Taiwanese and their language
futurepy
Chinese. So are their president and vice president. Taiwanees have
their own language. Mandarin Chinese is a foreign language to them.
Why do they, their presidents included, speak a foreign language, but
not their own?
john
"futurepy" <futu...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:a794329f.04041...@posting.google.com...
What is Taiwan's own language ?
Terry Kerr
Taiwan, in relation to Chinese history, was incoportaed into China under
the Qing, themselves a non-Han people and a foreign invader who
subjugated China.
john
language
and its official language is mandarin chinese and and fukian delect is also
spoken
widely in Taiwan.
"Terry Kerr" <ke...@lincoln.ac.nz> wrote in message
news:40836741...@lincoln.ac.nz...
KLM
wrote:
>That is still not answering the question, Taiwan does not have its own
>language and its official language is mandarin chinese and and fukian delect is also
>spoken widely in Taiwan.
I think a better claim to being separate and uniquely Taiwanese
language will be does the aboriginal language of Taiwan have a
written form or can it be written in Chinese characters? Its no
bloody good even if everyone can be made to speak aboriginal or some
unique Taiwan dialect if it cannot be recorded and transmitted in
writing
Peter L
"john" <jli...@ozemail.com.au> wrote in message
news:35Ggc.18$qr2....@nnrp1.ozemail.com.au...
Taiwanese. Taiwan as indigenous people. But Taiwanese is a modified
Fujianese.
>
Laser
Taiwanese? this is the first time I hear this word, the word of
Fujianese is also strange. where did you see the word? or you create
them yourself?
TheMiddlePath
It all depends on how do you define a Chinese. Are Singaporean whose
mother tougue is Hokien, Chinese too. How about Malaysian Teochew ?
charles liu
> Chinese.
Prove it. I remember someone posted a survey where majority of ROC
citizens consider themselves both Chinese and Taiwanese.
> So are their president and vice president. Taiwanees have
> their own language. Mandarin Chinese is a foreign language to them.
> Why do they, their presidents included, speak a foreign language, but
> not their own?
All Taiwanese should speak Gao Shan (high mountain) language - that's
the original Taiwanese language of the Native Taiwanese whom were
drove to the mountains by foreign invaders.
Yaofeng
There is no Taiwanese language. It is a dialect. In written form,
Taiwanese is no different from Chinese.
On being separate or united, language or ethnicity is hardly an issue,
but an excuse.
Guru Google
> futu...@yahoo.com (futurepy) wrote in message news:<a794329f.04041...@posting.google.com>...
> > Majority of the people in Taiwan think they are Taiwanese, but not
> > Chinese.
>
> Prove it. I remember someone posted a survey where majority of ROC
> citizens consider themselves both Chinese and Taiwanese.
You prove your claim and he prove his claim. :P
> > So are their president and vice president. Taiwanees have
> > their own language. Mandarin Chinese is a foreign language to them.
> > Why do they, their presidents included, speak a foreign language, but
> > not their own?
>
> All Taiwanese should speak Gao Shan (high mountain) language - that's
> the original Taiwanese language of the Native Taiwanese whom were
> drove to the mountains by foreign invaders.
and now you are in USA and please post in Navajo language.
John
> > Majority of the people in Taiwan think they are Taiwanese, but not
> > Chinese.
>
> Prove it. I remember someone posted a survey where majority of ROC
> citizens consider themselves both Chinese and Taiwanese.
You ask him to 'prove it' but reply with hearsay yourself.
> > So are their president and vice president. Taiwanees have
> > their own language. Mandarin Chinese is a foreign language to them.
> > Why do they, their presidents included, speak a foreign language, but
> > not their own?
>
> All Taiwanese should speak Gao Shan (high mountain) language - that's
> the original Taiwanese language of the Native Taiwanese whom were
> drove to the mountains by foreign invaders.
Because it is free country, since the military government of the KMT
is gone, and the Japanese are gone,too, and there is no coercion any
longer from either, people 'should speak' exactly what the f--k they
like, without your advice or anyone else's.
futurepy
> > Prove it. I remember someone posted a survey where majority of ROC
> > citizens consider themselves both Chinese and Taiwanese.
>
> You prove your claim and he prove his claim.
It is unnecessary to prove anything here. Taiwanese dislike Chinese a
lot, and they have their own language. Taiwanese have presented a huge
amount of evidence for their hostility. Why do they not take
Taiwanese as their official language?
Chinese is a foreign language for them. It's a shame for their
presidents to speak a foreign language, in their own land, to their
own constituents.
Chinese language is closely related to the Chinese people and Chinese
culture. If you identify yourselves as Taiwanese only, but not
Chinese, speak your own language, adopt your own culture only.
Guru Google
> goor...@yahoo.com (Guru Google) wrote in message news:<d4ba29e9.04042...@posting.google.com>...
>
> > > Prove it. I remember someone posted a survey where majority of ROC
> > > citizens consider themselves both Chinese and Taiwanese.
> >
> > You prove your claim and he prove his claim.
>
> It is unnecessary to prove anything here. Taiwanese dislike Chinese a
> lot, and they have their own language. Taiwanese have presented a huge
> amount of evidence for their hostility. Why do they not take
> Taiwanese as their official language?
Because there is a language called Hakka in Taiwan ..... :)
> Chinese is a foreign language for them. It's a shame for their
> presidents to speak a foreign language, in their own land, to their
> own constituents.
Because there is a Hakka.... Before their prez speak Hakka fluently,
speaking chinese is the minimum common factor.
> Chinese language is closely related to the Chinese people and Chinese
> culture. If you identify yourselves as Taiwanese only, but not
> Chinese, speak your own language, adopt your own culture only.
Because there is a Hakka language....
wuhinetad
aboriginal langauges, Southern Min langauge, Hakka language, Mandarin
language, Japanese language, and the English language.
charles liu wrote:
> futu...@yahoo.com (futurepy) wrote in message news:<a794329f.04041...@posting.google.com>...
>
>>Majority of the people in Taiwan think they are Taiwanese, but not
>>Chinese.
Huh?
> Prove it. I remember someone posted a survey where majority of ROC
> citizens consider themselves both Chinese and Taiwanese.
Correct. Nationally Republic of Chinsese, provincially Taiwanese.
>>So are their president and vice president. Taiwanees have
>>their own language.
Correction: Taiwanese have their own languages.
>>Mandarin Chinese is a foreign language to them.
Not at all, as described above.
>>Why do they, their presidents included, speak a foreign language, but
>>not their own?
Wrong. Which foreign language?
> All Taiwanese should speak Gao Shan (high mountain) language - that's
> the original Taiwanese language of the Native Taiwanese whom were
> drove to the mountains by foreign invaders.
This is a matter of convention and national policy and has no room for
normative fantasies.
Peter Dy
"wuhinetad" <wu.hi...@msa.hinet.net> wrote in message
news:c65660$j...@netnews.hinet.net...
> There are such things as Taiwanese languages. They are the Autronesian
> aboriginal langauges, Southern Min langauge, Hakka language, Mandarin
> language, Japanese language, and the English language.
Huh? Only the first is a Taiwanese language. Can you speak it?
Peter
benlizross
Actually, people concerned with Austronesian languages use the term
"Formosan" to refer to these pre-Chinese languages of Taiwan. This is
partly to avoid confusion with the Southern Min Chinese which is very
widely spoken in Taiwan and is often referred to as "Taiwanese".
Ross Clark
Yaofeng
> aboriginal langauges, Southern Min langauge, Hakka language, Mandarin
> language, Japanese language, and the English language.
>
Hakka, Mandarin, or Taiwanese (Fukianese or Ming Nam) is not a laguage
but a dialect of Chinese. If you must insist, they are all part of
the Chinese language unified by Chin-She-Huang-Ti thousands of years
ago. Each one of it is not a language by itself just like the British
accent is not a language but is English. In written form, Hakka,
Mandarin and Taiwanese are the same Chinese.
KLM
wrote:
>
>Actually, people concerned with Austronesian languages use the term
>"Formosan" to refer to these pre-Chinese languages of Taiwan. This is
>partly to avoid confusion with the Southern Min Chinese which is very
>widely spoken in Taiwan and is often referred to as "Taiwanese".
>
>Ross Clark
At last, someone who has an inkling of what the aboriginal language of
Taiwan is.
> American Heritage Dictionary:- Aus·tro·ne·sian (ô”str½-n¶“zh…n, -sh…n) adj.
>1. Of or relating to Austronesia or its peoples,
>languages, or cultures. --Aus·tro·ne·sian n.
>A family of languages that includes the Formosan, Indonesian,
>Malay, Melanesian, Micronesian, and Polynesian subfamilies.
Can you or anyone else tell us more? How many in Taiwan still speak
it? Is it comprehensible to the Chinese majority? Is there any
commonality in words between Chinese and aboriginal Taiwanese? Is
there any commonality with the rest of the Austronesian group?
In the tourist pictures showing aboriginal culture in Taiwan, in
particular the costumes dances and cultural shows, the performers look
pretty much Chinese and would have been indistinguishable from
ordinary Chinese if they wore street clothes. I understand the
performers may be ersatz aboriginals dressed up for the show. Can
someone from Taiwan tell us if they can tell any difference and
recognize aboriginal Taiwanese by sight?
Ekki
> Actually, people concerned with Austronesian languages use the term
> "Formosan" to refer to these pre-Chinese languages of Taiwan. This is
> partly to avoid confusion with the Southern Min Chinese which is very
> widely spoken in Taiwan and is often referred to as "Taiwanese".
People usually don't have a name for their own identity or language.
It's only when they interact with a foreign group that they get a
name. E.g: China did not have a name to refer to itself for a longest
time (Zhong Guo was more a poetic term.) In its own concept, China was
the world, so it did not need a name. Similarly, many aborigine group
names in Taiwan are simply derived from the word for "people/human",
like Tsou, Thau, Ta'u, etc. The word "Taiwanese", to refer to the
language, was of course not coined by the Taiwanese people. It was
coined by the Japanese government scholars during the occupation era,
who officially published dictionaries under the name "Taiwanese
Language Dictionary". Before the term "Taiwanese" came to be the name
of the language, the people that used this language referred to it as
"Hoklo" (with a silent k, if you wish,) for both the ethnicity and the
language. The origin of this term is not clear, but likely not Han
Chinese, since there are no standard Chinese characters to represent
it. This term was used before the arrival of Hoklo people to Taiwan,
and may be a term given to them from other mainland ethnic groups. The
English term for "Hoklo" has been in used for a long time, too. See:
October 16, 1845
http://www.history.rochester.edu/Scientific_American/vol1/vol1n008/p3c5.htm
Min is considered offensive to some extent. (a) There is a worm inside
the door. Much like there is a dog radical in the character to refer
to the Jewish people. Practices that should have been abandoned, but
retained by the Chinese, despite the writing reform. (b) Min
originally was just cognate of the Man character (nowadays meaning
"barbarian".) In fact, in this language, both characters are
pronounced as /ban/. (Interesting enough, this term originally simply
meant "human". Today, Hmong/Miao still retains a cognate form as the
name for their ethnicity and language.)
-- Ekki
Guru Google
> futu...@yahoo.com (futurepy) wrote in message news:<a794329f.04041...@posting.google.com>...
> > Majority of the people in Taiwan think they are Taiwanese, but not
> > Chinese. So are their president and vice president. Taiwanees have
> > their own language. Mandarin Chinese is a foreign language to them.
> > Why do they, their presidents included, speak a foreign language, but
> > not their own?
>
> There is no Taiwanese language. It is a dialect. In written form,
> Taiwanese is no different from Chinese.
I'm no linguists but when putting in printed form there are certain
words used in a "Taiwanese" text, I thikn you know that.
And the same thing applies to Cantonese -- read some Cantonese texts
in Hong kong newspaper or magazine web sites and you'll immediately
find some words seen only in Cantonese text.
Are these words more enough for us to say "Taiwanese/Cantonese is
different from Mandarin"? That's a difficult call.
futurepy
> > lot, and they have their own language. Taiwanese have presented a huge
> > amount of evidence for their hostility. Why do they not take
> > Taiwanese as their official language?
>
> Because there is a language called Hakka in Taiwan ..... :)
Hakka is spoken in China, too. It is not a language, but a dialect of
the Chinese language. The Hakka in China is not from Taiwan, but vice
versa. Hakka was spoken in China first, then taken to Taiwan by
migrants.
It turns out Taiwanese don't have their own language. They merely
speak a dialect of Chinese. But they hate Chinese people and their
culture.
wuhinetad
ones are languages
Yes, I can speak Pantza.
You?
> Peter
wuhinetad
ones are languages them
Piotr
"wuhinetad" <wu.hi...@msa.hinet.net> napisal
Also known as Ami, am I right ? Could you perhaps give me a short wordlist ?
Or a place to find one ?
My source on Austronesian languages of Taiwan (Ewa Zajdler - "Niechinskie
jezyki Tajwanu" [Non-Chinese languages of Taiwan]) gives the following info:
Ami (Amis, Pantse) - 124 949 speakers
Atayal (Tayal) - 81 020 speakers
Bunun (Vunum) - 37 474 speakers
Paiwan - 61 253 speakers
Puyuma (Pilam)- 8 599 speakers
Rukai - 8 343 speakers
Saisiyat - 3 919 speakers
Thao - 273 speakers
Tsou - 5 853 speakers
Yami - 3 967 speakers
Agalqunar viridaz,
Piotr
http://www.geocities.com/lezgian
Javier BF
> but a dialect of Chinese. If you must insist, they are all part of
> the Chinese language unified by Chin-She-Huang-Ti thousands of years
> ago. Each one of it is not a language by itself just like the British
> accent is not a language but is English. In written form, Hakka,
> Mandarin and Taiwanese are the same Chinese.
That's like stating that Spanish, French and Italian are not
languages but dialects of Romance. British and American English
are mutually intelligible without much effort at all; someone
speaking Cantonese will not be understood by a monolingual
Mandarin or Min or Hakka speaker. In fact, Danish and Swedish
are more mutually intelligible than Chinese so-called "dialects".
Speakers of Sinitic languages can easily use the common Chinese
logographic script as a tool for intercommunication, given that
those characters were developed to write the common ancestor of
the current Sinitic languages, and so the meanings associated
to a given character by the speakers of those languages are
the same or related and the grammars of Sinitic languages
share many aspects just like Romance languages. But those same
characters can also be used for basic intercommunication with
Japanese speakers. Does this fact that a Chinese may to some
extent communicate with a Japanese in written form make
Japanese a distant dialect of Chinese then?
