarin education, are often misled by the schools, and as a result, they regurgitate the misinformation about Mandarin.
To me reason why they are dialects is because their evolution has been strongly interfered by the unified literal language, if only had Qin Shi Huang not unified China, and had they all developed their own writing system, then would they be allowed to evolve freely on their own to become freestanding languages. In addition, the Chinese dialects are definitely not 100% unintelligible with each other because majority of their vocabulary is from the shared literal language, the higher the register the more intelligible they are to each other.
Mandarin is the only Chinese language written and spoken by all the people in China. The rest spoken speeches are direct and are written in Mandarin which is the National Language in China.
Mandarin is indeed the only official Chinese language for all the people in China, since the early 20th century. I will elaborate on that in future videos.
Wrong equivalence. Vietnamese, Korean and Japanese are not Sinitic language family. Chinese dialects are all Sinitic whether classified as dialect or language. Borrowing foreign words doesn't change a language origin. The grammar, syntax and phonology remained distinct. Neither does adopting a writing system, Malay uses Latin alphabet but it's still Austronesian language, not Latin.
@@benishan3 From my observation, I think Vietnamese shares the same perspective as Cantonese/Hokkien. I once believe it's a sinitic language. Japanese on the other hand is a totally different language but heavily loaning words ad some grammar structures from chinese. Japanese kanji has onyomi and kunyomi, which one is based on the pronunciation when the word is loaned (like during the wu or han or other dynasties), and the other based on their own japanese pronunciation. Like eating, can be said as 食べている tabeteiru or 食うkuu (the original common japanese way of saying), or shokujishiteimasu 食事している （chinese loan word is used here but this is a weird way of saying eating). I never learned korean so I have no idea.
If it wasn't for politics, there would be no doubt that the varieties of Han are languages. The sociopolitical argument doesnt reflect reality. It bends reality to fit a preferred outcome. I understand you're trying to be diplomatic and please both parties, but in that attempt, you've made several arguments that don't hold water. For one, American English isn't considered a language of its own. And if official status is the dividing line between dialect and language, then minority languages like Manchu, Bai and Yi would be considered dialects, yet they are undeniably considered languages in China. Conversely, Cantonese has official status in China but is considered a dialect. Back home in Malaysia, if lack of official status = dialect, then non-Malay indigenous languages like Murut, Kelabit, the Senoi languages etc. would be considered dialects of Malay, which would be disrespectful, and thankfully, they are considered languages in Malaysia.
You got that so right, sir, especially when you said "bends reality to fit a preferred outcome/narrative." We are going to come across more bending of reality in future videos.
Yes indeed. And through this video, I hope to educate people so that they are able to explain why are they languages and why are they dialects. All too often, people are arguing based on what someone taught them, but if they were taught incorrectly, then they would be regurgitating incorrect information.
Spanish, French & Italian are much more similar to each other than say Hokkien vs Cantonese vs Mandarin... I have had some familiarity/exposure with each. However, despite the similarities b/w Latin languages, their speakers are distinctly different re identity, culture & philosophy. England and Scotland share the same language but are very different countries; similarly Germany & Austria speak Standard High German but are also different nations. Conversely, despite the vast differences b/w the various types of Chinese, we all identify as 1 people.
There is no Hokkien language or dialect. the name of Hokkien is a name of a place or a name of a province in China, but not a name of language or dialect. In Fujian, there are many dialects spoke in different part of Fujian, and they are not understand each other. There are about 6 dialect spoke in Fujian Provice, such as Minnan Spoke in Xiamen, Quanzhou, and Taiwan, south east Asia, etc.. 闽语 闽语是福建省内使用最广泛的方言，主要包括闽南语、闽东语、闽北语、莆仙话等。闽南语主要分布在闽南地区和台湾省，使用人数众多。闽东语则主要分布在福建省东部沿海地区，包括福州话、福宁话等。 1. 闽南语即河洛语. 发祥于福建泉州。现主要分布地除闽南地区和台湾地区外，还分布于闽东北地区、浙东南区、及广东潮汕地区（揭阳、汕头、潮州）、汕尾海陆丰地区、粤西地区（湛江、茂名、阳江）、粤港澳大湾区（中山、香港）、海南岛及东南亚的大部分华人社群。 2. 福州话是闽东语的代表语言. 3. 闽北语主要分布于福建省北部古闽之建宁道建州（今建瓯）地区，以建瓯话为代表。闽北语的别称有闽北话、建州话、闽越语、建瓯话。 4.莆仙方言是闽方言的五大次方言之一，莆田话（莆仙话）的一种方言。莆仙语，又称兴化语、兴化话， 5. 客家语：主要分布在闽西的宁化、清流、长汀等地，使用人数相对较少，但在当地具有重要地位。
Language is language , dialect are dialect , even in mandarin too have different dialect and sligtly are different depending which country you come from. Even hokkien can have very dialect depending where you come from. my opinion.
No that's too simple. In that case English would be one of the german dialects. That's not scientific. Hokkien and Cantonese are languages, no matter what the communists in Mainland China make of it in their area.
So you’re saying that Chinese have to speak Mandarin because if they speak their own languages then they can’g understand each other. That means that Mandarin, Hokkien, Cantonese Hakka etc. Are all different languages. They are related, but different. Because the speakers cannot understand each other if they don’t speak Mandarin
Creating this series of videos, I am well aware that there would be instances of discrepancies, errors in facts, errors in general opinion, distortions and misleading information. Despite all that, I endeavor to bring you the history based on what I have researched, according to the information I have at hand, and also based on my understand and interpretation of what I have.
I do apologize for any error that appears. I will add these to the description text when these are pointed out to be and can be substantiated. Consider each video as work in progress as we continue to expand on our knowledge. What is important is that these videos help us ignite conversations of our past, which others may not have stated.
If you discover an error, please inform me in the common in the most courteous way. Any discourteous comment will be removed. It is not in my habit of responding to rude comments, my usual action is to scrub the comment section of any discourtesy, so that others enjoy a pleasant reading of one another's comments. Anyone who is rude may also be muted, so think twice before penning something offensive. It may result in your not being able to comment in the future.
As a general rule, I address all as sir, unless I know you as a woman, then I will address you as madam. I will not be calling you brother, bro, sis, sister, miss, ms or mister. By this, you will have a good idea of the general tone of this platform.
