Re: OT: Why does the Right hate relativity?

On Wed, 30 Dec 2009 18:58:59 -0800 (PST), Robert Carnegie
<rja.carnegie@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Mike Schilling wrote:
Quadibloc wrote:
On Dec 30, 8:34 am, "Mike Schilling" <mscottschill...@xxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

This is nothing new; back when the media began to modernize its
spelling of Chinese place names, the conservative establishment
considered using "Beijing" rather than "Peking" to be giving in to
the Commies.

That, at least, was actually legitimate, because the Republic of
China
hadn't chosen Pinyin over Wade-Giles as its official transliteration
of Chinese - so why be concerned over what decision was made by the
People's Republic of China?

The same reason you'd consult the Fifth Republic rather than the
current Bourbon pretender.

I'm not sure if this is relevant, but some Americans were hoping for
the return to power of the government-in-exile in Taiwan for way later
than seemed reasonable.

Having said that, I don't know if they speak any differently in
Taiwan. I know the Chinese language used to come in many flavours...

"Used to"?

"Chinese" is a written representation of about a dozen related
languages. The largest is Mandarin, which is spoken in most of
northern China and in Taiwan, though there are several dialects within
Mandarin. It's the official language of the People's Republic of
China.

Cantonese is spoken in large parts of southern China and was the
official language of the Republic of China under the Nationalists --
basically, if Nanjing was the national capital, Cantonese was the
national language; if Beijing was the capital, it was Mandarin.
Cantonese is in decline now.

Wu is the other really major language in China; it's spoken in the
central region. (The boundaries aren't as neat as I'm implying.)
Shanghainese is a dialect of Wu. Mandarin and Wu are ALMOST mutually
intelligible, but not quite. (Another language, Mei, is mutually
intelligible to both.) Most people in Shanghai these days know
Mandarin as well as Wu, as all official business is conducted in
Mandarin and foreigners may speak Mandarin but never know any Wu.

There are other Chinese languages, such as Mei (mentioned above) and
Jin (which some linguists consider a dialect of Mandarin, rather than
a separate language).

Written Chinese can usually be read by anyone who knows any of the
Chinese languages, though there are some idioms and usages that differ
from one to the other -- there are common Cantonese phrases that are
nonsensical in spoken Mandarin, but more or less acceptable in
writing. This interchangeability means that you'll sometimes see
Chinese people who speak different dialects drawing characters on
their hands to convey something the other person doesn't understand,
as the characters are the same even when the spoken words aren't.

There are two forms of written Chinese -- traditional and simplified.
Some of the traditional characters are unnecessarily complex and hard
to distinguish quickly, so the Communist government introduced the
simplified form back in the 1950s. Most characters didn't change,
only very complicated ones. The simplified version is used in China;
traditional characters are still used almost everywhere else,
including Taiwan.

There are two major languages in Taiwan -- the Taiwan dialect of
Mandarin, which is the dominant and official language, and Taiwanese,
which is what the original inhabitants spoke before the mainlanders
came swarming in and took over. Taiwanese Mandarin isn't very
different from the official mainland dialect -- probably closer than
New York English is to London English -- but there are differences.

Incidentally, the official dialect is sometimes called the Beijing
dialect, but in fact it's only spoken by the upper classes in Beijing;
the working class folks native to Beijing speak a highly-tonal dialect
with a very strong R glide and slurred consonants that even most other
Mandarin speakers have trouble with. Think of it as the Chinese
equivalent of a Cockney accent.

(Tones are absolutely necessary for understanding or speaking Mandarin
or Cantonese; in Wu they're much less important. Cantonese has far
too many tones, if you ask me; Mandarin is much more manageable.)





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