Xilaisalt mentioned something about the language on another thread and I have some questions. 1. China has a national language which we call Mandarin Chinese or Beijing language. 2. By ethnic languages I assume that's the same as "regional". These languages are used locally but not taught in school. Does this include Cantonese? I ask this because many films are made in Cantonese and have Mandarin subtitles. Also the opposite. To me I see that Cantonese is written differently than Mandarin to some degree. So where do the speakers of Cantonese learn to write the language? Do they have special private schools for children to learn Cantonese outside of regular school classes? 3. Just out of curiosity what is the language that is native to Manchuria like? Is it written with character variations like Cantonese? Is it closer to Mongolian languages or is it a derivative of the Chinese language group. I am just getting started.
I got mentioned! WOOT! Yup. I think I meant like Tibetan and Uygher. They're taught in public schools, just not in universities (which has caused quite the outrage among human rights activists). I don't know why. It's not like American universities get lambasted for not teaching in Spanish. Cantonese isn't really a different language so much as it's a dialect, a really different dialect. It's taught in schools where it's prevalent, like Southern China. Most students these days, I think, learn both simplified (Mandarin) and traditional (Cantonese) writing. There are private schools though, that teach the other dialect and English; they're quite popular. Actually, cantonese is pretty different... I think the Manchurian language is actually heavily influenced by Turkish languages; but I'm not sure. That doesn't quite make sense to me so I might have it backwards.
Whoa Turkish? As in all the way in Anatolia? I thought there would have been more Mongol influence than Turkish.
According to wikipedia -D), the Manchurian language is part of the Tungusic languages, which is a subset of Altaic languages. And that group includes the Turkic languages.
AZ what Xilaisalt (and tarheel as well) are talking about is a language group. The statistics are at Wikipedia. Look at the map! Wow these languages are "all over the map." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkic_languages "The Turkic languages constitute a language family of some thirty languages, spoken by Turkic peoples across a vast area from Eastern Europe and the Mediterranean to Siberia and Western China, and are considered to be part of the proposed Altaic language family." It gets even more complicated when some scholars contend that Japanese and Korean (Altaic by some standards) are related to the group by nature of their grammar and their agglutinative character. These languages have a structure of subject, object verb as opposed to Chinese which is like European languages. So have even gone further afield and include the Basque language which while most feel improbable but not impossible when you look at the map. The Manchurian language is really interesting I was unaware of their script. Wikepedia again says that there are only 70 speakers of it left but i bet there are a lot more than that. I thought that it was related to Chinese but I see, if Wiki is correct, that it is closer to Japanese and Korean. That makes sense to me. The script is very interesting and written vertically it reminds one of Chinese and Japanese "grass writing". This is a really great thread BTW and I am still not done with questions.
hi ya,I am a Honger,the rite person to tell you more abt the cantonese stuff. Cantonese is the official language in Hong Kong and Macao which two were British and Portuguese territories before the late 1990s,sharing the equal status with another offcial language,Portuguese and English. After the handover,this hasnt changed,Portuguese and English still remain the official language status in the regions,until now. As I'm a Honger,I can tell that a majority of ethnic chinese hongers speak Cantonese as our mother tongue,and study English as our second language.We do actually have Chinese lessons at schools,but that so-called "Chinese lessons" is in fact ONLY based on Cantonese speaking and Traditional Chinese characters writing,which is extremely different to the chinese language education out there in China,that uses simplified chinese characters and mandarin as the communication tools. Therefore we hongers and macanese barely have the opportunity to learn Mandarin at schools,as we speak English as our second language and the society regards the english language as a symbolization of one's educational background and standard of ability.Here in Hong Kong,nobody really cares you speak Mandarin or not...to be very honest with you,no matter considering from the school point of view,or social point of view...
How about the rest of the region. Is the study of Mandarin in Canton province more widely spread than in Hong Kong and Macao? Are they more bi-lingual (Cantonese and Mandarin) than their counter parts in HK?
The writing system is a different matter. the PRC invented the simplified text but places like Hong Kong (and Taiwan) still used the traditional way of writing. Cantonese is probably the furthest from Mandarin, most other dialects aren't quiet as dramatic, I understand Min Nan pretty well, and I can grasp the connection between Mandarin with say.. Hakka or Shanghai Hua, but Cantonese really baffles me. Also, a lot of dialect 's grammer still uses the traditional talks , aka wen yian wen.
Manchurian language belongs to the Altai languages. In China, there are two language families - The Sino-Tibetan language family and the Altai languages. The common word order of Manchurian language is subject-predicate-object. For example, " si gisure bi ai duruni I etuku be udaci sain?"(你 说 我 什么 样 衣服 买好?), which means "你说我买什么样的衣服好?"
No, Japanese is not taught in Taiwan after the handover in 1945, though those born before that may still know or use some, when my Grandma came to Taiwan from Shanghai in 1946 she immediately learned some Japanese so she could actually survive. Japanese use was discouraged in the 50s though no one really gave a (*)(*)(*)(*) later on (and it ceased to be widely used anyway, with Min Nan and Hakka again being the common lanuage outside of the cities and Mainland refugee communities.). Though Japanese is certainly the 3rd most well known language in Tawian after Chinese and English, and the difference between English and Japanese speaker may not actually be as wide as sometimes percieved. As for Manchurian, it's basically a dead language at this point, there's less than a handful of people who actually speaks it anymore. The amusing part though is that there are more Mongolian Speakers in China than in Mongolia. As for I-Ching and feng-sui in general, most people have a passive belive in them, aka they would not deliberately do something that is obviously against it's logic, but only a small portion take it very seriously, though Feng-Sui master gets paid a ton by some wealthy people / politicians. so who knows. For commoners, if someone give you a Feng-Sui advice you would probably listen and make the change if it's not too problematic, but few would go to too extreme measures such as rebuilding their house completely etc..
