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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-1803961324400001@mankin.usc.edu> <DoI2ot.H8o@midway.uchicago.edu> <mankin-1903961024490001@mankin.usc.edu>
Date: Wed, 20 Mar 1996 01:44:55 GMT
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In article <mankin-1903961024490001@mankin.usc.edu>,
Eric Mankin <mankin@bcf.usc.edu> wrote:
>In article <DoI2ot.H8o@midway.uchicago.edu>, deb5@midway.uchicago.edu wrote:

E. Mankin:
>! >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.
>
>And for Japanese, with numerous kluges, and for Korean until the brilliant
>invention of Hangul. Of course you're right, Cantonese is an exception
>-- and I think a relatively recent one (are there Cantonese texts as old
>as Camoes?) -- but the rule is a dismal one. In Europe, while Latin
>remained in circulation, spoken and used as an international learned
>medium right down the 18th century, useful written versions of the
>vernacular developed everywhere, along with vernacular literatures, not
>just in the case of French or Italian, but also in much smaller linguistic
>communities. In China, despite considerable linguistic diversity, this
>hardly happened at all. Obviously, politics was part of this -- but the
>difference is so great that it raises at least the suggestion of other
>factors, among which that extraordinarily cumbersome and
>divorced-from-the-spoken-word writing system seems a plausible suspect.
>of it.
> 
>! Therefore it's not the writing system per se which has marginalised
>! these languages, but other considerations. 
>
>I'm not sure, even putting it that baldly. 

It's merely a restatement of what you said above ("Yet these languages...").

>I certainly think your argument
>would benefit here from a discussion of what you take those "other
>considerations" to be.

Gee, I don't know.  Maybe political and cultural unity, stability, and
continuity on a scale unrivaled anywhere else in the world?  Frankly,
I thought the "other considerations" were so obvious (having been just
recently discussed in this very newsgroup) there was no reason to pad
my post by going into them.


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