It would be fine that first you learned the basics of what
is necessary for a linguistic variety to be considered a
dialect of the same language as another linguistic variety
from a linguistic point of view. Otherwise, your insistence
in making your absurd point only proves your ignorance.
ircirc
>That's like stating that Spanish, French and Italian are not
>languages but dialects of Romance. British and American English
>are mutually intelligible without much effort at all; someone
>speaking Cantonese will not be understood by a monolingual
>Mandarin or Min or Hakka speaker. In fact, Danish and Swedish
>are more mutually intelligible than Chinese so-called "dialects".
The above is an entirely different concept than the Chinese
dialect/script issue. Europe NEVER had been unified as a single
country throughout history. Although they use "similar" Greek/Latin
symbols/alphabets, even pronounciations, each state developed their
own culture/customs rather independently, historically, I mean. Since
the Chinese written language is the same, it takes people far less
time to learn how to communicate with a person of different region.
Mutually unintellgible is an exaggeration obviously from an outsider.
As a Cantonese/Shanghainese speaker, I DON'T have a lot of problems
understanding Taiwan TV shows in Minnan dialect (without subtitles of
course). I am just an ordinary example on how "mutually intelligbile"
the Chinese dialects are.
>Speakers of Sinitic languages can easily use the common Chinese
>logographic script as a tool for intercommunication, given that
>those characters were developed to write the common ancestor of
>the current Sinitic languages, and so the meanings associated
>to a given character by the speakers of those languages are
>the same or related and the grammars of Sinitic languages
>share many aspects just like Romance languages. But those same
>characters can also be used for basic intercommunication with
>Japanese speakers. Does this fact that a Chinese may to some
>extent communicate with a Japanese in written form make
>Japanese a distant dialect of Chinese then?
The Japanese never developed a language until very recently. They
were never accepted as part of East Asia family for their twisted,
bizarre yet aggressive towards both Korea and China. The entire
purpose of using some Chinese words is because their script is
severely lacking in functionality and flexibility. The Katakana IMHO
is unnecessary and convoluted. Therefore, the fact that the Japanese
still uses some Chinese words to plug holes in their language is
IRRELEVANT in discussing whether or not they are a dialect of Chinese
language.
>It would be fine that first you learned the basics of what
>is necessary for a linguistic variety to be considered a
>dialect of the same language as another linguistic variety
>from a linguistic point of view. Otherwise, your insistence
>in making your absurd point only proves your ignorance.
Why is someone with a different point of view "absurd" and "ignorant"?
I would counter that using European view of language evolvement in
interpreting Chinese dialect phenomenon is not acceptable either,
which is what you are doing.
Yang
that they should call themselves Englishmen, not Americans.
To deny the fact that Taiwan as a whole has acted and functioned as an
independent entity/nation for 50 plus years is just plain stupid.
Taiwan people don't have anything against Chinese people in China, they just
enjoy their freedom apart from the communist regime there.
If anything Chinese there may be the ones holding resentment due to envy and
jealousy.
"futurepy" <futu...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:a794329f.04042...@posting.google.com...
Peter T. Daniels
>
> On Wed, 21 Apr 2004 22:40:41 +1200, benlizross <benl...@ihug.co.nz>
> wrote:
>
> >
> >Actually, people concerned with Austronesian languages use the term
> >"Formosan" to refer to these pre-Chinese languages of Taiwan. This is
> >partly to avoid confusion with the Southern Min Chinese which is very
> >widely spoken in Taiwan and is often referred to as "Taiwanese".
> >
> >Ross Clark
>
> At last, someone who has an inkling of what the aboriginal language of
> Taiwan is.
>
> >1. Of or relating to Austronesia or its peoples,
> >languages, or cultures. --Aus·tro·ne·sian n.
> >A family of languages that includes the Formosan, Indonesian,
> >Malay, Melanesian, Micronesian, and Polynesian subfamilies.
>
> Can you or anyone else tell us more? How many in Taiwan still speak
> it? Is it comprehensible to the Chinese majority? Is there any
> commonality in words between Chinese and aboriginal Taiwanese? Is
> there any commonality with the rest of the Austronesian group?
>
> In the tourist pictures showing aboriginal culture in Taiwan, in
> particular the costumes dances and cultural shows, the performers look
> pretty much Chinese and would have been indistinguishable from
> ordinary Chinese if they wore street clothes. I understand the
> performers may be ersatz aboriginals dressed up for the show. Can
> someone from Taiwan tell us if they can tell any difference and
> recognize aboriginal Taiwanese by sight?
You're confusing language with ethnic group. There's no necessary reason
that speakers of Formosan languages should look different from speakers
of Sinitic languages.
--
Peter T. Daniels gram...@att.net
benlizross
>
> On Wed, 21 Apr 2004 22:40:41 +1200, benlizross <benl...@ihug.co.nz>
> wrote:
>
> >
> >Actually, people concerned with Austronesian languages use the term
> >"Formosan" to refer to these pre-Chinese languages of Taiwan. This is
> >partly to avoid confusion with the Southern Min Chinese which is very
> >widely spoken in Taiwan and is often referred to as "Taiwanese".
> >
> >Ross Clark
>
> At last, someone who has an inkling of what the aboriginal language of
> Taiwan is.
>
> > American Heritage Dictionary:- Aus·tro·ne·sian (ô”str½-n¶“zh…n, -sh…n) adj.
> >1. Of or relating to Austronesia or its peoples,
> >languages, or cultures. --Aus·tro·ne·sian n.
> >A family of languages that includes the Formosan, Indonesian,
> >Malay, Melanesian, Micronesian, and Polynesian subfamilies.
>
> Can you or anyone else tell us more? How many in Taiwan still speak
> it?
There are about a dozen languages still spoken. Someone has given some
figures elsewhere on the thread. Some have a reasonable number of
speakers, but all together they add up to no more than 1 or 2 percent of
the present population.
>Is it comprehensible to the Chinese majority?
No.
Is there any
> commonality in words between Chinese and aboriginal Taiwanese?
Naturally, you would expect borrowings from Chinese in the Formosan
languages. Whether there are any borrowings from Formosan in Taiwan
Chinese I don't know.
Is
> there any commonality with the rest of the Austronesian group?
Of course. That's how we know they're Austronesian languages. Courtesy
of Mark Rosenfelder's Metaverse, here are the numerals 1-10 in Ami
(Formosan), Ilokano (Philippines), Malagasy (Madagascar) and Malo
(Vanuatu):
Ami cicay tusa? tulu? spat lima? ?nem pitu? falu? siwa? ngu?tep
Ilokano maysa dua tallo uppat lima innem pito walo siam sangapulo
Malagasy iráy róa télo éfatra dímy énina fíto válo sívy fólo
Malo atea a-rua a-tolu a-Bati a-lima ayono a-mbitu a-walu a-suwa
sangaBulu
Ross Clark
KLM
<gram...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
>> In the tourist pictures showing aboriginal culture in Taiwan, in
>> particular the costumes dances and cultural shows, the performers look
>> pretty much Chinese and would have been indistinguishable from
>> ordinary Chinese if they wore street clothes. I understand the
>> performers may be ersatz aboriginals dressed up for the show. Can
>> someone from Taiwan tell us if they can tell any difference and
>> recognize aboriginal Taiwanese by sight?
>
>You're confusing language with ethnic group. There's no necessary reason
>that speakers of Formosan languages should look different from speakers
>of Sinitic languages.
So wise us up. I am always interested in unique human societies.
When an aboriginal language survives into modern times it implies a
still viable cultural way of life. It is extremely rare for someone
from the majority culture to adopt the aboriginal way of life much
less learn its language. The chances are that since the aboriginal
culture has survived mostly intact they would also have kept their
bloodline separate from the majority Han, enough for the Han not to
have diluted their distinctiveness, and be recognized by sight as to
who is an aboriginal.
To a non Han Chinese all Chinese look alike. As one I can usually,
tell just by looking, the region of China a person is from, and
thereby his dialect group. It takes only an exchange of two to three
lines of common pleasantaries to establish his exact home village and
there is no way a Chinese can bluff his way out of it.
I have seen Austronesian types in the hilly regions of Indo China and
Malaya - Sakais who are quite distinct from the majority Malays. I am
very interested in what features makes a Taiwan aboriginal.
Yaofeng
> > Hakka, Mandarin, or Taiwanese (Fukianese or Ming Nam) is not a laguage
> > but a dialect of Chinese. If you must insist, they are all part of
> > the Chinese language unified by Chin-She-Huang-Ti thousands of years
> > ago. Each one of it is not a language by itself just like the British
> > accent is not a language but is English. In written form, Hakka,
> > Mandarin and Taiwanese are the same Chinese.
>
> That's like stating that Spanish, French and Italian are not
> languages but dialects of Romance. British and American English
> are mutually intelligible without much effort at all; someone
> speaking Cantonese will not be understood by a monolingual
> Mandarin or Min or Hakka speaker. In fact, Danish and Swedish
> are more mutually intelligible than Chinese so-called "dialects".
>
No. It is entirely different. Just ask a French to read Italian or
Spanish. He won't be able to. A Hakka may not understand Mandarin.
But when a Chinese who only speaks Mandarin writes down what he says,
it is the same characters the Hakka writes, with very, very minor
differences. Taiwanese, Mandarin, Hakka or any od the scores or so
dialects within China shares the same language. The phonetics of each
dialect developed on its own because of a few thousand years of
separation and geographic isolation.
Yaofeng
Be careful when you accuse something against Taiwanese. They include
Ming-Nam, Hakka, and many Chinese from China, among others. Just
because they may want to be independent doesn't mean they hate Chinese
people and their culture.
Can't we get along?
John Atkinson
"KLM" <klm...@yahoo.com> wrote ...
> On Wed, 21 Apr 2004 22:40:41 +1200, benlizross <benl...@ihug.co.nz>
> wrote:
>
> >Actually, people concerned with Austronesian languages use the term
> >"Formosan" to refer to these pre-Chinese languages of Taiwan. This is
> >partly to avoid confusion with the Southern Min Chinese which is very
> >widely spoken in Taiwan and is often referred to as "Taiwanese".
> >
> >Ross Clark
>
>
> At last, someone who has an inkling of what the aboriginal language of
> Taiwan is.
>
> > American Heritage Dictionary:- Aus·tro·ne·sian (ô"str˝-n¶"zh.n, -sh.n)
adj.
> >1. Of or relating to Austronesia or its peoples,
> >languages, or cultures. --Aus·tro·ne·sian n.
> >A family of languages that includes the Formosan, Indonesian,
> >Malay, Melanesian, Micronesian, and Polynesian subfamilies.
>
> Can you or anyone else tell us more? How many in Taiwan still speak
> it?
It???
"About 20 Formosan languages have been recorded, of which half are now
extinct, the remainder having about 200 000 speakers at all."
> Is it comprehensible to the Chinese majority?
Of course not.
> Is there any
> commonality in words between Chinese and aboriginal Taiwanese?
Some Chinese words (especially in southern China) have been hypothesized to
derive from an Austronesian substratum.
I'm sure there have been many borrowings from Chinese into the various
Formosan languages over the last few centuries.
> Is
> there any commonality with the rest of the Austronesian group?
The rest of the Austronesian languages form a single basic subgroup of the
Austronesian family (called Malayo-Polynesian), as opposed to the Formosan
languages, which seem to form several such subgroups at this same level --
the exact number is still uncertain, I believe, probably three: Atayalic,
Tsouic, and Paiwanic.
See Piotr's post (or the Ethnologue) for more on the individual Formosan
languages
John.
Guru Google
It's not that simple.
Mandarin says "male chicken and female chicken" (roosters and hens).
Hoklo/Taiwanese say "chicken male and chicken female" literaly. While
Hoklo in Taiwan borrowed many usages from Japanese during Japan
colonization, I don't think this is one of them (borrowed from
Japanese).
English says "you leave first". In Mandarin literally it becomes "you
first leave" but in Cantonese it follows English as "you leave first".
These are difference in grammar structure, not just in phonetics.
It is a far cry to say these dialects are different languages; but I
don't think you can say they are the same in written form either with
only phonetic diff.
Ruud Harmsen
>The Japanese never developed a language until very recently.
??????
No further comments necesary.
--
Ruud Harmsen, http://rudhar.com
Ruud Harmsen
>No. It is entirely different. Just ask a French to read Italian or
>Spanish. He won't be able to.
I expect think they are. Even I can read some Italian based on some
knowledge of English, French, Spanish and Portuguese. For a native
speaker of French this should be even easier.
Ruud Harmsen
>No. It is entirely different. Just ask a French to read Italian or
>Spanish. He won't be able to. A Hakka may not understand Mandarin.
>But when a Chinese who only speaks Mandarin writes down what he says,
>it is the same characters the Hakka writes, with very, very minor
>differences. Taiwanese, Mandarin, Hakka or any od the scores or so
>dialects within China shares the same language.
The written language Chinese is one language. The spoken languages are
several.
>The phonetics of each
>dialect developed on its own because of a few thousand years of
>separation and geographic isolation.
Which is exactly what happened when Latin became Portuguese etc etc
Rumanian, and when Classical Arabic turned into Egyptian, Morrocan,
and Lebanese Arabic. They too can read each others newspaper (if
educated in an artificial language), but have trouble understanding
each other.
wuhinetad
Piotr wrote:
> "wuhinetad" <wu.hi...@msa.hinet.net> napisal
>
>>Peter Dy wrote:
>>
>>
>>>"wuhinetad" <wu.hi...@msa.hinet.net> wrote in message
>>>news:c65660$j...@netnews.hinet.net...
>>>
>>>
>>>>There are such things as Taiwanese languages. They are the Autronesian
>>>>aboriginal langauges, Southern Min langauge, Hakka language, Mandarin
>>>>language, Japanese language, and the English language.
>>>
>>>Huh? Only the first is a Taiwanese language. Can you speak it?
>>
>> ones are languages them
>>
>>Yes, I can speak Pantza.
>
>
> Also known as Ami, am I right ?
You are right.
Could you perhaps give me a short wordlist ?
Some one has just given the numerals one to ten in this thread.
> Or a place to find one ?
Maybe later.
> My source on Austronesian languages of Taiwan (Ewa Zajdler - "Niechinskie
> jezyki Tajwanu" [Non-Chinese languages of Taiwan]) gives the following info:
>
> Ami (Amis, Pantse) - 124 949 speakers
> Atayal (Tayal) - 81 020 speakers
> Bunun (Vunum) - 37 474 speakers
> Paiwan - 61 253 speakers
> Puyuma (Pilam)- 8 599 speakers
> Rukai - 8 343 speakers
> Saisiyat - 3 919 speakers
> Thao - 273 speakers
> Tsou - 5 853 speakers
> Yami - 3 967 speakers
>
> Agalqunar viridaz,
>
> Piotr
>
> http://www.geocities.com/lezgian
Thank you!
