Tag: The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy

Categories
Culture History Language Learning Names Technology

fántǐ‐zì

fĂĄntǐ+ (fĂĄn·tǐ complicated; complex; difficult · {body → [style] → [typeface; font]} → [traditional Chinese] çčäœ“ çčé«”)‐zĂŹ+ (characters 歗) đŸ‘ˆđŸŒ Tap/click to show/hide the “flashcard”

[This is a reposting of a post that was originally posted on November 30, 2020. I took the opportunity to flesh out the original post and this repost with additional material.]

For a long, long, long time, Chinese characters were just Chinese characters. Then, in 1956, the Communist government of mainland China issued what came to be known as the First Chinese Character Simplification Scheme (a second round of Chinese character simplification was later attempted and ultimately rescinded), and official simplified Chinese characters came into the world. (Some characters had been unofficially simplified and used for various purposes, both everyday and artistic, before that.)

Name?

To distinguish these newfangled official simplified Chinese characters from the Chinese characters that had existed before, and that continue to be used by many people in many parts of the world, retronyms were coined to refer to these pre-existing Chinese characters, just as the term “acoustic guitar” was coined to refer to a regular non-electric guitar after electric guitars came along.

In the English-speaking world, the pre-official simplification characters have come to be called “traditional Chinese characters”, as opposed to the “simplified Chinese characters”. In the Chinese-speaking world, as is true of many things regarding Chinese characters, the situation is
complicated. Wikipedia summarizes the situation thusly:

Traditional Chinese characters (the standard characters) are called several different names within the Chinese-speaking world. The government of Taiwan officially calls traditional Chinese characters standard characters or orthodox characters (traditional Chinese: æ­Łé«”ć­—; simplified Chinese: æ­Łäœ“ć­—; pinyin: zhĂšngtǐzĂŹ; Zhuyin Fuhao: ă„“ă„„Ë‹ ㄊㄧˇ ㄗˋ).[source] However, the same term is used outside Taiwan to distinguish standard, simplified and traditional characters from variant and idiomatic characters.[source]

In contrast, users of traditional characters outside Taiwan, such as those in Hong Kong, Macau and overseas Chinese communities, and also users of simplified Chinese characters, call them complex characters (traditional Chinese: çčé«”ć­—; simplified Chinese: çčäœ“ć­—; pinyin: fĂĄntǐzĂŹ; Zhuyin Fuhao: ㄈㄱˊ ㄊㄧˇ ㄗˋ). Users of simplified characters sometimes informally refer to them as “old characters” (Chinese: è€ć­—; pinyin: lǎozĂŹ; Zhuyin Fuhao: ㄌㄠˇ ㄗˋ).

Users of traditional characters also sometimes call them “full Chinese characters” (traditional Chinese: 慚體歗; simplified Chinese: ć…šäœ“ć­—; pinyin: quĂĄntǐ zĂŹ; Zhuyin Fuhao: ㄑㄩㄹˊ ㄊㄧˇ ㄗˋ) to distinguish them from simplified Chinese characters.

In my experience in the Chinese fields in Canada, I have always heard traditional Chinese characters referred to using this week’s MEotW, “fĂĄntǐ+ (fĂĄn·tǐ complicated; complex; difficult · {body → [style] → [typeface; font]} → [traditional Chinese] çčäœ“ çčé«”)‐zĂŹ (characters 歗)”. For reference, this is also the term used on jw.org when referring to Mandarin written using traditional Chinese characters:

jw.org referring to Mandarin written using traditional Chinese characters

jw.org refers to traditional Chinese characters as “fĂĄntǐ+ (fĂĄn·tǐ complicated; complex; difficult · {body → [style] → [typeface; font]} → [traditional Chinese] çčäœ“ çčé«”)” characters.

Beloved by Traditionalists and Purists, But Complicated

Many feel that traditional characters are the best characters of all, since, in their estimation, the official simplified characters have lost some of the heart and soul of characters. As a symbolic example, some point to how the simplified character for “love”, “爱”, omits the “heart” radical (“濃”), which is appropriately in the traditional character for “love”, “愛”.

