History UsefulNotes / ChineseDialectsAndAccents

The various sub-ethnic groups within Han Chinese (or just "dialect groups"; 漢族民系, literally "Han ethnic lineage") have, however, shared a common written language, i.e., Classical Chinese, for more than a millennium now, which lends... a little bit of credence to the "dialect" definition [[labelnote:i.e.]]To clarify, Classical Chinese is a form of writing that doesn't actually resemble any spoken Chinese language, but was favored in formal writing, quite a lot like how Latin and Greek were used in medieval Europe. Meanwhile, a Chinese person can use Chinese characters to write down what is said in their dialect verbatim. In that case, it's possible for a Chinese person who doesn't speak that dialect to make a ''passable'' guess at the meaning of what is written, though this becomes nigh-impossible with complex sentences, and you ''definitely'' wouldn't want to risk doing this in precise, technical matters. Just think of China as about as diverse as Europe, i.e., imagine an alternate universe Europe where the use of Latin in formal writing has persisted to modern day. It will be possible for an English speaker to read the Latin written by a German or French speaker. They will also be able to guess the meanings of, say, the German word ''statistik'' or the French word ''mention'', but reading a full page of verbatim German or French? That's a bit more difficult[[/labelnote]]. The linguistic situation in China is remarkably similar to the one faced in the UsefulNotes/ArabWorld, where the "dialects" of Arabic spoken in different countries/regions are mutually unintelligible, but they shared the same written language, Classical Arabic, for hundreds of years.[[note]]In fact, the Arab World still share the same formal language today: Modern Standard Arabic, a modernized register of the former lingua franca.[[/note]]

The existence and mutual incompatibility of these dialects plays a role in Chinese humour, usually as a result of what happens when a word has [[SeparatedByACommonLanguage completely different meanings in two dialects]]. [[Series/BabylonFive Lennier]] might be referencing this when he mentions a word, ''N'kai'', that appears in every Minbari dialect and subtongue but never means the same thing twice. Possible meanings include sand, father, and boot. In a real world example, some Mandarin dialects refer to shoes as ''háizi'', which sounds remarkably similar or identical to ''child'' in Standard Mandarin.

In general, the speech of southeastern China exhibits the greatest diversity, as it is home to the Wu, Gan, Min, Xiang, Hakka, and Yue dialects. Some of these are further divided: for instance, Min is divided into Northern, Southern, Eastern, Central, and Puxian forms, all of which are just as unintelligible to each other as Cantonese is to Mandarin. You see, Min branched off Old Chinese whereas all other varieties are descendants of Middle Chinese -- at least 500 years of separation. The reason for the Southeast's high diversity is related to its age, geography, and distance from traditional centers of Imperial power -- the south is one of the oldest parts of Chinese civilization, but for geographic reasons the north (the cradle of Mandarin) was easier to hold together as a united state, while the south tended to fracture whenever the dynasties were in decline, a process exacerbated by the fact that the imperial capital was almost always in the north. The southwest and northwest speak Mandarin on account of giant and fairly recent (Ming Dynasty and later in the Southwest, late Qing and Republican in the northwest) floods of immigration from the north-central and northeast regions, where Mandarin is spoken. As a result, their dialects are less divergent than the tongues of the southeast, although Southwestern Mandarin is rather difficult for speakers of other Mandarin dialects to understand -- it reflects Ming and early Qing Dynasty usage, influence from other nearby Chinese languages due to migration into the area, and retains features from the now extinct Ba-Shu Chinese language group. Southeastern varieties of Chinese also demonstrate substrate influences from the indigenous people who once populated southern China as Chinese civilization began in north China and many different ethnic groups were absorbed as the civilization moved southwards.

The "dialect" vs "language" debate is not helped by the fact that the Chinese themselves always call the dialect of every province/nation a language, regardless of whether that province/nation actually has a distinct dialect. There is also the issue that the Chinese word that we translate as "dialect" (方言 ''fāngyán'') actually means something slightly different[[labelnote:i.e.]]For the record, this term literally means "regional speech". It can be interpreted as "the way the locals of a particular region speak, which may or may not be distinct enough to constitute a language totally incomprehensible for outsiders". The most accurate word in English for this is likely "topolect", but since most English speakers might not know the word, it wouldn't be very helpful in a casual, general discussion[[/labelnote]].

