To begin with, I’ve recently spent an hour staring at a map explaining the etymology of nine European words in every language. Did you know that “orange” comes from an expression “an apple from China” in Slavic languages and that “bear” is “honey eater”? What’s more, the Chinese borrowed the word for beer from Slavic languages, including Polish.
http://www.businessinsider.com/european-maps-showing-origins-of-common-words-2013-11
The map showing the etymology of the word “tea” forced me to learn more about Chinese languages. In Portuguese, the word comes directly from Cantonese. The rest borrowed it from Cantonese via Persian, but it sounds similar, like chai in Russian. English tea and Spanish té and the rest of similar words come from Amoy dialect. Polish name is the weirdest, it’s a combination of herb from Latin and te from Amoy: herbata.
OK, the question now: what the hell is Amoy.
It’s the dialect that originated in Xiamen. Spoken in Fujian province, similar to the Taiwan language. Its variation is spoken also in Wenzhou.
In fact, the proper Wenzhou language, (in Chinese you say Wenzhou hua) in unintelligible to anybody. Yes. There is a language more obscure than Chinese! Wenzhou people are still proud because their language was used to encode German secret messages during the world war two. They had one Wenzhou person on one end, another one was receiving the messages and even if the communication was intercepted, nobody in the whole world could understand it.
What is Wenzhou? It’s a city in Zhejiang province I’ve never been too. Besides the most unintelligible language in the world, it’s famous of its clothes and shoes production and a trait in the culture of this city that makes its inhabitants travel the world and make money. Most of the American Chinese restaurants are owned by Wenzhou ren (Wenzhou people). The inhabitants of Granada should know that the Chinese who populate their city and run an incredible amount of shops are also mostly from Wenzhou. I know for a fact that all Chinese restaurants in Granada are owned by one Wenzhou family. Those people earn about eight hundred euro a month, but the employer provides them with clothes, food and accommodation, so they can easily save most of this salary, which is an incredible amount of money in China.
So, people in Wenzhou speak Wenzhou hua or Amoy.
People in Fujian and Taiwan speak Amoy.
People in Zhejiang speak Wu.
People in South-West China and Northern China speak dialects similar to Mandarin.
People in Guandong and Hong Kong speak Cantonese.
Mandarin was created on the basis of the Beijing dialect in the twentieth century and introduced by the Communist government.
In Zhejiang province the dialect varies not only from city to city, but from a district to a district. Sometimes after driving twenty minutes by car away from home you enter a place whose dialect is different to yours. That is why we call the dialects like this: Ningbo hua- the dialect of Ningbo, Cixi hua- the dialect of Cixi, etc. Those languages are different, but yet those people still can understand each other.
If they speak their dialects, an inhabitant of a Northern or South-Western China will not understand a Zhejiang ren, Guanzhou ren, Fujian ren nor Taiwan ren. They will understand him (or her) because his dialect is similar to Mandarin.
Only a Wenzhou ren will understand a Wenzhou ren.
The curious thing is that all those languages are called dialects. It is the will of the Chinese centralized government for sure, but not entirely. It seems to me that the Chinese have always believed to be one Chinese nation, although comprised of many Chinese nations. The Cantonese, for example, don’t show any need to create a separate country, but they still preserve their Cantonese culture and language.
The foreigners happily dismiss the dialects as being “only the dialects, they sound the same.” If we adopt this line of thinking, we can invent a common European language, force everybody to learn it at school and call all the spoken ones “dialects.” If the Europeans were Chinese, they would have probably done it already. You could easily do it with Slavic languages (that have a lot in common), but we would not allow it. Yes, I understand Slovak, but it is definitely a different language, not a dialect.
Here the language seems to be the mark of your identity. Shanghai and Zhejiang attract many immigrants from other provinces who come here to work. None of them makes any effort to speak the local language and nobody expects them to. They do not understand Wu any more than I do by the way.
The rest of the people communicate in Mandarin. It is a relatively very new language. In the twentieth century a phonetic alphabet, pinyin, was created, establishing once and for all the correct was of pronouncing the language. Children at school learn Mandarin and are forced to communicate in Mandarin only. People who are thirty and less are definitely fluent, fifty-year-olds might not speak it at all. That is why I always ask for directions or anything else young people, preferably smarter-looking too. From older citizens and physical labourers I can get a response, but only in Ningbo hua. This rule is of course very flexible. As all teachers know, some kids are particularly opposed to learning, thus many young people address me in Ningbo hua. On the other hand, Mandarin is the language of the media, so the elderly can teach themselves.
That is also the reason why people understand Mandarin, it is the language of the media. They respond in Ningbo hua though. Sometimes they repeat what I have just said, but in Ningbo hua, as if asking if they understood correctly. How would I know?! The most peculiar are the female neighbours chatting me up in Ningbo hua and then laughing because I don’t understand. Look at me. Just look at me. Do I look like somebody born in Ningbo?!
Mandarin is also a language of the young people. Not only are you forced to speak it at school, you go to school with people who were not born in your district. It is therefore their means of communication, which makes it an alive and developing language.
What was before Mandarin? People spoke their languages, but communicated in writing. That is probably why when I tell people that I can hear them, but not understand them (that is the correct way of saying it) they take out a piece of paper and write, only to learn that I can see, but I can’t understand. It usually provokes laughter because everybody knows that you can communicate in Chinese writing with everybody. Even the Wenzhou ren.
Last, but not least, is a riddle for a Chinese language book for first grade Chinese children. It is apparently very easy for them, but I’m afraid you need to be Chinese to solve it, as I couldn’t. Everybody: add a comment, have a try!