Yes, as the above post mentions, the obvious, glaring issue with traditional characters is—aggravated by the fact that there are tens of thousands of them—their extreme, extraordinary complexity, the result of their problematically complex basic nature, along with thousands of years of accumulated occasionally arbitrary design decisions and developmental cruft. For example, note the below excerpt from p. 82 of the book The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy, by John DeFrancis:

In the case of the rendition for the huáng meaning “sturgeon” we have two variants, one written with the “yellow” phonetic and the other with the “emperor” phonetic, both combined with the semantic element for “fish”:

魚 “fish”
鱑 “fish” + huĂĄng “yellow” = huĂĄng “sturgeon”
鰉 “fish” + huáng “emperor” = huáng “sturgeon”

While etymological research might succeed in clarifying the basis for some of the variation, in many cases, as one specialist in Chinese paleography concludes, “it is simply a matter of the whim of the writer” (Barnard 1978:203).

Scribal whim goes far to explain a diversity bordering on chaos in the forms of the Chinese characters as they evolved in the Shang dynasty and during the long years of political and administrative disunity in the Zhou dynasty (ca. 1028–221 B.C.). The situation was aggravated by the fact that characters were created by writers living in different historical periods, which inevitably meant changes in sounds over the years, and speaking different dialects, which inevitably affected their choice of phonetic elements in the creation of new characters.

Their inherent extraordinary complexity, exacerbated by an accumulated millennia-long history of design decisions made on a whim, out-of-date phonetic elements, etc., causes especially the traditional characters, and even the (moderately) simplified characters, to be extremely difficult for us imperfect humans to learn and to remember. This has lead to character amnesia and the Great Wall of unfamiliar characters being real things, even among those who have been studying characters for decades. How complex can traditional characters get? Theoretically, there is no upper limit!

The extreme, extraordinary complexity of traditional characters undoubtedly contributed greatly to illiteracy having been widespread in China for much of its history. Even for those who are privileged to be able to devote the extraordinary amount of time and effort needed to learn traditional characters, it’s a long, hard slog, compared to learning a comparatively simple and compact alphabetical writing system. It’s little wonder, then, that there have been serious, concerted efforts to simplify and even replace traditional Chinese characters.

Categories
Culture History Language Learning Names Technology

HĂ nzĂŹ

HĂ nzĂŹ+ (HĂ n·zĂŹ {Han (Chinese)} · Characters æ±‰ć­— æŒąć­—) ← Tap/click to show/hide the “flashcard”

[This is a reposting of a post that was originally posted on November 23, 2020. It discusses how, in the big picture, we Mandarin field language learners should view Chinese characters, those seemingly essential but maddeningly difficult-to-learn-and-remember icons of worldly Chinese culture.]

“HĂ nzĂŹ (HĂ n·zĂŹ {Han (Chinese)} · Characters æ±‰ć­— æŒąć­—)” is what Chinese characters are called in Mandarin. Actually, “HĂ nzĂŹ+ (HĂ n·zĂŹ {Han (Chinese)} · Characters æ±‰ć­— æŒąć­—)” literally means “Han characters”, but as discussed in the MEotW post on “HĂ nyǔ (HĂ n·yǔ {Han (Chinese)} · Language [→ [(Modern Standard) Mandarin]] æ±‰èŻ­ æŒąèȘž)”, the Han are by far the largest ethnic group in China, and they are the dominant cultural force in China. Thus, Han characters are, in effect, Chinese characters.

æŒąć­— æ±‰ć­—

Han culture has affected not only China, but also many of the surrounding nations. The words used by some of these nations to refer to “Chinese characters” are obvious echoes of “HĂ nzĂŹ (HĂ n·zĂŹ {Han (Chinese)} · Characters æ±‰ć­— æŒąć­—)”:

  • Japanese: kanji
  • Korean: Hanja
  • Vietnamese: hĂĄn tá»±

HĂ nzĂŹ (HĂ n·zĂŹ {Han (Chinese)} · Characters æ±‰ć­— æŒąć­—) are still used a lot in modern Japanese writing. However, although HĂ nzĂŹ (HĂ n·zĂŹ {Han (Chinese)} · Characters æ±‰ć­— æŒąć­—) used to be the dominant writing system in Korea and in Vietnam, those nations have moved on to mainly use alphabetic writing systems.

The Korean Connection

Regarding the situation in Korea, the Awake! article “Let’s Try Writing in Hankul!” says:

BEFORE Hankul [or Hangul] was created, the Korean language did not have its own script. For more than a thousand years, educated Koreans wrote their language using Chinese characters. Over the years, however, various attempts were made to devise a better writing system. But since all of them were based on Chinese characters, only the well-educated could use them.




King Sejong spearheaded the creation of an alphabet that would both suit spoken Korean and be easy to learn and use.




