So you want to learn Chinese — I mean, ALL Chinese
In the discussions that started Sinoglot, my cobloggers and I were all adamant about emphasizing that we’re not a comprehensive resource for the languages of China. We don’t want to mislead folks into even thinking that’s an aspiration: hence the word “eclectic” in our approach to China and language.
But hardly a day goes by that I don’t wish I knew more, e.g. the other day when I came across Evenki, a language spoken along the Russian border by (at least formerly) nomadic folks for whom, as Bruce Humes pointed out, ” ‘Russia’ and ‘China’ are rather abstract terms.”
With my own ignorance in mind, there’s a bit of cold comfort in seeing this rather plaintive question posed on a message board I frequent:
如果想听懂全国所有的方言，起码要学多少种？
虽然汉语方言被划分成8大方言区，但我想只学8种肯定不足以听懂所有的方言如果想听懂全国绝大多数的汉语方言（使用人口极少的方言例外），至少要学多少种呢？30种够不够？If you want to understand the whole country’s Fāngyán [方言 = Sinitic languages, usually], how many kinds do you need to learn?
Although Chinese is divided into eight Fangyan areas, if I just learn eight types it’s definitely not enough to understand most of the Fangyan of Chinese (not including the ones with very few speakers). What’s the minimum number I need? Is 30 enough?*writer uses 汉语 / hànyǔ, which usually means just Mandarin but in this case apparently refers to Sinitic languages generally
Does that sound like the question of a learner who feels daunted?
Some of the answers the post gets are just pointless:
仅为在城镇地区办公经商…会普通话大体全国可通行
Down to the city level you can use Standard Mandarin (普通话) for most business around the country
But others hint at the magnitude of the task:
单是福建就有约10种完全隔阂的语言，这些语言相互没1年的系统学习都是学不会的。
Fujian alone already has 10 completely distinct languages; a speaker of one variant would need at least a year’s study to learn one of the others.
Comprehensiveness? Good luck. I’ll stick with eclectic for now.
well, in any country with more than 100 languages, you can’t just learn them all… China, Indonesia, Papua-New Guinea, Brazil, Nigeria, South Africa, even the US, Australia and Canada.
So might I suggest a different approach (not surprising to those who know me
) – why not read some typological surveys… as far as there is research available, typologists have been trying to provide an accurate picture of what kind of linguistic diversity is out there…
Becoming familiar with all the languages of China would indeed be a daunting task. But let’s not make things sound more complex than they are. There are three distinguishable types of languages in China:
*** Contemporary Mandarin and dialects clearly based on Mandarin as it has been spoken for many centuries. These include “dialects” spoken in places as far-flung as Chengdu and areas in Shandong. Depending on how you classify them, there are perhaps thousands or even more of such dialects. The key characteristic of these dialects is that they are at first somewhat uncomprehensible to speakers of Mandarin, but can be fairly well understood by a non-native speaker within a few months of constant contact. For example, I was able to understand 1/3 of what my former Chengdu girlfriend said on the phone to her parents the first time I heard her talking in her dialect.
*** Dialects that are definitely Chinese, but whose pronunciation is so far removed from Mandarin as to be incomprehensible to a Mandarin speaker unless s/he studies it intensively for a year or more. Three that come to mind are: Cantonese, Shanghainese and Fukienese (including the form of Fukienese spoken in Taiwan). The important things to remember are that although these dialects sound utterly different from Mandarin, they: 1) Are made up largely of vocabulary that can be found in written Chinese today and/or over the last 2,500 years; 2) Largely share the same grammar as Mandarin; 3) Tend to differ from Mandarin mainly in terms of pronunciation.
*** Languages spoken in mainland China and Taiwan whose roots are found in languages other than Chinese. These would include Turkic tongues such as Uighur, languages spoken in the mountains of Taiwan that are closer to languages native to Malaysia or the Philippines, and so forth.
Personally, I find that many discussions of language in China are somewhat driven by the cultural chauvinism of today’s Mandarin speakers. They tend to see anything other than Beijing-based Mandarin as a dialect, and need it be said, inferior thereto. In fact, modern Chinese or Mandarin is heavily influenced by non-Chinese invaders from the North and Northwest, including the Manchus and Mongols, and given that these two peoples ruled the Chinese empire for much of the period between the 13th and 19th centuries, that’s not surprising.
These invaders popularized a form of Chinese which is relatively impoverished, sound-wise, compared to more ancient forms of Chinese. Southern dialects such as Cantonese still uses sounds such as glottal stops (the k,t and p sounds at the end of the syllable), and this makes the number of potential meaningful syllables available to a Cantonese speaker greater than in Mandarin as it is spoken today, i.e., based on the Beijing dialect, whose speakers do not use those glottal stops. Not to mention that Beijing dialect has just 4 tones, while Cantonese has 7-8.
So if one really wants to get a firm grasp of language as it is spoken in today’s China, I would assume that would mean learning Mandarin + a major “non-Mandarin” dialect + one “Mandarin-dialect” (say, Chongqing hua) + a non-Chinese language spoken here, like Uighur.
That would not be as difficult as it sounds. Once you have a working knowledge of Mandarin, a few years in Xiamen, HK or Guangzhou would make you decently fluent in Fukienese or Cantonese…
Have fun!
Bruce Humes
Chinese Books, English Reviews
http://www.bruce-humes.com
The question is why would you even want to attempt such a thing…As a European I m acquainted with more than 26 languages to some degree or other, but I have never considered trying to learn them all, sure, when i’m in a country where I don’t speak the language I do feel the pinch of at least trying to get the basics even if i m there just on a holiday, but that is purely practical, why would anyone attempt to learn something so obscure as those Fangyan, fangyan are used by locals only and it is weird to have someone who is clearly not a local use it…to even consider trying them all, sounds like megalomania to me…
That’s not necessarily true that only locals speak Sinitic languages other than Mandarin (I don’t like the term fangyan). At least in Japanese bookstores, you can easily buy learning materials for Cantonese, Taiwanese and Shanghainese.
As a foreigner living in China I have always found it amazing how many different Chinese dialects are spoken in the different parts of China.
In America, we are taught that Chinese people speak “Chinese”…few people understand that when someone is talking about the Chinese language, that includes hundreds of different dialects that can’t be understood by the majority of Chinese people.
Still, China is the most fascinating country to linguists and someone wants to be a linguist like me, for I can meet various languages without making my passport messy.
I think the most fascinating countries to linguists would be Brazil and Papua New-Guinea, possibly then Indonesia and India…
Though it’d also depend on how you define “fascinating to linguists”…
I actually just had this discussion regarding German dialects and mutual intelligibility (or lack there of in some cases). It’s probably only because every German I’ve ever known well is from a very different part of Germany than every other German (that I’ve know well), but Germany always struck me as an interesting place to study diversity all within one “language”. But then I’ve had not a moment’s study of German or Germany so that may be part of why it’s interesting.
Youngjun Kwon: You say “messy”, I say “glorious”.
Well as a freshman in university we once listened to a tape and I thought it was Dutch, but it turned out to be Swiss German 😉
You may find the following paper on German dialects, that I sadly haven’t had time to read completely yet, a quite interesting read: http://ftp.iza.org/dp4743.pdf