From my own independent research, old Chinese is split into 4 variants which are Bai, Min, Ba-Shu, and Middle Chinese. Bai language is the first split from Old Chinese and are not consider Han Chinese. Ba-Shu Chinese (old Sichuan) went extinct during the Mongol conquest of Song China; although there is still a hybrid version Ba-Shu & Middle Chinese in Sichuan. Hokkien, Teochew, and Hainanese formed a dialectical continuum of Minnan. They are languages in their own right, but I also believed a Teochew and Hokkein speaker right on the border of Guangdong and Fujian can communicate with one another. Middle Chinese is the most numerous and produces many daughter languages. Hakka, Cantonese and Mandarin are dialects of Middle Chinese with Cantonese being more conservative and retain more Middle Chinese features. Northern Guangdong has a Chinese language that I can't figure out the origin. I dont know if anyone has any information of Shaozhou/Yuebei Chinese. It might be a fusion of different Middle Chinese languages such as proto Cantonese or proto Hakka.
I will in future publish my videos on Old Chinese, Middle Chinese, Classical Chinese, Literary Chinese. I can be sure whether my research will be the same as yours but we can certainly compare after that.
My ancestor is Hokkian, but our family adopted the Spanish culture and put aside our Chinese civilization. A huge loss for me... My Chinese ancestry is rescued by marrying my 2nd wife who is a Tae Chew and Hakka Chinese. Otherwise, I lived and grew up amongst White Middle class and many time I forget that I'm Chinese, much less Asian
Western Kwangtung has Gou Lou. Which is even older than Cantonese represent the older Chinese language from Han dynasty to the Chan Kingdom period before the ancestors of the Cantonese came over during the Tang period. Btw Kwangsai Baak Wah is mutually intelligble with Cantonese of the Pearl river delta with a strong accent. Unfortunately it will be endangered in 30 years as Chlidren under 15 are no longer proficient in it in China. Cantonese could still hold out in Pearl Delta region slighlty longer but the prognosis future is worrying. Cantonese will die out in Kay EL in 30 years time with only a handful ( only the original Cantonese people) could hold a conversatiion. Chinese people in Kay El is shifting to the creolised Malaysian Mandarin.
Shaozhou and Teochow is the same dialect .., shaozhou 潮州is the mandarin pronunciation. Teochow is the pronunciation of Shaozhou people .
I should of put Chinese characters, Shaozhou (韶州) or Yuebei (粵北) Chinese. It's in Northern Guangdong.
I'm a native Cantonese speaker and can also speak Mandarin fluently. For me, speaking Mandarin is just about mastering the sounds and tones of the words. Grammar and vocabulary I learned already at school and are not a problem. I remember travelling in northern China for about a month, and when I returned to Hong Kong, it took me more than a week to be able to speak Cantonese fluently again!
Years ago I travelled regularly to Shanghai on business relating to a building project, and attended scheduled meetings with the local firm. I am not a Shanghainese speaker. We communicated in Mandarin, but at meetings, the locals would often diverge and speak Shanghainese among themselves, assuming that I could not understand a word of what they were talking about.
Surprisingly, when they talked about subjects relating to the project, I could pretty well understand what they were saying. But when they talked about other things, such as everyday events, they were totally lost to me. It's all about sharing the same written language, Mandarin.
That says it. Cantonese, Shanghainese, Fujianese, etc., may be separate languages linguistically, but they are also dialects in their relation with each other through the common written language. Until the end of the imperial Qing dynasty, Mandarin was like Latin in Europe in the Middle Ages. The modern reincarnation of Mandarin, through relentless promotion by the Chinese government, has become the unifying element among the Chinese nation, bridging across the nation's vast ethnic diversity.
Thanks so much for sharing with us your insight and experience!
Your interpretation is biased towards Mandarin being what everything Chinese, linguistically, would "start from".
Things link back to their origins, not the other way around.
It is like saying that Modern Italian IS Latin, and one must understand the Romance Language group from the point of view that modern day and recent historical Italian would be the starting point to understand Latin linguistically.
Of course, this is incorrect.
This interpretation is incorrect; it is actually *backwards*.
Mandarin, itself is a dialect of an area in Northern China, the tongue of "Han" China region.
Mandarin was NOT like Latin in Europe. Classical Chinese was. & it's NOT Putonghua. Whatever "Mandarin" it was depended on where the capital was. So the "mandarins" spoke Nanjing dialect when the capital was there. When it was Luoyang, it was the Luoyang language that was the prestige dialect.
@@SunnyIlhaBased on the original northern Chinese, Mandarin/PuTongHua developed via great modification from the Mongols (eliminating the entry tone), and then completely mutated by the Manchurians, adding the linguistic features of the Altaic language family (retroflex sound). Therefore, Zhang Taiyan章太炎, a famous master of Chinese scholar, said that it was the sound of Hulu胡虜, the nomads invaders from the north frigid zone.
Well before the founding of the Republic of China in 1912, China had 7 official languages; Cantonese, Hokkien, Hakka, Shanghaiese, Tibetan, Wu and Mandarin. Because of politics and expediency, Mandarin was chosen as the official language as the Beijing dialect was most commonly spoken language in the capital.
In my future videos, I will elaborate on this, in particular, on how Mandarin was chosen. I do not know how you derive the statement that "China had 7 official languages", but I will explain to you China's official language, prior to Mandarin, based on my own research.
Not very accurate. Those languages were never made official in China during dynatic period. During Qing there were 5 languages that were written in official documents. Classical Han, Manchurian, Mongolian, Tibetan and Uighur. But later it was reduced to just two for major Documents. Manchurian and Classical Han.
I think whichever dialects, the Chinese writings or Chinese characters are more or less understood by all dialect groups with some variations here and there.
From what I’ve heard, but please don’t quote me 😂, Cantonese was the main official national language during the Ming and Tang Dynasties. 唐詩三百首 is a collection of Tang poems that are best read out in Cantonese. These poems were selected and compiled during the Qing dynasty by a guy called 蘅塘 and he picked some of the most famous poems by 李白, a 詩仙. These poems proved the importance of the Cantonese language. When CCP was formed in 1949, the top guys in Beijing were debating should they make Cantonese or mandarin as their national language, the south would prefer Cantonese but the north preferred mandarin. The rest is history.
