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PaperclipPerfector  5d ago (text post)   2757 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for September 14, 2025

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My Chinese coworker says that this image is a reasonable representation of the controversy over whether Mandarin and Cantonese are dialects or languages. What is your opinion on the topic?

Does your coworker speak Mandarin as his first language? Is he from the northern PRC? Is he a nationalist? Those are important factors to consider when evaluating his opinion. I agree with others that including Korean is highly suspect. It suggests a level of ignorant northern Han chauvinism, the kind that still sees China as the "middle kingdom" (IMO better translated as the "central kingdom") and all other so-called cultures surrounding it as uppity monkeys who were enlightened by the hoary and superior Han Chinese.

To your question, no, they are not the same language at all. A lazy analogy (in that you could nitpick it to death and probably find a more exact example) is that they are like English and, say, Romanian. Both are Indo European, both use the Roman alphabet. They probably have some words in common that could be identified by a linguist. But day to day, they are mutually unintelligible, and the Romanians do things to the Roman alphabet that make English speaker say "wtf," such as "ă" and "ș". They are only part of the same "Chinese" language in that all Romance languages are part of "Romance," and even that is too generous IMO.

Does your coworker speak Mandarin as his first language? Is he from the northern PRC?

Cantonese is his first language. He's from Guangzhou, in the south.

Is he a nationalist?

I don't know. He has expressed thorough dislike of both the PRC government and Chiang Kai-Shek. He considers "zhonghua ren" to be significantly preferable to "Chinese person" as a moniker, I think since "Chinese" too easily implies "zhongguo".

That's a tricky one. IMHO there's probably nobody on this board who is really qualified to disentangle the nuances there, since AFAIK we do not have any regular born-and-raised-in-the-PRC posters (and even if we did the fact that they post here would make them highly unusual). But my understanding is that zhonghua 中华人 /zhonghuaminzu 中华民族 is used to mean "ethnically Chinese people," and I have heard it used (often as "huaren"华人) in conversations where the speaker was simply a non-PRC Chinese (e.g. from Taiwan) but also by PRC Chinese appealing to the loyalty owed by huaren (or huaqiao 华侨) to the mother country (PRC).

Re disliking Chiang Kai-shek... that's a tough one since AIUI he wasn't a very sympathetic character. I think there are plenty of PRC haters who have little love for Chiang.

I confess to not knowing enough folks from southern China to really grasp their views on Chineseness and compare them with those of northern Chinese (with whom I had much more contact).

Re disliking Chiang Kai-shek... that's a tough one since AIUI he wasn't a very sympathetic character.

To clarify, IIRC his position is something like "Chiang/the ROC should have admitted defeat like Robert E. Lee/the CSA and permitted the country to be reunited, rather than retreating to Taiwan and permanently dividing people". But I may be misremembering/misinterpreting his opinion.

Here's a direct quote:

ToaKraka: In the video game Hearts of Iron 3, you can play as the PRC and capture/execute Jiang Jieshi rather than allying with him against Japan. ¶ (at the Xi'an Incident)

Coworker: Allying with him was the only option. Different in political affiliation does not make him an enemy of China. Japan was the ultimate enemy. ¶ His sin is that he splits the country into two.

My gut says he's probably a PRC nationalist, though I say so with low confidence. Taiwanese have a generally warm view of Japan despite having been colonized by the Japanese for decades, so not all Chinese see the Japanese as a nemesis. The idea that "Japan was the ultimate enemy" is probably the strongest most unambiguous message in PRC propaganda, closely followed by "we must never forget the Century of Humiliation at the hands of Western powers" and "the CCP deserves undying gratitude for creating the 新中国 which awakened Chinese racial class consciousness and helped unify 中国人 enough to end their exploitation by evil foreigners." Given that, and given that the "Chinese=Han=Standard Mandarin" as an idea is pushed to promote national unity (no criticism here, every European country did it in the 19th and 20th century), I would take his linguistic theories with a grain of salt. Of course, I don't know the guy, so I'm speculating about his beliefs a lot here.

I'd be curious to hear what he actually believes if you feel you can broach this rather sensitive topic with him.

Taiwanese have a generally warm view of Japan despite having been colonized by the Japanese for decades

Is this a “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” thing, since the PRC is the strongest force in east Asia and both are concerned about their sea lanes and territorial integrity because of Chinese moves to expand its territorial waters and claim on Taiwan?

It's been a while since I studied this, but IIRC the occupation of Taiwan was much less draconian than the occupation of Korea or the wartime occupations of the mainland. The Japanese built a lot of infrastructure there and developed the island somewhat. They also engaged in cultural repression, but again, I think it was less strictly enforced than in Korea.

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