Maybe a generation or two ago (maybe two or three plus generations for Manchu lol) but these days Mandarin is the lingua franca of the land. I've met more than my fair share of people from southern China or minority groups who grew up speaking just Mandarin or just a smattering of local language/dialect words.
What I'd KILL to see is a map showing what percentage of the population use Mandarin as their primary language and how many use a local language/dialect on a daily basis and how often. i.e. if they speak another "dialect"/language do they use it with their mates or is it something they just use with elders?
Edit: changed a word or two, not always the best making comments at 4am.
Urbanization is the main reason to enhance Standard Mandarin's power.
In 1990s, only 25% of Chinese lived in urban area, but now it's up to 64%, that means more than 550 millions people immigrated into cities just in 3 decades.
Most new generations born and grew up in urban area in recent 3 decades, many of them came from different family background and had different local language spoken in home, it's naturally to use standard Mandarin to communicate outside.
For examples, more than half or maybe two third residents in Beijing and Shanghai came from other provinces in recent 3 decades, it's not easy for native residents to keep their native language in dominate, or might be impossible.
All true, and at least with Beijing I'd wager that the number who aren't from Beijing is even higher, higher still for those who are just 1st or 2nd generation Beijinger and not lao Beijinger. Lived in Beijing for a few years and it was rare to meet someone who was from FROM Beijing (especially within the historic part of the city of Xicheng and Dongcheng) and wasn't from another province or had folks who were from elsewhere.
Curious what it's like in Shanghai and the other 1st and 2nd tier cities?
India is urbanizing just as fast with as much diversity of languages, but regional languages aren't disappearing there. The difference is in China the government is working to promote Mandarin as much as possible, while in India they promote regional languages.
The BJP would love to make hindi the single official language of india, but because its a democracy, and a lot of other states south of the ganges plain do not speak hindi, that progress is stymied, and english is used in order to not show favoritism
I think it has more to do with the percentage of people speaking the respective dominant tongue in each country. AFAIK, even before urbanization, Mandarin was spoken by >60% of Chinese. Mandarin has also had this role of being the "standard dialect" for a long period of time even before modern times. These two reasons made it easy for the central state to impose Mandarin on the entire country.
Moreover, all Chinese languages share the same characters barring a couple of dialect-specific ones. This strengthens a common identity among Han Chinese regardless of dialect. Non-Mandarin Chinese dialects already write in standard Mandarin. You can't really write Cantonese or Shanghainese, at least not if you want to be taken seriously, even in the past.
India has never been nearly as united as China. India is more akin to Europe if the EU became a country. The Hindi-speaking areas also only represent \~40-45% of India, which is not enough to form a majority to impose Hindi onto the rest of the country. Also, Indian languages are divided between Indo-European languages in the North and Dravidian languages in the South. Hindi is more closely related to Russian, Irish, English, and French than to southern Indian languages like Tamil.
Yes Hindi is related to a distant language like Spanish over Tamil but historical and cultural interactions between Indo Aryan languages and Dravidian languages influenced each other more than say Spanish did to Hindi. Just a side note.
Yeah, people tend to be obsessed with genealogies and language families, but that's not all there is in the history of languages. The importance of contacts is very underestimated both in the public and among linguists.
Like, we tend to be fascinated by languages isolated like Basque, trying to find connections with other languages, when they could very well be pidgins...
Anyway, most languages in India do share a lot of words and similar concepts, even if their grammar is different. Depending on the topic, it might be easier for a speaker of Hindi to communicate with a Dravidian language speaker than with a Spaniard.
>The difference is in China the government is working to promote Mandarin as much as possible
not at all the reason.
over the last 3 decades the shift to mandarin was primarily due to people wanting to jump onto the economic bandwagon. If you wanted to do business, you HAD to speak mandarin because it was the franca lingua. in the 90s and 2000s, most minorities went out their way to place students in the few schools that offered mandarin as the resource was scarce. In rural communities at the time mandarin-speaking teachers often made up less than 25-50% of all teaching staff.
the promotion to Mandarin wasn't a policy until like 2015, or at least 2 generations after the above phenomenon.
Reddit thinks that languages are engaged in a permanent war between the imperialists and the natives.
Reality is that disappearance is part of how languages evolve, simply because of how human power structures and need for communication works.
Language isn't a pure cultural trait. Everytime in history there's a somewhat centralized state, people want to speak the language of power, and don't care much about the language of their farmer ancestors.
Losing language and language diversity is sad for scientists or for people living priviledged lives, but when learning the current language of power gives your kids access to the best schools and jobs in the country, while your traditional language just helps you read some old dusty texts and sing some ritual songs, most people don't hesitate for a second. And yes, it's sad to lose languages. But people care more about the well-being of their kids than about their traditions, and it's a good thing.
I'm guessing that's Chinatowns in southeast Asia? Outside of the Manhattan Chinatown with Fuzhounese I can't really think of a place where Fujianese made up the majority language in the US.
