User:Gak/Sandbox

= Mandarin as a dialect =

In Chinese, Mandarin, as the dialect of the capital, Beijing, is the dialect of prestige and therefore taught as "standard" Chinese.

One criticism of the other dialects, is that there are many words which cannot be written down, or, when written, they have to be written using homophones or new constructs ("made up words"). Another criticism of the southern dialects is the large number of words that are pronounced differently when spoken as compared to when they are written. The is often used to justify the statement that the dialects are somehow inferior, because they do not conform closely to written classical Chinese.

Here I will show that these criticisms that are used by Mandarin speakers to denigrate other dialects as "inferior" or "non-standard" are in fact features of Mandarin itself.

Mandarin as a dialect has been heavily corrupted by Manchurian. The number of tones has been drastically reduced from the eight of Classical Chinese to the four of modern Chinese (five if one includes the "neutral" tone).

There are some obvious borrowings from Manchurian: the snack, shaqima 沙琪瑪, is obviously a phonetic transliteration from Manchurian, and the individual words contribute no meaning.

That words should have different pronunciations in the spoken and written languages is a feature of Mandarin that has been forgotten.

On of the key changes sparked by the May 4 movement of 1919 was language reform. This resulted in a devaluation of classical Chinese, and an increased emphasis on the vernacular language that had previously been considered inferior. Novels such as A Dream of Red Mansions 《紅樓夢》 and 《水滸傳》, which were written entirely in the vernacular, were touted as models to be followed. The first modern novel to be written entirely in the vernacular was The True Story of Ah Q 《阿 Q 真傳》.

A further change occurred in the creation of dictionaries to record the vernacular language. In many cases, the classical Chinese pronunciation of many words was discarded in favour of the vernacular pronunciation. The word 'rice porridge' 粥 is read as zhōu in the vernacular, but it has a reading of zhù when read in classical Chinese. The classical reading is not recorded in dictionaries produced in mainland China, but is recorded in dictionaries produced in Taiwan. The word 'thief' 賊 is pronounced zéi in the vernacular, but the classical pronunciation zé is, again, only recorded in Taiwanese dictionaries.

The word for 'cooked' 熟 is pronounced classically (as shú) in both China and Taiwan, but in its extended meaning of 'familiar' 熟 (e.g., 'familar friend' 熟人 shóurén), the word is read with a vernacular pronunciation of shóu in Taiwan.

The word 'green' 綠 is now universally read using its vernacular pronunciation of lǜ, except in the phrase 'Heroes of the green wood'「綠林好漢」 lùlín hǎohàn, when it is read using the classical pronunciation of lù.

There are numerous examples of words in Mandarin for which homophones or new creations are used to write the word. Examples of dialect words in Mandarin include: suffix 們 men to form plural pronouns. the intensifier, 'very ' 很 hěn, was originally written using 'vicious, cruel' 狠 hěn and only later derived. Louis Cha's (金庸) novels (written in the 1950's and 60's) are good examples of early vernacular usage. In Cha's usage, 他 is used as the third person pronoun to mean 'he', 'she' and 'it'; the modern written distinction between 'he' 他, 'she' 她 and 'it' 它 does not appear. The character 她 is a new creation, and the character 它 is borrowed from a Chinese word of the same meaning (but pronounced tuó). The word 他 is pronounced using its vernacular pronunciation tā in both China and Taiwan, when used to mean the third person pronoun ('he', 'she', 'it'); but in Taiwan, 他 is pronounced as tuō when reading classical Chinese (so, 他日 is tārì in China, but tuōrì in Taiwan).

In Cha's novels, the vocative particles 罷 ba and 麼 ma are still written using borrowed characters, and the modern creations, 吧 ba and 嗎 ma appear only occasionally.

Cha's use of the suffix 的 de does not discriminate between the two modern particles: the possessive/adjectival suffix 的 de, and the adverbial suffix 地 de. He never uses the suffix 得 de ("can be...", "may be...", "able to be...": e.g., 'may be eaten' 吃得下 chī de xià or 'can be understood' 聽得懂 tīng de dǒng), and when 得 appears in Cha's work, it is only ever used as the independent verb, 'to obtain' 得 dé; or as the auxilliary verb, 'must' 得 děi.