LEE Sau Dan
wuhinetad> There are such things as Taiwanese languages. They are
wuhinetad> the Autronesian aboriginal langauges, Southern Min
wuhinetad> langauge, Hakka language, Mandarin language, Japanese
wuhinetad> language, and the English language.
Except for the last two, I'd agree with you.
>> Prove it. I remember someone posted a survey where majority of
>> ROC citizens consider themselves both Chinese and Taiwanese.
wuhinetad> Correct. Nationally Republic of Chinsese,
.................................................^^^^^^^^
wuhinetad> provincially Taiwanese.
That's wrong. That country is called "Republic of China".
>>> Mandarin Chinese is a foreign language to them.
wuhinetad> Not at all, as described above.
So, are you saying that English is not a foreign language on Taiwan,
either?
--
Lee Sau Dan 李守敦(Big5) ~{@nJX6X~}(HZ)
E-mail: dan...@informatik.uni-freiburg.de
Home page: http://www.informatik.uni-freiburg.de/~danlee
LEE Sau Dan
ircirc> Mutually unintellgible is an exaggeration obviously from
ircirc> an outsider. As a Cantonese/Shanghainese speaker, I DON'T
ircirc> have a lot of problems understanding Taiwan TV shows in
ircirc> Minnan dialect (without subtitles of course).
I'm a native Cantonese speaker, speaking Mandarin as a third language.
I CANNOT understand Minnan and Shanghainese at all.
ircirc> I am just an ordinary example on how "mutually
ircirc> intelligbile" the Chinese dialects are.
Then, what am I? FYI, most Chinese know only one "dialect" and its
accent. You're already bilingual in Cantonese and Shanghainese, which
is not that common.
ircirc> The Japanese never developed a language until very
ircirc> recently.
What do you mean? Do you mean the Japanese couldn't talk among
themsevles until very recently? Or when they talked, they always used
a foreign language?
ircirc> They were never accepted as part of East Asia family for
ircirc> their twisted, bizarre yet aggressive towards both Korea
ircirc> and China. The entire purpose of using some Chinese words
ircirc> is because their script is severely lacking in
ircirc> functionality and flexibility.
You're wrong. They use Chinese characters in the writing, because
they speak ALSO with words loaned from Chinese. Words like "denwa"
for telephone (cf. Cantonese [tin22 wa35]), "tofu" (cf. Mandarin
<dou4fu4>) are not mere coincidence. Since they already speak with
lots of Chinese loans, it is not unnatural to write these words in
Chinese characters.
ircirc> The Katakana IMHO is unnecessary and convoluted.
It is necessary at least for writing the grammatical particles of
Japanese (e.g. no, ni, wa (written as ha), ga, de, etc.).
ircirc> Why is someone with a different point of view "absurd" and
ircirc> "ignorant"? I would counter that using European view of
ircirc> language evolvement in interpreting Chinese dialect
ircirc> phenomenon is not acceptable either, which is what you are
ircirc> doing.
Scientifically, there is no satisfiable way to differentiate "dialect"
from "language".
LEE Sau Dan
>> American Heritage Dictionary:- Aus·tro·ne·sian
>> adj. 1. Of or relating to
>> Austronesia or its peoples, languages, or
>> cultures. --Aus·tro·ne·sian n. A family of languages that
>> includes the Formosan, Indonesian, Malay, Melanesian,
>> Micronesian, and Polynesian subfamilies.
KLM> Can you or anyone else tell us more?
Yes. That Austronesian spoken in Taiwan is known as the <gao1shan1>
(lit.: high mountains) language. It is a non-Han language, in the
same way Zhuang, Hmong, Mongolian, Uygul and Tibetan are non-Han
languages spoken by "ethnic minorities" in China.
KLM> How many in Taiwan still speak it?
It's spoken by those non-Chinese tribes (still) inhabiting the areas
high in the mountains. I don't have the numbers, though.
KLM> Is it comprehensible to the Chinese majority?
No. It's a non-Han language. (Han == Sinitic)
KLM> Is there any commonality in words between Chinese and
KLM> aboriginal Taiwanese?
There should be many loan words from Chinese into <gao1shan1>, because
those tribe live in regions ruled by (Han-)Chinese speaking rulers.
KLM> Is there any commonality with the rest of the Austronesian
KLM> group?
Certainly. Otherwise, linguists won't classify it into the
Austronesian group.
KLM> In the tourist pictures showing aboriginal culture in Taiwan,
KLM> in particular the costumes dances and cultural shows, the
KLM> performers look pretty much Chinese and would have been
KLM> indistinguishable from ordinary Chinese if they wore street
KLM> clothes.
I haven't seen them. So, I can't comment. But what you say applies
to the Zhuang, Hmong, Naxi, Bai, Taic, etc. people. They all look
like southern Chinese (and Vietnamese, Thai) and it is not easy to
tell that they're not Chinese from their appearance.
KLM> I understand the performers may be ersatz aboriginals dressed
KLM> up for the show.
Not impossible. There are also Vietnamese people owning and operating
"Chinese Restaurants" instead of "Vietnamese Restaurants" here in
Germany.
KLM> Can someone from Taiwan tell us if they can tell any
KLM> difference and recognize aboriginal Taiwanese by sight?
LEE Sau Dan
Yaofeng> Hakka, Mandarin, or Taiwanese (Fukianese or Ming Nam) is
.........................................................^^^^
Why is it "ng" rather than "n"?
Yaofeng> not a laguage but a dialect of Chinese.
That's both right and wrong. Politically right. Linguistically wrong.
Hakka, Mandarin and Hokkien are not mutually intelligible AND they
have slightly different features and development trends. They're
different languages.
Compare this with the pair Italian and Spanish. They ARE mutually
intelligible. And you think they're different languages? This is not
just a particular instance. Another example is Danish, Swedish and
Norwegian. These 3 are mutually intelligible. And they're 3
different languages? Then why are Hokkien and Mandarin "the same
language"?
Yaofeng> If you must insist, they are all part of the Chinese
Yaofeng> language unified by Chin-She-Huang-Ti thousands of years
Yaofeng> ago.
Both Spanish and Italian are Romance language, descending from the
common language of the empire "unified" by Alexander the Great (excuse
me if my knowledge of history is wrong) more than 2000 years ago. So,
would you now say Spanish and Italian are the same language?
Yaofeng> Each one of it is not a language by itself just like the
Yaofeng> British accent is not a language but is English.
The British accent and the US accent and the Australian accent are
still *mutually intelligible*. It is acceptable to say they're the
same language. But saying Hokkien and Mandarin -- which are mutually
UNintelligible -- the same language is unreasonable, given that
Italian and Spanish (or Norwegian/Danish/Swedish) are mutually
intelligible but considered *different* languages.
Yaofeng> In written form, Hakka, Mandarin and Taiwanese are the
Yaofeng> same Chinese.
Really? When do you really write in Hakka, Mandarin and Taiwanese?
You only write in *literary Chinese*, which is a fourth language
indeed.
LEE Sau Dan
Ekki> People usually don't have a name for their own identity or
Ekki> language. It's only when they interact with a foreign group
Ekki> that they get a name. E.g: China did not have a name to
Ekki> refer to itself for a longest time
It did. During the warring states period, people identify their state
by the 7 state names. After the grand unification (2xx B.C.), people
refer to their own country by the Dynasty name. It is generally
believed that the current Cantonese-speaking region was Sinicized
during the Tang dynasty. That's why we Cantonese people call
ourselves Tang2ren2. That's also why "Chinatown" is called
Tang2ren2jie1. (Most Chinatowns are built up by Cantonese-speaking
settlers.) People in other areas call themselves Han4ren2, because
Han dynasty was the period they were sinicized. The Japanese and
Korean call Chinese characters "Kanji" and "hanja", respectively.
Both "Kan" and "Han" refers to the name of the Han dynasty. So,
apparently, the ancient Chinese used to call their country by the
dynasty name.
Do you know why China is called "China" in the west? Some people
(non-Chinese scholars included) say that that work comes from Greek,
and it is an imitation of the pronunciation Chinese word <qin2> -- the
name of the first dynasty after the grand unification. If this
explanation is true, then it further supports the idea that the
Chinese called their country by the dynasty name.
Ekki> (Zhong Guo was more a poetic term.) In its own concept,
Ekki> China was the world, so it did not need a name.
It's not the world. I think the "barbarians" surrounding it are not
considerd a part of "the Middle Kingdom".
LT Lee
Nonsense.
"First, you do this" and, "You do this first" mean different
grammatical structures.
Peter T. Daniels
> Which is exactly what happened when Latin became Portuguese etc etc
> Rumanian, and when Classical Arabic turned into Egyptian, Morrocan,
> and Lebanese Arabic. They too can read each others newspaper (if
> educated in an artificial language), but have trouble understanding
> each other.
Classical Arabic didn't "turn into" the various Arabic vernaculars.
There is disagreement over whether the range of spoken Arabics all have
a single ancestor (seems unlikely), but Classical Arabic is a somewhat
artificial creation based on at least two dialects (the variety in which
the consonantal text was written lacks a number of features that are
supplied by the "vocalization" pointing, which was added subsequently in
stages).
LEE Sau Dan
Ruud> 21 Apr 2004 19:27:23 -0700: yc...@bmwe30.net (Yaofeng): in
Ruud> sci.lang:
>> No. It is entirely different. Just ask a French to read
>> Italian or Spanish. He won't be able to.
Ruud> I expect think they are. Even I can read some Italian based
Ruud> on some knowledge of English, French, Spanish and
Ruud> Portuguese. For a native speaker of French this should be
Ruud> even easier.
And I can read some Dutch because of my knowledge of English and
German. I speak none of them natively.
LEE Sau Dan
>> That's like stating that Spanish, French and Italian are not
>> languages but dialects of Romance. British and American English
>> are mutually intelligible without much effort at all; someone
>> speaking Cantonese will not be understood by a monolingual
>> Mandarin or Min or Hakka speaker. In fact, Danish and Swedish
>> are more mutually intelligible than Chinese so-called
>> "dialects".
>>
Yaofeng> No. It is entirely different. Just ask a French to read
Yaofeng> Italian or Spanish. He won't be able to.
I'm afraid you're wrong, at least partially.
I was once at a meeting in Torino, Italy (a.k.a. "Turin" in French,
English, German). One colleague was a Frenchman. He could read the
signs on the street. He even told another colleague (also a
Frenchman), "you see? Italian is easy. It's almost French."
I could also read the Italian signs without big difficulties, thanks
to my knowledge of many French words and a handful of Italian words.
Yaofeng> A Hakka may not understand Mandarin. But when a Chinese
Yaofeng> who only speaks Mandarin writes down what he says, it is
Yaofeng> the same characters the Hakka writes, with very, very
Yaofeng> minor differences.
That's because literary Chinese is a language different from Mandarin
and Hakka, but learnt by literate speakers of both. It's an
inter-language. After the adoption of Bai2hua4 since 1919, the
literary language is based on Mandarin, and is thus close to Mandarin
in syntax and style. But as a written language, it has no sounds.
Before 1919, the literates communicate in Classical Chinese, which
nobody spoke. The syntax and style of Classical Chinese is completely
different from modern Sinitic languages, although it's closer to
Cantonese, Hakka, Hokkien than to Mandarin.
Yaofeng> Taiwanese, Mandarin, Hakka or any od the scores or so
Yaofeng> dialects within China shares the same language. The
Yaofeng> phonetics of each dialect developed on its own because of
Yaofeng> a few thousand years of separation and geographic
Yaofeng> isolation.
That's enough for calling them different "languages".
The Europeans also share a common way of writing numbers (with the so
called "Arabic numerals", although it looks radically different from
what the Arabs use in the Arabic script). Does that make them under
the umbrella of "the same number-language"?
LT Lee
> > futu...@yahoo.com (futurepy) wrote in message news:<a794329f.04041...@posting.google.com>...
> > > Majority of the people in Taiwan think they are Taiwanese, but not
> > > Chinese. So are their president and vice president. Taiwanees have
> > > their own language. Mandarin Chinese is a foreign language to them.
> > > Why do they, their presidents included, speak a foreign language, but
> > > not their own?
> >
> > There is no Taiwanese language. It is a dialect. In written form,
> > Taiwanese is no different from Chinese.
>
> I'm no linguists but when putting in printed form there are certain
> words used in a "Taiwanese" text, I thikn you know that.
>
> And the same thing applies to Cantonese -- read some Cantonese texts
> in Hong kong newspaper or magazine web sites and you'll immediately
> find some words seen only in Cantonese text.
Cantonese text?
What do the Cantonese call their writings? Chinese.
All living languages are changing languages. New words and phrases are
added to the lexicons all the time. During the last century, Cantonese
and Fujianese are in the forefront in making contact with foreigners.
New contacts bring new concepts and new language usage. So, it is not
surprising that they may use a slightly different and/or larger set of
chinese characters.
Similar thing occurs in English. For example, kowtow is not native
English. Suppose one from Kansas read the New York Times twenty-thirty
years, he found the word Kowtow in the newspaper, would he then
conclude that New Yorkers use a somewhat different language? Of cause
not.
> Are these words more enough for us to say "Taiwanese/Cantonese is
> different from Mandarin"? That's a difficult call.
>
> > On being separate or united, language or ethnicity is hardly an issue,
> > but an excuse.
Ruud Harmsen
<dan...@informatik.uni-freiburg.de>: in sci.lang:
> ircirc> The Japanese never developed a language until very
> ircirc> recently.
>
>What do you mean? Do you mean the Japanese couldn't talk among
>themsevles until very recently? Or when they talked, they always used
>a foreign language?
>
>
> ircirc> They were never accepted as part of East Asia family for
> ircirc> their twisted, bizarre yet aggressive towards both Korea
> ircirc> and China. The entire purpose of using some Chinese words
> ircirc> is because their script is severely lacking in
> ircirc> functionality and flexibility.
>
>You're wrong. They use Chinese characters in the writing, because
>they speak ALSO with words loaned from Chinese. Words like "denwa"
>for telephone (cf. Cantonese [tin22 wa35]), "tofu" (cf. Mandarin
><dou4fu4>) are not mere coincidence. Since they already speak with
>lots of Chinese loans, it is not unnatural to write these words in
>Chinese characters.
OK. But I suppose Japanese also has a lot of originally Japanese
words, not from Chinese? Don't they write these also in Chinese (or
Chinese-like, or -derived?) characters?
futurepy
> aboriginal langauges, Southern Min langauge, Hakka language, Mandarin
> language, Japanese language, and the English language.