Sadly, some scholars opposed Hankul, precisely because it was so easy to learn! They derisively called it Amkul, meaning “women’s letters.” They disdained a system that could be learned even by women, who back then were not taught to read in the schools. This prejudice against Hankul persisted among upper-class Koreans for some time. In fact, more than 400 years elapsed before the Korean government declared that Hankul could be used in official documents.

The Chinese Conundrum

How about the writing system situation in China itself? Do the Chinese languages need to be written using HĂ nzĂŹ (HĂ n·zĂŹ {Han (Chinese)} · Characters æ±‰ć­— æŒąć­—)? Chinese traditionalists have influenced many people to assume so, but there is actually no technical linguistic requirement that any Chinese language be written using HĂ nzĂŹ (HĂ n·zĂŹ {Han (Chinese)} · Characters æ±‰ć­— æŒąć­—)—writing Chinese languages using HĂ nzĂŹ (HĂ n·zĂŹ {Han (Chinese)} · Characters æ±‰ć­— æŒąć­—) is purely and merely a deeply embedded tradition.

Proof that the use of HĂ nzĂŹ (HĂ n·zĂŹ {Han (Chinese)} · Characters æ±‰ć­— æŒąć­—) is merely a tradition and not a technical requirement comes from the fact that PÄ«nyÄ«n (PÄ«n·yÄ«n {Piecing Together of} · Sounds → [Pinyin] æ‹ŒéŸł), a phonetic alphabetic system designed by a Chinese government team, is a good, workable full writing system for Modern Standard Mandarin.

Why has China held on to its traditional use of HĂ nzĂŹ (HĂ n·zĂŹ {Han (Chinese)} · Characters æ±‰ć­— æŒąć­—) when other nations have moved on to alphabetic writing systems? As mentioned in the MEotW post on “ZhƍngguĂł (Zhƍng·guĂł Central · Nation → [China | Chinese] äž­ć›œ 侭朋)”,

Some wonder why China has held on to its archaic characters writing system instead of moving on to using a modern alphabetic writing system like almost every other nation does, even though outstanding native sons like Lǔ XĂčn+ ((Lǔ Stupid; Rash (surname) éȁ é­Ż) (XĂčn Fast; Quick; Swift èż…) (pen name of Zhƍu ShĂčrĂ©n, the greatest Chinese writer of the 20th cent. and a strong advocate of alphabetic writing)) have advocated strongly for that. Perhaps the proud self-centredness of the only nation to name itself the centre of the world provides a clue
.

When the Communists took over China a few years after World War II, their Plan A for China’s writing system situation actually did involve eventually moving on from the characters to an alphabetic writing system that would be developed, which turned out to be PÄ«nyÄ«n (PÄ«n·yÄ«n {Piecing Together of} · Sounds → [Pinyin] æ‹ŒéŸł). However, the government needed the help of the people already educated in HĂ nzĂŹ (HĂ n·zĂŹ {Han (Chinese)} · Characters æ±‰ć­— æŒąć­—), and many of these people opposed this plan that they feared would involve leaving behind, or at least de-emphasizing, a cultural tradition that they were very proud of, that they had invested very much time and effort into mastering, and that gave them much prestige in the existing environment.1 In other words, the pride and prejudice of those who had already been educated in the HĂ nzĂŹ (HĂ n·zĂŹ {Han (Chinese)} · Characters æ±‰ć­— æŒąć­—) caused them to disparage and oppose the idea of a simpler alternative writing system, just as had been the case in Korea, as noted above. So, the simplification of the HĂ nzĂŹ (HĂ n·zĂŹ {Han (Chinese)} · Characters æ±‰ć­— æŒąć­—) is the farthest China has gotten so far with regard to official writing system reform, and even that has only been achieved in the face of much criticism and opposition.

Chairman MĂĄo ZĂ©dƍng+ ((MĂĄo Hair (surname) æŻ›) (Zé·dƍng Marsh · East æłœäžœ 柀東) (the founder of the People’s Republic of China)) (Wikipedia article) himself supported continuing to move on, from simplification of the characters to actually adopting PÄ«nyÄ«n (PÄ«n·yÄ«n {Piecing Together of} · Sounds → [Pinyin] æ‹ŒéŸł) as a writing system. In a letter to an old schoolmate, he wrote:


Pinyin writing is a form of writing that is relatively convenient. Chinese characters are too complicated and difficult. At present we are only engaged in reform along the lines of simplification, but some day in the future we must inevitably carry out a basic reform.2

Letter from Mao endorsing a transition from Chinese characters to alphabetic writing

(The above picture is from near the beginning of the book The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy, by John DeFrancis.)

