[時事討論] The Economists: How a dialect differs from a language

felicity2010

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3 v% y& ?- O8 ~TVBNOW 含有熱門話題，最新最快電視，軟體，遊戲，電影，動漫及日常生活及興趣交流等資訊。The Economists: How a dialect differs from a language6 J. l$ R: N0 Y' `5 {9 b5 B3 E

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HONG KONG'S education department caused a furore last month by briefly posting on its website the claim that Cantonese was “not an official language” of Hong Kong. After an outcry, officials removed the text. But was the claim correct? The law says that “Chinese and English”are Hong Kong’s official languages. Whereas some people say that Cantonese is a dialect of Chinese, others insist that it is a language in its own right. Who is right—and how do dialects differ from languages in general?7 s: N" |. C2 R- w) z. p
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5 R  o( J7 x4 W* P- y4 t% G5 `/ ?Two kinds of criteria distinguish languages from dialects. The first are social and political: in this view, “languages”are typically prestigious, official and written, whereas “dialects” are mostly spoken, unofficial and looked down upon. In a famous formulation of this view,“a language is a dialect with an army and a navy”. Speakers of mere “dialects”often refer to their speech as “slang”, “patois” or the like. (The Mandarin Chinese term for Cantonese, Shanghaiese and others is fangyan, or“place-speech”.) Linguists have a different criterion: if two related kinds of speech are so close that speakers can have a conversation and understand each other, they are dialects of a single language. If comprehension is difficult toimpossible, they are distinct languages. Of course, comprehensibility is not either-or, but a continuum—and it may even be asymmetrical. Nonetheless, mutual comprehensibility is the most objective basis for saying whether two kinds of speech are languages or dialects.
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" X1 b# ~$ s- d5 \+ B  Atvb now,tvbnow,bttvbBy the comprehensibility criterion, Cantonese is not a dialect of Chinese. Rather it is a language, as are Shanghaiese,Mandarin and other kinds of Chinese. Although the languages are obviously related, a Mandarin-speaker cannot understand Cantonese or Shanghaiese without having learned it as a foreign language (and vice-versa, though most Chinese do learn Mandarin today). Most Western lingists classify them as “Siniticlanguages”, not “dialects of Chinese”. (Some languages in China, like Uighur,are not Sinitic at all.) Objective though it may be, this criterion can annoy nationalists—and not just in China. Danes and Norwegians can converse, making some linguists classify the two as dialects of a single language, though few Danes or Norwegians think of it this way.  l! t7 H" ^' ]5 ]3 P3 E5 z, k

; _7 S* \, H3 V/ \+ K7 dtvb now,tvbnow,bttvbIn China the picture is further confused by the fact that one written form unifies Chinese-language speakers (though mainland Chinese write with a simplified version of the characters used in Hong Kong and Taiwan). But this written form is not a universal “Chinese”: it is based on Mandarin. The confusion arises because many people consider written language to be the “real” language, and speech its poor cousin. The same reasoning can be used to classify Arabic as a single language, though a Moroccan and a Syrian, say, cannot easily understand each other. Ethnologue, a reference guide to the world's languages, calls Chinese and Arabic"macrolanguages", noting both their shared literature and the mutual(spoken) unintelligibility of many local varieties, which it calls languages.For the most part, linguists consider spoken language primary: speech is universal, whereas only a fraction of the world’s 6,000-7,000 languages are written. This is behind the linguist’s common-sense definition: two people share a language if they can have a conversation without too much trouble.- W* t+ M6 {% s0 k

0 L1 I# ~3 E$ pTVBNOW 含有熱門話題，最新最快電視，軟體，遊戲，電影，動漫及日常生活及興趣交流等資訊。
' u1 L- O$ C. zTVBNOW 含有熱門話題，最新最快電視，軟體，遊戲，電影，動漫及日常生活及興趣交流等資訊。（按此閱讀英文原文）TVBNOW 含有熱門話題，最新最快電視，軟體，遊戲，電影，動漫及日常生活及興趣交流等資訊。! _; j9 q- K+ ^% F
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felicity2010

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陳雲：識講普通話就識寫文章？
1 C. k+ r$ S$ _- p1 M" L7 y4 d. D2 xTVBNOW 含有熱門話題，最新最快電視，軟體，遊戲，電影，動漫及日常生活及興趣交流等資訊。
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某人的英文講得很好，他寫求職信，便說：I have heard from my friend that your company is seeking someone to fill up the post of assistant manager. This job suits me well. Can I work for you?
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! {3 G* m% R& A3 }2 y; B公仔箱論壇這樣寫的求職信，除非僱主別具慧眼，否則必然石沉大海。求職信的開頭，要寫In response to your advertisement for an assistant manager posted in your company website this 17th February 之類。求職信一般要莊重，這是書面語的成規，屬於社會語言學（sociolinguistics）的register（語域）觀念。不同的場合使用不同的語言風格，例如廣播、公事、學院等，都要用正規語域（formal register）的文書。即使口語講得很好，如果不識得書面語的風格，不識得人情世故，就寫不出大方得體的求職信。* h. M6 z) l( q2 B3 {% V/ K
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如果這人找的是餐廳的侍應生或廚工，親身摸上門，向老闆或經理說這番話，卻又變得好恰當、好坦率。因為這些餐廳酒館，屬於非正式的場合，用的是informal register（非正式語域）的語言。
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) X/ N. N$ q  G+ g2 j' V- f' V$ A又或者，某人用非正式的語言，如此寫求職信：My friend Clifford showed me an advertisement the other day. He told me that he left this company a month ago and he still missed the colleagues and the projects there. I think there must be something wonderful about your company because he doesn’t look back in life very often. He is, allow me to say,Clifford Richards, who worked as product designer in your company. 這又變得可以了。此信用白話口語寫成，但由於涉及私交，故又變得恰當。這是破格的寫法。當然，帶出他朋友名字的最後一句，仍要有點客套。而且，此段之後，就不可以再提朋友的名字，要講自己的了。TVBNOW 含有熱門話題，最新最快電視，軟體，遊戲，電影，動漫及日常生活及興趣交流等資訊。" y) J' V3 |) P, z
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改用中文吧。普通話講得很好，你夠膽這樣寫求職信麼？# a) s' {3 g1 p% J7 F, S0 W

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「我今天吶，無聊起來上了咖啡館讀報紙，無意之中翻到了分類廣告那幾頁，看到你們請產品設計員，心跳的特厲害。這樣的工作，我畢業到現在，真等了很久，碰上你們又是這麼一家出名的大公司，裡面這麼多高人，我如果能進去做，那往後的日子該有多好啊。」
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) d5 s$ f0 _7 o5.39.217.76這是地道的北方話、普通話，但這樣的普通話可以入文，用來寫求職信嗎？不可以啊，散文也不能這樣寫。然而，這樣的中文口語，神氣活現，卻可以用來寫小說、電視劇、舞台劇、相聲，但我們香港的學校真要訓練小說家、劇作家嗎？
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" l. K; L6 p/ D& ^4 P, stvb now,tvbnow,bttvb普通話教中文能幫助寫文章？少發一點神經病吧，拜託。
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