Cantonese has been an official language for millenniums in China but mandarin is just a hybrid language, a mixture of Cantonese and Manchurian spoken only during the Qing dynasty
孫中山, Sun Yat Sen led the 1911 Revolution that overthrew the Qing dynasty and made China a republic. He was born in Zhongshan, a Canton province. Though he’s Hakka but he spoke Cantonese and he studied in Hong Kong. His followers in the south would prefer Cantonese was being made the national language but for whatever political reasons, the people in the north selected mandarin. Now more than 1.4 billion Chinese speak mandarin, but let’s hope Cantonese is kept alive and do not ever let it die out….
Very good video on the different Chinese Languages and dialects. Thoroughly enjoy your video. Well done.
PS__ I am Singapore Chinese Hokkien of Quanzhou group.!👍💪
Awesome! Thank you! Yes, if you are a Singapore Chinese Hokkien, the high likelihood is you are from the Quanzhou group!
It is definitely Langiage as there is no similarity in sound nor understanding. Dialects are like Loghat in Malay. We have Penang Loghat and Johor loghat. Both are Malay dialecta and you can hear similarity. Another example is UK English dialect vs US English Dialect
The loghat would be how linguists translate the meaning of dialect. So, yes sir, dialects are like loghat in Malay.
Actually Malay variants sounded nothing like each other as well, you put Kedah person and Kelantan person next to each other it's like talking with a chicken and a duck. "Hang pi mana" (Kedah) and "Demo gi khuano" (Kelantan) is very different. Not to mention more differences between those groups (Pahangese have at least 30 dialects which are very different from each other). Mind you that Peninsular Malaysia is only the size of Guangdong, to have that much diversity in such small area is mindboggling to say the least, even Russian with its vast expanse of land doesn't have dialects.
@blueshirt26 Nonsense..30 over dialects..Not many variation..As clearly seen in history that Paramewara was elected as Sultan Melaka in1400 in Peminsulsr Siam.The Melala Port build by Emperor Ming got famous as Admiral Zheng He promote this port through out the world The port bevame succesful.and Malays Palembang migrated into peninsular Siam and ovet populated the Siam town and Ciities. They migrated North towards Kedah and East toeards Pahang Terenganu. That is why Sultan of various states are actally brother and Uncles of Paramewara...Thry are the sane groip of palembang Malays. The difference is the Mix with Siam language.
@@yours_sincerely48 clearly you are here to provoke and being racist instead of learning from each other. You have absolutely no qualifications about Malay language and history. Stupid is as stupid does.
Why is Cantonese not available in google translate ?
I wish it is available, and I do not know why it isn't. Maybe because they have not developed Google Translate for Cantonese yet, nor have they done it for Hokkien and other Sinitic languages. Time will tell whether they add Cantonese translation in the future.
It is kinda similar to the situation of Malays where various groups of people closely related to each other but at the same time different enough to have noticeable regional differences in culture, clothing and language/dialect. For example, Kedah people cannot understand Kelantanese without exposure because the languages are distinct enough to not be intelligible to each other and have to communicate in Standard Malay. When I first went to Negeri Sembilan as someone from Terengganu, I also could not understand a word of what they're saying and have to communicate in Standard Malay, when I do research the Malays actually speak different but closely related languages, kinda like Romance languages where there is strong similarities in terms of vocabulary and grammar but also different enough to be considered distinct mainly due to differences in phonology and syntax (lots of false friends too, for example "selalu" in Selangor means "always" but in Terengganu it means "Right now"). The reason why they are called dialects are mainly political, similar to the situation of Sinitic languages. But of course China being bigger and more populous it has longer history of these languages to developed much further apart from each other.
this channel just gets better and better !!! :)
Thank you, you are so kind!
Great video, I've always wanted to know these differences. Well explained! Thank you, I'm looking forward to more videos about Chinese languages.
Awesome, thank you! Yes indeed, more videos on the way, to help people have a comprehensive understand of Chinese languages and their history.
TQ for your research. Is it true that when SunYatSen established ROC, the KMT juggled whether to use Mandarin or Cantonese or ?? as the official or national language?
They were involved. I will produce a video on this in future.
How is it Cantonese is considered when half of the political leaders at that time were Hakka?
@@Jin-e7q I had this feeling Qin Shi Huang was a Hakka as it came from the northern side of China....LOL. Hakka are more politically involved than other group. It was said Hakka are from the royal lineage so they were familiar with military structure like they build the Fujian Tulou incorporated with military defence.
@@Utube1024 The Han, Tang and Sung dynasties are Hakka dynasties. They are the reason why China was so much more advanced than the rest of the world.
Went to Taiwan. Their Hokkien is very difficult to understand.
They said they added Japanese loan words but in reality, those loan words are few and far between.
Are they from different region of Fujian?
They are in fact from the same Fujian seaports that provided settlers to the rest of Southeast Asia. The language has branched away through the generations.
@@learnpenanghokkienTaiwan Minnan accent is 泉漳滥. Nearer to Penang Hokien. In 台南and Southern Taiwan iT is more 偏漳. The Quanzhou vowel of er- 短,坐,还，和（ 尚）, 转( seh- 漳音）are all lost They have their own vocabulary like 共款，Jima( 现在）, 便所, guleixi 牛丽施うれしい - happy etc. Some are Japanese words. It is not to the extent of difficulty cited by the above commentor. with so many 台语songs and dramas that are free to watch on line. It
also depends on the standard of Hokien of the individual.
Their ancestors came from a remote mountain area in northwest India. They made up a story about their ancestry and pretended to be Chinese.
@nancysmith9189 which commentor are you referring to? Really Indian?
@@nancysmith9189 Can you elaborate? This is the first I have heard.
I had a lecturer who comes into Uni class and plays a 30min video from UA-cam as his lesson. The video is ok maybe but he kept doing it for every lesson. This was at least 10 years ago. I dare say your videos are a joy to watch and I hope to attend your lecture in person one day!
I did offer in-person lectures, but that was some ten years ago, usually to tour guides at tour guide associations, but it is too time consuming, and can only reach a small audience size, about 100 person. I would rather use videos, like this one, as I can reach out to thousands, and I don't have to keep doing the same lecture over and over.
This man explains very clearly the difference of language/dialects..very meticulous person..😅😅😅😅😅BRAVO!!.
I appreciate it! 😊
You explained it perfectly from linguistics and sociopolitical perspective
Thank you sir!
It is the writing unified all Chinese by Qin Shi Huang more than 2000 years ago. So it works as one family. (Common language) 普通话 is just a spoken language that work on every Chinese communication whatever province you are, it has never called a National language.