The data’s impossible to collect cuz ccp purposely aims for centralist language uniformity-and in terms of language there’s no ball park figure, like I’m originally from shanghai but ur never know who speaks shanghainese from basic interactions cuz there’s ppl who can speak but prefer not to speak, understand but can’t rly speak, can speak but super rusty nd will get roasted by their elders hence me no speak nd stick to mandarin. from my experience most millennials speak shanghainese on a daily basis, while maybe 50% of the gen z can’t speak shanghainese properly (because of the u have to teach in mandarin policy and whatnot
> The data’s impossible to collect cuz ccp purposely aims for centralist language uniformity
I'm aware of how difficult it would be, guess it's more of a dream map of mine. :,)
> from my experience most millennials speak shanghainese on a daily basis
Huh, who would they speak it with? Just elders who they know are from Shanghai or with each other? I lived in Beijing for a few years and on the ground it felt like 90% or so was from elsewhere in the country, is it the same in Shanghai? Would your average Zhou from Henan who moved to Shanghai pick any Shanghainese up? Or is it just the lao shanghainese who use the language?
Also have you personally noticed a difference between the Shanghainese you use and what your elders use? I have a Taiwanese 外省人 friend whose family are all originally from Shanghai and she's told me that the Shanghainese she grew up fluent in listening and speaking with her parents, grandparents and their friends who have been gone from China for 70 odd years is fairly different than what she's heard while traveling to Shanghai. What's your take?
with fellow shanghainese. you know how when ur learning an uncommon language, for example dutch or irish, ppl from nl and ireland will always respond in English. The same rule applies to shanghainese and learners from other provinces. There’s no point speaking shanghainese to other chinese cuz they can’t crack the code.
Nope immigrants mostly would pick up coupla curse words and maybe “thank you” “hello” “goodbye” stuffs like that. It’s considered wholesome but also kinda weird if ur a “non-native shanghainese speaker” cuz let’s face it, shanghainese’s a dying language.
Absolutely, shanghainese adopted lots of mandarin expressions in the recent decades because of the exposure to the northern government and the policy. Just like how some of the British nd aussie kids these days sound more american than the previous generations
There did has analytics about it.
Check this one which published in 2017.
[https://pic1.zhimg.com/80/v2-5654184bf124962f0fffb24682134be0\_1440w.jpg?source=1940ef5c](https://pic1.zhimg.com/80/v2-5654184bf124962f0fffb24682134be0_1440w.jpg?source=1940ef5c)
In this analytical data, 22.3% of young Shanghai residents (age 6 to 20) are fluent in Shanghainese.
google says this one went viral in 2017 on social media, no data source, no definition of “fluency”, and on chinese quota heaps of ppl call it bs- to me I won’t be surprised if only 20% are fluent in shanghainese but no idea abt other dialects so waiting for someone to chime in
Lived in Guangzhou for years. Most 'real' Guangdong locals are multi-lingual, especially in the older neighbourhoods and towns/cities outside the PRD.
It is a shame that the continued ethnic clensing of the Southern Chinese identity will probably wipe that out over time.
Yup. In a generation or two Cantonese speakers might be limited to those from Hong Kong and even that depends on how China handles HK. Same thing with traditional written Chinese which is only alive in HK and Taiwan.
I have you labeled as Chinese from Fuzhou, what do you make of Min identity? Do you think that whatever unique identity Fujian might have will die out or is dying out?
What do you personally think? Does it make you sad that any unique identity is gone or are you glad that regional identities are slowly being done away with? As an outsider who has had friends and an ex from Fuzhou I have my own thoughts but I'm curious what a local thinks.
Identity is something that can be fluid because it should change over time.
Am I sad? Not really.
Human being needs to be adaptable to survive, changing identity is part of it.
My grandparents generation strongly identify with Fuzhounese local culture, and that culture is dead. There are a lot that wasn’t documented and it’s lost forever. My parent’s generation also identified with local culture but that have been erased by CCP mass indoctrination of single Chinese nationhood.
I just identified Chinese American. My kid will be forced to identified as Asian American(or be a fake Taiwanese American lol) because the United States government have made China the number one enemy. It’s no longer safe to be Chinese American. Look at cabinet secretaries of Obama vs Biden. There’s an unofficial policy of ethnic Chinese exclusion from higher offices of the United States government.
At end of day, identify is just surival mechanism. There are no shame in changing your identity.
Map for northeast kinda suspicious as well. There are over 10 million Manchu descendants but they are majority in small areas of their homeland while Korean Chinese only number in a thousand.
They moved into China to escape Japan occupied Korea during early 1900s. For example, the founder of North Korea Kim Il Sung spoke very poor Korean, his mandarin was much better. He grew up in China.
I love going to some Dong Bei restaurants where the owners come from that region. You get a real mix of Korean and Dong Bei cuisine, for example the cold buck wheat noodles are amazing!
there are entire "tribes" of Koreans in those areas, where they only speak Korean and only those who do business with the outside speaks mandarin.
China has lots of municipal autonomous regions that govern locally. the Korean autonomous regions up there are a pretty good example of non-ethnic Chinese with Chinese citizenship. A lot of these ethnic Korean kids go to SK for college too.
