The Taiwanese Language? Options

[hanzhongrenshi]

ever heard of "五胡亂華，衣冠南渡"?

count the number of centuries northern china was under "foreign" rule, and you'd understand why southern dialects have historically been the more conservative.

We shoud provide the linguistic evidence,not stories. When proto-Han people were at war with Hu(mostly turkish tribes),the footstone of modern Han was in progress of formation. and later the hus in Han-land was slaughtered to extinction in north.

This post has been edited by hanzhongrenshi: Dec 5 2006, 12:03 AM

[Herbsttag]

We shoud provide the linguistic evidence,not stories.

well, i'm sure there are articles on wikipedia you could check out ...

i could also point you to sources ...

i could also tell you, for example, that mandarin has lost 入聲, while it's preserved in all the southern dialects; that the 中古聲調系統 has been perfectly preserved in, for example, cantonese; that the 中古清濁對應 has been perfectly preserved in all the wu dialects; that both wu and minnan have preserved a great amount of old/middle chinese lexicon...

more?

This post has been edited by Herbsttag: Dec 4 2006, 11:45 PM

[hanzhongrenshi]

well, i'm sure there are articles on wikipedia you could check out ...

i could also point you to sources ...

i could also tell you, for example, that mandarin has lost 入聲, while it's preserved in all the southern dialects; that the 中古聲調系統 has been perfectly preserved in, for example, cantonese; that the 中古清濁對應 has been perfectly preserved in all the wu dialects; that both wu and minnan have preserved a great amount of old/middle chinese lexicon...

more?

but are the languages you stated mutual intelligible? You may quote the words in the Japanese as well. Loan words and phonetic similarity mean nothing when analyze the origin of language.

This post has been edited by hanzhongrenshi: Dec 4 2006, 11:59 PM

[Herbsttag]

but are the languages you stated were mutual intelligible? You may quote the words in the Japanese as well. Loan words means nothing when analyze the origin of language.

what if they are not mutually intelligible? the austronesian languages in taiwan are not mutually intelligilble. so? they are still far more conservative with respect to proto-austronesian than austronesian languages found outside of taiwan, which are more similar.

"conservative" in this regard means preserving aspects of the old language. but languages do evolve and become differentiated. and besides, there are different layers of language. suzhou hua and wenzhou hua are both wu, but suzhou hua has been more influenced by mandarin historically, to such an extent that it's not mutually intelligible with wenzhou hua. that in and of itself doesn't say anything about suzhou hua or wenzhou hua being not more conservative than mandarin.

perhaps you should do some research before you wade into a discussion on this topic? i'm not making things up. this is the opinion accepted in most academic circles.

You may quote the words in the Japanese as well. Loan words and phonetic similarity mean nothing when analyze the origin of language.

yue, min, wu all can be traced back to old chinese. japanese can't.

so no, these are not just "loan words" - they are the words of the parent language.

When proto-Han people were at war with Hu(mostly turkish tribes),the footstone of modern Han was in progress of formation. and later the hus in Han-land was slaughtered to extinction in north.

it's not just the 五胡 ... really, read up on your chinese history.

[hanzhongrenshi]

what if they are not mutually intelligible? the austronesian languages in taiwan are not mutually intelligilble. so? they are still far more conservative with respect to proto-austronesian than austronesian languages found outside of taiwan, which are more similar.

"conservative" in this regard means preserving aspects of the old language. but languages do evolve and become differentiated. and besides, there are different layers of language. suzhou hua and wenzhou hua are both wu, but suzhou hua has been more influenced by mandarin historically, to such an extent that it's not mutually intelligible with wenzhou hua. that in and of itself doesn't say anything about suzhou hua or wenzhou hua being not more conservative than mandarin.

perhaps you should do some research before you wade into a discussion on this topic? i'm not making things up. this is the opinion accepted in most academic circles.

You means the people were from north and speak a language identical with that of Tang-Han, but they changed it so that nowadays they are not able to communicate?What you stated is only to prove my point,that is more likely they were assimilated into local one linguistically. The Contonese is charicterized by the nasal sound,but a totally different language from the Vietnamese or Thai. This demonstrates the effect of the linguistic acculturation happened in far south China. At the same time the varieties spoken by people in northwest and northeast sound nothing like Mongolian and Manchurian, the more important is they are mutual intelligible.

it's not just the 五胡 ... really, read up on your chinese history.

Lol,calm down man. Was that you only said 五胡亂華，衣冠南渡 in your post? and i was only to refute what you had said .I dont think your history is better than me.

