Pǔtōnghuà and the rest
There's no disputing that Mandarin rules the roost in China - with more than 840 million speakers, Mandarin is, by far, the biggest Chinese topolect. Its is also politically important, as it is the official language of the Chinese government and power structures. Mandarin has been adopted as the 'standard' version of Chinese, called Pǔtōnghuà or 'common language'.
Other major Chinese topolects include Wu which is spoken around Shanghai by about 90 million speakers, Yue (a.k.a. Cantonese) spoken in Guangdong and the south, including Hong Kong, by about 70 million people, Xiang (65 million) spoken in Hunan, Min (60 million) in Fujian, Hainan and parts of Taiwan, Hakka (50 million) spoken in Fujian and Guangxi and Gan (30 million) spoken in Jiangxi, Hubei and Hunan.
The bigger linguistic picture
The Languages of China |
As well as the Chinese languages, there are minority languages of hill tribe peoples, as well as Turkic languages in the west and Mongolian and Korean in the north. The overall picture makes for a greater level of linguistic diversity than you would, at first, imagine.
Mandarin has the largest number of native speakers in the world, followed by Spanish, English, Hindi and Arabic, but Cantonese itself is a substantial language, equivalent in its number of native speakers to languages like Italian or Turkish. Cantonese is also very much a world language and is spoken in immigrant communities all over Asia, Europe and the Americas.
Trying to learn Cantonese?
I tried to learn some Cantonese before taking a trip to Hong Kong - not so much to speak the language, as to get a sense of its sound and 'feeling'. Whilst I have learned a tonal language before (Thai) and could, on a very basic level, understand the importance of hearing the different tones of Cantonese, it was the first time that I ever studied a language where there are two tape scripts for every listening exercise; one at the normal speed of a native Cantonese speaker and a second recording, slowed down for the benefit of the Cantonese student. I think that says it all really!
Lexical environment analysis
The different dialects of Yue/Yuet (Cantonese) |
I've used a simple test that I call Lexical environment analysis to determine the relationship between words in different languages. I used a very similar test with Uighur to explore its relationship with other Turkic languages and possible influences from (Mandarin) Chinese.
The concept is straightforward and is based on my knowledge of the relationship between English, German and French. I believe there are certain words that are part of the Natural environment of a language - things such as body parts, natural elements, native animals etc. that surely existed in the language before colonisation or influence by another people/language. Then there are things which are part of a Constructed environment - furniture, inventions and other innovations that were (perhaps) introduced by another people in their own language.
English, French and German
You can see what I mean by the comparison of English, French and German (below):
Natural environment lexicon
English | German | French |
Finger | Finger | Doigt |
Father | Vater | Père |
Moon | Mond | lune |
Rain | Regen | pluie |
Swine | Schwein | cochon/porc |
Earth | Erde | terre |
It's obvious here that English has much more in common with German, which makes sense as English is, fundamentally, a Germannic language.
Constructed environment lexicon
Glove | Handschuh | gant | ||
Boss | Chef | chef | ||
Candle | Kerze | bougie | ||
Umbrella | Schirm | parapluie | ||
Pork | Schweinefleisch | porc | ||
Chair | Stuhl | chaise |
The picture is more complicated here and you can see the influence of French on English words such as pork and chair.
Mandarin and Cantonese
Natural environment lexicon
English | Mandarin | Cantonese |
Finger | shǒuzhǐ | sau ji |
Father | fùqīn | foo chan |
Moon | yuèliàng | yuet |
Rain | yǔ | yue |
Swine | zhū | jùe |
Earth | Dìqiú | dei kau |
At a very basic level, it's clear that Mandarin and Cantonese are incredibly close in terms of their basic natural environment lexicon. If we look at the constructed environment lexicon however, it's clear that the two 'languages' are in a process of separating and developing lexicons which are unfamiliar to each other's native speakers.
Glove | shǒutào | sau mat | |
Boss | lǎobǎn | boh si | |
Candle | làzhú | laap juk | |
Umbrella | sǎn | jè | |
Pork | zhūròu | jue yuk | |
Chair | yǐzi | dang |
I think it's a process that takes centuries, but you can definitely see a bigger difference with these more 'modern' words. It's also interesting that, despite the fact that this is such a small sample, I can already see the influence of English on Cantonese, more so than on Mandarin (boss and boh si).
Cantonese Wikipedia
I think Wikipedia can be a good indication of how languages are doing in terms of their online presence, so I did a quick survey of which Chinese languages have their own Wikipedias.
Not surprisingly, Mandarin is right up there and is the 11th biggest Wikipedia in terms of the number of articles, not far behind Portuguese. Cantonese is currently number 92 - not great in European terms (less articles than Sicilian!) but equivalent to other 'big' languages from outside Europe, eg. Gujarati, which has 49 million native speakers. Min is also present on Wikipedia - interestingly written in a Romanised script. Wu, Hakka and Gan are also there, but with very small numbers of articles, equivalent to Maltese, Cornish and Corsican, respectively!
It will be interesting to see how the 'other' Chinese topolects compete with Mandarin in the future - I wonder if they will forever be consigned to 'dialect' status, or whether they will become languages in their own right?
I'm going to leave you with a sample of how Cantonese sounds - you can find almost everything on YouTube, even a recital of Bai Juyi's beautiful poem, Song of Unending Sorrow, here spoken by Cantonese businessman James Chan. Enjoy!
Image credits:
Both maps were taken from Wikimedia Commons and are in the public domain.
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