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Chinese Dialects | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Lessons in Polyglottery |  | |
| Raincrowlee Tetraglot Senior Member United States Joined 6493 days ago 621 posts - 808 votes  Speaks: English*, Mandarin, Korean, French Studies: Indonesian, Japanese | Message 1 of 41 03 December 2007 at 12:50am | IP Logged |
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Prof Arguelles
I know that your main focus has been on European languages, but do you have any insight on the difficulty of studying the Chinese language family? By which I mean the "dialects," the Sino part of the Sino-Tibetan family. I have already studied Mandarin to an advanced level, and I am currently working on Japanese (not related, but an undeniable resource for anything in East Asia). My girlfriend's family speaks both Chaozhou (Teochew) and Hakka, so I'm considering learning those. I have been living in Taiwan for a while and picked up material for Taiwanese (Southern Minnan), and there are more Cantonese learning resources than any other dialect. I think the only other "major" dialects would be Shanghaiese and Sichaunese, though I'm not sure what exactly would constitute a major dialect. Do you have any thoughts or suggestions about such a course of action? Eric Hansen 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| jimbo Tetraglot Senior Member Canada Joined 6085 days ago 469 posts - 642 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin, Korean, French Studies: Japanese, Latin | Message 2 of 41 03 December 2007 at 2:23am | IP Logged |
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There is a good bookstore for Taiwanese and Hakka study materials over in one of the lanes across from the
National Taiwan University sports complex on Hsin Sheng South Road. I think it is one of the lanes between Tequila Sunrise and Family Mart. Taiwanese is hard. Have fun. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Raincrowlee Tetraglot Senior Member United States Joined 6493 days ago 621 posts - 808 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin, Korean, French Studies: Indonesian, Japanese | Message 3 of 41 03 December 2007 at 8:44am | IP Logged |
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Really, now? That's not far away. Do you happen to know the name of the store? Not that I should be buying more books, but it's nice to know where the resources are.
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| jimbo Tetraglot Senior Member Canada Joined 6085 days ago 469 posts - 642 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin, Korean, French Studies: Japanese, Latin | Message 4 of 41 08 December 2007 at 4:31am | IP Logged |
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Sorry, haven't had a chance to wander over there until today.
www.taiouan.com.tw Tel: +886-2 2362-5799 The address is : #6, Lane 76, Sec. 3, Hsin (Xin) Sheng South Road The name is: 臺灣e店。 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| ProfArguelles Moderator United States foreignlanguageexper Joined 7047 days ago 609 posts - 2102 votes | Message 5 of 41 09 December 2007 at 5:37pm | IP Logged |
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Alas, Mr. Hansen, the subject of Chinese “dialects” is one of the many fascinating subjects I have never found the time to investigate and so unfortunately I cannot make any educated suggestions for you in your own course of study.
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| Rout Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5503 days ago 326 posts - 417 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Spanish Studies: Hindi | Message 6 of 41 09 April 2009 at 6:29pm | IP Logged |
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I think it's funny that the "dialects" of chinese like those that you mentioned are even called dialects. They're completely different languages, but unfortunately are not considered as such. Hope your studies go well!
Professor, how is your Mandarin coming BTW? Surely you're not a "1-1-0-0" on your chart anymore. Thanks, J Rout 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| kimchicurry Super Polyglot Newbie United States Joined 5786 days ago 12 posts - 29 votes Speaks: English, Cantonese*, Mandarin, Japanese, Korean, Hindi, Spanish, Nepali, Urdu, Taiwanese, Shanghainese, Kannada, Gujarati Studies: Biblical Hebrew, Arabic (Egyptian), Sinhalese, Swahili, Vietnamese, Modern Hebrew, Arabic (Written), French, Persian, Bengali, Malay | Message 7 of 41 21 April 2009 at 8:02am | IP Logged |
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The inner diversity among Sinitic languages is rather complicated, and this is compounded by the lack of government dedication to letting Sinitic languages other than Mandarin modernize and standardize out of Classical Chinese.