Thanks for sharing.
I am fluent in Spanish.
I have many Brazilian friends, and Italian colleagues.
Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese are dialects descended from a common language.
French is further apart from the above mentioned 3 dialects. So it’s a different language.
I am also fluent in English and German. English and German have evolved too far apart from each other to qualify as different dialects of a common language.
I speak Hokkien and Mandarin. They are dialects, because they have common grammar and too many common vocabulary.
I am a Malaysian chinese. These are dialects
That's why in this video, I explain why some people say they are languages, and some say they are dialects.
it's both. cantonese is fundementally different from mandarin but politically, it's considered a dialect.
I LOVE how you preface that you're Malaysian Chinese & that automatically means you're an expert in Chinese languages. Oh yeah they're different LANGUAGES by the way. I'm a linguist.
@@Jumpoable he's kinda right, Cantonese and Mandarin's main difference is phonology rather than vocabulary. Their vocabulary remains similar but pronunciations are completely different.
"I am a Norwegian"
Mandarin: Wo shi nuo wei ren
Cantonese: Ngo hai no wai jan
Mandarin: Gong xi fa chai
Cantonese: Kung hey fat choi
You can tell they share the same root word, just different pronunciation.
Bravo to your hard work? TQ 4 sharing. Had learned much.
Mandarin being the national or official language in China, hence it is called 'PU TONG HUA' (common language). Am I right?
Mandarin has its written form & verbal sound (hanyupinyin). Cantonese has its own too, HK is an eg. Do Hakka, Hokkien, Teochew, FooChow, HengHua, etc., have their own? TQ Sir.
Yes indeed. In my latest video, I look at Mandarin and its many names, collected over time as the language evolves along with its usage.
A very informative video. Thanks
Then, can we say Mandarin in mainland China is also a dialect but not from a sociopolitical perspective? Thanks
Yes indeed, and it was known as "the Beijing dialect" before it received its "promotion" to present status. Future videos will explain this.
I wonder if you could do a video about how mandarin became the main language ? historically ?
Ya, please. Also b4 ShiHuangTi unified China, particularly all 'Chinese languages' then, how many & what were there?
@@jameslohtaikan8796 wow ! great topic !!! :) also were there different writing systems and then they got rid of them ? ... because online I see wenzhounese even has their own kind of way to use chinese characters to write their language
Yes, that is in the plans. It's something that people, especially us Chinese, need to know.
simple answer: the republic of China decided that mandarin should be the main language
Shih Huang ti did not speak Mandarin. Mandarin is the language spoken in the north . It has several dialects. Mandarin itself is not very old. Probably emerged during the Yuan dynasty. Modern Mandarin was called Guan Hua. That is the language of the Mandarins those who run the adminstration. It came with the Manchurians especially the Emperor who could not understand officials from the provinces when they are posted in the Capital Peking . Therefore higher ranks Mandarins have to learn to speak or at least pronounced Classical Chinese to the Emperor in speech of Peking. And the speech spoken by in Peking and its pronuciation of Chinese characters were modified by the Manchus and Bannermen both Manchus and Han. Manchurian influenced Peking Mandarin pronouciation. Therefore standard Mandarin uses Peking pronuciatiob and tones as its standard although Peking colloquail dialect should not be confused with standard Mandarin.
First thing to learn any languages or dialect is scolding someone in their language or dialect...
Ha ha ha
Chinese is a civilization not just a nation. From my observation, a language comes out of the mouth to communicate, whereas a writing codex is what people put down in a visual form. Chinese characters is completely visual as it can be understood by visual inspection, where as languages have letters that represent sounds as if it is a aural represention. Chinese represent meaning through a visual understanding of the characters and many people need to ask others more knowledgeable for pronunciation, although looking at the character, they have understanding from its construct. Indoeuropean languages all use sound representation for understnding. Aural versus visual is the big difference and that also implies that Indoeuropean languages like English require more written words to say the same thing. A two step process, read, hear, then understand. Whereas Chinese is read, then understad, don't need to hear.
Since almost all dialects use Han Zi for meaningful communication at the sociopolitical level, it is a visual language that makes up the communication of the Chinese civilization. The Koreans simplified the Han Zi to simplify communication, however, they have reduced their ability to communicate with their big neighbour, whereas, the Japanese can still read a significant number of Han Zi eventhough they have simpified many characters. All their hiraganas were deduced from Han Zi to become the aural component of Japanese.
Just food for thought...!
Visual only for identification. Not for meaning.
Thank you for sharing your food for thought, something to chew on!
Actual in the reality, today all the countries official languages had been transformed and modified by the ex-Dynasty. Oldest Korea uses Mandarin as official languages but changed to Korean Languages by one of the Dynasty decade because the rural wants their citizens literate. In the oldiest Malaya, Indonesia and Borneo all spoke Kelantan Melayu and Indonesian Melayu languages. Remember they called it :"Bahasa Pasar" after modern Bahasa Melayu officially launched. This part was same with the history of Mandarin and Korean Languages. So in the today each state, they all are speak different pronounce of Melayu and our Malay friends also call it Perak Dialect or Kelantan Dialect but in the official letter, uses modern Bahasa Malayu. Indonesia also same. India also has many different dialects but their official languages was English. 😊
I have come across different people explain this differently. I will explain this matter also, in a future video, so that -- with luck -- I can help people understand the role of Literary Chinese, not only in China proper, but also in Korea, Vietnam and Japan.
@visHan8 as an Indian who speaks four different Indian languages let me assure you that the diversity of languages in India are most certainly not dialects of each other. These are all independent languages many with their own scripts and all with their own literature. I sense a pejorative tone in your final comment but once again India has multiple official languages. Hindi and English are most commonly used at a federal and national level.
Languages. It is only politics that calls it dialects.
I totally agree with you sir.
Absolutely. Anyone who has even the most BASIC training in linguistics would know this.
@@flyingzone356 Or anyone with sense & an EAR. Some Mandarin speakers cannot comprehend a single Cantonese phrase without context, yet they MAINTAIN that Cantonese is a "dialect" So how come you cannot understand or pronounce a Cantonese sentence properly leh?
Fascinating, thanks!! I just wondered how the Chinese travelled overseas and do trade??? ....utterance of words, foreign to one another, but by pointing to items of interest, form a basic common understanding and communication!!! 😅😅
I have researched and have some idea about that. Could talk about it in a future video.