This post has been edited by hanzhongrenshi: Dec 5 2006, 12:24 AM

[Herbsttag]

You means the people were from north and speak a language identical with that of Tang-Han, but they changed it so that nowadays they are not able to communicate?What you stated is only to prove my point,that is more likely they were assimilated into local one linguistically. The Contonese is charicterized by the nasal sound,but a totally different language from the Vietnamese or Thai. This demonstrates the effect of the linguistic acculturation happened in far south China. At the same time the varieties spoken by people in northwest and northeast sound nothing like Mongolian and Manchurian, the more important is they are mutual intelligible.

proved your point what? what are you talking about?

of course there are areanal features. romanian, whose parent language is latin, do share similarities with neighboring languages. but nonetheless it's more conservative than italian. and of course there's going to be a tai-kadai or hmong-mien or whatever substratum, but that's what it is - a substratum.

and mutual intelligibility as the proof of being more conservative? how about it stems from the fact that the political center of china has historically been in the north?


if you can't come up with some concrete linguistic proof, like phonology or lexicon, drop it.

Lol,calm down man. Was that you only said 五胡亂華，衣冠南渡 in your post? and i was only to refute what you had said .I dont think your history is better than me.

refute what? my point was that 衣冠南渡 caused han chinese to migrate further south, such that their language became firmly entrenched south of the yangtze river.

furthermore, i said to consider the centuries of rule in north by "barbarians" - which obviously would include not just the “五胡”.

[STFU]

^you should go check for yourself. apparently, those who used to resided in central/northern china during the tang and han period migrated to the south

yeah, taiwanese language education has been politicized in taiwan by the dpp. but in retrospect, i think what's happening now is analogous to what the kmt did w/ mandarin 30-40 years back. of course, adopting and enforcing mandarin education has its benefits, both socially and economically, but the kmt went out of its way to suppress the taiwanese language, which was part of the government's broader agenda to eliminate traces of a taiwanese identity. not only was taiwanese forbidden, the kmt-controlled media also played an important role in portraying the taiwanese language as low-class and undesirable. as someone else pointed out earlier, "those who speak taiwanese are the gangsters, laborers, and other socially undesirable characters," and that was exactly the kind of impression the kmt wanted people to have. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/icon_sad.gif)

I think some taiwanese probably have self-esteem problem. KMT did not suppress taiwanese language. If anything, KMT discouraged speaking of ALL dialects.(not just taiwanese.) If you call kmt's language policy as an act of suppression, then every mainlander's mother tongue was suppressed too. so it's eqaul opportunity discrimination. Just because some mainlanders spoke Mandarin with heavy accent did not mean they were allowed to speak thier mother tongues while taiwanese were not allowed to. Remember.....Mandarin was not the mother tongue of most mainland migrants eithers. You don't see those mainland migrants whine about thier mother tongues being suppresed, do you? And there were 3 million taiwanese and 3 millions mainland migrants back in 1949. So taiwanese did not held clear majority either.

This post has been edited by STFU: Dec 5 2006, 12:38 AM

[hanzhongrenshi]

proved your point what? what are you talking about?

of course there are areanal features. romanian, whose parent language is latin, do share similarities with neighboring languages. but nonetheless it's more conservative than italian. and of course there's going to be a tai-kadai or hmong-mien or whatever substratum, but that's what it is - a substratum.

The modern linguistic study is synchronical since linguistic changes took place in history were not well-recorded. It hard to say that who is more "consercative",which a word actually barely used in linguistics. Do you have the sound tape of Tang language? If you dont, we should prove the evidence in synchronical method.

and mutual intelligibility as the proof of being more conservative? how about it stems from the fact that the political center of china has historically been in the north?
if you can't come up with some concrete linguistic proof, like phonology or lexicon, drop it.

Again,what do you believe the phonology,morphology,and lexicon of Tang to be? I dont want to start it at first place, it was that you talked about the purity of south language. I said loan words(more than the word a nation adopted from another nation)and phenotic( not the phonology), actually the phonology and lexicon within Chinese languages vary little. How can i drop it?

refute what? my point was that 衣冠南渡 caused han chinese to migrate further south, such that their language became firmly entrenched south of the yangtze river.

furthermore, i said to consider the centuries of rule in north by "barbarians" - which obviously would include not just the “五胡”.

If you read my post more carefully and didnt rush to argue with me, you would know what i said. If you want to refer a group that not limited in Wu Hu, you shoud have specified it.