Generally, the Sinitic languages are divided into separate language branches, though these are all referred to as 方言 (usually translated as dialect, though does not necessarily carry the connotations of mutual intelligibility). Depending how one likes to split Sinitic up, the following languages are usually obtained: 1. Northern (Mandarin) - includes Standard Mandarin and most forms of Sinitic spoken from the Northeast to the Southwest (includes Sichuan dialect, Beijing dialect, Hubei dialect, etc.) 2. Wu - includes the forms of Chinese spoken in southern Jiangsu, Shanghai, and Zhejiang, with a few small pockets in Anhui. 3. Yue (Cantonese) - includes Standard Cantonese as well as forms of Chinese in western Guangdong and eastern Guangxi. 4. Hakka- spoken in northeastern Guangdong, southern Jiangxi, western Fujian, and some pockets in Taiwan 5. Gan- spoken in Jiangxi 6. Xiang - spoken in Hunan, is divided into Old Xiang (much more conservative in phonology) and New Xiang (very much influenced by Southwestern Mandarin) 7. Minnan - Southern Min, spoken in southern Fujian, Taiwan, eastern Guangdong (as Teochew), and small pockets here and there in Guangdong and Zhejiang. Qiongwen in Hainan is still classified as Minnan, but I personally think the difference between Qiongwen and other Minnan dialects is so great that it should be it's own branch under Min Chinese. 8. Mindong - Eastern Min, spoken in and around the city of Fuzhou in eastern Fujian, and the Matsu islands sometimes Minnan and Mindong are merged together into one large Min family. Beyond the aforementioned languages/dialect clusters, the following are also seen listed sometimes, and sometimes they are merged into one of the above. 9. Minbei - spoken in and around the city of Jian'ou in northern Fujian 10. Puxian - also known as Henghwa, spoken in the Putian area sandwiched between Southern Min and Eastern Min; this tiny "dialect"/language is kind of like a linguistic mix between the Southern and Eastern Min 11. Minzhong - very tiny relatively unknown "dialect"/language usually merged into one of the other Min languages, but SIL recognizes it as separate from other Min languages, so I put it here for completeness. 12. Hui - some minor "dialects" of Anhui which exhibit great inner diversity 13. Jin - spoken in Shanxi province, as well as some parts of Inner Mongolia. Sometimes merged into Mandarin. 14. Ping - spoken in some pockets of Guangxi, sometimes merged into Cantonese. If I recall correctly, this website only includes Mandarin, Cantonese, Shanghainese, and Taiwanese as languages you can put in your profile, so if you decide to study Teochew or Hakka, maybe you could petition to have them included on the list. If your girlfriend's family speaks Teochew and Hakka, then by all means take some time and learn some of each, depending on which they use more. Teochew is quite similar to Taiwanese and other Minnan dialects, but it also has great Cantonese influence due to being located in Guangdong province. Teochew is quite difficult though, so work hard. Since you have already learned Mandarin, you at least have one foot into the grammar and vocab, which is good. I have passive knowledge of Teochew and can speak to some degree, though my Taiwanese is better. Knowing one will definitely give some comprehension of the other. There are very few English resources for Teochew, so you should look for Chinese resources (which unfortunately will also be rather limited). Find friends who can speak the language, and try to learn from them. There are websites in English for Teochew heritage speakers such as gaginang.org so you should check them out. As for Hakka, the first thing you need to find out is which dialect of Hakka your girlfriend's family speak. There are many accents within Hakka which each have their own tonal system, so you need to make sure you learn the one you want. Meixian/Moiyen accent is generally considered "prestige," but in Taiwan other accents are prevalent, so find out where your girlfriend's family's hometown is first. Here's a Taiwanese government website with some resources about Hakka: http://www.hakka.gov.tw/ct.asp?xItem=8793&ctNode=751&mp=103 There also used to be a really nice Taiwanese government resource which had example sentences with audio for Taiwanese/Minnan, Mindong, Hakka (in a variety of accents), Mandarin, English, and various Taiwanese aboriginal languages, but it seems that the website is down (hopefully temporarily). Linguistically, both Teochew and Hakka share similarities with Cantonese and Min, and together they are categorized as "southern forms of Chinese." If you decide to study both, you will find many cognates between Teochew and Hakka in both vocabulary and syntax which are not present in standard Mandarin (a "northern" form of Chinese). 3 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Asiafeverr Diglot Senior Member Hong Kong Joined 6133 days ago 346 posts - 431 votes 1 sounds Speaks: French*, English Studies: Mandarin, Cantonese, Shanghainese, German | Message 8 of 41 21 April 2009 at 6:01pm | IP Logged |
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The Hong Kong central library has a language center with learning materials for over
40 Chinese dialects. You might find similar materials in Taiwanese or Mainland Chinese libraries or bookstores. Most of these books were written more than a decade ago and have tapes instead of CDs but I guess you could still track them down with some research. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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