This is exactly what I questioned. Taiwanese is a language, no matter
what its name is. Mandarin is another language. Why are Taiwanese,
including their presidents, speaking the foreign language Mandarin,
but not their own?
When people move to another place, they speak the language of that
place. Taiwanese are in their own land. They don't move to anywhere.
They are supposed to speak their own, not a foreign language, in
their own land.
It is said that Taiwanese has no written form. This is their own
business. They must not like to write down their own language.
Actually this is not possible. When Taiwanese people write letters to
one another, they must write Taiwanese. Of course they don't write
Shanghainese or Cantonese or Mandarin.
Tommi Nieminen
> they already speak with
> lots of Chinese loans, it is not unnatural to write these words in
> Chinese characters.
Huh? Since Finnish has many Russian loans, should they be written in
Cyrillic, then? That's BS.
--
.... Tommi Nieminen .... tommi underline nieminen at luukku dot com ....
There is no sweeter sound than the crumbling of your fellow man.
-Groucho Marx-
.... http://kotisivu.mtv3.fi/tommi_nieminen/ ....
Harlan Messinger
"LEE Sau Dan" <dan...@informatik.uni-freiburg.de> wrote in message
news:m3u0zce...@mika.informatik.uni-freiburg.de...
> >>>>> "ircirc" == ircirc <1...@abc.com> writes:
>
> ircirc> Mutually unintellgible is an exaggeration obviously from
> ircirc> an outsider. As a Cantonese/Shanghainese speaker, I DON'T
> ircirc> have a lot of problems understanding Taiwan TV shows in
> ircirc> Minnan dialect (without subtitles of course).
>
> I'm a native Cantonese speaker, speaking Mandarin as a third language.
> I CANNOT understand Minnan and Shanghainese at all.
Is it possible that Cantonese and Shanghainese *together* provide enough
background for Minnan to be somewhat intelligible? For comparison, someone
who speaks both French and German may have an easier time learning English
than someone who speaks only French or only German.
wuhinetad
LEE Sau Dan wrote:
>>>>>>"wuhinetad" == wuhinetad <wu.hi...@msa.hinet.net> writes:
>
>
> wuhinetad> There are such things as Taiwanese languages. They are
> wuhinetad> the Autronesian aboriginal langauges, Southern Min
> wuhinetad> langauge, Hakka language, Mandarin language, Japanese
> wuhinetad> language, and the English language.
>
> Except for the last two, I'd agree with you.
The last two cannot be excluded as not Taiwanese languages. Japan
ruled Taiwan from 1895 to 1945 as a colony. Close relations of the
United States with Taiwan and Taiwan's participation in world trade made
English another Taiwanese language.
> >> Prove it. I remember someone posted a survey where majority of
> >> ROC citizens consider themselves both Chinese and Taiwanese.
>
> wuhinetad> Correct. Nationally Republic of Chinsese,
> .................................................^^^^^^^^
> wuhinetad> provincially Taiwanese.
>
> That's wrong. That country is called "Republic of China".
Hence, Republic of Chinese.
> >>> Mandarin Chinese is a foreign language to them.
>
> wuhinetad> Not at all, as described above.
>
> So, are you saying that English is not a foreign language on Taiwan,
> either?
As far as businessmen and academics are concerned, no.
Marc Adler
> The Japanese never developed a language until very recently. They
> were never accepted as part of East Asia family for their twisted,
> bizarre yet aggressive towards both Korea and China. The entire
> purpose of using some Chinese words is because their script is
> severely lacking in functionality and flexibility. The Katakana IMHO
> is unnecessary and convoluted. Therefore, the fact that the Japanese
> still uses some Chinese words to plug holes in their language is
> IRRELEVANT in discussing whether or not they are a dialect of Chinese
> language.
Perfect.
--
「斯くてゴルゴタといふ處に、即ち髑髏(されかうべ)の地にいたり、苦味を混ぜ
たる葡萄酒を飲ませんとしたるに、嘗めて、飲まんとし給はず。」
太 二七・三三－三四
Marc Adler
> ircirc> The Katakana IMHO is unnecessary and convoluted.
>
> It is necessary at least for writing the grammatical particles of
> Japanese (e.g. no, ni, wa (written as ha), ga, de, etc.).
The Japanese use hiragana to write particles, katakana to write foreign
names (and for other reasons).
Marc Adler
> OK. But I suppose Japanese also has a lot of originally Japanese
> words, not from Chinese? Don't they write these also in Chinese (or
> Chinese-like, or -derived?) characters?
Yes. They use kanji to write native Japanese words, too, like 男 for
otoko or 木/樹 for ki. They also use kanji/kana combinations like 食べる
for taberu.
Marc Adler
> Huh? Since Finnish has many Russian loans, should they be written in
> Cyrillic, then? That's BS.
In French they still use the "Greek i" to write "ps_y_chologie" but the
Spanish use the "Latin i." Is that BS, too?
In any case, you don't seem to understand the cultural context with
regard to Chinese and Japanese. At first the only way to write was in
Chinese characters. The native syllabaries were derived afterwords, from
the characters. At no point did they ever stop using the characters.
There are arguments for writing Japanese just using the syllabaries, but
the comparison with Russian loandwords in Finnish is inaccurate.
Yaofeng
> >>>>> "Ruud" == Ruud Harmsen <erre-agá-a-at-rudhar-ponto-com> writes:
>
> Ruud> 21 Apr 2004 19:27:23 -0700: yc...@bmwe30.net (Yaofeng): in
> Ruud> sci.lang:
> >> No. It is entirely different. Just ask a French to read
> >> Italian or Spanish. He won't be able to.
>
> Ruud> I expect think they are. Even I can read some Italian based
> Ruud> on some knowledge of English, French, Spanish and
> Ruud> Portuguese. For a native speaker of French this should be
> Ruud> even easier.
>
> And I can read some Dutch because of my knowledge of English and
> German. I speak none of them natively.
I do too. If you tell me you can make sense out of a Dutch or German
article knowing a few words by way of your training in English, you
are quite genius. Why do we need to learn German or Dutch, or any
other latin based language? Isn't English sufficient?
Yaofeng
> >>>>> "Yaofeng" == Yaofeng <yc...@bmwe30.net> writes:
>
> Yaofeng> Hakka, Mandarin, or Taiwanese (Fukianese or Ming Nam) is
> .........................................................^^^^
>
> Why is it "ng" rather than "n"?
"g" with a nasal tone.
>
> Yaofeng> not a laguage but a dialect of Chinese.
>
> That's both right and wrong. Politically right. Linguistically wrong.
>
> Hakka, Mandarin and Hokkien are not mutually intelligible AND they
> have slightly different features and development trends. They're
> different languages.
>
Hakka, Mandarin and Hokkien have many similarities. They all evolve
from one ancient tongue (language or dialect). To say they are not
mutually intelligible is plain wrong. Hakka and Hokkien, in
particular, have many more similarities then other dialect. If you
understand both Hakka and Hokkien (which I do) you will know what I
mean. To give an example, "run" in Hakka and Hokkien sounds almost
the same. They are many more phrases like that. Both Hakka and
Hokkien kept many ancisnt pronunciations unchanged for a few thousand
years.
> Compare this with the pair Italian and Spanish. They ARE mutually
> intelligible. And you think they're different languages? This is not
> just a particular instance. Another example is Danish, Swedish and
> Norwegian. These 3 are mutually intelligible. And they're 3
> different languages? Then why are Hokkien and Mandarin "the same
> language"?
>
It is because the written form of Hakka and Hokkien is none other than
the same set of Chinese characters used throughout China. That's why
a student in Fujian province speaking Hoklo and another in Canton
Province speaking Hakka use the same text book published in Beijing.
Do you mean to tell me Italian and Spanish literature are the same?
>
> Yaofeng> If you must insist, they are all part of the Chinese
> Yaofeng> language unified by Chin-She-Huang-Ti thousands of years
> Yaofeng> ago.
>
> Both Spanish and Italian are Romance language, descending from the
> common language of the empire "unified" by Alexander the Great (excuse
> me if my knowledge of history is wrong) more than 2000 years ago. So,
> would you now say Spanish and Italian are the same language?
>
My previous argument applies here.
>
> Yaofeng> Each one of it is not a language by itself just like the
> Yaofeng> British accent is not a language but is English.
>
> The British accent and the US accent and the Australian accent are
> still *mutually intelligible*. It is acceptable to say they're the
> same language. But saying Hokkien and Mandarin -- which are mutually
> UNintelligible -- the same language is unreasonable, given that
> Italian and Spanish (or Norwegian/Danish/Swedish) are mutually
> intelligible but considered *different* languages.
>
>
Hakka, Hokkien and Mandarin are NOT mutual un-intelligible. If you
take the British English and the American English and let each one
develops on its own for a few thousand years WITHOUT ANY PHYSICAL
INTERACTION like what happened to Hokkien and Hakka, Thw Brits in the
future may not understand what the Yankees are saying. But they may
still have the same English language.
> Yaofeng> In written form, Hakka, Mandarin and Taiwanese are the
> Yaofeng> same Chinese.
>
> Really? When do you really write in Hakka, Mandarin and Taiwanese?
> You only write in *literary Chinese*, which is a fourth language
> indeed.
You are being absurd.
Yaofeng
Your obsession with what people must or must not do is mind boggling.
Chen Sui-Bian can speak Japanese and writes Martian if he wants. But
he won't be comminicating effectively with his voters and foes. Will
he?
The Taiwanese people can be Chinese and still want independence. They
can also deny their Chinese culture and be united with China.
What is it you are trying to say. What is your point?
Peter T. Daniels
> Hakka, Hokkien and Mandarin are NOT mutual un-intelligible. If you
> take the British English and the American English and let each one
> develops on its own for a few thousand years WITHOUT ANY PHYSICAL
> INTERACTION like what happened to Hokkien and Hakka, Thw Brits in the
> future may not understand what the Yankees are saying. But they may
> still have the same English language.
No, they would not have the same English language.
You must be using the word "language" in a way that it isn't used in
English.
Ekki
> from one ancient tongue (language or dialect).
To say it more correctly in terms of history and anthropology, Hakka
and Hoklo acquired their Chinese language because they were invaded by
the Chinese. Much like how the French and the Spaniards acquire their
Romance languages.
The following link has an estimate of the genetic composition of
Taiwanese Hakka/Hoklo people, which puts the Central Plain (Chinese
proper) ancestry at 15 to 20%. About 15% of the genetic material from
Taiwanese aborigenes. The dominant genetic material comes from the
Mainland southern aborigines: 65-70%.
http://cult.nc.hcc.edu.tw/but23.htm
> mutually intelligible is plain wrong. Hakka and Hokkien, in
> particular, have many more similarities then other dialect.
True. Spider in Hakka is lakia (la^kia^), in Hoklo is laaqiaa, not
shared by any other major Chinese dialects, but shared by the mainland
aboriginal She tribe/nation language: lau-khoe. In fact, no standard
Chinese characters for this term, because it is not even Chinese. It
is likely remanant from Austronesian-like substratum language. Another
example is diam-diam, meaning "quiet", shared by Hakka and Hoklo, plus
Malay/Indonesian and cognates in other Austronesian languages.
But then, Hakka and Cantonese also share a lot of similarities. E.g.:
third personal pronoun: Cantonese keu, Hakka ki.
And some other terms are shared by
Cantonese/Hakka/Hoklo/Malay/Indonesian. Like the word for cockroach:
Hakka ki-tsat, Hoklo gazuaq, Cantonese ga-dzat, Malay/Indonesian
kachuak/kacoa/kacoak, etc. Notice that the Hakka form precludes the
possibility of modern borrowing. It is more likely a substratum word.
> the same. They are many more phrases like that. Both Hakka and
> Hokkien kept many ancisnt pronunciations unchanged for a few thousand
> years.
So does Korean, Vietnamese, just about all places that have been
invaded by China. E.g.: book in Korean is "chaek", Hoklo "cheh",
Vietnamese "sach". One clear sign that Hakka/Hoklo differ from ancient
Chinese is that they do not have retroflex consonant initials. The
6-vowel system of Hoklo is also reminiscence of Austronesian.
> It is because the written form of Hakka and Hokkien is none other than
> the same set of Chinese characters used throughout China.
Literary layer, yes. Colloquial layer, no.
> > Really? When do you really write in Hakka, Mandarin and Taiwanese?
> > You only write in *literary Chinese*, which is a fourth language
> > indeed.
>
> You are being absurd.
I don't think he is being absurd. Being a person that can write (and
read) colloquial Hoklo (romanized or otherwise), I know by experience
that it is quite different from literary Hoklo (like the pronunciation
used in traditional Taiwanese puppet shows.) The problem with you is
that you have never written a single article in Hoklo/Hakka in your
life (guess how I know that), yet you talk as if you know what written
Hoklo/Hakka is about. Most elementary schools in Taiwan use some form
of romanization in addition to Han characters to teach Hoklo/Hakka. I
don't know how you can be so disconnected. You have not been following
news articles nor gone to research libraries.
Try to go to some research libraries and read more about modern
studies on Hakka. Or find out more about Hoklo/Hakka language teaching
in Taiwan. Or read about the DNA findings (which are old news by now
that most people in Taiwan know.) Or simply contact Dr. Chu. Your
points of view are kind of obsolete, I apologize, but it's true.
regards,
-- Ekki
Guru Google
> >
> > Mandarin says "male chicken and female chicken" (roosters and hens).
> > Hoklo/Taiwanese say "chicken male and chicken female" literaly. While
> > Hoklo in Taiwan borrowed many usages from Japanese during Japan
> > colonization, I don't think this is one of them (borrowed from
> > Japanese).
> >
> > English says "you leave first". In Mandarin literally it becomes "you
> > first leave" but in Cantonese it follows English as "you leave first".
> >
> > These are difference in grammar structure, not just in phonetics.
>
> Nonsense.
Thanks for your self-rating.
> "First, you do this" and, "You do this first" mean different
> grammatical structures.
You can't deny the reversing of adverb and verbs in Cantonese compared
to Mandarin, and the reversal of adj. and noun in Taiwanese.
Guru Google
> > > Taiwanese is no different from Chinese.
> >
> > I'm no linguists but when putting in printed form there are certain
> > words used in a "Taiwanese" text, I thikn you know that.
> >
> > And the same thing applies to Cantonese -- read some Cantonese texts
> > in Hong kong newspaper or magazine web sites and you'll immediately
> > find some words seen only in Cantonese text.
>
> Cantonese text?
> What do the Cantonese call their writings? Chinese.
