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From: deb5@ellis.uchicago.edu (Daniel von Brighoff)
Subject: Re: Chinese dialects vs. Indoeuropean languages
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References: <19960312.010003.00158002@ACCTON.COM.TW> <mankin-1403961624340001@mankin.usc.edu> <DoE9sD.5to@midway.uchicago.edu> <mankin-1803961324400001@mankin.usc.edu>
Date: Tue, 19 Mar 1996 05:46:05 GMT
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In article <mankin-1803961324400001@mankin.usc.edu>,
Eric Mankin <mankin@bcf.usc.edu> wrote:
>In article <DoE9sD.5to@midway.uchicago.edu>, deb5@midway.uchicago.edu wrote:
>
>
># >I was actually limiting it to Romance languages, which in fact share
># >very similar (though not identical) word orders, verb structures,
># >noun genders, etc, along with a large stock of clearly cognate vocabulary.
># 
># Then why on earth did you use English in your example?  It's as Romance
># as Korean is Sinitic (to continue your analogy).
>
>Excuse me, but I don't think I did -- my example was just using Latin,
>Spanish and French, and I believe I explicitly said, Romance languages.
>Someone else's example used English. I don't think I was unclear about
>this, but if I was, accept my apologies for failing to make my point
>unmistakeable.

I don't have the original post anymore so I can't check the attribution.
If you say that was someone else, I can only take you at your word and
offer my apologies for my misreading.

># >From what I have read, I believe that Chinese dialects show differences
>#>at least as marked as the Spanish-Italian difference noted above.
>> 
># I don't suppose I need to tell anyone here that these are apples and
># oranges.  One important thing to keep in mind:  Spanish and Italian
># both have standardised forms based on rather conservative dialects of
># each.  (Compare Andalucian or Asturian to Piedmontese or Sicilian and
># you'll see how this distorts the comparision.)  Most Chinese dialects 
># don't have well-defined standards.  Yue has Cantonese/Hong Kongese and
># Minnan has Amoy, but what about Wu, Xiang (Old or New), Gan, Hakka,
># Teochiu, or Hainanese?
># -- 
>#          Daniel "Da" von Brighoff    /\          Dilettanten
>#         (deb5@midway.uchicago.edu)  /__\         erhebt Euch
>                                     /____\      gegen die Kunst!
>
>The point of the post is #why# these are apples and oranges, why standardized
>forms and literatures in these languages don't really exist. A Portuguese
>speaker can look back four and a half centuries and hear Camoes's voice
>come off a printed page. Can a Wu or Hakka speaker do the same for one of
>his own at the same termporal remove? The Chinese regionalects are surely
>as differentiated as Portuguese, and have historically been spoken by
>substantial populations --as large or larger as those who spoke Catalan,
>for example, or Provencal. Yet these languages are, as you say, totally
>marginalized -- and it's clearly the writing system that has done so.
>Surely it's not something intrinsic in the nature of the languages.

But Cantonese is the exception that proves the rule.  Despite intense 
pressure from Mandarin, it possesses a standardised written form that 
accurately reflects the spoken one.  There's no reason why the same
couldn't have been done (and can't still be done) for Wu or Hokchiu or 
Hainanese--after all, a Hanzi-based script was developed for Vietnamese.

Therefore it's not the writing system per se which has marginalised
these languages, but other considerations.  A century ago, Mandarin itself 
was marginalised in much the same way and has only come into its own
as a result of the baihua movement.  As other posters have pointed out,
things could have turned out quite differently.

-- 
	 Daniel "Da" von Brighoff    /\          Dilettanten
	(deb5@midway.uchicago.edu)  /__\         erhebt Euch
				   /____\      gegen die Kunst!