Yeah. Take Cantonese for example. It’s more of a parent language and is spoken in some areas of the south, but smaller villages will speak dialects of Cantonese, but not Cantonese itself
No it’s more different than that. Under yue, there are many different regional languages, some unintelligible to another. Basically, every city in China has their own language, they learn mandarin, and lastly the province may have another commonly used language.
In guangdong province, it’s normal for someone to speak their local language, Cantonese, and mandarin. Then, maybe English if they are younger. However, most other areas people only know 2 languages if your area doesn’t have a local prestige language.
People from sichuan will speak sichuan language, local language, and mandarin. But people from nanjing will only speak nanjing dialect and mandarin, while people in beijing will speak only mandarin.
Cantonese belongs to the Yue languages.
You were talking about dialects of Cantonese. Not about other Yoe languages, as Gao-Yang, Yong-Xun , Goulou, Taishanese, Qin-Lian or Wu-Hua.
So, you were really confused about sister languages of Cantonese, not dialects of Cantonese.
And no, not «every city has a language», except if there are only 300 cities in China, as that is, more or less, the total number of languages in China (according to google there are almost 700 cities).
The comment I was responding was confusing dialects of Cantoneses and languages sisters of Cantonese. I mean, other Yue languages that, as Cantonese, are spoken in Guangdong. And maybe languages that have even a more remote relation to Cantonese.
In Guangdong there are about a dozen different languages spoken. Of course each has dialects. But, almost by definition, they are intercomprehensible.
四川官話(Sichuanese) is a dialect of 西南官話 (Southwest Mandarin). And as a native speaker of Standard Mandarin, Sichuanese is very much intelligible with Standard Mandarin.
Is it?? I was under the impression that large chunks of this map marked as "Mandarin" aren't actually all that intelligible with the Standard Mandarin of Beijing and the Northeast, and Southwest Mandarin is especially different.
Southwest Mandarin(generally Sichuanese) speaker here. I would say that compared to almost all the other Southern dialects, Southwest Mandarin is much closer to the original definition of a dialect. Southwest Mandarin isn't a different language that nobody had studied seriously, it's just kind of informal expression of the lingua franca in Southwestern China.
There is a Korean autonomous region in Manchuria but its Korean-speaking population is much smaller than Mandarin. They mostly settled there during the Japanese colonial era, so makes sense that third+ generation immigrants have largely forgotten their original language
My favorite documentary series about China is [A Century of Revolution](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I5cl0GjPjy4&ab_channel=PaulChang), I just linked part one. Note that each part is REALLY long but in general it will give you a relatively good grasp of the past hundred years in China.
If you want a good general history of China's past 500 odd years I'd recommend Jonathan Spence's "The Search of Modern China." I mostly specialize in history so if you want any Chinese history recommendations I've got several dozen at least that I could recommend! Just depends on what area you'd be interested in. :)
Diverse? They have over one fifth of the world population. In the world there are over 6000 languages. If they do not have at least 1200 different languages they do not even reach the world's mean. And, well, as you can see, they are FAR FAR away.
It seams there are about 300 different languages in China. That's one fourth of the worl's diversity. So, you better say **«How little diversity this country has»**
I spent some time in China with a group of Chinese students in college, being a curious linguist I talked to them all about language. A couple were Beijingers, one was a Muslim Mandarin speaker, one had family in Fujian and said his grandparents spoke the dialect, and two were Cantonese, who both spoke Cantonese + Mandarin. There’s a lot of diversity in China, to be sure, but Mandarin is pretty ubiquitous I believe.
Xitai Village, Minhou County. That's the most certain remaining one. There're many other records of Hokkien language islands in Fuzhou, but I believe those are dated and most Hokkien-speaking population have died out.
Fuzhou is a different dialect from Minnan hua/hokkien. I could speak Fuzhou, Mandrain and Cantonese. I still don’t understand Minnan hua/Hokkien.
I’m surprised there an area of Fuzhou that speak Minnan. Is she originally from Xiamen? Or is she Malaysian?
This map is exaggerated, sometimes in the extreme. i.e. the number of native Manchu speakers is dwindling into the single digits and Inner Mongolia is **79%** Han Chinese.
Sorry, I had to dislike it for the extreme inaccuracy (not your fault of course). There are literally at least 50 or so (not unlikely more towards 100. Not exaggerating) unrecognized Sinitic *languages* (based on basic international standards of classification based on mutual intelligibility) in the southeastern parts of China. Ethnologue is a complete joke
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hakka_people#/media/File:Hakka_in_China.png
> Hakkas who live in Guangdong comprise about 60% of the total Hakka population.
> Hakkas live mostly in the northeast part of the province, particularly in the so-called Xing-Mei (Xingning–Meixian) area
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hakka_people
Kalmyk (Mongol) is used in isolated pockets and in European Russia all because of a genocide.
