Mandarin Eclipsing Cantonese
pretzellogic
October 22, 2009, 02:19 PM posted in General DiscussionI thought this NY Times article was interesting. But maybe only for Americans.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/22/nyregion/22chinese.html?th&emc=th
changye
January 12, 2010, 05:09 AMI also heard the same story before. Some scholars insist that Mandarin and Cantonese have the same substratum language, which is also the base language of Thai and Zhuang yu (壮语). Cantonese is very different from modern Mandarin, partly because Mandarin was heavily affected by northern ethnic languages.
henning
October 22, 2009, 06:56 PMVery interesting - I am watching similar shifts here in Germany (although we don't have any real "Chinatowns"). Old restaurant or shop owners still speak Cantonese - but the now prevalent young Chinese all speak Mandarin.
BTW: I am tired. For a moment I read "Mandarin eclipsing Klingon".
simonpettersson
October 22, 2009, 07:06 PMNow there's a discussion. Mandarin vs. Klingon: which is the true language of the future?
I guess it depends on wether you're a Firefly fan or a trekkie.
Tal
October 22, 2009, 10:34 PMGood to see Klingon back on the boards! The spirit of pete lives on! Hey man if you're out there lurking, break your silence and make us all smile! ;)
pretzellogic
October 23, 2009, 02:43 AMactually, I am curious. Wasn't cpod at one point going to start a cantonese pod? I thought I saw John say something about cpod starting cantonese pod on the User Voice (and what's happening with User Voice?)
Tal
October 23, 2009, 06:50 AMPersonally I don't find this topic of great interest, but I noticed this online discussion with some amusing comments and interesting links and thought others here might be interested.
I live in Guangdong, and enjoy visiting Hong Kong very much, (actually I sometimes wish that I'd gone to live and work there in the first place,) but I don't have the slightest intention of ever trying to learn Cantonese, which I do not enjoy listening to.
I love learning Mandarin though. It seems much more worthwhile for a 老外 like me, and as one former acquaintance of mine flippantly put it: "learning one Chinese language is quite enough suffering for one lifetime."
changye
October 23, 2009, 07:22 AMHi pretzellogic
You can easily find a reason in the news article why they don't start Cantonesepod. Thanks for the link, I enjoyed reading that.
Hi tal
I agree. We should not torture ourselves anymore.
pretzellogic
October 23, 2009, 08:12 AMHi Changye, my question was more toward what was happening in User Voice about cpod statements for starting cantonese pod. This trend has been percolating along, then back in January or whenever, the cantonese pod talk should not have gotten to the point where John (I thought) said that a Cantonese pod would be started. I have noticed that the Cantonese pod talk hasn't come up, along with User Voice, Activity Stream, and other things that go by the wayside.
pretzellogic
October 22, 2009, 05:50 PMNo wonder. Not that i'm actively practicing, but I was practicing northern kungfu styles. Not that my sifu told us the poem in mandarin, but it would have been nice to go through the poem in mandarin.
now that I remember it, I think his pronunciation of xie4xie was horrible, so maybe not going through the poem was a good idea after all.
Hopefully, he doesn't subscribe to Chinesepod, or remember me as a student.
orangina
January 11, 2010, 10:09 AMYou know, I am learning a language to talk to people who are alive right now. Not to talk to people in 50 or 100 years (and I have met many young people who speak Cantonese.) If people right now speak a language then it is worth learning. From that perspective the argument is moot. With that said I currently have my hands full learning Mandarin. But if you want to learn Cantonese, I say: 加油！Maybe someday I will join you.
fongtan101
January 11, 2010, 03:19 PM学广东话干嘛呀~
matthiask
January 11, 2010, 11:14 PMI hope this was in the voice of Frankenstein - at least in my head, you sounded like him :)
matthiask
January 11, 2010, 11:17 PMwell, when Cantonese declines, it will be even more protected - like all the minorities in china :)
However, I think that Chinese is already a funny construct, and Cantonese simply takes the biscuit.
go_manly
January 11, 2010, 11:53 PMWith regard to the claim that Cantonese is 'older':
The two languages are supposed to be derived from a common source, so it seems meaningless to talk about which one is older. In fact, I think the idea of talking about the age of ANY language is meaningless - every language derives from some other language, and this process goes back to the year dot.
Of more interest is the relationship of each language to the parent language. And from what I've read, Cantonese is closer than Mandarin to their predecessor.
pretzellogic
January 12, 2010, 01:21 AMI thought it was interesting that in the NY Times article, the author said that Cantonese "is being rapidly swept aside" by Mandarin, and that this is being translated/heard as "Cantonese is dead".
simonpettersson
One thing I've noticed as I've started to learn Cantonese is that Cantonese learners are fiercely protective of the language (while native speakers are not). There are aggressive feelings as soon as someone calls it a "dialect" and news of Mandarin or English being used instead of Cantonese is called things like "cultural genocide".
simonpettersson
January 12, 2010, 04:16 AMOne thing I've noticed as I've started to learn Cantonese is that Cantonese learners are fiercely protective of the language (while native speakers are not). There are aggressive feelings as soon as someone calls it a "dialect" and news of Mandarin or English being used instead of Cantonese is called things like "cultural genocide".
simonpettersson
January 11, 2010, 08:33 AMArise, thread! Arise from thy shadowy slumber!
I just came across this rebuttal of the NYT article. Seems like the article might not be entirely factual.
The blog post has some problems of its own, though. First accusing others of spreading linguistic misinformation and then claiming that Cantonese is older than Mandarin. Or first accusing others of treating China as one homogenous country, then saying "I like diversity. So do the Chinese". Okay, that second one isn't bad as much as funny.
Anyway, it's a mostly well-written post and I for one was glad to hear that Cantonese is still alive and thriving in the overseas Chinese communities.
matthiask
I hope this was in the voice of Frankenstein - at least in my head, you sounded like him :)
go_manly
With regard to the claim that Cantonese is 'older':
The two languages are supposed to be derived from a common source, so it seems meaningless to talk about which one is older. In fact, I think the idea of talking about the age of ANY language is meaningless - every language derives from some other language, and this process goes back to the year dot.
Of more interest is the relationship of each language to the parent language. And from what I've read, Cantonese is closer than Mandarin to their predecessor.
bababardwan
有趣
simonpettersson
Go_manly: That was exactly my thought.
changye
I also heard the same story before. Some scholars insist that Mandarin and Cantonese have the same substratum language, which is also the base language of Thai and Zhuang yu (壮语). Cantonese is very different from modern Mandarin, partly because Mandarin was heavily affected by northern ethnic languages.
simonpettersson
October 22, 2009, 05:19 PMThe decline of Cantonese is really a shame. I'm going to Foshan in six months, to stay for a year, and I'm learning Mandarin. I'm a bit ashamed of that, to be honest. I'd love to be learning Cantonese and once I'm at a comfortable level with my Mandarin, where I won't risk mixing things up, I might take it up. Hopefully this will happen while still in Foshan.
But it is quite obvious that Cantonese is becoming a language of the past, and Mandarin is surely the Chinese of the future. I expect that in ten years I'll have learned Cantonese, only to realize that nobody uses it anymore and the only use I have for it is to watch old HK action movies and pronounce the names of the moves in the kung fu style I practice (which is a southern, and thus Cantonese, style).