How Mandarin Conquered China: the 100+ year battle for language unity

Comments · 1.8K

• AB

  @ABChinese · 2 years ago (edited) · pinned

  Hey guys! Hope you liked this video and don’t forget to share with your friends! I will have NO ADS on this video for the first 24 hours it’s out 😊<br><br>Edit: I made a mistake at <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCiamiaZTO8&amp;t=705">11:45</a>. The 尖音 and 团音 are labeled backwards <br><br>I also have a ton of extra info in notes but I ran out of space in the description so here&apos;s a Google Doc! <a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/150R2rbbDEHjXYNU9wszmeXWckjiQl44YMf_XL_4xqes/edit?usp=sharing">https://docs.google.com/document/d/150R2rbbDEHjXYNU9wszmeXWckjiQl44YMf_XL_4xqes/edit?usp=sharing</a>

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• DA

  @Dawsoncws · 2 years ago

  I’m a Hakka descendent living in Malaysia. I must say Malaysia is a very blessed nation as we are allowed to embrace our own cultures and language. However, with the earlier dominance of US which focus more on English and later China which now emphasizes on Mandarin, the dialects are slowly fading to only spoken by at best the Gen Y. Many minority dialects in Malaysia is losing its speakers. The only few remaining that is still widely spoken here is Hokkien and Cantonese. I like the proverb “I rather sell my ancestor’s land than not forgetting my ancestor’s language” So I’ll continue to speak Hakka to preserve this dialect in Malaysia!

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• FE

  @FefeHpg · 2 years ago

  One misconception though is that Beijing dialect = modern Mandarin completely. If you&apos;ve ever heard old native Beijingers talk, there are still a lot of differences, especially in accent and vocab

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• SW

  @swan9506 · 2 years ago

  a jump from 53% to 81% fluency in puntonghua in a mere 22 years is astounding

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• DU

  @DustinLaGriza · 2 years ago

  It doesn&apos;t have to be an either/or situation. The government should promote both Putonghua and the local dialects--it&apos;s good for the brain too!

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• SH

  @shen8888 · 2 years ago (edited)

  Cantonese still used in Vietnam, Saigon and Hanoi. So our languages still exist. So i hope Hongkong, Macau, or any Cantonese speaker in the world, please keep the languages alive, any languages like Teochew, Hokkien, Hakka, Hainansese, Shanghainese, Toishanese,...

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• RE

  @Reazzurro90 · 2 years ago

  This is a similar situation of what happened in Italy. After the collapse of the Roman Empire, Latin in Italy evolved into the various regional tongues that developed throughout the peninsula. While Latin was considered &quot;proper speech&quot; (since most people assumed they just spoke a version of Latin), a movement gradually grew for a unified vernacular. Very long story short, this culminated in what is called &quot;Standard Italian&quot; which was slowly adopted by all the city-states while the bulk of the population continued to speak the regional tongues. Now of course with modernization Italian is dominant, but there are now pushes to have more appreciation for the &quot;dialects.&quot;

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• ER

  @erichuanp · 2 years ago

  I notice that more modernized the city is, people pay less attention on local dialect. I came from a poor little town in China and worked in Shenzhen. People in my hometown don&apos;t speak Mandarin unless the teacher is monitoring us. We speak Gan in daily life and even teachers tells dialect jokes more than Mandarin jokes. I can say that 95% of my friends can speak both Gan and Mandarin. However, when I started work at Canton and Shenzhen, people always tell me their Cantonese is dying. I really can&apos;t understand because like I said people speaking two languages is really common in my hometown.

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• 穆宇

  @穆宇穹 · 2 years ago (edited)

  Parts of my family are from Fuzhou (Hokchew). Actually, I sometimes feel sad that I can&apos;t speak fluent Eastern Min Chinese, i.e., Fuzhounese, and my listening is not good enough so I can only understand maybe 50% native vocabularies. My parents and relatives in Fuzhou spoke Mandarin to me when I was child, but they spoke Fuzhounese to each other. Now I am around 30 years old and just started learning Fuzhounese by myself for few years. The sad thing is the deep and complex thinking in my mind can only be in Mandarin now.<br><br>Now the number of fluent native speaker may be less than 10 million, and I still notice that my relatives in Fuzhou tend to speak Mandarin to their children tho they chat to each other fluently in Fuzhounese. It seems that the children can&apos;t speak Fuzhounese and can only understand basic Fuzhounese. My relatives migrated to Australia told me that maybe they are the last generation who can speak Fuzhounese. How sad that is!

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• SP

  @sportingusa · 2 years ago

  I am in Singapore.<br>My youngest 3 year old boy speaks five languages and dialect fluently. &nbsp;He dreams in Shanghainess and Bahasa. &nbsp;Speaks English, Mandarin and Japanese. &nbsp;It is effortless for him to learn at such a young age. &nbsp; <br><br>He speaks to the Maid in Bahasa, the grandparents in Shanghainess, Mandarin with the mother, English with me and he attends a japanese nursery. &nbsp;<br><br>Hence it is possible as long as the right opportunities and environment are provided.

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• JU

  @Just-An-AverageBear · 2 years ago

  Grate information. <br>As a westernised Chinese. Proud of my heritage. Overseas Chinese should learn more about their history n heritage….

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• VE

  @vetiarvind · 1 year ago

  it&apos;s why we Indians fight so hard for our regional languages. Governments come and go, but once a language becomes extinct, the whole culture and way of life goes with it forever.

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