That shows Cantonese is a subset of Chinese but not vice versa?
> All living languages are changing languages. New words and phrases are
> added to the lexicons all the time. During the last century, Cantonese
> and Fujianese are in the forefront in making contact with foreigners.
> New contacts bring new concepts and new language usage. So, it is not
> surprising that they may use a slightly different and/or larger set of
> chinese characters.
And reversing adverb/verb order is too?
> Similar thing occurs in English. For example, kowtow is not native
> English. Suppose one from Kansas read the New York Times twenty-thirty
> years, he found the word Kowtow in the newspaper, would he then
> conclude that New Yorkers use a somewhat different language? Of cause
> not.
You are arguing words and grammar.
Guru Google
> > There are such things as Taiwanese languages. They are the Autronesian
> > aboriginal langauges, Southern Min langauge, Hakka language, Mandarin
> > language, Japanese language, and the English language.
>
> This is exactly what I questioned. Taiwanese is a language, no matter
> what its name is. Mandarin is another language. Why are Taiwanese,
> including their presidents, speaking the foreign language Mandarin,
> but not their own?
Because they like so? If they like so and nobody force them so, what
bothers you?
> When people move to another place, they speak the language of that
> place. Taiwanese are in their own land. They don't move to anywhere.
> They are supposed to speak their own, not a foreign language, in
> their own land.
That means they gotta forget whatever language they brought from
Fujian, this is what you meant?
> It is said that Taiwanese has no written form. This is their own
> business. They must not like to write down their own language.
> Actually this is not possible. When Taiwanese people write letters to
> one another, they must write Taiwanese. Of course they don't write
> Shanghainese or Cantonese or Mandarin.
Again, you worry too much. What language Taiwanese wanna say or write
is up to them as long as nobody forces them to.
Dylan Sung
news:e89d1e3e.0404...@posting.google.com...
> LEE Sau Dan <dan...@informatik.uni-freiburg.de> wrote in message
news:<m34qrdi...@mika.informatik.uni-freiburg.de>...
> > >>>>> "Yaofeng" == Yaofeng <yc...@bmwe30.net> writes:
> >
> > Yaofeng> Hakka, Mandarin, or Taiwanese (Fukianese or Ming Nam) is
> > .........................................................^^^^
> >
> > Why is it "ng" rather than "n"?
>
> "g" with a nasal tone.
Yung4 pu1 tung1 va4 loi2 gong3, zin4 sit5 fat5 yim1 he4 'min', m1 me4
'ming'.
>
> >
> > Yaofeng> not a laguage but a dialect of Chinese.
> >
> > That's both right and wrong. Politically right. Linguistically wrong.
> >
> > Hakka, Mandarin and Hokkien are not mutually intelligible AND they
> > have slightly different features and development trends. They're
> > different languages.
> >
>
> Hakka, Mandarin and Hokkien have many similarities. They all evolve
> from one ancient tongue (language or dialect). To say they are not
> mutually intelligible is plain wrong. Hakka and Hokkien, in
He4 me4? Ngai2 gin1 ha4 yung4 nga1 hiong1 gong3 hak5 ga1 va4 loi2 sia3 dung1
si1, ngi2 va4 git5 do3 zak5 hiau3 pu1 tung1 va4 han2 di1 gong3 hok6 lau3 va4
sit5 tuk6. Mau2 yung4 hon4 su4 loi2 sia3 su4,
ngai2 gong3 gai4 hak5 ga1 va4 siong3 sin4 hok6 lau3 ngin2 han2 di1 bet5
fong1 ngin2 ko3 len2 tuk6 ngai2 sia3 dau3 lai3 diu1 gai4 dung1 si1 m1 tung1.
> particular, have many more similarities then other dialect. If you
> understand both Hakka and Hokkien (which I do) you will know what I
> mean. To give an example, "run" in Hakka and Hokkien sounds almost
> the same. They are many more phrases like that. Both Hakka and
> Hokkien kept many ancisnt pronunciations unchanged for a few thousand
> years.
Yit5 zak5 su4, yit5 zak5 su4 loi2 ge4 he4 mau2 det5 bi3 gai4. Tung2 ngai2
an2 nung4 sia3 sang2 yit5 gi4 yit5 gi4 loi2 kon4 zang4 yiu1 zin4 sit5 gai4
bi3 gau3 hau4 lit6. Ngia3 zak5 fong1 fap5 loi2 zo4 he4 co4.
>
> > Compare this with the pair Italian and Spanish. They ARE mutually
> > intelligible. And you think they're different languages? This is not
> > just a particular instance. Another example is Danish, Swedish and
> > Norwegian. These 3 are mutually intelligible. And they're 3
> > different languages? Then why are Hokkien and Mandarin "the same
> > language"?
> >
>
> It is because the written form of Hakka and Hokkien is none other than
> the same set of Chinese characters used throughout China. That's why
But5 go3 he4 ngi2 m1 yung4 hon4 su4 loi2 sia3, tai4 ga1 du1 fu2 fu2 tu2 tu2
la1!
> a student in Fujian province speaking Hoklo and another in Canton
> Province speaking Hakka use the same text book published in Beijing.
An2 nung1 yin1 vui4 sia3 su4 yiu1 sia3 su4 gai4 ngi1 fap5, gong3 va1 yiu1
gong1 va4 gai4 ngi1 fap5. Liong3 yong4 he4 oi4 hok6 zang4 ko3 yi1 min2 pak6
gai4.
[cet5]
> >
> > Yaofeng> Each one of it is not a language by itself just like the
> > Yaofeng> British accent is not a language but is English.
> >
> > The British accent and the US accent and the Australian accent are
> > still *mutually intelligible*. It is acceptable to say they're the
> > same language. But saying Hokkien and Mandarin -- which are mutually
> > UNintelligible -- the same language is unreasonable, given that
> > Italian and Spanish (or Norwegian/Danish/Swedish) are mutually
> > intelligible but considered *different* languages.
> >
> >
>
> Hakka, Hokkien and Mandarin are NOT mutual un-intelligible. If you
Ngai2 hia3 gong3 hak5 ga1 va4 tung2 mai2 hiong1 gong3 gai4 gong3 dung1 va4,
tung2 mai2 sau3 sau3 tang4 pu1 tung1 va4, but5 go3, he4 tang4 hok6 lau3 va4
loi2 gong3, yen2 cien2 m1 sit5 tang4.
> take the British English and the American English and let each one
> develops on its own for a few thousand years WITHOUT ANY PHYSICAL
> INTERACTION like what happened to Hokkien and Hakka, Thw Brits in the
> future may not understand what the Yankees are saying. But they may
> still have the same English language.
>
> > Yaofeng> In written form, Hakka, Mandarin and Taiwanese are the
> > Yaofeng> same Chinese.
> >
> > Really? When do you really write in Hakka, Mandarin and Taiwanese?
> > You only write in *literary Chinese*, which is a fourth language
> > indeed.
Gi2 gong3 det6 yiu1 li1 yiu2
>
> You are being absurd.
Ngi2 lau1 gong3 va4 tung2 sia3 su4 kun2 lon4 yit5 ce2. Liong3 zung3 ngi1
fap5 m1 tung2. Fat5 yim1 du1 m1 tung2, yiu1 si2 gong3 gai4 su4 ci2 du1 m1
tung2, ngi1 fap5 du1 yiu1 dit6 m1 siong1 tung2. Ngai2 gong4 gai4 hiong3
gong3 hak5 ga1 va4 bi3 nga1 lau3 po2 gai4 gong3 dung1 ho2 ngien2 liung2 con1
si4 gai4 si4 du3 hak5 ga1 va4 du1 hau3 do3 m1 tung. Oi4 hok5 sit5 zang4 sit5
tang4. So3 yi1, ngai2 du1 tung2 sen1 hang2 gai4 zak5 ngin2 tung2 yi4, ngi2
he4 co4
hoi1.
An2 nung2 loi2 gong3. He4 ngi2 vun2 dau3 liong3 zak5 m1 sit5 su4 gai4 ngin2
loi2 dui4 tiu2 gong3 va4, yit5 zak5 hak5 ga1 ngin2, yit5 zak5 hok5 lau3
ngin2, gia1 liong3 ha2 foi4 m1 foi4 min2 pak5 ai3 zak5 gong3 den3 mak5 gai4
mi1?
(Translating the last paragraph)
Let's put it in another way. If you sought two illiterate people together
face to face, one who is a hakka speaker, the other a hoklo speaker, will
the two understand what the other is saying?
Dyl.
boarhuntr
> Malaya - Sakais who are quite distinct from the majority Malays. I am
> very interested in what features makes a Taiwan aboriginal.
The famous Chinese (Taiwanese) Olympic athlete CK Yang was a
aboriginal. I recall he looked darker and more rugged facial features
than Han Chinese. If you can get an old picture of him it might give
you an idea of what a Taiwanese aboriginal looks like. CK Yang is from
the 60's, so he is by now quite ancient.
I'm willing to bet that there are few full blooded aboriginals anymore
and very few of them speak their language. To complicate matters, the
aborigines may have several different dialects themselves. Being a
hilly country, Taiwan would traditionally have pockets of native
peoples living in isolation from each other, so the possibility of
different dialects arising is great. I think anthropologists would
classify the aborogines' language as Australonesian or Malay. Being
in close proximity to the Philippines it would not be out of the realm
of possibility for Taiwanese aborigines to have cultural and
linguistic ties to the people of the Philippines, and look how many
dialects the PI has.
When people refer to "Taiwanese" they are actually referring to the
descedants of Fujian people who migrated to Taiwan from the mainland
during the end of the Ming dynasty, and throughout the Manchi (Qing)
dynasty. Culturally and ethnologically these Taiwanese are Han
people, whether they acknowledge it or not. Their wish for
independence is not so much a repudiation of their cultural heritage
than a wish to be politically independent of whatever political winds
blow on the Mainland.
Going back to dying native languages and dialects. It is interesting
that the Manchus, so powerful 400 years ago, who conquered China and
ruled it for 300 years, there are very few Manchurian speaking people
now, and their writing script is almost forgotten. They have basically
assimilated into Han culture.
Taiwanese aborigines can hardly compare with the Manchus, so the
chances of them keeping their language alive is minimal.
Michael
boarhuntr
boarhuntr
> That's like stating that Spanish, French and Italian are not
> languages but dialects of Romance. British and American English
> are mutually intelligible without much effort at all; someone
> speaking Cantonese will not be understood by a monolingual
> Mandarin or Min or Hakka speaker. In fact, Danish and Swedish
> are more mutually intelligible than Chinese so-called "dialects".
But the difference is that Spanish, French and Italian are languages
of recognized independent countries. Hakka, Fujianese, and Cantonese
speakers all live in one country, not several independent nations, so
as such does not meet the criteria of a "national" language, but
qualify as a dialect.
Does this fact that a Chinese may to some
> extent communicate with a Japanese in written form make
> Japanese a distant dialect of Chinese then?
Had Japan conquered China it would have met the same fate as the
Manchus 400 years ago. First, the Japanese would have to learn Chinese
in order to administer the vast bureaucracy that is China. Then also
they will need to learn Chinese to shop and conduct the activities of
daily living. Within a 100 years the Japanese would have assimilated,
just as the Manchus did. Japan would abandon Tokyo and move to Beijing
or Shanghai, leaving Tokyo as the spirtual ancestral capital.
Therefore it is highly probable that Japanese would have ended up
being a Chinese dialect, although not a Han dialect, but the dialect
of a distinct national minority as recognized by mainland China. In
fact Japan might be accorded an autonomous region status due to its
distinct language and culture. Don't laugh. It happened to the Manchus
, who had their own language and writing. Manchu script is inscribed
on some of the palaces in the Forbidden City, along with Tibetan and
Han writing. When the Manchus invaded China they were not a
cultureless nomadic tribe who herded goats and horses, but rather a
powerful semi-nomadic culture that had already had several hundred
years of experience administering cities and agriculture. But do you
see Manchurians today agitating for independence, another revived
Manchukuo ? I don't.
Michael
boarhuntr
>
> It would be fine that first you learned the basics of what
> is necessary for a linguistic variety to be considered a
> dialect of the same language as another linguistic variety
> from a linguistic point of view. Otherwise, your insistence
> in making your absurd point only proves your ignorance.
Tommi Nieminen
> In French they still use the "Greek i" to write "ps_y_chologie" but the
> Spanish use the "Latin i." Is that BS, too?
In French, they write _psychologie_ with all-Latin letters: there is
definitely no greek upsilon in the word, and neither is the whole word
written in Greek script.
> In any case, you don't seem to understand the cultural context with
> regard to Chinese and Japanese.
Actually I do, but that's beside the point...
My comment was specifically targeted to this remarkable claim: "Since
they [the Japanese] already speak with lots of Chinese loans, it is not
unnatural to write these words in Chinese characters".
Borrowing words from one language to another, _spoken_, language, does
not entail anything regarding the writing of (either) language. The
"cultural context" you refer to helps to understand why it may _seem_
natural, but doesn't in fact make it so.
Marc Adler
> In French, they write _psychologie_ with all-Latin letters: there is
> definitely no greek upsilon in the word, and neither is the whole word
> written in Greek script.
So is it safe to assume you don't know what the letter "y" is called in
French?
> Actually I do, but that's beside the point...
Uh-huh.
> My comment was specifically targeted to this remarkable claim: "Since
> they [the Japanese] already speak with lots of Chinese loans, it is not
> unnatural to write these words in Chinese characters".
Only a minority of Japanese, Chinese, or Koreans would think it strange
for the Japanese to write their Chinese loanwords using Chinese
characters. A Finn from the other side of the world thinks it's "BS."
Now you tell me: who understands the cultural context? You or them?
> Borrowing words from one language to another, _spoken_, language, does
> not entail anything regarding the writing of (either) language.
This right here is proof you don't understand the cultural context. The
introduction of the Chinese language into Japan was more important in
terms of its function as a written language than as a spoken language.
I hope you understand at least that much.
> The
> "cultural context" you refer to helps to understand why it may _seem_
> natural, but doesn't in fact make it so.
Putting aside the metaphysical conundrum of something _seeming_ natural
which actually isn't, the question of whether it is feasible to use
Chinese characters to write Chinese loanwords in Japanese is something
altogether different.
Tommi Nieminen
> So is it safe to assume you don't know what the letter "y" is called in
> French?
And does the *name* have anything to do with this? No. It doesn't make
it any more "Greek".
(<y> is called the "Greek i" in many other languages as well, eg. Estonian.)
> Only a minority of Japanese, Chinese, or Koreans would think it strange
> for the Japanese to write their Chinese loanwords using Chinese
> characters. A Finn from the other side of the world thinks it's "BS."