This post has been edited by hanzhongrenshi: Dec 5 2006, 12:50 AM

[caolucai]

I think some taiwanese probably have self-esteem problem. KMT did not suppress taiwanese language. If anything, KMT discouraged speaking of ALL dialects.(not just taiwanese.) If you call kmt's language policy as an act of suppression, then every mainlander's mother tongue was suppressed too. so it's eqaul opportunity discrimination. Just because some mainlanders spoke Mandarin with heavy accent did not mean they were allowed to speak thier mother tongues while taiwanese were not allowed to. Remember.....Mandarin was not the mother tongue of most mainland migrants eithers. You don't see those mainland migrants whine about thier mother tongues being suppresed, do you? And there were 3 million taiwanese and 3 millions mainland migrants back in 1949. So taiwanese did not held clear majority either.

where did you get the 3 million from?

http://www.library.uu.nl/wesp/populstat/Asia/taiwanc.htm

i understand that many also came before and after 1949, but seems like the population only jumped by 1 million or so, thus making the ratio of taiwanese to mainlander 6:1.

i did mention that mandarin education is a good thing overall and i would have done the same if i were in charge, but the manner in which the kmt tried to associate the taiwanese language with all the negative aspects of society was uncalled for.

This post has been edited by caolucai: Dec 5 2006, 12:53 AM

[mobi3232]

doesn't the geographical features of North vs South China have something to do with the evolution of languages in each area? wouldn't it be the case that the easier it is to communicate across areas, the more uniform the languages tend to be.

i don't really care who is more conservative, however this is an interesting discussion. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

[Herbsttag]

The modern linguistic study is synchronical since linguistic changes took place in history were not well-recorded. It hard to say that who is more "consercative",which a word actually barely used in linguistics. Do you have the sound tape of Tang language? If you dont, we should prove the evidence in synchronical method.

actually "conservative" is a word often used in linguistics. my second major is linguistics and i specialize in indo-european philology. we use it all the time. e.g., sardinian's phonology is very conservative. lithuanian is a very conservative indo-european language. etc. etc.

as for middle chinese, no we don't know the actual phonetics of middle chinese. just as we don't know the actual phonetics of latin or indo-european.

but there is a fundamental difference between phonetics and phonology. phonology, we do know. and phonological categories we do know. in chinese historical linguistics, we use rime table to establish middle chinese phonological categories. and more of them have been preserved in the southern dialects than in mandarin dialects.

Again,what do you believe the phonology,morphology,and lexicon of Tang to be? I dont want to start it at first place, it was that you talked about the purity of south language. I said loan words(more than the word a nation adopted from another nation)and phenotic( not the phonology), actually the phonology and lexicon within Chinese languages vary little. How can i drop it?

phonology can be established by rime books - i can refer you to sources.
vocabulary and morphology can be established by texts, of which there are plenty.

purity? i never said the southern dialects were pure. i said they were conservative, specifically with respect to old and middle chinese phonlogy and lexicon.

This post has been edited by Herbsttag: Dec 5 2006, 01:05 AM

[STFU]

where did you get the 3 million from?

http://www.library.uu.nl/wesp/populstat/Asia/taiwanc.htm

i understand that many also came before and after 1949, but seems like the population only jumped by 1 million or so, thus making the ratio of taiwanese to mainlander 6:1.

i did mention that mandarin education is a good thing overall and i would have done the same if i were in charge, but the manner in which the kmt tried to associate the taiwanese language with all the negative aspects of society was uncalled for.

did kmt purposely impose negative image to taiwanese language? i dont think so. did the media do that? maybe. but the media also made fun of all other dialects as well.

[Herbsttag]

If you want to refer a group that not limited in Wu Hu, you shoud have specified it.

since you are chinese, i assumed that by saying "centuries of rule in the north by barbarians" it would be fairly apparent who these "barbarians" were.

i'm sorry for making that assumption.

[hanzhongrenshi]

actually "conservative" is a word often used in linguistics. my second major is linguistics and i specialize in indo-european philology. we use it all the time. e.g., sardinian's phonology is very conservative. lithuanian is a very conservative indo-european language. etc. etc.

as for middle chinese, no we don't know the actual phonetics of middle chinese. just as we don't know the actual phonetics of latin or indo-european.

but there is a basic fundamental difference between phonetics and phonology. phonology, we do know. and phonological categories we do know. in chinese historical linguistics, we use rime table to establish middle chinese phonological categories. and more of them have been preserved in southern dialect than in northern dialects.
phonology can be established by rime books - i can refer you to sources.
vocabulary and morphology can be established by texts, of which there are plenty.

purity? i never said the southern dialects were pure. i said they were conservative, specifically with respect to old and middle chinese phonlogy and lexicon.

