1009: Chinese Languages Sep 13, 2017

The study of modern language, when done properly, follows the same procedures as the study scientific subjects. Nevertheless, as has been discussed here before, certain conventions are somewhat political rather than purely scientific. 'Chinese', for example, is an incredibly broad term that can often be misleading. Though usually it refers to Mandarin when people use the term casually, depending on the situation, there are other varieties of Chinese that are quite different to it, in the same way that the Romance languages are in many ways similar, but are still distinct. Cantonese, for instance, has six tones while Mandarin has four, and both of those have their own dialects that differ even more. Generally, it is accepted that there are seven varieties of Chinese, but because most people do not call them languages, it can be difficult to describe them, along with their own separate dialects. All varieties of Chinese use not only the same writing system, but while words in Spanish and Italian, (or any two other related languages) will often be written differently in their native languages whether they sound the same or not, even when two words in Mandarin and Cantonese mean the same thing but are pronounced differently, they will be written with the same character, making the varieties appear more similar on the surface. Also, it is politically beneficial for some to consider all of the varieties to be the same language to reinforce a sense of unity, but that issue is beyond the scope of this blog.