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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Neocon who wrote (125801)	3/8/2004 7:40:47 PM
From: Sig	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Having been born and educated in the remote outer regions of Xinjiang Uygur , a decendant or Scotch/Mandarin parents I am able to speak with authority on the development of the Putonghanian tongue. There, although I was bereft of friends( my father often played the bagpipes which kept other kids away)) I became an expert with the YOYO and at the age of 32 was able to earn enough by professional yoyoing to buy passage to America on a tramp dhow. It was only much later , after graduating from Harvard Law school, that I learned my parents had earlier ,in desperation to achieve some form of communication, invented the Putonghan dialect by combining the Scotch and Chinese languages. And your question was ?? Sig

To: Neocon who wrote (125801)	3/9/2004 12:26:38 AM
From: Bilow	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Hi Neocon; Re: "My impression, from reading around, is that you misrepresent the facility of people with Putongha ..." We're not talking about "people", we're talking about the "best minds" of China. Re: "... but a sort of Esparanto ..." The comparison to Esparanto is highly inaccurate. The various dialects of Chinese share the same grammar, Esparanto shares its grammar with no language. Next are you going to start arguing that Spanish and English could share the same written language? The differences between the Chinese dialects is similar to the differences between the various dialects of English. We share the same written language, (other than the odd "harbour" spelling), but we sometimes have great difficulty communicating with each other. In addition, we have different slang words for various things. *Do I need to point out that slang words aren't used much in high tech?* Would you expect the UK to use Cockney slang as the language for instruction in programming in Java? Does the UC Berkeley offer graduate classes in physics taught in Black English? How about Spanglish, is that the language we use to teach Chemistry at USC's PhD programs? China is similar in that her education in high tech is uniformly taught in Mandarin Chinese, with a considerable amount of English as well. For that matter, the number of people in China for whom Mandarin is the native language is huge. Here's what the CIA says (remember, Neoconservatives ignore CIA warnings at their peril, LOL): The World Factbook Population: 6,302,309,691 ... Languages: Chinese, Mandarin 14.37%, Hindi 6.02%, English 5.61%, Spanish 5.59%, Bengali 3.4%, Portuguese 2.63%, Russian 2.75%, Japanese 2.06%, German, Standard 1.64%, Korean 1.28%, French 1.27% (2000 est.) note: percents are for "first language" speakers only ... cia.gov Thus the CIA's own figures say that about 905,641,902 people are NATIVE speakers of Mandarin. Most of those are in China, but not all. If the official numbers from the CIA aren't good enough for you, then you can get the same facts from various other places: ... Standard Chinese (Mandarin) is spoken by 70% of the population. ... emsc.nysed.gov ... Mandarin (northern Chinese) is the principal and official language of China. Local dialects are spoken in the south and southeast. English is not widely spoken. ... eia.doe.gov ... There are seven major Chinese dialects and many subdialects. Mandarin (or Putonghua), the predominant dialect, is spoken by over 70% of the population. It is taught in all schools and is the medium of government. Only about two-thirds of the Han ethnic group are native speakers of Mandarin; the rest, concentrated in southwest and southeast China, speak one of the six other major Chinese dialects. ... clinton3.nara.gov * "Chinese" for this chart is composed of the total of the following SIL designated languages: Mandarin 836,000,000 Xiang 36,015,000 Hakka 34,000,000 Gan 20,580,000 Minbei 10,537,000 total 937,132,000 www2.ignatius.edu Many of the Chinese are convinced (rightly or wrongly) that they can speak a foreign dialect by simply making consistent changes to their pronunciation. Think of an American imitating a British accent. Here's another source for similar data: China: Mandarin: 70% Wu: 8% Cantonese: 5% Hunan: 5% Hakka: 3% Southern Min: 3% Gan (Jiangxi): 2% Northern Min: 1% members.fortunecity.com Also see: petitiononline.com Also see the efforts in Tsingapore in promoting the Mandarin dialect: ... By late 1988, some 87 percent of the Chinese population [of Singapore] claimed to be able to speak Mandarin. ... reference.allrefer.com For an update, see: ... Overall, Mandarin has superseded Chinese dialects as the predominant home language of the Chinese resident population. The proportion of Mandarin-speaking Chinese increased from 30 per cent in 1990 to 45 percent in 2000. There was a corresponding decline in the proportion who spoke in dialects, from 50 per cent to 31 per cent. ... singstat.gov.sg So do you still say that language is a big problem for China? Is this one of those neocon beliefs that will refuse to fade in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary? -- Carl P.S. As time has passed, the differences between our regional accents has decreased. This is probably due to the influence of television. There was a time when a visitor to Georgia from Australia could expect to be unable to communicate with the locals.