While obviously what MĂĄo ((MĂĄo Hair (surname) æŻ›) (abbr. for MĂĄo ZĂ©dƍng, the founder of the People’s Republic of China)) foresaw regarding a writing system “basic reform” in China has not yet come true, American sinologist and University of Pennsylvania Professor of East Asian Languages and Civilizations Victor H. Mair wrote in a blog post:

So, those who are in favor of HP [HĂ nyǔ (HĂ n·yǔ {Han (Chinese)} · Language → [(Modern Standard) Mandarin] æ±‰èŻ­ æŒąèȘž) PÄ«nyÄ«n (PÄ«n·yÄ«n {Piecing Together of} · Sounds → [Pinyin] æ‹ŒéŸł)] don’t need to be concerned, and those who are opposed to HP don’t need to be frightened. HP is ineluctably playing a greater and greater role in the educational, cultural, social, political, and every other aspect of the lives of Chinese citizens, and this is occurring without regard to anyone pushing it as a governmental program. It is happening because of the wishes of those who actually use it for a wide variety of helpful purposes.

Digraphia [the use of more than one writing system for the same language, in this case the use of both HĂ nzĂŹ (HĂ n·zĂŹ {Han (Chinese)} · Characters æ±‰ć­— æŒąć­—) and PÄ«nyÄ«n (PÄ«n·yÄ«n {Piecing Together of} · Sounds → [Pinyin] æ‹ŒéŸł) for writing Modern Standard Mandarin] is emerging before our very eyes, enabling people to use the alphabet and the characters for whatever purposes they deem suitable. Nobody needs to take a vote or carry out a survey for this to happen.

Tourists or Missionaries?

Regardless of how worldly Chinese people view the HĂ nzĂŹ (HĂ n·zĂŹ {Han (Chinese)} · Characters æ±‰ć­— æŒąć­—), how should we dedicated Mandarin field language-learners view them? It would be easy to fall back on the commonly accepted view, the tourist’s view, that the HĂ nzĂŹ (HĂ n·zĂŹ {Han (Chinese)} · Characters æ±‰ć­— æŒąć­—) are an integral and fascinating part of China’s precious cultural heritage that we should duly respect and even heap adulation upon.

However, as Mandarin field language-learners, we are not in the Mandarin field to be tourists just enjoying the exotic foreign culture. On the contrary, we must be more like missionaries or spiritual rescue workers involved in an urgent life-saving work, because lives are indeed involved. As ones involved in an urgent, life-saving work, we need tools, technologies, and systems that efficiently and effectively help us to get this work done without wasting time and effort when people’s everlasting lives are at stake. From this sober and pragmatic angle, the extraordinarily difficult-to-learn-and-remember HĂ nzĂŹ (HĂ n·zĂŹ {Han (Chinese)} · Characters æ±‰ć­— æŒąć­—) are far from ideal. Thus, while there is obviously value in learning as many HĂ nzĂŹ (HĂ n·zĂŹ {Han (Chinese)} · Characters æ±‰ć­— æŒąć­—) as one is reasonably able to, it is fortunate that PÄ«nyÄ«n (PÄ«n·yÄ«n {Piecing Together of} · Sounds → [Pinyin] æ‹ŒéŸł) exists and is available as a simple, effective alternative writing system for Mandarin, for the many times when it is not necessary to use HĂ nzĂŹ (HĂ n·zĂŹ {Han (Chinese)} · Characters æ±‰ć­— æŒąć­—).

 

1. John DeFrancis, The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1984), p. 258. ^

2. Ibid., p. 295. ^

Categories
Culture Language Learning Languages Science

yǔxì

yǔxĂŹ+ (yǔ·xĂŹ language · {tied (things) → [system; family]} èŻ­çł» èȘžçł») ← Tap/click to show/hide the “flashcard”

[This is a reposting of a post that was originally posted on February 8, 2021. It discusses the important basic issue of how Mandarin should be classified as a language, a subject about which much political and cultural propaganda has unfortunately been spread.]