The riddle: two small trees with ten branches. Leaves don’t grow on them nor flowers bloom. They can write and calculate. They work every day and don’t speak.
http://www.businessinsider.com/european-maps-showing-origins-of-common-words-2013-11
The map showing the etymology of the word “tea” forced me to learn more about Chinese languages. In Portuguese, the word comes directly from Cantonese. The rest borrowed it from Cantonese via Persian, but it sounds similar, like chai in Russian. English tea and Spanish té and the rest of similar words come from Amoy dialect. Polish name is the weirdest, it’s a combination of herb from Latin and te from Amoy: herbata.
OK, the question now: what the hell is Amoy.
It’s the dialect that originated in Xiamen. Spoken in Fujian province, similar to the Taiwan language. Its variation is spoken also in Wenzhou.
In fact, the proper Wenzhou language, (in Chinese you say Wenzhou hua) in unintelligible to anybody. Yes. There is a language more obscure than Chinese! Wenzhou people are still proud because their language was used to encode German secret messages during the world war two. They had one Wenzhou person on one end, another one was receiving the messages and even if the communication was intercepted, nobody in the whole world could understand it.
What is Wenzhou? It’s a city in Zhejiang province I’ve never been too. Besides the most unintelligible language in the world, it’s famous of its clothes and shoes production and a trait in the culture of this city that makes its inhabitants travel the world and make money. Most of the American Chinese restaurants are owned by Wenzhou ren (Wenzhou people). The inhabitants of Granada should know that the Chinese who populate their city and run an incredible amount of shops are also mostly from Wenzhou. I know for a fact that all Chinese restaurants in Granada are owned by one Wenzhou family. Those people earn about eight hundred euro a month, but the employer provides them with clothes, food and accommodation, so they can easily save most of this salary, which is an incredible amount of money in China.
So, people in Wenzhou speak Wenzhou hua or Amoy.
People in Fujian and Taiwan speak Amoy.
People in Zhejiang speak Wu.
People in South-West China and Northern China speak dialects similar to Mandarin.
People in Guandong and Hong Kong speak Cantonese.
Mandarin was created on the basis of the Beijing dialect in the twentieth century and introduced by the Communist government.
In Zhejiang province the dialect varies not only from city to city, but from a district to a district. Sometimes after driving twenty minutes by car away from home you enter a place whose dialect is different to yours. That is why we call the dialects like this: Ningbo hua- the dialect of Ningbo, Cixi hua- the dialect of Cixi, etc. Those languages are different, but yet those people still can understand each other.
If they speak their dialects, an inhabitant of a Northern or South-Western China will not understand a Zhejiang ren, Guanzhou ren, Fujian ren nor Taiwan ren. They will understand him (or her) because his dialect is similar to Mandarin.
Only a Wenzhou ren will understand a Wenzhou ren.
The curious thing is that all those languages are called dialects. It is the will of the Chinese centralized government for sure, but not entirely. It seems to me that the Chinese have always believed to be one Chinese nation, although comprised of many Chinese nations. The Cantonese, for example, don’t show any need to create a separate country, but they still preserve their Cantonese culture and language.
The foreigners happily dismiss the dialects as being “only the dialects, they sound the same.” If we adopt this line of thinking, we can invent a common European language, force everybody to learn it at school and call all the spoken ones “dialects.” If the Europeans were Chinese, they would have probably done it already. You could easily do it with Slavic languages (that have a lot in common), but we would not allow it. Yes, I understand Slovak, but it is definitely a different language, not a dialect.
Here the language seems to be the mark of your identity. Shanghai and Zhejiang attract many immigrants from other provinces who come here to work. None of them makes any effort to speak the local language and nobody expects them to. They do not understand Wu any more than I do by the way.
The rest of the people communicate in Mandarin. It is a relatively very new language. In the twentieth century a phonetic alphabet, pinyin, was created, establishing once and for all the correct was of pronouncing the language. Children at school learn Mandarin and are forced to communicate in Mandarin only. People who are thirty and less are definitely fluent, fifty-year-olds might not speak it at all. That is why I always ask for directions or anything else young people, preferably smarter-looking too. From older citizens and physical labourers I can get a response, but only in Ningbo hua. This rule is of course very flexible. As all teachers know, some kids are particularly opposed to learning, thus many young people address me in Ningbo hua. On the other hand, Mandarin is the language of the media, so the elderly can teach themselves.
That is also the reason why people understand Mandarin, it is the language of the media. They respond in Ningbo hua though. Sometimes they repeat what I have just said, but in Ningbo hua, as if asking if they understood correctly. How would I know?! The most peculiar are the female neighbours chatting me up in Ningbo hua and then laughing because I don’t understand. Look at me. Just look at me. Do I look like somebody born in Ningbo?!
Mandarin is also a language of the young people. Not only are you forced to speak it at school, you go to school with people who were not born in your district. It is therefore their means of communication, which makes it an alive and developing language.
What was before Mandarin? People spoke their languages, but communicated in writing. That is probably why when I tell people that I can hear them, but not understand them (that is the correct way of saying it) they take out a piece of paper and write, only to learn that I can see, but I can’t understand. It usually provokes laughter because everybody knows that you can communicate in Chinese writing with everybody. Even the Wenzhou ren.
Last, but not least, is a riddle for a Chinese language book for first grade Chinese children. It is apparently very easy for them, but I’m afraid you need to be Chinese to solve it, as I couldn’t. Everybody: add a comment, have a try!
The riddle: two small trees with ten branches. Leaves don’t grow on them nor flowers bloom. They can write and calculate. They work every day and don’t speak.
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