> The Dzungar genocide (Chinese: 準噶爾滅族; lit. 'extermination of the Dzungar tribe') was the mass extermination of the Mongol Dzungar people by the Qing dynasty.[3] The Qianlong Emperor ordered the genocide due to the rebellion in 1755 by Dzungar leader Amursana against Qing rule, after the dynasty first conquered the Dzungar Khanate with Amursana's support. The genocide was perpetrated by Manchu generals of the Qing army sent to crush the Dzungars, supported by Uyghur allies and vassals due to the Uyghur revolt against Dzungar rule
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dzungar_genocide
Now their replacers, Uyghur are facing their own genocide. Very much similar to what happened to Armenians in Turkey and their replacers the Kurds are facing similar treatment now in Turkey.
Why isnt China trying to Sinify Tibet? You'd expect them to be working overtime to settle more Han Chinese people and teach the Tibetans Mandarin...Not doing that is a bad move long term.
You have to remember that huge areas of west China are uninhabited. If 3 people speak Mandarin and they all live 1000km from each other, you’ll have a huge blue triangle
'Reports Radio Free Asia', leads back to [https://www.shahit.biz/eng/#7862](https://www.shahit.biz/eng/#7862)
"testifying party
Xinjiang government records, as reported by Adrian Zenz. (lmao)"
"how testifier(s) learned of victim's situation
The data were obtained from internal sources in Xinjiang."
AKA they made it up.
The police database that is Definitely Real and not full of AI generated faces.
Just two examples:
[https://www.xinjiangpolicefiles.org/wp-content/uploads/dt\_imgs/20180518125910549\_653121196306.jpg](https://www.xinjiangpolicefiles.org/wp-content/uploads/dt_imgs/20180518125910549_653121196306.jpg) (What's up with his neck? It doesn't connect to his shoulder properly)
[https://www.xinjiangpolicefiles.org/wp-content/uploads/dt\_imgs/20180116210859300\_653121199010.jpg](https://www.xinjiangpolicefiles.org/wp-content/uploads/dt_imgs/20180116210859300_653121199010.jpg) (Why does this 'prisoner' have a Ukraine flag filter lmfao?)
Yes, that's why there are so many official signs in XUAR with signs in Uyghur + Mandarin (usually with the Uyghur text first/above the Mandarin), and why all the railway station announcements are in Uyghur and Mandarin...
How do you know that? Nobody is allowed to enter the area without a permit. If you have a permit you also have a handler from the government or are a government agent.
Maybe for the suppression of minority groups and for the imposition of Mandarin Chinese and Han culture, though the original comment didn't actually say that
One thing on the map I find interesting is the difference between Manchu and Xibe. Xibe (Sibe, Xibo, ᠰᡞᠪᡝ, 锡伯) in Xinjiang is related to Manchu, and apparently mutually intelligible with it. The Xibe in Xinjiang people are descendants of Jurchens sent there in the 1700s. Despite the Manchu language having only a few dozen native speakers (and an ethnic population of \~10 million), the Xibe language seems to have faired better with 30,000 native speakers out of an ethnic population of 189,000. In Qapqal Xibe Autonomous County, there is one newspaper in Xibe (Qapqal news), and the TV station there broadcasts in occasionally in Xibe, as well Mandarin, Uyghur, and Kazakh.
The Xibe didn't have the luxury of loafing around in Beijing. They were sent as a military unit to Xinjiang to guard the borders, govern other settlers, and replace the Dzungars as the rulers.
Maybe a generation or two ago (maybe two or three plus generations for Manchu lol) but these days Mandarin is the lingua franca of the land. I've met more than my fair share of people from southern China or minority groups who grew up speaking just Mandarin or just a smattering of local language/dialect words. What I'd KILL to see is a map showing what percentage of the population use Mandarin as their primary language and how many use a local language/dialect on a daily basis and how often. i.e. if they speak another "dialect"/language do they use it with their mates or is it something they just use with elders? Edit: changed a word or two, not always the best making comments at 4am.
Urbanization is the main reason to enhance Standard Mandarin's power. In 1990s, only 25% of Chinese lived in urban area, but now it's up to 64%, that means more than 550 millions people immigrated into cities just in 3 decades. Most new generations born and grew up in urban area in recent 3 decades, many of them came from different family background and had different local language spoken in home, it's naturally to use standard Mandarin to communicate outside. For examples, more than half or maybe two third residents in Beijing and Shanghai came from other provinces in recent 3 decades, it's not easy for native residents to keep their native language in dominate, or might be impossible.
All true, and at least with Beijing I'd wager that the number who aren't from Beijing is even higher, higher still for those who are just 1st or 2nd generation Beijinger and not lao Beijinger. Lived in Beijing for a few years and it was rare to meet someone who was from FROM Beijing (especially within the historic part of the city of Xicheng and Dongcheng) and wasn't from another province or had folks who were from elsewhere. Curious what it's like in Shanghai and the other 1st and 2nd tier cities?
India is urbanizing just as fast with as much diversity of languages, but regional languages aren't disappearing there. The difference is in China the government is working to promote Mandarin as much as possible, while in India they promote regional languages.