[A past] MEotW post mentioned that English and Spanish are generally considered by modern linguists to be in the Indo-European language family. This concept of a language family is used in modern linguistic genealogical (or genetic) language classification:

A language family is a group of languages related through descent from a common ancestral language or parental language, called the proto-language of that family. The term “family” reflects the tree model of language origination in historical linguistics, which makes use of a metaphor comparing languages to people in a biological family tree
Linguists therefore describe the daughter languages within a language family as being genetically related.[source]

The Mandarin Translation

As confirmed by American sinologist and University of Pennsylvania Professor of East Asian Languages and Civilizations Victor H. Mair in his article “The Classification of Sinitic Languages: What Is ‘Chinese’?” (p. 747), an accepted and acceptable Mandarin translation for “language family” is “yǔxĂŹ (yǔ·xĂŹ language · {tied (things) → [system; family]} èŻ­çł» èȘžçł»)”, this week’s MEotW.

The “yǔ+ (language; speech | saying; proverb | words; expression | speak; say èŻ­ èȘž)” in “yǔxĂŹ (yǔ·xĂŹ language · {tied (things) → [system; family]} èŻ­çł» èȘžçł»)” means “language”, particularly, the speech of a language, which modern linguists (language scientists) recognize to be the primary aspect of a language.

“XĂŹ ({tied [(things)]} [→ [system; series | family]] çł»)”, as used in “yǔxĂŹ (yǔ·xĂŹ language · {tied (things) → [system; family]} èŻ­çł» èȘžçł»)”, literally means “tied [(things)]”, and effectively means “system”, “series”, or “family”. Note that in this usage, the character â€œçł»â€ is the same in both simplified and traditional forms. Looking up the character â€œçł»â€ in the dictionary can get tricky, because the simplified character â€œçł»â€ can correspond to the traditional characters â€œçł»â€, “係”, and also “çč«â€, all of which have different, though sometimes related, meanings. This is an example of the complexities and vagaries of characters in general, and of how simplified and traditional characters relate to each other, as mentioned in the MEotW post on “jiǎntǐ (jiǎn·tǐ simplified · {body → [style] → [typeface; font]} → [simplified Chinese] çź€äœ“ ç°Ąé«”) zĂŹ (characters 歗)”.

BTW, an interesting other usage of “xĂŹ ({tied [(things)]} [→ [system; series | family]] çł»)” is in “YĂ­n HĂ©+ ((YĂ­n Silver 银 銀) (HĂ© River æČł) → [Milky Way]) XĂŹ+ ({Tied (Things)} → [System] → [Galaxy] çł»)”, in which “xĂŹ ({tied [(things)]} [→ [system; series | family]] çł»)” effectively means “galaxy”.

Pinwheel Galaxy

The Pinwheel Galaxy, another kind of xĂŹ ({tied [(things)]} [→ [system; series | family]] çł»)

The Mandarin Connection Is
Complicated

We have discussed that English and Spanish are generally considered by modern linguists to be in different groups in the Indo-European language family. How about Mandarin? What is Mandarin’s place in its language family tree?

Unfortunately, the answer to this seemingly simple question is complicated, by at least two major factors.

One complicating factor is that scientific genetic (or genealogical) language classification itself is not a fully worked out thing. The EncyclopĂŠdia Britannica put it this way:

So far, most of the languages of the world have been grouped only tentatively into families, and many of the classificatory schemes that have been proposed will no doubt be radically revised as further progress is made.

Another complicating factor was mentioned in the MEotW post on “fāngyĂĄn (fāng·yĂĄn {direction → [place]} · speech → [topolect; dialect (common but misleading translation)] æ–č蚀)”:

China’s central government is highly motivated to convince people that China is one unified political and cultural entity which should thus be governed by one central government—them

Yes, there is an excess of politics and its propaganda when it comes to the language situation in China, perhaps resulting in a relative dearth of actual scientific research into that situation. Additionally, pervasive political and cultural pressures tend to induce unscientific distortions and self-censorship in whatever research does get done. In his article mentioned above (p. 749), Prof. Mair describes the situation this way:

The contentious, non-scientific nature of the debate over the SLG/F [Sinitic (Chinese) Language Group/Family] is manifest in the circumlocutions used to designate its constituent members: “speech forms,” “varieties,” “styles,” “regionalects,” “dialects” (no matter how far up or down the taxonomic scale one may go), and so forth. At the same time, scholars openly admit that the main reasons why they do not use normal linguistic terminology (family, group, branch, language, dialect) in dealing with the SLG/F are due to sociopolitical and cultural factors. The fallacy of such a bizarre approach is evident when one considers that all nations have special sociopolitical and cultural circumstances, yet an impartial analytical outlook does not allow such circumstances to interfere with pure linguistic research.

