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Spoken Chinese (or '''Chinese dialects''') comprises many regional variants. Although the English word '' Dialect '' is often used to translate the Chinese term ''fangyan'' (), the differences between the major spoken variations of Chinese are such that they are generally Mutually Unintelligible . Whether these variants should be identified as dialects or languages is a contentious issue. (See Identification Of The Varieties Of Chinese for more details) CLASSIFICATION Chinese people make an impressional strong distinction between Written language (文, Pinyin: ''wén'') and spoken language (语/語 ''yǔ''). They tend to conceptualize the variations of Chinese as different spoken languages. GROUPS OF SPOKEN CHINESE The various forms of Spoken Chinese are usually classified into the following broad groups. (See List Of Chinese Dialects for a comprehensive listing of individual dialects.)
:One distinctive feature of Mandarin is the employment of four categories of tonal types during word creation. This stands as a partial loss of tones employed, in comparison to Middle Chinese and the other dialects, however. Another is the loss of consonants on the ends of syllables, so that while Middle Chinese had an inventory of "-p, -t, -k, -m, -n, ng", Mandarin only has "-n, -ng". (A few dialects, such as that of Nanjing , also have the Glottal Stop .) In addition, Mandarin underwent fewer tone splits than the other dialects. As a result, many words which sound different in dialects such as Cantonese are homophones in Mandarin. Mandarin has adjusted by developing compound words in order to make up for the development of homophones. The use of compounds is generally less frequent in other dialects.
(The following three dialect groups are not always classed separately.)
Some varieties remain unclassified. These include:
In addition, the Dungan Language (东干语/東干語) is a language spoken in Kyrgyzstan descended from Chinese, and is akin to northwestern dialects of Mandarin , therefore it is linguistically a Mandarin dialect. However, it is written in the Cyrillic Alphabet as a result of Soviet rule, and may not be considered by all to be Chinese. SOCIOLINGUISTICS Bilingualism with Mandarin In southern China where the difference between Standard Mandarin and the local dialect is particularly pronounced, well-educated Chinese are generally fluent in Standard Mandarin, and most people have at least a good passive knowledge of it, in addition to being native speakers of the local dialect. The choice of dialect varies based on the social situation. Standard Mandarin is usually considered more formal and is required when speaking to a person who does not understand the local dialect. The local dialect (be it nonstandard Mandarin or non-Mandarin altogether) is generally considered more intimate and is used among close family members and friends and in everyday conversation within the local area. Chinese speakers will frequently Code Switch between Standard Mandarin and the local dialect. Parents will generally speak to their children in dialect, and the relationship between dialect and Mandarin appears to be mostly stable. Knowing the local dialect is of considerable social benefit and most Chinese who permanently move to a new area will attempt to pick up the local dialect. Learning a new dialect is usually done informally through a process of immersion and recognizing sound shifts. Typically, a speaker of one dialect of Chinese will need about a year of immersion to understand the local dialect and about three to five years to become fluent in speaking it. Because of the variety of dialects spoken, there are usually few formal methods for learning a local dialect. Political issues Within the People's Republic Of China there has been a consistent drive towards promoting the standard language; for instance, the education system is entirely Mandarin-medium from the second year onwards. However, usage of local dialect is tolerated, and in many informal situations socially preferred. Unlike in Hong Kong , where colloquial Cantonese characters are often used for formal occasions, within the PRC a character set closer to Mandarin tends to be used. At the national level, differences in dialect generally do not correspond to political divisions or categories, and this has for the most part prevented dialect from becoming the basis of Identity Politics . Historically, many of the people who promoted Chinese Nationalism were from southern China and did not natively speak the national standard language, and even leaders from northern China rarely spoke with the standard accent. For example, Mao Zedong often emphasized his Hunan origins in speaking, rendering much of what he said incomprehensible to many Chinese. One consequence of this is that China does not have a well developed tradition of spoken political rhetoric, and most Chinese political works are intended primarily as written works rather than spoken works. Another factor that limits the political implications of dialect is that it is very common within an extended family for different people to know and use different dialects. In addition, while speaking similar dialect provides very strong group identity at the level of a city or county, the high degree of linguistic diversity limits the amount of group solidarity at larger levels. Finally, the linguistic diversity of southern China makes it likely that in any large group of Chinese, Standard Mandarin will be the only form of speech that everyone understands. On the other hand, in the Republic Of China on Taiwan , the government had a policy until the mid- 1980 s of promoting Standard Mandarin as high-status and the local languages— Taiwanese and Hakka —as low-status, a situation which caused much resentment and resulted in considerable backlash in the 1990s, manifested in the Taiwanese Localization Movement . EXAMPLES OF VARIATIONS The , a variety of Min, to express the idea that one is feeling a little ill ("''I am not feeling well.''"), one might say (in Pe̍h-oē-jī ): which, when translated Cognate -by-cognate into Mandarin would be spoken as an awkward or Semantic ally unrecognizable sentence: Where as when spoken colloquially in Mandarin, one would either say: or: the latter omitting the reflexive pronoun (zìjǐ), not usually needed in Mandarin. Some people, particularly in the north of China, would say: PHONOLOGY For more specific information on phonology of Chinese see the respective main articles of each spoken variety. The Phonological structure of each syllable consists of a Nucleus consisting of a Vowel (which can be a Monophthong , Diphthong , or even a Triphthong in certain varieties) with an optional Onset or Coda Consonant as well as a Tone . There are some instances where a vowel is not used as a nucleus. An example of this is in Cantonese , where the Nasal Sonorant consonants and can stand alone as their own syllable. Across all the spoken varieties, most syllables tend to be open syllables, meaning they have no coda, but syllables that do have codas are restricted to , , , , , , or . Some varieties allow most of these codas, whereas others, such as Mandarin , are limited to only two, namely and . Consonant Cluster s do not generally occur in either the onset or coda. The onset may be an Affricate or a consonant followed by a Semivowel , but these are not generally considered consonant clusters. The number of sounds in the different spoken dialects varies, but in general there has been a tendency to a reduction in sounds from Middle Chinese . The Mandarin dialects in particular have experienced a dramatic decrease in sounds and so have far more multisyllabic words than most other spoken varieties. The total number of syllables in some varieties is therefore only about a thousand, including tonal variation. All varieties of spoken Chinese use Tones . A few dialects of north China may have as few as three tones, while some dialects in south China have up to 6 or 10 tones, depending on how one counts. One exception from this is Shanghainese which has reduced the set of tones to a two-toned Pitch Accent system much like modern Japanese. A very common example used to illustrate the use of tones in Chinese are the four main tones of Standard Mandarin applied to the syllable ''ma''. The tones correspond to these five Characters : |
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