Are you deliberately misquoting me? I can only repeat myself: what I
called BS was the *claim* that having Chinese loan words would entail
having to write them in Chinese characters. The cultural context
(including the position of written language) may still make the *claim*
seem natural. Cultural context is, of course, always found natural to
those living in it: that's why it's called "cultural" context.
> This right here is proof you don't understand the cultural context. The
> introduction of the Chinese language into Japan was more important in
> terms of its function as a written language than as a spoken language.
Yes, I know that: it still does not legitimise the original claim.
> the question of whether it is feasible to use
> Chinese characters to write Chinese loanwords in Japanese is something
> altogether different.
The result could just as easily (or "naturally") been the exact opposite.
LEE Sau Dan
Yaofeng> LEE Sau Dan <dan...@informatik.uni-freiburg.de> wrote in
Yaofeng> message
Yaofeng> news:<m34qrdi...@mika.informatik.uni-freiburg.de>...
>> >>>>> "Yaofeng" == Yaofeng <yc...@bmwe30.net> writes:
>>
Yaofeng> Hakka, Mandarin, or Taiwanese (Fukianese or Ming Nam) is
>> ..................................................^^^^
>>
>> Why is it "ng" rather than "n"?
Yaofeng> "g" with a nasal tone.
What is a nasal *tone*? I hope you're not confusing vowels,
consonants and tones.
And why "g" for a nasal? By what convention?
The usual convention of using "ng" is for the velar nasal sound. But
I'm wondering in which Chinese language/dialect is that character
pronounced with a final "ng" sound. It's [min214] in Mandarin,
[m@n13] in Cantonese and [ban24] in Minnan. All end with "n", not
"ng".
>> Hakka, Mandarin and Hokkien are not mutually intelligible AND
>> they have slightly different features and development trends.
>> They're different languages.
>>
Yaofeng> Hakka, Mandarin and Hokkien have many similarities.
Danish, Swedish, Norwegian have no fewer similarities.
Italian and Spanish have no fewer.
Yaofeng> They all evolve from one ancient tongue (language or
Yaofeng> dialect).
The same applies to Danish/Swedish/Norwegian and Italian/Spanish.
Yaofeng> To say they are not mutually intelligible is plain wrong.
Yaofeng> Hakka and Hokkien, in particular, have many more
Yaofeng> similarities then other dialect.
Really? Do you know what "mutually intelligible" means? It means the
native speakers of both languages can understand one another without
learning the other's language.
That happens for Danish/Swedish/Norwegian and Italian/Spanish. I've
never heard a native *monoglot* speaker of Hakka being able to
understand Hokkien without being exposed to or having learnt it. And
vice versa.
In Taiwan, children in a Hakka home are usually exposed to Hokkien and
Mandarin pretty early, in schools or on TV. These children are
polygots. In mainland China, you may have a different situation. As
a Hakka speaker in Meixian, Guangdong if he can understand Hokkien
without learning it! Ask a typical person in Amoy if he can
understand Hakka.
Yaofeng> If you understand both Hakka and Hokkien (which I do) you
Yaofeng> will know what I mean.
That's not mutual intelligibility. If you know both Chinese and
English, then you of course have no problems communicating in any of
them. And you can also find some similarities between Chinese and
English, too.
Yaofeng> To give an example, "run" in Hakka and Hokkien sounds
Yaofeng> almost the same.
English "tea" and Hokkien "te" also sound alike. So what?
Some kinds of such similarities are only apparent to the polyglots in
those languages. To the monoglot of any involved languages, the
"similarity" does not exist. E.g. I find English "eight" and German
"acht" to sound 'similar', because I know they're etymologically
related, and I know how the sounds maps between them. Dutch "geen"
sounds 'like' German "kein" to me, again because I can easily guess
from context that these 2 words are etymologically related and the
sound mapping is consistent.
Yaofeng> They are many more phrases like that.
Yaofeng> Both Hakka and Hokkien kept many ancisnt pronunciations
Yaofeng> unchanged for a few thousand years.
So has Cantonese. Mandarin is the only "outside" in this camp.
So, do you understand Cantonese without learning it?
Yaofeng> It is because the written form of Hakka and Hokkien is
Yaofeng> none other than the same set of Chinese characters used
Yaofeng> throughout China. That's why a student in Fujian
Yaofeng> province speaking Hoklo and another in Canton Province
Yaofeng> speaking Hakka use the same text book published in
Yaofeng> Beijing.
When has Taiwan abandoned the traditional characters?
Yaofeng> Do you mean to tell me Italian and Spanish literature are
Yaofeng> the same?
I know nothing about literature.
Yaofeng> Hakka, Hokkien and Mandarin are NOT mutual
Yaofeng> un-intelligible.
They ARE. I know Mandarin and I speak Cantonese natively, but I can't
understand Hakka nor Hokkien at all. When I was in Taiwan and the TV
showed ads in Hokkien, I couldn't make any sense out of it. I can
understand the TV news in Taiwan perfectly, because they're in
Mandarin.
Those languages are mutually unintelligible.
(Actually, Minnan is closer to Cantonese in terms of grammar,
pronunciation and vocabulary than to Mandarin. Both Minnan and
Cantonese have preserved a lot from Middle Chinese. (e.g. both have
kept the "entering tones".) The sounds map better (i.e. more
regularly). Both use many expressions kept from M.C. Mandarin has
gone far away from M.C.)
Yaofeng> In written form, Hakka, Mandarin and Taiwanese are the
Yaofeng> same Chinese.
Now, how about Cantonese?
LEE Sau Dan
>> And I can read some Dutch because of my knowledge of English
>> and German. I speak none of them natively.
Yaofeng> I do too. If you tell me you can make sense out of a
Yaofeng> Dutch or German article knowing a few words by way of
Yaofeng> your training in English, you are quite genius.
English alone is not sufficient for reading Dutch. But knowing German
ALSO, it's just a game of deciphering. :)
Yaofeng> Why do we need to learn German or Dutch, or any other
Yaofeng> latin based language? Isn't English sufficient?
That's becoming a trend. Read a German magazine about mobile phones
or computers, and don't be surprised that there are so many English
loans. Even if you know only English, you can guess what the articles
are talking about. (That's the same as what I can do with a Japanese
newspaper article (esp. the headline), due to my knowledge of
Chinese.) Of course, you need to know the language to get to the fine
details.
LEE Sau Dan
>> mutually intelligible is plain wrong. Hakka and Hokkien, in
>> particular, have many more similarities then other dialect.
Ekki> True. Spider in Hakka is lakia (la^kia^), in Hoklo is
Ekki> laaqiaa, not shared by any other major Chinese dialects,
How about Hokkien (Fujian)? He was talking about the similarity
between Hakkan and Hokkien, not Hoklo!
Ekki> but shared by the mainland aboriginal She tribe/nation
Ekki> language: lau-khoe.
There is a Cantonese word [k'@m21 lou35] for spider, which is of
non-Chinese origin. However, it has been virtually replaced by the
Chinese word [tsi55 tsy55] in the past half century.
Ekki> In fact, no standard Chinese characters for this term,
Ekki> because it is not even Chinese.
I think people writing drama/movie scripts have invented Cantonese
characters to write [k'@m21 lou35], using the principle of
xing2sheng1zi4.
Ekki> It is likely remanant from Austronesian-like substratum
Ekki> language. Another example is diam-diam, meaning "quiet",
Ekki> shared by Hakka and Hoklo, plus Malay/Indonesian and
Ekki> cognates in other Austronesian languages.
And linguists have found that the Cantonese word [k'@m21 lou35] has
cognates in related languages such as Zhuang, Hmong.
Ekki> But then, Hakka and Cantonese also share a lot of
Ekki> similarities. E.g.: third personal pronoun: Cantonese keu,
Ekki> Hakka ki.
Yeah.
Ekki> And some other terms are shared by
Ekki> Cantonese/Hakka/Hoklo/Malay/Indonesian. Like the word for
Ekki> cockroach: Hakka ki-tsat, Hoklo gazuaq, Cantonese ga-dzat,
Ekki> Malay/Indonesian kachuak/kacoa/kacoak, etc.
It's "Kakalak" in German. Is that a loan from Malay/Indonesian?
Back to the topic. What is cockroach in Hokkien?
Ekki> So does Korean, Vietnamese, just about all places that have
Ekki> been invaded by China.
Yeah. I've heard [p'EN21 t'aN24] in a Vietnamese film, which is so
close to Cantonese [p'IN21 t@N35], meaning the same thing: equality.
(I know the meaning of that Vietnamese word from the English
subtitles.)
Ekki> E.g.: book in Korean is "chaek", Hoklo "cheh", Vietnamese
Ekki> "sach". One clear sign that Hakka/Hoklo differ from ancient
Ekki> Chinese is that they do not have retroflex consonant
Ekki> initials. The 6-vowel system of Hoklo is also reminiscence
Ekki> of Austronesian.
And the 6+3 tone system of Zhuang is so amazingly similar to that of
Cantonese.
So, if Mandarin and Cantonese are considered to be "the same
language", why aren't we pulling Vietnamese, Japanese, Korean, Zhuang,
etc. into the same basket? There are also various degrees of
similarities between these languages and Chinese (mainly in the
lexicon).
>> It is because the written form of Hakka and Hokkien is none
>> other than the same set of Chinese characters used throughout
>> China.
Ekki> Literary layer, yes. Colloquial layer, no.
I can't agree more!
Ekki> I don't think he is being absurd. Being a person that can
Ekki> write (and read) colloquial Hoklo (romanized or otherwise),
Ekki> I know by experience that it is quite different from
Ekki> literary Hoklo (like the pronunciation used in traditional
Ekki> Taiwanese puppet shows.)
Written Cantonese is a very good example here. It is quite
standardized and publications in Written Cantonese (from HK) are
widely available. All non-Cantonese people who have tried to read
such publications ended up with the same exclamation: "Is that really
Chinese?" They can't understand Written Cantonese.
Ekki> The problem with you is that you have never written a single
Ekki> article in Hoklo/Hakka in your life (guess how I know that),
And I'm waiting for that. I'll show him how I can't understand what
he'd write.
Ekki> yet you talk as if you know what written Hoklo/Hakka is
Ekki> about.
This is typical. Most Chinese are brainwashed into believing
"Mandarin is your mother tongue", even though they have to learn it as
a foreign language. And they are made to believe that when they write
in literary Chinese, they're writing what they'd speak (+YhFiS1vrYhFT4w-).
That slogan is a liar. It only applies to Mandarin and modern
standard written Chinese. Actually, Mandarin has developed faster
than literary Chinese after 1919. So, even a Mandarin speaker doesn't
write what he says. I'd find it absurb if a native Mandarin speaker
would say "+TglRQ1FridI-" rather than "+TglYSlFra9s-" or even more shortly "+TglYSg-
+UWs-". Colloquial Mandarin has minor differences from literary Chinese.
It's not hard to discover -- once you've unbrainwashed yourself.
--
Lee Sau Dan +Z05biGVm-(Big5) ~{@nJX6X~}(HZ)
LEE Sau Dan
Yaofeng> Your obsession with what people must or must not do is
Yaofeng> mind boggling. Chen Sui-Bian can speak Japanese and
Yaofeng> writes Martian if he wants. But he won't be
Yaofeng> comminicating effectively with his voters and foes. Will
Yaofeng> he?
That alone is sufficient to illustrate that Mandarin and Hokkien are
different languages. If they're the same language and are mutually
intelligible, then why doesn't A-Bia give public talks in Mandarin?
Yaofeng> The Taiwanese people can be Chinese and still want
Yaofeng> independence. They can also deny their Chinese culture
Yaofeng> and be united with China.
Being Chinese and being an independent country are two separate
issues. Singapore is mostly Chinese (75%) and it also uses Chinese as
one of its official languages. The Chinese Singaporeans also admit
that they're 華人 (not 中國人 to avoid political confusions). But
they're proud of being citizens of their own country. There is no
conflicts in being 華人 and being in a country independent from China.
--
Lee Sau Dan 李守敦(Big5) ~{@nJX6X~}(HZ)
LEE Sau Dan
>> That's like stating that Spanish, French and Italian are not
>> languages but dialects of Romance. British and American English
>> are mutually intelligible without much effort at all; someone
>> speaking Cantonese will not be understood by a monolingual
>> Mandarin or Min or Hakka speaker. In fact, Danish and Swedish
>> are more mutually intelligible than Chinese so-called
>> "dialects".
boarhuntr> But the difference is that Spanish, French and Italian
boarhuntr> are languages of recognized independent
boarhuntr> countries. Hakka, Fujianese, and Cantonese speakers all
boarhuntr> live in one country, not several independent nations,
boarhuntr> so as such does not meet the criteria of a "national"
boarhuntr> language, but qualify as a dialect.
Isn't that a driving force (among many) for the Taiwanese people to
fight for independence?
IMO, it is better for China to recognize these "dialects" as languages
of their own rights, and even set up committees on standardizing
pronunciation, vocabulary and a system of teaching them to the local
people as well as "cross-province" people.
Even such a small country as Luxemburg has its own language! Finland
has only 5 million people altogether -- much fewer than all big
Chinese cities. And Finnish is recognized internationally as a
language on is own. (Finnish is mutually intelligible with the
language of Estonia, which is also a country with a small population.
But Estonian is also recognized as a separate language!)
boarhuntr> Had Japan conquered China it would have met the same
boarhuntr> fate as the Manchus 400 years ago. First, the Japanese
boarhuntr> would have to learn Chinese in order to administer the
boarhuntr> vast bureaucracy that is China. Then also they will
boarhuntr> need to learn Chinese to shop and conduct the
boarhuntr> activities of daily living.
Remember the Sino-Japanese war a century ago? Which country was more
technologically advanced and industrialized?
boarhuntr> Within a 100 years the Japanese would have assimilated,
boarhuntr> just as the Manchus did. Japan would abandon Tokyo and
boarhuntr> move to Beijing or Shanghai, leaving Tokyo as the
boarhuntr> spirtual ancestral capital. Therefore it is highly
boarhuntr> probable that Japanese would have ended up being a
boarhuntr> Chinese dialect, although not a Han dialect, but the
boarhuntr> dialect of a distinct national minority as recognized
boarhuntr> by mainland China.
I doubt. Japan has a much richer culture than Manchuria. And it is
technologically much more advanced. It took the Manchurians 400 years
to be completely Han-ified. It would take the Japanese even longer.
LEE Sau Dan
futurepy> This is exactly what I questioned. Taiwanese is a
futurepy> language, no matter what its name is. Mandarin is
futurepy> another language. Why are Taiwanese, including their
futurepy> presidents, speaking the foreign language Mandarin, but
futurepy> not their own?