The Mandarin Connection—A Common View

In view of the complications mentioned above, what can be said at this time about Mandarin’s place in its language family tree?

At this time, it seems to be traditionally accepted that there is a Sino-Tibetan language family, and that Mandarin is a language (some would unscientifically say “dialect”) in the Sinitic branch of this language family.

It should be noted, however, that even the Wikipedia article on the Sino-Tibetan language family says that there is not yet convincing evidence that the Sino- and Tibetan parts of this hypothetical language family are actually connected in the way that would justify considering them to be together in the same language family:

Several low-level subgroups have been securely reconstructed, but reconstruction of a proto-language for the family as a whole is still at an early stage, so the higher-level structure of Sino-Tibetan remains unclear. Although the family is traditionally presented as divided into Sinitic (i.e. Chinese) and Tibeto-Burman branches, a common origin of the non-Sinitic languages has never been demonstrated.

The Mandarin Connection—Prof. Mair’s View

From my research so far, I have come to consider Prof. Mair, mentioned above, to be the most knowledgeable and trustworthy living authority I know of on the language situation in China.1 The following are some points he made in a relatively recent article, mentioned above, on how Sinitic (Chinese) languages like Mandarin should be classified:

If efforts to link Sinitic with other major language groups continue to be as unconvincing as they have been to date, it may well be that Sinitic will end up being classified as a family unto itself. Because it remains to be determined whether Sinitic is a group or a family, I provisionally style it the Sinitic Language Group/Family (SLG/F). (p. 737)

Cantonese and Mandarin are separate languages. Cantonese is not a ‘dialect’ of Mandarin or of Hanyu, and it is grossly erroneous to refer to it as such. Since Cantonese and Mandarin are separate languages (or, perhaps more accurately, separate branches), it is wrong to refer to them as ‘dialects.’ The same holds for Hokkien, Shanghainese, and so forth. (p. 737)

I
remain agnostic [non-committal] about whether the SLG/F is actually a family unto itself or whether it is more or less closely linked to some other group(s)─such as Tibeto-Burman or Austronesian─in a family (p. 745)

The scientific classification of languages should not be held hostage to extra-linguistic political and cultural prejudices. (p. 746)

In the scientific classification of modern Sinitic languages, as much as possible, data should be drawn from the strikingly different spoken varieties, not from standard written forms. Writing is a second-order linguistic phenomenon. Since most speakers of Sinitic throughout prehistory and history have been illiterate, the nonessentiality of writing for the existence of the SLG/F is self-evident. (pp. 746–747)

The classification of the SLG/F, both internally and externally, is still in the beginning stages; much difficult work remains to be done. (p. 750)

‘Chinese’, ‘dialect’, and other terms in broad popular usage should be employed with extreme caution in technical discussions of the countless varieties of speech forms that currently exist and that have existed at various periods and places during the past in the East Asian Heartland (EAH) and Extended East Asian Heartland (EEAH) (p. 750)

There is an urgent need for the classification of the SLG/F, but this cannot be accomplished satisfactorily without precise, linguistically justifiable terminology. (p. 751)

The people of China have a right to conceive and speak of the languages of their country however they wish; linguists of the world have a duty to study the languages of China according to universal principles. If linguists abandon their scientific duty, the current chaos and lack of consensus concerning the nature of Sinitic will continue, much to the detriment of our understanding not only of the languages of China, but to linguistics as a whole. (p. 751)

Be Wary of What You May Hear About Mandarin

So, as we seek to learn Mandarin, let us keep in mind that while others—including well-meaning ones who are sincerely sharing what they themselves learned—may tell us certain things about Mandarin and how it relates to other varieties of speech, some of what they tell us may not be scientifically verified truth. More research needs to be done in some areas. Also, unfortunately, we need to be wary of the abundant political and cultural propaganda that has been spread about Mandarin and about the language situation in China in general.

1. American linguist, sinologist, author of Chinese language textbooks, lexicographer of Chinese dictionaries, and Professor Emeritus of Chinese Studies at the University of HawaiÊ»i at Mānoa John DeFrancis was also an exceptionally knowledgeable and trustworthy authority on the language situation in China. Sadly, he passed away in 2009. He did leave behind many excellent writings, though. I highly recommend his book The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1984). ^