Another point to look at: Imagine the times of chunqiu or sanguo, these were multi-nations eras in the land of China and people possibly spoke differently within each nation but somehow still share the root of the previous language.
You can argue that they're dialects of Chinese, but you shouldn't say that only Mandarin is the language but throw all the others under. Even by precedence that's messed up. Mandarin is the last guy to show up.
There is another aspect of analysis.
All languages have several different sociolinguistic register
level--
highly formal
semi-‘formal regular
semi-formal definitional
informal
slang
vulgar
swear/curse
Between 2 speech systems, the more formal, like highly formal levels, have most similarities, like
2 dialects, with maximum no. of
similar words, more like
dialects, but swear levels use most different words, more like
2 different languages. Perhaps such 2 or more speech systems can be called langlects? or diaguages!
Certainly sir! But broadly speaking, we split it into two, being the high and low registers. With just two, we can show the greatest difference between one to the other.
good if you can interview oldies in penang whilst they are still around, sharing old photos, in a way immortalising their memories for future generations. asking them about how life was during their youth and adulthood .. capturing those memories for us all !!! :)
I am of the opinion that, there should be more people interested in our local history to do something. So while I embark on my research, there will be someone else who are into interviewing the elderly. Often the work is so vast, it requires more than one person to help fully uncover our past.
@@jonwijaya8539 yes it will also be good for tourism and not only that , preserve the memories ! priceless memories !
I think when spoken, Hokkien, Cantonese and Hakka are languages; if written, these communication systems can be called dialects because their written words are the same.
I will explain the spoken and written languages in future videos. Right now, so many people are confused, and out of the confusion, they add their opinion, which leads to more confusion.
They dont write in different languages they either wrote in a standardised classical Chinese or in modern times they all actually write using Mandarin standard. Cantonese the other hand has developed its own non formal vernacular literary tradition with specialised characters to write dialogues in Movie scripts Comics advertising and Text and email messages. Although the characters are far from standardised but Ive learnt it through HK movie subtitles and reading comics. Other Chinese would be quite flummoxed with written colloquial Cantonese.
Not really. Cantonese has its own Characters
@@learnpenanghokkien problems is we have people who cannlt except that there is no one Chinese language because it has been taught the oneness of the "Chinese Nation" and whether we in the people outside of the political borders of the PRC are part of the " Chinese Nation " is a different matter. I dont want to go into the politics of that. Linguitically Cantonese and Hokkien are different languages not dialects of a same language which exist 2000 years ago.
@@desmondlim5836 of course there nuances in the language or dialect due to geographical, historical and cultural differences and development but the script is largely the same. Cuneiform was the script used in the Levant by many of those lost kingdoms that spoke Babylonian, Sumerian, Akkadian, Hittite and Elam
💯 Great video. I learned something today.
Thank you very much.
Dialects in Language refers to *spoken* language, not writing.
Dialect refers to *speech* , not symbols (written; writing system).
Take for example, that the Vietnamese Language *uses* the romance language *script* .
(Writing).
However the Vietnamese Language is *not* a romance language, *nor* is it a dialect of the romance language group.
Hokkien (Minnan), Cantonese (Yue) and Hakka (Khek) are languages but they are subdivided into different dialects varying in accents and some words during to historical, cultural and geographical factors.
Teachew, Hainnanese and Luichew are sub-languages of Minnan, and Minnan is a sub-language of Min along with Hockchew and Henghwa.
Szeyap dialects including Hoishan seems to be Cantonese sub-languages or dialects. However, there are many minnan elements in these languages oe dialects too.
Hakka even has more sub-lamguage. Most kheks in Singapore are from Teochew Prefecrure such Taipu and there are overlapping with Cantonese and Teoochew. There are also Kheks of Eng Teng of Hokkien Province.
I believe Khek, YUE, Min and Wu were once from the same language.
Thanks for the input!
Well in order to establish one as a language it has to have it's written characters, spoken form and literature, like Mandarin, which other Chinese forms don't have hence they are merely dialects though they may have evolved over the years.
Like for instance, bahasa kelate is a dialect and so is bahasa Perak etc. These are all dialects as they don't have literature and characters of their own but just the way of speaking. Unlike bahasa Melayu that had evolved to what it is today as a standalone language.
Interestingly the scenario in India is different. All states have their own written form, spoken form and literature. They stand on their own. And they are languages not dialects.
Thanks for the observation!
I personally think that we should look at the historical aspect as well. Also, the grammar and character-use preference in Cantonese / Hokkien are quite different from mandarin. In mandarin, the same character used in Cantonese/Hokkien sometimes also have very different meaning and usage. For example, He/She in mandarin is 他/她/它， whereas in cantonese 渠/佢 and in hokkien it's 伊。Also there are many classical chinese literature that can be understood more easily using cantonese and hokkien than mandarin. This is also why I see some similarity between Hokkien/Cantonese is to Mandarin (also partially in Japanese) and Bahasa Melayu is to Bahasa Indonesia.
How about Fukien is it the same as Hoi Kien ?????
Yes sir. Fukien is in fact derived from the Hakka Sixian pronunciation of Hokkien (福建), which is also pronounced Fújiàn in Mandarin. Thus, different Chinese language/dialect pronounce the same Chinese characters differently.
is bahasa Malaysia and Bahasa Indonesia both dialects
They are official languages of their respective countries. It's hard to say whether one is the dialect of the other.
@@learnpenanghokkienbahasa indonesia come from bahasa melayu
I wonder what language china dynasty use in court, do you know 😊
Throughout Chinese history, the language used by emperors varied with the dynasties and the ethnic origins of the ruling family. I will elaborate that in future videos.
Anyone who has even the most basic training in linguistics can tell you that those are all Sinitic LANGUAGES that belong to the Sino-Tibetan language family. There are various Mandarin, Cantonese, Hokkien, Shanghaiese, etc. dialects that are mutually intelligible. But Mandarin, Cantonese, Hokkien, Hakka, Shanghaiese, etc. themselves are not mutually intelligible. Mutual intelligibiliy is the best (but not the only) criterion to decide whether two tongues are languages or dialects. Of course, dialects could evolve into languages over time if sufficient linguistic isolation has taken place.