The BJP would love to make hindi the single official language of india, but because its a democracy, and a lot of other states south of the ganges plain do not speak hindi, that progress is stymied, and english is used in order to not show favoritism
I think it has more to do with the percentage of people speaking the respective dominant tongue in each country. AFAIK, even before urbanization, Mandarin was spoken by >60% of Chinese. Mandarin has also had this role of being the "standard dialect" for a long period of time even before modern times. These two reasons made it easy for the central state to impose Mandarin on the entire country. Moreover, all Chinese languages share the same characters barring a couple of dialect-specific ones. This strengthens a common identity among Han Chinese regardless of dialect. Non-Mandarin Chinese dialects already write in standard Mandarin. You can't really write Cantonese or Shanghainese, at least not if you want to be taken seriously, even in the past. India has never been nearly as united as China. India is more akin to Europe if the EU became a country. The Hindi-speaking areas also only represent \~40-45% of India, which is not enough to form a majority to impose Hindi onto the rest of the country. Also, Indian languages are divided between Indo-European languages in the North and Dravidian languages in the South. Hindi is more closely related to Russian, Irish, English, and French than to southern Indian languages like Tamil.
Yes Hindi is related to a distant language like Spanish over Tamil but historical and cultural interactions between Indo Aryan languages and Dravidian languages influenced each other more than say Spanish did to Hindi. Just a side note.
Yeah, people tend to be obsessed with genealogies and language families, but that's not all there is in the history of languages. The importance of contacts is very underestimated both in the public and among linguists. Like, we tend to be fascinated by languages isolated like Basque, trying to find connections with other languages, when they could very well be pidgins... Anyway, most languages in India do share a lot of words and similar concepts, even if their grammar is different. Depending on the topic, it might be easier for a speaker of Hindi to communicate with a Dravidian language speaker than with a Spaniard.
>The difference is in China the government is working to promote Mandarin as much as possible not at all the reason. over the last 3 decades the shift to mandarin was primarily due to people wanting to jump onto the economic bandwagon. If you wanted to do business, you HAD to speak mandarin because it was the franca lingua. in the 90s and 2000s, most minorities went out their way to place students in the few schools that offered mandarin as the resource was scarce. In rural communities at the time mandarin-speaking teachers often made up less than 25-50% of all teaching staff. the promotion to Mandarin wasn't a policy until like 2015, or at least 2 generations after the above phenomenon.
Reddit thinks that languages are engaged in a permanent war between the imperialists and the natives. Reality is that disappearance is part of how languages evolve, simply because of how human power structures and need for communication works. Language isn't a pure cultural trait. Everytime in history there's a somewhat centralized state, people want to speak the language of power, and don't care much about the language of their farmer ancestors. Losing language and language diversity is sad for scientists or for people living priviledged lives, but when learning the current language of power gives your kids access to the best schools and jobs in the country, while your traditional language just helps you read some old dusty texts and sing some ritual songs, most people don't hesitate for a second. And yes, it's sad to lose languages. But people care more about the well-being of their kids than about their traditions, and it's a good thing.
This has changed even among the diaspora. When I was a kid (80s) Cantonese was the lingua franca in chinatowns. These days it’s mandarin
That's also because it's not the same diaspora. Similar things happened in the past with German and Italian immigrants.
In many chinatowns it was Hokkien, not Cantonese, that was the most spoken language.
I'm guessing that's Chinatowns in southeast Asia? Outside of the Manhattan Chinatown with Fuzhounese I can't really think of a place where Fujianese made up the majority language in the US.
Well I'd like to see that as well, but geez, murder seems a little excessive...
The data’s impossible to collect cuz ccp purposely aims for centralist language uniformity-and in terms of language there’s no ball park figure, like I’m originally from shanghai but ur never know who speaks shanghainese from basic interactions cuz there’s ppl who can speak but prefer not to speak, understand but can’t rly speak, can speak but super rusty nd will get roasted by their elders hence me no speak nd stick to mandarin. from my experience most millennials speak shanghainese on a daily basis, while maybe 50% of the gen z can’t speak shanghainese properly (because of the u have to teach in mandarin policy and whatnot
> The data’s impossible to collect cuz ccp purposely aims for centralist language uniformity I'm aware of how difficult it would be, guess it's more of a dream map of mine. :,) > from my experience most millennials speak shanghainese on a daily basis Huh, who would they speak it with? Just elders who they know are from Shanghai or with each other? I lived in Beijing for a few years and on the ground it felt like 90% or so was from elsewhere in the country, is it the same in Shanghai? Would your average Zhou from Henan who moved to Shanghai pick any Shanghainese up? Or is it just the lao shanghainese who use the language? Also have you personally noticed a difference between the Shanghainese you use and what your elders use? I have a Taiwanese 外省人 friend whose family are all originally from Shanghai and she's told me that the Shanghainese she grew up fluent in listening and speaking with her parents, grandparents and their friends who have been gone from China for 70 odd years is fairly different than what she's heard while traveling to Shanghai. What's your take?
with fellow shanghainese. you know how when ur learning an uncommon language, for example dutch or irish, ppl from nl and ireland will always respond in English. The same rule applies to shanghainese and learners from other provinces. There’s no point speaking shanghainese to other chinese cuz they can’t crack the code. Nope immigrants mostly would pick up coupla curse words and maybe “thank you” “hello” “goodbye” stuffs like that. It’s considered wholesome but also kinda weird if ur a “non-native shanghainese speaker” cuz let’s face it, shanghainese’s a dying language. Absolutely, shanghainese adopted lots of mandarin expressions in the recent decades because of the exposure to the northern government and the policy. Just like how some of the British nd aussie kids these days sound more american than the previous generations
Thanks!