Why is Bush speaking the foreign language English on the soil of North
America, and not an Amerindian language?
futurepy> When people move to another place, they speak the
futurepy> language of that place.
The European colonists all disagree with you. Take a look at
Australia, New Zealand, the Americas, and even India.
futurepy> Taiwanese are in their own land. They don't move to
futurepy> anywhere. They are supposed to speak their own, not a
futurepy> foreign language, in their own land.
Don't they? Are they ever forbidden to do so?
LEE Sau Dan
boarhuntr> Going back to dying native languages and dialects. It
boarhuntr> is interesting that the Manchus, so powerful 400 years
boarhuntr> ago, who conquered China and ruled it for 300 years,
boarhuntr> there are very few Manchurian speaking people now, and
boarhuntr> their writing script is almost forgotten. They have
boarhuntr> basically assimilated into Han culture.
Weaking cultures being assimulated by strong cultures. That's a
normal trend. (Would the Manchurians be better off now if they didn't
invade Han China?)
boarhuntr> Taiwanese aborigines can hardly compare with the
boarhuntr> Manchus, so the chances of them keeping their language
boarhuntr> alive is minimal.
But they didn't invade the Hans! :)
In mainland China, not only Mongolians and Tibetans and Zhuangs have
kept their culture and languages, but also the smaller minorities such
as Bai, Naxi, Yi, Hmong, Li, etc. The communists (I'm not for them)
do take it seriously to preserve such cultures. (But ironically,
they're ruining the rich Han culture(s) and language(s).)
Yaofeng
> >>>>> "Yaofeng" == Yaofeng <yc...@bmwe30.net> writes:
>
> Yaofeng> Your obsession with what people must or must not do is
> Yaofeng> mind boggling. Chen Sui-Bian can speak Japanese and
> Yaofeng> writes Martian if he wants. But he won't be
> Yaofeng> comminicating effectively with his voters and foes. Will
> Yaofeng> he?
>
> That alone is sufficient to illustrate that Mandarin and Hokkien are
> different languages. If they're the same language and are mutually
> intelligible, then why doesn't A-Bia give public talks in Mandarin?
>
>
It has nothing to do with whether they are the same or different. I
know you disagree. But Abian often give his speech in Hoklo.
> Yaofeng> The Taiwanese people can be Chinese and still want
> Yaofeng> independence. They can also deny their Chinese culture
> Yaofeng> and be united with China.
>
> Being Chinese and being an independent country are two separate
> issues. Singapore is mostly Chinese (75%) and it also uses Chinese as
> one of its official languages. The Chinese Singaporeans also admit
> that they're +g+9Oug- (not +Ti1XC066- to avoid political confusions). But
> they're proud of being citizens of their own country. There is no
> conflicts in being +g+9Oug- and being in a country independent from China.
Exactly right. You are no saying anything different than what I have
said.
Yaofeng
>
> Let's put it in another way. If you sought two illiterate people together
> face to face, one who is a hakka speaker, the other a hoklo speaker, will
> the two understand what the other is saying?
>
> Dyl.
Of course not. I never said they do. But Hoklo and Hakka are not
mutually un-intelligible, as others have pointed out too.
futurepy
> > This is exactly what I questioned. Taiwanese is a language, no matter
> > what its name is. Mandarin is another language. Why are Taiwanese,
> > including their presidents, speaking the foreign language Mandarin,
> > but not their own?
>
> Because they like so? If they like so and nobody force them so, what
> bothers you?
Human beings use reasoning and logic. When they do something, they
give a reason. Taiwanese have already given the reason for their
intention for independence. They are saying that they are not
Chinese, but Taiwanese only. So they want be independent from China.
Saying 'they like so' is saying nothing. Of course 'they like so',
otherwise they are not speaking Chinese. But it is really funny that
when being free to choose and not forced by anybody, they don't choose
their own language, but somebody else's.
futurepy
> > When people move to another place, they speak the language of that
> > place. Taiwanese are in their own land. They don't move to anywhere.
> > They are supposed to speak their own, not a foreign language, in
> > their own land.
>
> That means they gotta forget whatever language they brought from
> Fujian, this is what you meant?
Is 'Fujian' the Fujian province of China? It must be not. People in
Fujian are Chinese. But people in Taiwan claim not Chinese. If they
came from the Fujian province but claim not Chinese, they must already
have thrown their ancestors away.
KLM
<dan...@informatik.uni-freiburg.de> wrote:
>
>IMO, it is better for China to recognize these "dialects" as languages
>of their own rights, and even set up committees on standardizing
>pronunciation, vocabulary and a system of teaching them to the local
>people as well as "cross-province" people.
>
>
Uhuh. That will only encourage the development of the linguistic
chaos India has so intractable problems with. In India's case the
only solution is to use English because that doesn't provoke dangerous
passions in ethinc, religion, caste and wrong headed nationalism (eg.
a Sikh homeland.) Plus English is the international language of trade
and technology. For this convenience the preservation of diverse and
unique Indian traditions suffer somewhat as often, those who learn
English tend to look down upon their native tongue and lose a chunk of
their heritage.
The policy to adopt the Beijing version of "putonghua" as China's
national language is correct and post war Chinese who went through
school has few problems with it. The written form in any dialect had
always been the same so it does not form a divisive barrier to
national unity. In fact written Chinese is the only thing that
preserved Chinese culture and unity throughout China's tumultuous
history where, had the same events occured elsewhere, would have
balkanized China into many independent states.
As for the preservation of dialects and minority languages in China
there is no significant disincentive to their continued existence.
The major dialects have native speakers in the tens, if not hundreds,
of millions and won't die out any time soon. Even minority tongues
(eg. hill tribes) have at least several thousand speakers. With this
population base the dialects can survive as living languages and
evolve with the times. Committees and standization rules will be
unenforceable and will likely stifle the dialect. Although highly
desirable in individuals there is no compulsion for speakers of
mutually intelligible dialects to understand each other in their
native dialect as there is already putonghua to bridge that barrier.
This thread has evolved into three lines of discussion
1. Taiwanese as an independent language to support Taiwan
Indenpendence. (A weak argument.)
2."Taiwanese" as a subset of Chinese and the relationship of dialects
and languages in China and with the surrounding countries. (Learned a
lot here.)
3. The Austronesian group of languages of which aboriginal Taiwanese
(Formosan) is a subset. I will be making a separate post on the
Austronesian linkage as this subject is fascinating.
Dylan Sung
> > (Translating the last paragraph)
> >
> > Let's put it in another way. If you sought two illiterate people
together
> > face to face, one who is a hakka speaker, the other a hoklo speaker,
will
> > the two understand what the other is saying?
> >
> > Dyl.
>
> Of course not. I never said they do.
There you are. Two illiterate people who do not know the other's speech,
talking together and not understanding what the other is saying. That is
mutual unintelligibility.
> But Hoklo and Hakka are not
> mutually un-intelligible, as others have pointed out too.
And how did you fair reading my dialect? Is it the same as yours? Which
Hakka dialect do you speak?
Dyl.
LEE Sau Dan
KLM> In fact written Chinese is the only thing that preserved
KLM> Chinese culture and unity throughout China's tumultuous
KLM> history where,
That would be true if we have kept using Classical Chinese instead of
modern written Chinese. The switch to modern Chinese in 1919 has
already destroyed the culture partly.
KLM> had the same events occured elsewhere, would have balkanized
KLM> China into many independent states.
The Communists have introduced the "simplified" characters, which
effectively split the Chinese into 2 circles: HK+Taiwan+Chinatowns
vs. mainland+Singapore+Malaysia.
KLM> The major dialects have native speakers in the tens, if not
KLM> hundreds, of millions and won't die out any time soon.
With Mandarin having a prestigious status, it's just a matter of a few
generations to see more and more regions and dialects "Mandarinized".
Shanghainese is suffering from such a change. So is the Hunan
dialect.
--
Lee Sau Dan +Z05biGVm-(Big5) ~{@nJX6X~}(HZ)
Geoff
>
> Hakka, Hokkien and Mandarin are NOT mutual un-intelligible. If you
> take the British English and the American English and let each one
> develops on its own for a few thousand years WITHOUT ANY PHYSICAL
> INTERACTION like what happened to Hokkien and Hakka, Thw Brits in the
> future may not understand what the Yankees are saying. But they may
> still have the same English language.
Oh golly. not any physical interaction between Hakka
speakers and Hokkien/Fujianhua speakers over a few thousand
years? Words fail me. I'm having flashbacks to,... wait a
minute... is this Sukguen Jung again? 以此為根本,他的理論是
和意見都是完全胡說.
Ekki
> Yaofeng wrote:
> >
> > Hakka, Hokkien and Mandarin are NOT mutual un-intelligible. If you
> > take the British English and the American English and let each one
> > develops on its own for a few thousand years WITHOUT ANY PHYSICAL
> > INTERACTION like what happened to Hokkien and Hakka, Thw Brits in the
> > future may not understand what the Yankees are saying. But they may
> > still have the same English language.
>
> Oh golly. not any physical interaction between Hakka
> speakers and Hokkien/Fujianhua speakers over a few thousand
> years? Words fail me.
That was my first reaction, too. But we must take into account that
English is not the native language of many of us, so we must try to
read a second time. What he meant was "no physical interaction between
Hakka and Mandarin" and "no physical interaction between Hokkien and
Mandarin". His mental picture was: Hakka and Hoklo people were
originally from Central Plains, they migrated to the South. Due to the
distance, these languages (Hakka & Hoklo) were frozen in time and
preserved the ancient features of Chinese language, while the language
in the Central Plains evolved (or is corrupted) into today's Mandarin.
This picture, though inaccurate in light of modern findings, was the
popular belief of many southerners.
Fujian area was fully sinicized much later than people tend to
believe. From Marco Polo's book (I know, it is probably plagiarized
from Arabic work), cannibalism was still ubiquitous during Yuan
dynasty. Fujian only became fully sinicized in Ming dynasty (14th to
17th century.) Guangdong was a totally different case. Pearl River
Delta fell into Chinese control during Qin dynasty (221 B.C.) and has
basically remained so ever since. Fujian was a bit more like Vietnam:
the Central Plains lost grip from time to time. The main reason was
the mountain hills in Fujian, which Pearl River Delta did not have (in
fact, there is open corridor from Central Plains to the Delta.) If you
look at the Gaelic-speaking highlands, the Basque country, the
Caucasus region, you can probably understand the reason behind it all.
Understand, for instance, why there is a worm in the Chinese character
for "Min" to refer to the Fujian people, and understand why this worm
is at the doorsteps.
regards,
-- Ekki
Geoff
Yes to all that, except I don't believe the original
poster's idea that Hakka or Hoklo developed over many
centuries without any interaction with the language of the
official class, predecessor of Mandarin, or guanhua 官話. It
was what their magistrates and prefects spoke.
Your descriptoin of the geography of the Min regoin reminded
me of this poem by the late Tang poet Du Xunhe (846-904):
閩中秋思
Autumn Thoughts in Min
雨勻紫菊叢叢色風弄紅蕉葉葉聲北畔是山南畔海祇堪圖畫不堪行
Rain drenches the chrysanthemums, growing thickly purple;
Wind shakes the red bananas, sets their leaves to rattling.
To the north, all mountains, to the south, the sea:
A landscape best for painters, not for travelers.
By the way, the folk etymology you mention for min 閩 (snake
under door) ignores that the door 門 (middle Chinese mu@n)
is the phonetic part of min 閩 (Middle Chinese mju@n,
supposdly the name of a type of snake common to the old Min
area (Fujian and southern Zhejiang). The putonghua reading
min3 is irregular, most of the other words with that initial
/final/tone are now read wen2 (文聞紋闅雯 etc.)
/Geoff
Marc Adler
> And does the *name* have anything to do with this? No. It doesn't make
> it any more "Greek".
Originally, it had everything to do with it. You asked, "Why not write
Russian loans in cyrillic?" Well, what if it were just one letter? It's
the same thing.
> Are you deliberately misquoting me? I can only repeat myself: what I
> called BS was the *claim* that having Chinese loan words would entail
> having to write them in Chinese characters. The cultural context
> (including the position of written language) may still make the *claim*
> seem natural. Cultural context is, of course, always found natural to
> those living in it: that's why it's called "cultural" context.
Then your point is trivial. Sure there's no reason for the Japanese to
have to write Chinese loanwords in kanji. Just as there's no reason for
the Finns not to dump the Latin alphabet and start writing Finnish with
the Thai alphabet.
> The result could just as easily (or "naturally") been the exact opposite.
Sure. Anything's possible.
Guru Google
> goor...@yahoo.com (Guru Google) wrote in message news:<d4ba29e9.04042...@posting.google.com>...
> > futu...@yahoo.com (futurepy) wrote in message
>
> > > This is exactly what I questioned. Taiwanese is a language, no matter
> > > what its name is. Mandarin is another language. Why are Taiwanese,
> > > including their presidents, speaking the foreign language Mandarin,
> > > but not their own?
> >
> > Because they like so? If they like so and nobody force them so, what
> > bothers you?
>
> Human beings use reasoning and logic. When they do something, they
> give a reason. Taiwanese have already given the reason for their
> intention for independence. They are saying that they are not
> Chinese, but Taiwanese only. So they want be independent from China.
True -- for a part of Taiwanese. Majority or minority, a part of Taiwanese say so.
> Saying 'they like so' is saying nothing. Of course 'they like so',
> otherwise they are not speaking Chinese. But it is really funny that
> when being free to choose and not forced by anybody, they don't choose
> their own language, but somebody else's.
Cuz there's something called Hakka and that's the fact you never realize.
Guru Google
Tell this to the Americans on "May Flower".
Yusuf B Gursey
: Ruud Harmsen wrote:
:> Which is exactly what happened when Latin became Portuguese etc etc
:> Rumanian, and when Classical Arabic turned into Egyptian, Morrocan,
Classical Arabic is a grammarians' selection from the various Old
Dialects. the colloquials are a result of whatever historical accident
produced the appropriate combination of Old Dialects for a particular
colloquial. many now think that the early Northern urban dialects
contributed far more relatively to colloquial arabic than to classical
arabic, and that these had diverged earlier towards the modern
colloquials.
only yemeni colloquials seem to identifiably have come from Old Yemeni
dialects, with admixture from the northern colloquials and standard
arabic. i.e. yemeni colloquials still have features mentioned for Old
Yemeni dialects, but tendeding towards standard arabic and other
colloquials.