It's NOT mutual intelligibility that sets out those variants of Chinese, nor their origin. It's their linguistic system, mainly with respect to sounds and especially tonal systems. Within one dialectgroup (= language) these features are more or less similar (though not identical).
Tonal systems within Mandarin are quite similar, although the tones themselves are not. The dialects of Cantonese have more tones like all Southern dialects. But the tonal system of Southern Min (Hokkien) is different from that of Cantonese mainly because of its "flipflops".
Besides this, the development of initials in the latter two groups was quite different, which is true of Mandarin as well (and especially the Wu-dialects which kept a degree of voicing).
Their respective grammars differ as well, though the patterns are more or less the same. But almost all the grammatical words differ between dialectgroups.
And then there is vocabulary. Certain words are peculiar to a dialectgroup, and many of those words have come to be written in characters invented for that peculiar dialectgroup (Cantonese, Hokkien and Wu all have their own vernacular characters, which are, however, almost never used).
However, to a Chinese citizen it sounds horrible to speak of Chinese languages, as if China were not a unified country.
There is but one motherland ("ancestral land" in Chinese) and to denounce this is one of the most disrespectful deeds of blasphemy towards one's ancestors.
So Chinese politics / mentality decides that one should speak of dialects (fangyan) and of local speech (tuhua).
All Chinese dialects are officially grouped together as Hanyu. although most of the time by Hanyu only standard Mandarin (Putonghua / Guoyu) is meant.
It is important to remember that the terms 'Sino-Tibetan' and 'Sinitic' are terms only, and in this case, this long-standing term
(used to describe the languages across the expanse of the vastness of China) is a *geographic* description *only* , NOT based in *Linguistics* .
There are two distinct prehistoric Language roots in China. They are not related. One has an epicenter in the northern edge of the Tropics, Northern Vietnam and Southern China, including the marine coastline. This includes all of the Guangdong region. This is the ancient, and prehistoric place of origin of the Hakka Tribes.
Ancient Hakka lore, passed down through tens of thousands of generations tells of the origin of the Hakka being along a river there. They grew successfully without warfare peacefully so soundly that there were too many people in the village, so one bunch of people went across the river to the north side, from the south side.
To expand to new land for people to start more village building and new agricultural land. (Expansion).
The language that was spoken was is a proto-Austronesian root tongue that eventually through eons of Time, spread southward into and throughout Southeast Asia, Indonesia, the Filipino Archipelago, Taiwan, and ultimately out into and across the entire Pacific Ocean, and, eastward over the Indian Ocean to Madagascar.
This ancient tongue is the ancestor tongue of modern day Hakka, Cantonese, and Tribal Languages of Yunnan.
It's prehistoric tongue is the ancestor to the Austronesian language family.
My B.A. is in Cultural Anthropology.
I have also studied Linguistics and Physical Anthropology. My area of studies focused on Sunda-Sahul, Oceania, Far East Asia, Aboriginal North and South America, and Human Evolution in Africa.
My grandfather is Hakka.
@@SunnyIlha I thought most Hakka lore believed in the myth that they were all properly respectable Han refugees from "the north" & only settled in the savage south after escaping countless wars in different waves...?
Where did you hear this tale? From your own clan? Seriously curious about it. My paternal grandmother is Hakka.
@Jumpoable
My cousin, 3rd cousin. He's older than me, like an Uncle . He born in China.
We talked one time about it length one day over coffee many years ago. He knew more than me and he informed me more, because he was born there.
Thank you, Timothy! This video clarified the use of language and dialect, I love your AI podcast, too.
Thank you so much! I am delighted you love the podcast too!
Sorry Timothy, I'm afraid the longer you try to explain and distinguish the technical differences of the Chinese language and dialect, you have muddied the water and it's still as clear as mud.
These are dialects!
Yes, they are dialects.
99% Hokkien and Cantonese can't understand each other in China. For Malaysia yes and no. Penang Hokkien and KL Hokkien is dialect.
You forgot See-Yup I don't know the spelling but it's pronounced that way. My grandmother was See-Yup and while my grandfather was away in the Pacific earning a living back around 1900, the Hakkas who were fierce robbers came and attack their home. So there was always ill feelings there. Bit like the Scottish clans. They are all Scottish but they battled each other and killed each other. So when my dad married my mum who is Hakka, she never had a chance. Without doing anything the animosity was there just because she was a Hakka. Mum learnt See-Yup. Hakka is not an easy dialect. In our town in Papua New Guinea up until 1965 the See-Yup, Hakkas and Cantonese communicated in Cantonese when in public. After 1966 the younger generation spoke English.
Thank you for sharing this. I have not known about See-Yup. Maybe in future I will be able to gather more information.
they can be called languages, but after formation of china, it become a dialect. Hakka is a subbranch from the Gan , there are smaller dialects , which are not a part of asean
Thank you sir for your explanation.
In 2023, US co, Meta, announced its new Hokkien (subdialect?
translatior machine. See several
websites & videos?! under relevant categories titles,
I saw the video by Mark Zuckerberg. Not sure whether one day they will do Penang Hokkien, my mother tongue.
You did explained that the illustrations used are all AI generated. I must say that they look very authentic, only a little too enhanced for their vintage. But I admire them👍🙂
Thank you so much.
Still havent zero in on the penang version.of hokkien back on the map of china.
I will treat each specific today in its own video, so stay tuned.
English is also a dialect in England...
Oh
I'm from Sarawak. I find Penang hokkien a bit difficult to understand 😊
How can I help you?
We Chinese are all screwed up 😅
LOL
Thank you. Keep up your interest. AI sounds very stupid, but I hope it will improve. I especially do not want to hear "dive in". Errr! As a Linguists grad and work in the language field in China 1979-80, including travel all over China, listening to the languages and dialects. There are a lot of non-Hans hidden by the CCP in China. My heart bleeds for Hong Kong and have little hope for Cantonese's survival.
Thank you 🙏❤
None of the Chinese languages/dialects, however, is close enough to Old Chinese. If I were allowed to, I would pick Amdo Tibetan to be the official language of China, reasons being 1) it's one of the most conversative Sino-Tibetan languages, hence super classical, 2) it has decent number of speaking population and importantly 3) it has active productivity.
That's an interesting opinion!
Only using the shared writing system claims that the different languages across China are "dialects of one same language".
Which is incorrect.
The various spoken tongues in China are different languages, not dialects of a language.
To illuminate the Malaysia example, the unofficial use of english does not mean it is a dialect of Malay.