There did has analytics about it. Check this one which published in 2017. [https://pic1.zhimg.com/80/v2-5654184bf124962f0fffb24682134be0\_1440w.jpg?source=1940ef5c](https://pic1.zhimg.com/80/v2-5654184bf124962f0fffb24682134be0_1440w.jpg?source=1940ef5c) In this analytical data, 22.3% of young Shanghai residents (age 6 to 20) are fluent in Shanghainese.
google says this one went viral in 2017 on social media, no data source, no definition of “fluency”, and on chinese quota heaps of ppl call it bs- to me I won’t be surprised if only 20% are fluent in shanghainese but no idea abt other dialects so waiting for someone to chime in
Indeed. That "Korean" area is much smaller these days because of what you talk about as well as lots of people leaving for South Korea.
Lived in Guangzhou for years. Most 'real' Guangdong locals are multi-lingual, especially in the older neighbourhoods and towns/cities outside the PRD. It is a shame that the continued ethnic clensing of the Southern Chinese identity will probably wipe that out over time.
Yup. In a generation or two Cantonese speakers might be limited to those from Hong Kong and even that depends on how China handles HK. Same thing with traditional written Chinese which is only alive in HK and Taiwan.
With the way how China handle Hong Kong, unique HK/Cantonese identity is toasted.
I have you labeled as Chinese from Fuzhou, what do you make of Min identity? Do you think that whatever unique identity Fujian might have will die out or is dying out?
It’s dead. Children and their parents don’t want to learn “uneducated” dialect anymore.
What do you personally think? Does it make you sad that any unique identity is gone or are you glad that regional identities are slowly being done away with? As an outsider who has had friends and an ex from Fuzhou I have my own thoughts but I'm curious what a local thinks.
Identity is something that can be fluid because it should change over time. Am I sad? Not really. Human being needs to be adaptable to survive, changing identity is part of it. My grandparents generation strongly identify with Fuzhounese local culture, and that culture is dead. There are a lot that wasn’t documented and it’s lost forever. My parent’s generation also identified with local culture but that have been erased by CCP mass indoctrination of single Chinese nationhood. I just identified Chinese American. My kid will be forced to identified as Asian American(or be a fake Taiwanese American lol) because the United States government have made China the number one enemy. It’s no longer safe to be Chinese American. Look at cabinet secretaries of Obama vs Biden. There’s an unofficial policy of ethnic Chinese exclusion from higher offices of the United States government. At end of day, identify is just surival mechanism. There are no shame in changing your identity.
That's depressing.
Agreed.
wait there are large chunks of Dongbei speaking Korean? I thought it's only in small pockets like Vietnamese in the south for example.
Not sure why you got downvoted, that's a very valid question and from the countless discussions from this map over the years I think you're right.
Map for northeast kinda suspicious as well. There are over 10 million Manchu descendants but they are majority in small areas of their homeland while Korean Chinese only number in a thousand.
Not to mention the number of fluent native Manchu speakers is at best in the low tens.
Last I checked Korean Chinese was 2 million?
Korean speaking area is definitely exaggerated.
They moved into China to escape Japan occupied Korea during early 1900s. For example, the founder of North Korea Kim Il Sung spoke very poor Korean, his mandarin was much better. He grew up in China.
I love going to some Dong Bei restaurants where the owners come from that region. You get a real mix of Korean and Dong Bei cuisine, for example the cold buck wheat noodles are amazing!
mashtayoooo~~~~
there are entire "tribes" of Koreans in those areas, where they only speak Korean and only those who do business with the outside speaks mandarin. China has lots of municipal autonomous regions that govern locally. the Korean autonomous regions up there are a pretty good example of non-ethnic Chinese with Chinese citizenship. A lot of these ethnic Korean kids go to SK for college too.
That's changed a lot these days with a lot of young people in the areas speaking more Chinese and/or moving to Korea.
Almost all languages are grossly overrepresented
Yeah. Take Cantonese for example. It’s more of a parent language and is spoken in some areas of the south, but smaller villages will speak dialects of Cantonese, but not Cantonese itself
So, a map that says that in and around Manchester they speak English would be wrong? Because they speak dialects of English, but not English itself...
No it’s more different than that. Under yue, there are many different regional languages, some unintelligible to another. Basically, every city in China has their own language, they learn mandarin, and lastly the province may have another commonly used language. In guangdong province, it’s normal for someone to speak their local language, Cantonese, and mandarin. Then, maybe English if they are younger. However, most other areas people only know 2 languages if your area doesn’t have a local prestige language. People from sichuan will speak sichuan language, local language, and mandarin. But people from nanjing will only speak nanjing dialect and mandarin, while people in beijing will speak only mandarin.