:> and Lebanese Arabic. They too can read each others newspaper (if
:> educated in an artificial language), but have trouble understanding
:> each other.
: Classical Arabic didn't "turn into" the various Arabic vernaculars.
: There is disagreement over whether the range of spoken Arabics all have
: a single ancestor (seems unlikely), but Classical Arabic is a somewhat
: artificial creation based on at least two dialects (the variety in which
i.e. the grammarians broadly divided the Old Dialects into Eastern and
Western. classical arabic has features of both, and no dialect seems to
fit classical arabic completely.
they also ignored the northern urban dialects, which are pieced together
from other evidence. these may have resembled the modern colloquials more.
: the consonantal text was written lacks a number of features that are
: supplied by the "vocalization" pointing, which was added subsequently in
: stages).
: --
: Peter T. Daniels gram...@att.net
KLM
<john...@bigpond.com> wrote:
>> >Actually, people concerned with Austronesian languages use the term
>> >"Formosan" to refer to these pre-Chinese languages of Taiwan. This is
>> >partly to avoid confusion with the Southern Min Chinese which is very
>> >widely spoken in Taiwan and is often referred to as "Taiwanese".
>> >
>>
>> > American Heritage Dictionary:- Aus·tro·ne·sian (ô"str½-n¶"zh.n, -sh.n)
>adj.
>> >1. Of or relating to Austronesia or its peoples,
>> >languages, or cultures. --Aus·tro·ne·sian n.
>> >A family of languages that includes the Formosan, Indonesian,
>> >Malay, Melanesian, Micronesian, and Polynesian subfamilies.
>>
>"About 20 Formosan languages have been recorded, of which half are now
>extinct, the remainder having about 200 000 speakers at all."
>
>> Is it comprehensible to the Chinese majority?
>
>Of course not.
>
>> Is there any
>> commonality in words between Chinese and aboriginal Taiwanese?
>
>Some Chinese words (especially in southern China) have been hypothesized to
>derive from an Austronesian substratum.
>
>I'm sure there have been many borrowings from Chinese into the various
>Formosan languages over the last few centuries.
>
>> Is
>> there any commonality with the rest of the Austronesian group?
>
>The rest of the Austronesian languages form a single basic subgroup of the
>Austronesian family (called Malayo-Polynesian), as opposed to the Formosan
>languages, which seem to form several such subgroups at this same level --
>the exact number is still uncertain, I believe, probably three: Atayalic,
>Tsouic, and Paiwanic.
>
>See Piotr's post (or the Ethnologue) for more on the individual Formosan
>languages
>
>John.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
In the early 80s I read an article in the Scientific American on the
epic wave of migrations that populated all the islands of the Pacific.
The lead author is a well known US antropologist with an Italian
sounding name. (I can't remember or find the name but will recognize
it immediately if I came across it again.)
The evidence then, based on linguistics pointed to Taiwan as the
origin of the Polynesian peoples. A summary of the migration events
is copied from
>http://leahi.kcc.hawaii.edu/org/pvs/migrationspart1.html
>When European explorers found the islands of Polynesia, the common ancestry of the Polynesians
> was evident the inhabitants of widely separated islands looked alike, spoke alike, and had similar cultural practices.
>Their manufactured products such as fishhooks, trolling lures, adzes, and ornaments also revealed similarities.
>And they had the same basic stock of domesticated plants and animals.
>The peoples of Polynesia came from a common ancestral group that
>developed a distinctive fishing and farming culture in the islands of Tonga and Samoa.
>While dates constantly change with new archaeological discoveries,
>the general sequence for the settlement of Polynesia has been relatively well established
>(Dates represent earliest archaeological finds; they almost certainly do not represent the earliest presence of human beings.):
>--Hunters and gatherers inhabited Australia and New Guinea by 50,000 years ago.
>--Around 1600-1200 B.C., a cultural complex called Lapita (identified by a distinctive pottery and named after a site in New Caledonia)
>spread from New Guinea in Melanesia as far east as Fiji, Samoa, and Tonga. Polynesian culture developed at the eastern edge of this region (i.e., in Samoa and Tonga).
>--Around 300 B.C. or earlier, seafarers from Samoa and Tonga discovered
>and settled islands to the eastÑthe Cook Islands, Tahiti-nui, Tuamotus, and Hiva (Marquesas Islands).
>--Around 300 A.D. or earlier, voyagers from central or eastern Polynesia, possibly from Hiva, discovered and settled Easter Island.
>--Around 400 A.D. or earlier, voyagers from the the Cook Islands, Tahiti-nui, and /or Hiva settled Hawai'i.
>--Around 1000 A.D. or earlier, voyagers from the Society and/or the Cook Islands settled Aotearoa (New Zealand).
>The ethnobotanical evidence reflects this progression of settlement from the
>Western Pacific islands, through central Polynesia (the Cook Islands, Society Islands, and Hiva),
>and then to Hawai'i. Of the 72 plants identified as having been transported to Polynesia by people,
>41-45 are found in the Cook Islands, the Society Islands, and Hiva; 29 are found in Hawai'i, including taro,
>breadfruit, sugar cane, bamboo, ti, yam, banana, 'awa, paper mulberry, kukui, coconut, gourd, sweet potato,
>and mountain apple. The settlers also brought the pig, dog, chicken, and rat along with them.
>The transport of plants and domesticated animals on voyaging canoes
>suggests that the early settlers planned to colonize Hawai'i, after having discovered its location.
The attribution of circa 1600BC to the wave of migrations from New
Caledonia and I remember, attribution of circa 2500 BC to the original
wave from Taiwan raises a few interesting questions. Many human
societies had retained folklore about their origins and one dating
back to only 2000 to 5000 years ago usually proved to have a core with
a factual basis once the fanciful embellishments have been teased
away.
>http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/easter/civilization/first.html
>Linguists estimate Easter Island's first inhabitants arrived around AD 400, and most agree that they came from East Polynesia.
>The archaeological record suggests a somewhat later date of settlement, between AD 700 and 800.
>As early as BC 5500 people in Melanesia were voyaging in boats and trading in obsidian.
>The westward movement of people continued until Tahiti and the Marquesas Islands were reached, at least by AD 300.
>Voyaging canoes moved southward, northward and southeast to ultimately inhabit Easter Island, Hawaii, and New Zealand, all in the short period of about 400 years.
>The existence of the sweet potato in Polynesia appears to leave open the question of who were the original inhabitants of Rapa Nui.
>Botanists have proven that the sweet potato originally came from South America.
>Does this mean that people from South America could have colonized the Pacific?
This DNA evidence is the clincher that Polynesians originated in the
SE Asia Indonesia region.
>http://www.nature.com/cgi-taf/Dynapage.taf?file=/nature/journal/v410/n6825/abs/410166b0_fs.html
>The origin of the Polynesian islanders and of the Austronesian languages that they speak has been debated
>for more than 200 years. Diamond has presented the predominantly held modern viewpoint,
>described as the 'express train to Polynesia' model, which proposes that the ancestors of the Polynesians
>were early farmers who dispersed south from a homeland in South China/Taiwan,
>through Island Southeast Asia (replacing an indigenous 'Australoid' hunter-gatherer population),
>and then on east, out into the Pacific - all within the past 6,000 years.
>However, evidence is accumulating from several genetic markers that Polynesian lineages have a much deeper ancestry
>within tropical Island Southeast Asia than this hypothesis would suggest.
>The new evidence implies that the Polynesians originated not in China/Taiwan,
>but in eastern Indonesia, somewhere between Wallace's line and the island of New Guinea.
The Indonesian origin certain is a better fit as the Pacific islanders
with their dark skins and rounder features look closer to modern
Malays than to Chinese - Mongols or Taiwan aboriginals.
The questions are
1. How did Taiwan aboriginals acquire their language that is related
to the Pacific Islanders under the Austronesian group?
2. Do Taiwan aboriginals share DNA markers with Pacific Islanders?
Its rare for a human community to adopt just the language alone
without intermixing.
3. 5000 to 6000 years ago is a pivotal era in the rise of
civilizations based on the evolution of grain grasses and agriculture,
and the drying of continents to produce vast grasslands. Why would
that prompt the ancestors of the Pacific islanders to make the very
dangerous epic oceanic migrations they did?
There are a lot more questions but now the main one is how do the
Taiwanese aboriginals fit into the origins of the Chinese people.
Peter T. Daniels
> In the early 80s I read an article in the Scientific American on the
> epic wave of migrations that populated all the islands of the Pacific.
> The lead author is a well known US antropologist with an Italian
> sounding name. (I can't remember or find the name but will recognize
> it immediately if I came across it again.)
You may be thinking of Cavalli-Sforza, but did he ever write on the
settlement of the Pacific?
The most prolific and reliable author on this topic is Peter Bellwood.
> The evidence then, based on linguistics pointed to Taiwan as the
> origin of the Polynesian peoples.
Linguistics can't tell you about the origin of the peoples, only of
their languages.
What it means is that the languages of the Taiwan aborigines (Formosans)
are so similar that they clearly belong to the same family, and to the
same phylum as the Malayo-Polynesian languages, but differ so much among
themselves that they don't constitute a single branch from which all
have descended. And it's generally recognized that where there is the
most linguistic diversity is where a language family probably
originated.
But no indigenous Austronesian languages have survived on the mainland,
so linguistics can't even tell the physical anthropologists where they
might start looking for mainland relatives.
Obviously Austronesian-speaking people didn't spring from dragons' teeth
on Taiwan, but there's no _linguistic_ evidence as to where they came
from.
> There are a lot more questions but now the main one is how do the
> Taiwanese aboriginals fit into the origins of the Chinese people.
That may be the main question for you, but to linguists and
anthropologists it's a rather odd one.
KLM
<gram...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
>> In the early 80s I read an article in the Scientific American on the
>> epic wave of migrations that populated all the islands of the Pacific.
>> The lead author is a well known US antropologist with an Italian
>> sounding name. (I can't remember or find the name but will recognize
>> it immediately if I came across it again.)
>
>You may be thinking of Cavalli-Sforza, but did he ever write on the
>settlement of the Pacific?
Cavalli-Sforza is the man alright. Now that you raised the doubt, I
think C-S was more into the population movements and the development
of racial groups in early man rather than the Pacific Island
migrations although this migration episode did get a notable mention
in his articles (besides the Sc American.) . C-S gave extensive
genetic evidence to support his theories and could have hardly
supported the Austronesia - Taiwan origin camp. It was the DNA angle
that caught my attention because this is irrefutable argument (almost)
and a fairly novel analytical tool during the 80s. Bold new theories
in this field seem to have tapered off somewhat but the subject on the
origins of human races, languages and the Out of Africa theme . But
all this is saying is that the subject is still wide open and the real
exciting stuff is yet to come.
Yaofeng
Was it Hakka? They are gobbledigook to me. I am soory, I am not
trained to read whatever you wrote.
Dylan Sung
"Yaofeng" <yc...@bmwe30.net> wrote in message
news:e89d1e3e.04042...@posting.google.com...
> "Dylan Sung" <dylanwhs....@pacific.net.hk> wrote in message
news:<c6bi3c$a4ocp$1...@ID-119091.news.uni-berlin.de>...
> > "Yaofeng" <yc...@bmwe30.net> wrote in message
> > news:e89d1e3e.04042...@posting.google.com...
> > > > (Translating the last paragraph)
> > > >
> > > > Let's put it in another way. If you sought two illiterate people
> > together
> > > > face to face, one who is a hakka speaker, the other a hoklo speaker,
> > will
> > > > the two understand what the other is saying?
> > > >
> > > > Dyl.
> > >
> > > Of course not. I never said they do.
> >
> > There you are. Two illiterate people who do not know the other's speech,
> > talking together and not understanding what the other is saying. That is
> > mutual unintelligibility.
> >
> > > But Hoklo and Hakka are not
> > > mutually un-intelligible, as others have pointed out too.
> >
> > And how did you fair reading my dialect? Is it the same as yours? Which
> > Hakka dialect do you speak?
> >
> > Dyl.
>
> Was it Hakka? They are gobbledigook to me.
In effect, you couldn't understand it was Hakka, because it wasn't in a
familar medium. Had it been in Chinese characters, you would have
understood.
But that's the major point here, Hokkien is gobbledegook to me when I hear
it spoken, because I've no exposure to it to learn it.
My Hakka and someone else's Hokkien are mutually un-intelligible languages.
They may have had some common linguistic ancestry, and display similarities
in word order, sentence structure, and vocabulary, but that's not enough to
make them mutually intelligible to each other.
Writing is not language, and you shouldn't assume that it is. It is just a
tool. You might as well ask a bilingual person to help translate, instead.
> I am soory, I am not trained to read whatever you wrote.
I could put it into IPA if you want.
Dyl.
Dylan Sung
"Marc Adler" <mad...@hawaii.edu> wrote in message
news:c6eca1$ambhp$1...@ID-204076.news.uni-berlin.de...
> Tommi Nieminen wrote:
> > Are you deliberately misquoting me? I can only repeat myself: what I
> > called BS was the *claim* that having Chinese loan words would entail
> > having to write them in Chinese characters. The cultural context
> > (including the position of written language) may still make the *claim*
> > seem natural. Cultural context is, of course, always found natural to
> > those living in it: that's why it's called "cultural" context.
>
> Then your point is trivial. Sure there's no reason for the Japanese to
> have to write Chinese loanwords in kanji.
Sure, look at Vietnamese, everything is written in quoc ngu, not a Chinese
loan word in Chinese characters.
Dyl.
futurepy
> >>>>> "futurepy" == futurepy <futu...@yahoo.com> writes:
>
> futurepy> This is exactly what I questioned. Taiwanese is a
> futurepy> language, no matter what its name is. Mandarin is
> futurepy> another language. Why are Taiwanese, including their
> futurepy> presidents, speaking the foreign language Mandarin, but
> futurepy> not their own?
>
> Why is Bush speaking the foreign language English on the soil of North
> America, and not an Amerindian language?
Bush's case is different from Chen Shui Bian.
>
>
> futurepy> When people move to another place, they speak the
> futurepy> language of that place.
>
> The European colonists all disagree with you. Take a look at
> Australia, New Zealand, the Americas, and even India.
It is funny if British don't speak English in England, but speak
Russian. This is the analogy of Taiwanese speaking Chinese.
>
>
> futurepy> Taiwanese are in their own land. They don't move to
> futurepy> anywhere. They are supposed to speak their own, not a
> futurepy> foreign language, in their own land.
>
> Don't they? Are they ever forbidden to do so?
In the same token, Taiwanese are not forbidden speaking Taiwanese in
Taiwan, but they simply choose not to. They must be mentally sick, or
Taiwanese is a sick language.