Another example is the Philippines, which is the second largest English speaking Country in the World second to only the USA. (It has more English speakers than the UK!!). However while English is officially the adopted second language there, it is NOT the Native Official standardized language (the Tagalog dialect) of an Island Archipelago Nation that has *different* *languages* spoken across it. Note that, though, unlike across China, the languages in the Philippine Archipelago, as across Indonesia, are all branches of Austronesian root tongue (which is also the same shared root as Malay and other Southeast Asian Countries, (and, *linguistically* the Peoples of Guangdong, Southern Coastal China and Yunnan.
A "social political explanation of language" should not be ever used concerning Language.
It is in error, and incorrect to use this "explanation" regarding *language* .
Another example is regarding Native American languages in the United States.
The different Native American languages are NOT dialects of the official language of the USA english (this is almost nearly a dumb thought; it is obvious it is not).
Incidentally, it is absolutely true and correct that American standard english is a dialect of England english. This sounds even weird to even say, since it's completely stating the physical *obvious* and a bygone conclusion.
In China, there are *different* *Languages* .
These Languages, many of which have multiple *millions* of speakers *each* *separately* are *not* dialects of a single main language. That is to say, those are NOT dialects of Mandarin.
Are they all the languages OF China?
Are they the languages IN China?
Well, it is stating the obvious and a bygone conclusion that they ARE.
However it is a problem when it is confused and misinterpreted that all of those Languages are said to be "dialects of one language".
This would be *incorrect* .
Yes, yes, I agree with you. Alas, though the "social political explanation" should not be used, it is used anyway! Not by us, but by the powers that be who want to explain it that way.
They were languages before the CPC government made Mandarin the Common Language and taught in schools throughout China
It started with the last dynasty. They used Mandarin as the court or official language.
I will explain in future videos how the situation was before Modern Standard Mandarin became the common language. It is important that people -- the Chinese people of Malaysia and Singapore in particular -- understand this.
different language
Different languages. Not dialects.
Yes sir.
Hokkien, Hakka, Hainanese , Shanghainese, Cantonese n Teocheow are basically are dialects it derive from diffident province of the China mainland as far as I know ..maybe I’m wrong 😂
Then watch the video and get the explanation! 😂
@@learnpenanghokkienI wonder he really watched your video.
@marielim2519 Cantonese, Hakka, Teochew all come from the same Guangdong province.Are you Chinese? Maybe not Chinese culturally like Thai Chinese or Indonesian Chinese. You all put nationality ahead of ethnic culture and heritage. OMG.
Swedish, Norwegian and Danish are considered to be different languages, yet they are largely mutually intelligible.
The same could be said for Spanish and Portuguese.
But Hokkien is totally mutually unintelligible with Mandarin, yet is called a dialect.
The podcast used the example of the difference in pronunciation between Mandarin and Cantonese of the word for “horse”. At least, the two have a similar sound, “ma” (albeit different tones). A more striking difference would be the pronunciation for “horse” in Hokkien, which is “beh”.
The reason why the fiction that Hokkien, Cantonese and Hakka (and others) are dialects is because the central government wanted to downgrade them, since dialects are considered to be an inferior version of the standard language.
Totally agree with you sir.
Languages become dialects when they are of secondary importance. Otherwise they are all languages.
If dialects are considered languages, then I m certainly a multilinguist speaking 9 languages…brilliant lol😂
Ya, you would be a polyglot!
They are dialects
What's important is not about saying whether they are dialects or languages, but in fully understanding why they are dialects and why they are languages.
Please explain that an official written letter in Mandarin can be read in various respective dialects. You confused people
You are still confused. Please go through my video several times, and watch my future videos for clarity.
He saying the linguistics perspective not the written form. Cantonese people can understand the Mandarin written form but cannot be completely understood by the Hokkien people as certain Hokkien words cannot be express in Mandarin.
This video intends to clarify the subject but offer nothing new, language or dialect both correct, watch or don't, no difference.
You are most knowledgeable, sir, hence nothing new here.
You use AI to draw eye balls?? dialects are spoken locally within one province. they are not official,it is dialects.
No one calls modern European languages as dialects of Proto Indo-European.
Division in languages or dialects are more often based on politics rather than linguistics.
Well said, sir.
Do you call English, French, Italian, and Chinese dialects? To me, any form of communication, that can be written, read, and printed is a language. Try writing down Hokkien, when have you last read Hokkien text, or read a printed newsletter in Hokkien?
Cantonese can be written in its own characters
Some people use characters to write Hokkien
some ar commonly agreed upon,
but others have varied choices
There are several Romanized alphabets by different people
& of course International Phonetic Alohabets Hokkien
letters.
Keep it up the goodwork fr penang,very knowledgeable,most young generation todak speak madarin n forget their mother tongue,my own children cant even talk hokkien randon only unless taiwan/singapore show that is in hokkien old people love watching it on the stageplay,even in penang the vendor also speak madarin due to the chinese tourist fr oversea ,let keep it up Ah Ba you doing a good job,keeping up penang baba hokkien alive n it is still there for our younger generation to appreciate it.
There is so much misinformation flying all over the place. The younger generation, who grew up on Mandarin education, are often misled by the schools, and as a result, they regurgitate the misinformation about Mandarin.
dialects
👌
To me reason why they are dialects is because their evolution has been strongly interfered by the unified literal language, if only had Qin Shi Huang not unified China, and had they all developed their own writing system, then would they be allowed to evolve freely on their own to become freestanding languages. In addition, the Chinese dialects are definitely not 100% unintelligible with each other because majority of their vocabulary is from the shared literal language, the higher the register the more intelligible they are to each other.
Thank you for sharing your insight.
Mandarin is the only Chinese language written and spoken by all the people in China. The rest spoken speeches are direct and are written in Mandarin which is the National Language in China.
Mandarin is indeed the only official Chinese language for all the people in China, since the early 20th century. I will elaborate on that in future videos.
Putong hua aka Common language. Thanks to Qin Shi Huang otherwise it will be like India so many different language newspapers.
Hakka is the official language in Suriname
Is it? Please show us the evidence.
@@learnpenanghokkienit is
If they are dialects, then Vietnamese, Korean and Japanese are Chinese dialects too.
In future videos, I will explain the situation before Mandarin assumed its present position.
