What's the difference between a dialect and and language:
... the difference between a language and a dialect was ultimately a political distinction and had little to do with linguistics per se. Thus, German and Dutch are separate languages, but Mandarin and Meixian Chinese are supposed dialects.
What's the difference between a dialect and a language?
I have a Swedish pal I see at conferences in Denmark. When we’re out and about there, he is at no linguistic disadvantage. He casually orders food and asks directions in Swedish despite the fact that we are in a different country from his own, where supposedly a different “language”—Danish—is spoken. In fact, I’ve watched speakers of Swedish, Danish, and Norwegian conversing with each other, each in their own native tongues, as a cozy little trio over drinks. A Dane who moves to Sweden does not take Swedish lessons; she adjusts to a variation upon, and not an alternate to, her native speech. The speakers of these varieties of Scandinavian consider them distinct languages because they are spoken in distinct nations, and so be it. However, there is nothing about Swedish, Danish, and Norwegian in themselves that classifies them as “languages”; especially on the page, they resemble each other closely enough to look more like dialects of one “language.”
The Difference Between a Language and a Dialect - The Atlantic
[See also: Jay Doubleyou: idiolect vs dialect]
It's political:
United Nations’ Chinese Language Day falls on 20 April, and is one of the six UN language days, celebrating multilingualism and the use of six official languages (Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian, and Spanish). Here, I want to talk about the term ‘Chinese’, a ‘simple’ term packed with linguistic and ideological complexities...
A quick internet search reveals various videos where native speakers produce scripted sentences in dialects (this one has 3 dialects – Putonghua, Cantonese, and Hakka, and this one contains 5 dialects). As a Mandarin/Putonghua speaker, I can only manage 10-20% for non-Mandarin varieties at best.
So why are vastly different varieties classified as dialects rather than languages? The reasons are deeply ideological and political, and unique to China as a nation-state. According to DeFrancis, China has for centuries maintained its status as a ‘single if occasionally disrupted political entity’ with mutually unintelligible languages/dialects, spoken by a mostly monoethnic population (92% Han vs 8% of 55 other ethnicities). Unlike nations where different varieties are closely tied with religious, ethnic, racial, and/or extreme economic differences, leading to an interruption in political and linguistic unity, China and its unity of speakers of different dialects has never been challenged by these extralinguistic factors historically. Although the tension between different social groups (e.g. different economic status) might have been building up recently, the Chinese government’s vigorous promotion of Putonghua as the sole standard and official language has certainly helped maintain its linguistic unity.
Here's a list:
Languages of China - Wikipedia
Here's some history:
Mandarin, later called Putonghua, has served as the lingua franca in China, allowing those who spoke different Chinese languages to communicate with one another. The country remained linguistically diverse until the 1990s when Putonghua was promulgated as the major medium of instruction in schools.
Many complained about the arbitrary decision to make Mandarin the official tongue back in 1913, and local advocates have resisted the suppression of mother tongues. In Cantonese-speaking Guangdong province, many believe the local tongue is more authentic than Mandarin, and some even believe Cantonese nearly became China’s official language.
The reasons behind the myth of Cantonese as a more authentic Chinese language · Global Voices
The Chinese government is beginning to impose one language on the country:
Jay Doubleyou: china, mandarin and domestic dominance
And it's in the news:
Chinese authorities in the northern region of Inner Mongolia have cut the number of weekly Mongolian language classes from schools across the region, Radio Free Asia has learned. The move comes as schools complete the phasing out of Mongolian in favor of Mandarin as a medium of instruction for non-language classes including history, math and science — a policy that sparked mass protests by parents and students followed by a regionwide crackdown when it was first announced in September 2020.
China bans Mongolian-medium classes, cuts language hours in schools — Radio Free Asia
Some education experts in Hong Kong have pushed for increased use of Mandarin Chinese in schools to better improve the competitiveness of the next generation. But others worry that children could suffer from a loss of ability to express themselves if they are not able to have most of their tuition in their native dialect. In the second of a two-part series about Cantonese, the Post explores the long-running and contentious debate about how to teach Chinese in the city amid its steady integration with mainland China.Cantonese or Mandarin? A debate in Hong Kong education since 2008 | South China Morning Post
To finish:
After the implementation of compulsory education in 1986, Putonghua was promulgated as the major medium of instruction in schools. By the end of the 1990s, mother tongues were redrawn from primary school education, with the exception of a few autonomous regions, including inner Mongolia, Xinjiang and Tibet, where the majority of the local population is not Han Chinese.
In 2000, the Standing Committee of the People’s Congress passed the Standard Spoken and Written Chinese Language Law, demanding Putonghua be used in government and public institutions, schools, and TV and radio broadcasting. In addition, the official language’s standard written form be used in textbooks, public documents, product instructions, public displays and signs, etc. As students are forbidden to speak in their mother tongues inside schools, many have lost their ability to speak in their mother tongues.
In recent years, Putonghua has replaced indigenous languages in education and other institutional settings in autonomous regions, including Xinjiang, inner Mongolia and Tibet.
While China's critics often slam the suppression of non-Han ethnic languages in autonomous regions as “cultural genocide,” Chinese state-funded media outlets rebuked the accusation as a “smear campaign” as Beijing just extended its suppression of mother tongues among Han, according to national law, to other ethnic groups. Even in Hong Kong, Putonghua is replacing Cantonese as the medium of instruction in the Chinese Language Subject in primary and secondary school education. The term “cultural genocide” cannot accurately capture the zeal for the centralization of power since the Qin Dynasty through the standardization of language.
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