Lingusitics is the main course in my major, about conservative i dont know how it can be so important in it. Have you seen the ancient Japanese classic books,is the vocabulary and morphology(to some extent) so important to identify the similarity in language?

You said that south language more Tang-Han related didnt indicate it was pure? and people always identify the ancient north people as "barbarain", actually not only the north were barbarain, the west,east and south were all called"barbarian" by Han supremacists, one can take a look at "NanMan Zhuan" in "Hou Hanshu" .Only the ancient people lived in modern north China were civilized. Drop the south centric mentality, it is just ridiculous and baseless. The north were barbarain, they had managed to be rulers but south barbarain were not able to.

This post has been edited by hanzhongrenshi: Dec 5 2006, 01:15 AM

[Herbsttag]

You said that south language more Tang-Han related didnt indicate it was pure? and people always identify the ancient north people as "barbarain", actually the not only north are barbarain, the west,east and south were all called"barbarian" by Han supremacists, one can take a look at "NanMan Zhuan" in "Hou Hanshu" .Only the ancient people lived in modern north China were civilized. Drop the south centric mentality, it is just ridiculous and baseless

where did that come from? i'm talking about languages and linguistics.

did i say anything to suggest that being more conservative is better? no. sardinian is far more conservative than french. so what?

i only talked about linguistics. i gave you evidence. you ignored it. i told you that it's the opinion of most academic researchers in the subject. you ignored it.

and now i'm being south-centric? if you had any sense, you'd realize that being conservative was neither a good thing nor a bad thing. and if you realized that, you wouldn't have rushed to criticize the southerners for being "ridiculous" - which was what started the whole thing.

This post has been edited by Herbsttag: Dec 5 2006, 01:20 AM

[hanzhongrenshi]

where did that come from? i'm talking about languages and linguistics.

did i say anything to suggest that being more conservative is better? no. sardinian is far more conservative than french. so what?

i only talked about linguistics. i gave you evidence. you ignored it. i told you that it's the opinion of most academic researchers in the subject. you ignored it.

and now i'm being south-centric? no, if you had any sense, you'd realize that being conservative was neither a good thing nor a bad thing. and if you realized that, you would haven't rushed to criticize the southerns for being "ridiculous" - which was what started the whole thing.

the part of my post that you didnt quote in this post of you is my evidence. This only shows that it was you to ignore. To be honest,there always some people claim the close relation with Tang-Han whenever there was a topic related to Contonese or other south language. I have to be suspicious of it.

[Herbsttag]

the part of my post that you didnt quote in this post of you is my evidence. This only shows that it was you to ignore. To be honest,there always some people claim the close relation with Tang-Han whenever there was a topic related to Contonese or other south language. I have to be suspicious of it.

lol
referring vaguely to some "japanese classic books" constitutes evidence?

that's why i ignored it. i gave you specifics. and i can give you references to books and articles by reputable scholars.

This post has been edited by Herbsttag: Dec 5 2006, 01:26 AM

[hanzhongrenshi]

doesn't the geographical features of North vs South China have something to do with the evolution of languages in each area? wouldn't it be the case that the easier it is to communicate across areas, the more uniform the languages tend to be.

i don't really care who is more conservative, however this is an interesting discussion. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

Yeah, geographical features and social condition both are important in the development of a linguistic varity.The former result in regional dialect and the latter social dialect. That is why i tend to point the assimilation of "Chinese language" in south China,the geographical barriers and mytriad of south tribes together result in many linguistic varieties in south China. Ancient South China used to be literary and culture centre, and north China has been political centre. All cound affect the local speech. However, the northern languages are share the most similarity within themself.

It is stupid to say who is more traditional, the bottom-line is we are just equal.

referring vaguely to some "japanese classic books" constitutes evidence?

that's why i ignored it. i gave you specifics. and i can give you references to books and articles by reputable scholars.

Isnt that you talking about vocabulary or text? Have you forgotten what you said? yeah, you like to ignore, i have sensed that.

This post has been edited by hanzhongrenshi: Dec 5 2006, 01:37 AM

[Herbsttag]

Isnt that you talking about vocabulary or text? Have you forgotten what you said? yeah, you like to ignore, i have sensed that.

?
yes i talk about lexicon and texts. for example, 辰光 in wu. it's inherited from middle chinese lexicon. how do we know that? there are textual evidences in the middle chinese corpus.

but you haven't told me what these "japanese classic books" are and why they should shed any light on our discussion here. please enlighten me.

[hanzhongrenshi]

please enlighten me.

Go self-enlightening!