To: Neocon who wrote (125801)	3/9/2004 8:19:04 AM
From: Neocon	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

On the Chinese language question: According to World Book, only 70% of Chinese speak Putongha. and, subtracting those whose mother tongue is Mandarin, many can merely get by. Proficiency in reading does not make much difference, since written Chinese is basically the same for all dialects. Putongha is treated like a second language, and is often heavily influenced by the native language of the region in which it is taught. Here is some additional information: The dialects from the seven groups are quite different. For example, a Mandarin speaker in northern China usually understands little Cantonese, but a non-Mandarin speaker usually can speak some Mandarin with a strong accent. This is largely because Mandarin has been the official national language since 1913. Mandarin or Putonghua is mainly based on the Beijing dialect. Despite the large differences among Chinese dialects, there is one thing in common for them -- they all share the same writing system based on Chinese characters. chineseculture.about.com Putonghua From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Pŭt¨ngh¨´a (ÆÕÍ¨Ô’) was adopted by the People's Republic of China as the official pronunciation of Chinese language words. It literally means "ordinary speak." In practice it can be viewed as being identical to Mandarin Chinese. The theory behind putonghua, however, is very different from that of guoyu (‡øÕZ,lit. "national language"). Guoyu is based exclusively on the pronunciation of words from Beijing and putonghua is influenced by non-Beijing pronunciations. However in practice the differences are small differences with guoyu in: 1.tone 2.transcription: putonghua uses Pinyin Putonghua and guoyu refer to speech and hence the difference in the use of simplified characters and traditional characters is not usually considered to be a difference between these two concepts. en.wikipedia.org Due to the domination of the numerically superior Mandarin-speaking delegates, the Peking dialect was voted for the general foundation of the new national language 'guoyu' (national speech). It embodies the pronunciation of Peking, the grammar of the Mandarin dialects, and the vocabulary of modern vernacular Chinese literature, but features of various local dialects were also incorporated. Guoyu is now the official language of mainland China, Taiwan and one of the official languages of Singapore. After the establishment of the People's Republic of China in 1949 it was renamed to putonghua (common language) . In 1956, it became the medium of instruction in all schools nationwide and a policy of promoting its use began. It is now the most widely used form of spoken Chinese. In Taiwan, it still goes under the name of guoyu, or 'national speech'. In the West it is generally referred to Mandarin. chinalanguage.com The standard form of Mandarin Chinese uses the sounds of Beijing minus some pronounced regionalisms. There are regional variations in pronunciation, however, for two reasons. The first is that the geographical area where this language is the mother tongue of most speakers is so large that there are pronounced regional variations encountered as one moves from place to place. These regional differences are as pronounced as the regional versions of the English language found in England, Australia, Canada, and the United States. The second reason for pronounced variations in pronunciation is that speakers of Mandarin as a second language frequently flavor it with a strong infusion of the speech sounds of their native tongues. Taiwanese Mandarin, for instance, has become a fairly consistent variant of standard Mandarin as defined by educational authorities. Mandarin is also sometimes incorrectly known as Beijingese (Beijing hua or Beijing fangyan), or Jing pianzi (¾©Æ¬×Ó). In Taiwan, those espousing Taiwan independence often insist on using the term Beijing hua instead of Guoyu in order to promote the idea that Taiwanese should be their new national language..... ..... However, both versions of "school" Mandarin are often quite different from the Mandarin that is spoken in accordance with regional habits. Not all variations of spoken Mandarin are readily mutually intelligible. Specifically, according to SIL International [1]: Mandarin varieties in the Lower Plateau in Shaanxi are not readily intelligible with Putonghua. Mandarin varieties of Guilin and Kunming are inherently unintelligible to speakers of Putonghua. Nevertheless, educated speakers of the official language of instruction living in southwestern cities such as Guilin and Kunming will be found to speak quite adequate Putonghua, as well as their own mother tongue. In northern China, Sichuan, and other areas where the "Northern" language is spoken, the local variations of Mandarin are the mother tongues of most of the people who live in those regions. The era of mass education in Mandarin has not erased these earlier regional differences. In the south, the interaction between Mandarin and local variations of Chinese has produced local versions of the "Northern" language that are rather different from that official standard Mandarin in both pronunciation and grammar. For example, the Mandarin spoken in Taiwan by students who speak [[Taiwanese (linguistics)\|Taiwanese] (a dialect of Southern Min) or Hakka as their mother tongue is usually spoken with a grammar and accent that renders it different from the Kuoyu standard, creating a version of Mandarin commonly known as Taiwan Mandarin. Although Mandarin is considered the standard dialect, speaking Mandarin without the local accent or speaking Mandarin instead of the local dialect can mark a person as being an outsider or as someone who is not "a regular guy." Thus most Chinese, including Chinese political leaders themselves, do not bother to learn to speak Mandarin with the official standard accent. en.wikipedia.org Thus it looks like there is some reason for concern about difficulty in inter- regional cooperation, but that the situation is not dire. Both Sig and Carl have points.