Thanks to six decades of ruthless promotion and huge population growth, Standard Mandarin (which is similar to Beijing Mandarin) now has close to 1 billion speakers and is the basis for ''Pinyin'', the transcription system we're using on this page. Others variants include Yue (in Guangdong-Guangxi, UsefulNotes/HongKong, and {{UsefulNotes/Macau}}), Xiāng (spoken in Hunan), Gan (spoken primarily in Jiangxi and surrounding regions), Wú (spoken about the Lower Yangzi delta around Jiangsu, Zhejiang, and UsefulNotes/{{Shanghai}}), Hakka (dispersed around Guangdong, Fujian, Jiangxi, UsefulNotes/{{Taiwan}}, and other parts of southern China) and Mǐn (Fujian, Taiwan, Hainan, parts of Guangdong and parts of Zhejiang).

The various sub-ethnic groups within Han Chinese (or just "dialect groups"; 漢族民系, literally "Han ethnic lineage") have, however, shared a common written language, i.e., Classical Chinese, for more than a millennium now, which lends... a little bit of credence to the "dialect" definition [[labelnote:i.e.]]To clarify, Classical Chinese is a form of writing that doesn't actually resemble any spoken Chinese language, but was favored in formal writing, quite a lot like how Latin and Greek were used in medieval Europe. Meanwhile, a Chinese person can use Chinese characters to write down what is said in their dialect verbatim. In that case, it's possible for a Chinese who doesn't speak that dialect to make a ''passable'' guess at the meaning of what is written, though this becomes nigh impossible with complex sentences, and you ''definitely'' wouldn't want to risk doing this in precise, technical matters. Just think of China as about as diverse as Europe: I.e., imagine an alternate universe Europe where the use of Latin in formal writing has persisted to modern day. It will be possible for an English speaker to read the Latin written by a German or French speaker. They will also be able to guess the meanings of, say, the German word "statistik" or the French word "mention", but reading a full page of verbatim German or French? That's a bit more difficult[[/labelnote]]. The linguistic situation in China is remarkably similar to the one faced in the UsefulNotes/ArabWorld, where the "dialects" of Arabic spoken in different countries/regions are mutually unintelligible, but they shared the same written language, Classical Arabic, for hundreds of years.[[note]]In fact, the Arab World still share the same formal language today: Modern Standard Arabic, a modernized register of the former lingua franca.[[/note]]

The "dialect" vs "language" debate is not helped by the fact that the Chinese themselves always call the dialect of every province/nation a language, regardless of whether that province/nation actually has a distinct dialect. There is also the issue that the Chinese word that we translate as "dialect" (方言 ''fāngyán'') actually means something slightly different [[labelnote:i.e.]]For the record, this term literally means "regional speech". It can be interpreted as "the way the locals of a particular region speak, which may or may not be distinct enough to constitute a language totally incomprehensible for outsiders". The most accurate word in English for this is likely "topolect", but since most English speakers might not know the word, it wouldn't be very helpful in a casual, general discussion[[/labelnote]].

The dialects promoted by the scholars of the [[UsefulNotes/DynastiesFromShangToQing Ming Empire]] (six hundred years ago, for use in the examination system, poetry recitals, etc. etc.)[[note]]Partly because it had a wider range of pronunciation and inflection than many others, but chiefly because it was a language that very few people spoke. This would limit the number of people who would benefit from the official pronunciation being the same as their native language. The other major contender was the Wú language (used in Jiangnan/the lower Yangzi delta), which was so much richer and better-educated than other regions that even after Mandarin was chosen ''a third'' of the people who qualified for the exams of the time spoke it (even though Jiangnan only had a tenth of the country's population).[[/note]], [[UsefulNotes/NoMoreEmperors First Republic]], and later Communist Republic (since most literate people and businessmen knew at least a little) both came from the Guan or Mandarin family. Modern Standard Chinese is based on the Beijing dialect and it has become synonymous with [[UsefulNotes/ChineseLanguage Mandarin Chinese]] for non-linguists. Mandarin itself is a diverse branch of Chinese and not a single language. The Mandarin spoken by the court of the early Ming was Nanjing Mandarin while the late Ming and Qing spoke Beijing Mandarin -- the two are mutually unintelligible.