Those are completely different language families. Grammatically and phonetically
Stop displaying your stupidity, these languages don't even share the basic root words
Wrong equivalence. Vietnamese, Korean and Japanese are not Sinitic language family. Chinese dialects are all Sinitic whether classified as dialect or language.
Borrowing foreign words doesn't change a language origin. The grammar, syntax and phonology remained distinct. Neither does adopting a writing system, Malay uses Latin alphabet but it's still Austronesian language, not Latin.
@@benishan3 From my observation, I think Vietnamese shares the same perspective as Cantonese/Hokkien. I once believe it's a sinitic language. Japanese on the other hand is a totally different language but heavily loaning words ad some grammar structures from chinese. Japanese kanji has onyomi and kunyomi, which one is based on the pronunciation when the word is loaned (like during the wu or han or other dynasties), and the other based on their own japanese pronunciation. Like eating, can be said as 食べている tabeteiru or 食うkuu (the original common japanese way of saying), or shokujishiteimasu 食事している （chinese loan word is used here but this is a weird way of saying eating). I never learned korean so I have no idea.
Most European “languages” are dialects of Latin. Same thing here laa
If it wasn't for politics, there would be no doubt that the varieties of Han are languages. The sociopolitical argument doesnt reflect reality. It bends reality to fit a preferred outcome. I understand you're trying to be diplomatic and please both parties, but in that attempt, you've made several arguments that don't hold water.
For one, American English isn't considered a language of its own. And if official status is the dividing line between dialect and language, then minority languages like Manchu, Bai and Yi would be considered dialects, yet they are undeniably considered languages in China. Conversely, Cantonese has official status in China but is considered a dialect.
Back home in Malaysia, if lack of official status = dialect, then non-Malay indigenous languages like Murut, Kelabit, the Senoi languages etc. would be considered dialects of Malay, which would be disrespectful, and thankfully, they are considered languages in Malaysia.
You got that so right, sir, especially when you said "bends reality to fit a preferred outcome/narrative." We are going to come across more bending of reality in future videos.
They are both languages and dialects.
The key is that Chinese is not like Western languages, e.g. English.
Yes indeed. And through this video, I hope to educate people so that they are able to explain why are they languages and why are they dialects. All too often, people are arguing based on what someone taught them, but if they were taught incorrectly, then they would be regurgitating incorrect information.
Mandarin is not Chinese language it’s Han ‘s language ! China has 55 ethnic minorities ! Han is the largest group in China .
Thanks for you input!
Spanish, French & Italian are much more similar to each other than say Hokkien vs Cantonese vs Mandarin... I have had some familiarity/exposure with each. However, despite the similarities b/w Latin languages, their speakers are distinctly different re identity, culture & philosophy. England and Scotland share the same language but are very different countries; similarly Germany & Austria speak Standard High German but are also different nations. Conversely, despite the vast differences b/w the various types of Chinese, we all identify as 1 people.
Thanks so much for providing your observation.
Hokkien, Cantonese and Hakka. What about Teochew, Hainan, etc? Mao Tse Tung is a Hainese. Xi Jinping is a Teochew!
Same, sir.
Even Chinese all look alike but not the same, need to break up China into separate parts !!!!!
Mandarin is the only official Chinese language in Singapore.
Yes, it is.
Americans just call it English. We don't speak American.
Indeed, yes!
They call it dialect for Unity sake as Chinese people.
Oh yes sir, you got that right!
There is no Hokkien language or dialect. the name of Hokkien is a name of a place or a name of a province in China, but not a name of language or dialect. In Fujian, there are many dialects spoke in different part of Fujian, and they are not understand each other. There are about 6 dialect spoke in Fujian Provice, such as Minnan Spoke in Xiamen, Quanzhou, and Taiwan, south east Asia, etc..
闽语
闽语是福建省内使用最广泛的方言，主要包括闽南语、闽东语、闽北语、莆仙话等。闽南语主要分布在闽南地区和台湾省，使用人数众多。闽东语则主要分布在福建省东部沿海地区，包括福州话、福宁话等。
1. 闽南语即河洛语. 发祥于福建泉州。现主要分布地除闽南地区和台湾地区外，还分布于闽东北地区、浙东南区、及广东潮汕地区（揭阳、汕头、潮州）、汕尾海陆丰地区、粤西地区（湛江、茂名、阳江）、粤港澳大湾区（中山、香港）、海南岛及东南亚的大部分华人社群。
2. 福州话是闽东语的代表语言.
3. 闽北语主要分布于福建省北部古闽之建宁道建州（今建瓯）地区，以建瓯话为代表。闽北语的别称有闽北话、建州话、闽越语、建瓯话。
4.莆仙方言是闽方言的五大次方言之一，莆田话（莆仙话）的一种方言。莆仙语，又称兴化语、兴化话，
5. 客家语：主要分布在闽西的宁化、清流、长汀等地，使用人数相对较少，但在当地具有重要地位。
Ya agree! I explained that in my videos too!
Too wordy, so much preamble , how to follow. Good effort still.
Thank you, I will try to improve.
@@learnpenanghokkien i seen time markers in some channels, allows listeners to skip to parts they like
Language is language , dialect are dialect , even in mandarin too have different dialect and sligtly are different depending which country you come from. Even hokkien can have very dialect depending where you come from. my opinion.
Thanks very much for sharing your opinion.
They are Chinese dialects. Why? Because 99.9% of Chinese said so. Simple as that.
You are also right.
Mandarin is a concocted language with inputs from the other languages (or some refer to as dialects). Mandarin appears artificial.
Interesting!
You yourself don't speak Chinese yet teaching people which is right or wrong about the origin of Chinese languages 😂😂😂
Yup, amazing, isn't it?
La nguages
👌
They are Chinese dialects, plain and simple, period!! No need to have a debate over it, the Chinese are united by mandarin in communication.
No that's too simple. In that case English would be one of the german dialects. That's not scientific. Hokkien and Cantonese are languages, no matter what the communists in Mainland China make of it in their area.
Thanks for your statement.
So you’re saying that Chinese have to speak Mandarin because if they speak their own languages then they can’g understand each other. That means that Mandarin, Hokkien, Cantonese Hakka etc. Are all different languages. They are related, but different.
Because the speakers cannot understand each other if they don’t speak Mandarin
Dialects thier successive global transliterated maomao Kan ton nesse apa nue kahn tong toungues
Hmm?
HaHa😅
LOL
dialects
TQ