Controversial title, I get it. Just hear me out. On this channel, I've talked a lot about a
language I would call "Standard Mandarin" or "Standard Chinese", which is, I think,
what most people imagine when they hear the word "Chinese": the official language
of the countries of China and Taiwan. This is a standardised version of Mandarin, first
developed under the Nationalist government, and now it's reportedly spoken by 80% of the Chinese
population, as the first or second language. So if there is a language which
could ever be called "Chinese", this is the one. But really, there
are a LOT of Chinese languages, and the naming around all this
is really confusing at times... So let's talk about Sinitic, the group of
languages... or are they dialects?... or, well, just this weird confusing STUFF which is
spoken in China and by the Chinese diaspora. But first, let's be real with ourselves
for a second. We all want to learn some more languages. They are the
spice of life, hands down. When I'm not working on this channel
or eating stupid amounts of cheese, I'm trying desperately to keep up with my French, Italian and Danish - but it's hard to
find motivation sometimes, isn't it? I'd love to fly off to Italy
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language learners... and support the channel. Thank you to Busuu for sponsoring this video. Okay, so what is "Sinitic", what is "Mandarin"
and what is up with this nebulous term "Chinese"? So you may know that linguists divide up the
language of the world into genetic groups, which are languages which share a common ancestor. Like how French and Italian and Spanish are all Romance languages because
they're all descended from Latin. Then a lot of these groups can be collected into
major language families. At the highest level, these are groups like the Indo-European
language family, which contains not only all the Romance languages, but all the Germanic,
Indo-Iranian and Slavic languages, among others. One of these major families is generally known as
the Sino-Tibetan family. The high-level structure of this family is quite contentious, but the
biggest widely accepted subgroup is the Sinitic. This is what is known as the
group of "Chinese languages". Now, a lot of the time, these are
talked about as a single language, saying that all these variants like Cantonese
are "dialects", despite the fact that mutual intelligibility, the ability to understand
each other when speaking these variants, between Cantonese and the Standard Mandarin we
discussed earlier, is completely impossible. Many linguists, therefore, call
these variants different languages... Hundreds of different languages, where one
person speaking one Sinitic variety and one speaking another can't understand each other. This is precisely why, with the modernisation
of the Chinese state in the 20th century, a common language came to be created. The Sinitic languages can be divided up into
various "dialect groups" or "language groups" (depending on your linguistic calling),
and the largest of these is Mandarin. This originated in northern China and is now spoken across the north and
south-west of the country. And the Beijing dialect was selected to form the basis of this new standardised national
language - hence, "Standard Mandarin", or, since it is used for communication
throughout China, "Standard Chinese". "But K!" I hear you ask. "Then why not
just call this language 'Chinese'? We already have other names for
all these other languages!" Well, for me, the thing is
that a lot of these other languages still have relevance - but a waning one. The national language policy of China is
to spread Standard Mandarin... and I think it's important to recognise the richness
and diversity of languages within China. I don't think there's anything wrong with calling
this language "Chinese", inherently - it's just when people who don't know much about China hear
that word, it strengthens this idea that there's this one unitary language of China. Which
is a reality we haven't quite come to. Yet. But then I hear all this - and I think of
Italian. We call it "Italian". Why do we do that? It's just one dialect, or one language, (depending on your linguistic calling)
of a whole net of varieties spoken on the Italian Peninsula, originating in
Tuscany, especially based on Florentine. Should we start calling it "Standard
Tuscan"? "Standard Italian"? The lack of knowledge about minority
languages, and the bundling of different dialects under one national label isn't just
a problem in China - it's a global problem. It's a problem of the nation-state. But to be fair, in China
we have 1.3 billion people, hundreds of millions of whom have native
languages which are non-Mandarin Sinitic varieties - so there's something
to be said for that as well. But at the end of the day, that's just the
scale on which these arguments play out; it doesn't actually have an
effect on the argument itself. I don't know what we should call Italian. I don't think calling Chinese "Standard Mandarin"
is going to do much to help dying Hakka dialects. But I do hope that maybe you understand a little
better now why there are all these words being thrown around when talking about Chinese, and
that they do - kind of - mean different things. And then you also have to
consider... all this boils down to the question of "what is a language?" Mandarin and Cantonese are mutually
unintelligible. For a lot of speakers, Swedish and Danish are not. You can change the way you speak to make it
easier for others to understand. Sometimes people from the US can't understand a thick Scottish
accent. Sometimes intelligibility is asymmetric. Where does the line between
language and dialect go? Maybe there isn't one, and it's
more of a fuzzy little spectrum. Anyway, onto the real purpose of this video:
I swear that joke I made about Mandarin being a stupid name for Standard Chinese was funny
it was really well thought out and really -
The difference between a language and a dialect is a standing army.
Think about it.