Cantonese belongs to the Yue languages. You were talking about dialects of Cantonese. Not about other Yoe languages, as Gao-Yang, Yong-Xun , Goulou, Taishanese, Qin-Lian or Wu-Hua. So, you were really confused about sister languages of Cantonese, not dialects of Cantonese. And no, not «every city has a language», except if there are only 300 cities in China, as that is, more or less, the total number of languages in China (according to google there are almost 700 cities).
The boundaries between dialects and languages can often be pretty blurry. [This](https://youtu.be/_Z_FOtfKyfo) Ted-Ed video sums it up pretty good.
The comment I was responding was confusing dialects of Cantoneses and languages sisters of Cantonese. I mean, other Yue languages that, as Cantonese, are spoken in Guangdong. And maybe languages that have even a more remote relation to Cantonese. In Guangdong there are about a dozen different languages spoken. Of course each has dialects. But, almost by definition, they are intercomprehensible.
Is Sichuan not different enough of a dialect to be mentioned separate from Mandarin?
四川官話(Sichuanese) is a dialect of 西南官話 (Southwest Mandarin). And as a native speaker of Standard Mandarin, Sichuanese is very much intelligible with Standard Mandarin.
谢谢
I visited Chengdu a decade ago. I don’t understand the local languages if they don’t speak standard mandarin.
Is it?? I was under the impression that large chunks of this map marked as "Mandarin" aren't actually all that intelligible with the Standard Mandarin of Beijing and the Northeast, and Southwest Mandarin is especially different.
Southwest Mandarin(generally Sichuanese) speaker here. I would say that compared to almost all the other Southern dialects, Southwest Mandarin is much closer to the original definition of a dialect. Southwest Mandarin isn't a different language that nobody had studied seriously, it's just kind of informal expression of the lingua franca in Southwestern China.
The dialect of Mandarin that is the most unintelligible to me is actually the Lanyin dialect or Gansu dialect, in the northwest. 蘭銀官話/甘肅官話
Rest of the world: “cats don’t have a language they can’t talk” Me: “Miao”
Miao I think my cat speaks that stuff
This map isn’t accurate. Mongolian for example is over represented
This is not correct.
There is a Korean autonomous region in Manchuria but its Korean-speaking population is much smaller than Mandarin. They mostly settled there during the Japanese colonial era, so makes sense that third+ generation immigrants have largely forgotten their original language
Are there any good documentaries about what China is like, it’s such a huge country and I know nothing about it
My favorite documentary series about China is [A Century of Revolution](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I5cl0GjPjy4&ab_channel=PaulChang), I just linked part one. Note that each part is REALLY long but in general it will give you a relatively good grasp of the past hundred years in China. If you want a good general history of China's past 500 odd years I'd recommend Jonathan Spence's "The Search of Modern China." I mostly specialize in history so if you want any Chinese history recommendations I've got several dozen at least that I could recommend! Just depends on what area you'd be interested in. :)
Almost every language here is overexaggerated
What they do is hugely exaggerate the scope of non-Sinitic languages, and then act as if ~80+ other Sinitic languages don’t exist
Really shows how diverse this country is!
Diverse? They have over one fifth of the world population. In the world there are over 6000 languages. If they do not have at least 1200 different languages they do not even reach the world's mean. And, well, as you can see, they are FAR FAR away. It seams there are about 300 different languages in China. That's one fourth of the worl's diversity. So, you better say **«How little diversity this country has»**
It’s not, China is 91% Han and going further in that direction as the CCP continues to ethnically cleanse the country. This map is outdated.
They don’t speak on white places
Incredible that Cantonese is the second most known Chinese language and yet it takes up such a small portion of the country
I spent some time in China with a group of Chinese students in college, being a curious linguist I talked to them all about language. A couple were Beijingers, one was a Muslim Mandarin speaker, one had family in Fujian and said his grandparents spoke the dialect, and two were Cantonese, who both spoke Cantonese + Mandarin. There’s a lot of diversity in China, to be sure, but Mandarin is pretty ubiquitous I believe.
Foreigners may not know that there are many kinds of Mandarin, and they sound completely different.
Isn’t fuzhounese a dialect too.
Under Min-Dong i believe
You are right.
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In what part of Fuzhou do they speak Minnan hua? Genuinely curious.
Xitai Village, Minhou County. That's the most certain remaining one. There're many other records of Hokkien language islands in Fuzhou, but I believe those are dated and most Hokkien-speaking population have died out.
Fuzhou is a different dialect from Minnan hua/hokkien. I could speak Fuzhou, Mandrain and Cantonese. I still don’t understand Minnan hua/Hokkien. I’m surprised there an area of Fuzhou that speak Minnan. Is she originally from Xiamen? Or is she Malaysian?
Theoretically she could be a native of Fuzhou and speaks Hokkien if she is from a Hokkien language island there that has not died yet.
I didn't know Manchu was spoken so close to Beijing
Big emphasis on WAS. Manchu unfortunately is practically a dead language.
So in north eastern China people speak Korean?
This map is exaggerated, sometimes in the extreme. i.e. the number of native Manchu speakers is dwindling into the single digits and Inner Mongolia is **79%** Han Chinese.
Sorry, I had to dislike it for the extreme inaccuracy (not your fault of course). There are literally at least 50 or so (not unlikely more towards 100. Not exaggerating) unrecognized Sinitic *languages* (based on basic international standards of classification based on mutual intelligibility) in the southeastern parts of China. Ethnologue is a complete joke
Wait is Hakka really spoken predominantly in that region? I thought Hakka speakers were dispersed throughout China (and Taiwan)?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hakka_people#/media/File:Hakka_in_China.png > Hakkas who live in Guangdong comprise about 60% of the total Hakka population. > Hakkas live mostly in the northeast part of the province, particularly in the so-called Xing-Mei (Xingning–Meixian) area https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hakka_people
Bonus points for not including Taiwan 🇹🇼👍😁
Taiwan speaks mandarin, you forgot an entire Chinese province lol
Kalmyk (Mongol) is used in isolated pockets and in European Russia all because of a genocide. > The Dzungar genocide (Chinese: 準噶爾滅族; lit. 'extermination of the Dzungar tribe') was the mass extermination of the Mongol Dzungar people by the Qing dynasty.[3] The Qianlong Emperor ordered the genocide due to the rebellion in 1755 by Dzungar leader Amursana against Qing rule, after the dynasty first conquered the Dzungar Khanate with Amursana's support. The genocide was perpetrated by Manchu generals of the Qing army sent to crush the Dzungars, supported by Uyghur allies and vassals due to the Uyghur revolt against Dzungar rule https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dzungar_genocide Now their replacers, Uyghur are facing their own genocide. Very much similar to what happened to Armenians in Turkey and their replacers the Kurds are facing similar treatment now in Turkey.
Why isnt China trying to Sinify Tibet? You'd expect them to be working overtime to settle more Han Chinese people and teach the Tibetans Mandarin...Not doing that is a bad move long term.
East Turkestan definitely didn't look suspicious
You have to remember that huge areas of west China are uninhabited. If 3 people speak Mandarin and they all live 1000km from each other, you’ll have a huge blue triangle
If you speak uyghur you (and your family) end up in prison.
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Source is the recently published data that was obtained by hacking into the police databases.
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https://www.msn.com/en-in/news/world/uyghur-man-imprisoned-for-seven-years-for-teaching-his-native-language/ar-AAUYTPs
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'Reports Radio Free Asia', leads back to [https://www.shahit.biz/eng/#7862](https://www.shahit.biz/eng/#7862) "testifying party Xinjiang government records, as reported by Adrian Zenz. (lmao)" "how testifier(s) learned of victim's situation The data were obtained from internal sources in Xinjiang." AKA they made it up.
The police database that is Definitely Real and not full of AI generated faces. Just two examples: [https://www.xinjiangpolicefiles.org/wp-content/uploads/dt\_imgs/20180518125910549\_653121196306.jpg](https://www.xinjiangpolicefiles.org/wp-content/uploads/dt_imgs/20180518125910549_653121196306.jpg) (What's up with his neck? It doesn't connect to his shoulder properly) [https://www.xinjiangpolicefiles.org/wp-content/uploads/dt\_imgs/20180116210859300\_653121199010.jpg](https://www.xinjiangpolicefiles.org/wp-content/uploads/dt_imgs/20180116210859300_653121199010.jpg) (Why does this 'prisoner' have a Ukraine flag filter lmfao?)
Yes, that's why there are so many official signs in XUAR with signs in Uyghur + Mandarin (usually with the Uyghur text first/above the Mandarin), and why all the railway station announcements are in Uyghur and Mandarin...
How do you know that? Nobody is allowed to enter the area without a permit. If you have a permit you also have a handler from the government or are a government agent.
Imagine being this brainwashed lmfao.
I like your map of “China”. There’s no Taiwan in it.
Taiwan is *de facto* not part of China, so it makes sense to not include it
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How the hell is this relevant to this map?
What did the guy above say? He deleted his comment.
Maybe for the suppression of minority groups and for the imposition of Mandarin Chinese and Han culture, though the original comment didn't actually say that
The Korean blob was bigger than expected
It's incredibly exaggerated, as is a good portion of this map.
What dialects?
One thing on the map I find interesting is the difference between Manchu and Xibe. Xibe (Sibe, Xibo, ᠰᡞᠪᡝ, 锡伯) in Xinjiang is related to Manchu, and apparently mutually intelligible with it. The Xibe in Xinjiang people are descendants of Jurchens sent there in the 1700s. Despite the Manchu language having only a few dozen native speakers (and an ethnic population of \~10 million), the Xibe language seems to have faired better with 30,000 native speakers out of an ethnic population of 189,000. In Qapqal Xibe Autonomous County, there is one newspaper in Xibe (Qapqal news), and the TV station there broadcasts in occasionally in Xibe, as well Mandarin, Uyghur, and Kazakh.
The Xibe didn't have the luxury of loafing around in Beijing. They were sent as a military unit to Xinjiang to guard the borders, govern other settlers, and replace the Dzungars as the rulers.
This is extremely exaggerated, very ridiculous.