That "super short dynasty that came between the Zhou and Han" was easily the most influential upon the persistence of China as a cohesive body. Qin Shihuangdi conquered the shit out of the pre-China rival states; brutally exterminated confucian intellectuals (imposing my-word-is-law 'legalism' instead); burnt countless texts non-Qin texts; simplified and mandated a common language; imposed national standards on weights, measures, road and axel widths; built/connected most of the Great Wall of China with drafted labour forces; and had a life-sized terracotta army built for his tomb so he could subsequently conquer the shit out of heaven in the afterlife. His legacy is mixed, but there's no denying he was instrumental in carving out a lasting mould for what would remain to be a single China (even though his son was totally incapable of continuing his specific dynasty). Side note: crazy-wrong pronunciation of most chinese words in this video.
Hræð Af framhliðinni sadly it's surprisingly common among westerners. Every time I watch BBC or CNN I realise how hard it is for Americans and Europeans to pronounce the "zh" sound, "yü", and the word "Malay"
Borges wrote a short story about this emperor. It's quite charming to read (at least in Spanish). You should check it, the translation for the title would be "The wall and the books", I guess.
@@elliotw.888 It turns out asking a bunch of people who have no idea how to properly interpret a script they'll tend towards the phonetics of their own language, and I doubt this is a uniquely western problem.
the distinguished boi well the Chinese people don't call their country "China" for the same reason why America doesn't call themselves "美国“ （Mei Guo or "America" in Chinese). Europeans just coined the term for themselves to use and did not change what the Chinese people call themselves.
Its kind of the same with india Arabs:called us people who live on the side of river sindhu which later became hindu when muslims came in india in 12 century AD Europeans : called the river sindhu indus so they called us india They later classified all people who dont follow christianity and islam and called them hindus
Sorry Xidnaf, as a native Chinese speaker, or to be precise, Madarin speaker, I need to point out two of your misconceptions on the Chinese language(s)/dialects: 1. Not all Chinese dialects/languages are derived from Middle Chinese, some are from Old Chinese. In fact, the only two dialects/languages derived from Middle Chinese are Mandarin and Cantonese. The proof is that some irregular consonant shift that Middle Chinese had undergone is not attested in the some modern dialects. For example, the krktr 中, meaning "middle", is "zhong" in Mandarin, "zung" in Cantonese but "tiong" in Hokkien; the krktr 茶, meaning "tea", is "cha" in Mandarin, "tsaa" in Cantonese but "te" in Hokkien. Significantly, Mandarin and Cantonese are inherited from some dialect which had undergone a "Depalato-Retroflexizing" consonant shift, but Hokkien is not. 2. Putonghua is not Mandarin, it is a subset of Mandarin. Mandarin is also a diverse dialect/language with vastly different subdialects/dialects. Yes, Mandarin itself etymologically means "official language", but etymology says nothing to its actual meaning. A native inhabitant from either Chengdu or Wuhan is also a native Mandarin speaker (like me), but his Mandarin is certainly not Putonghua. By the way, my home dialect is not Putonghua as well, although my hometown is close to Beijing enough. My home dialect belongs to Hebei-Shandong Mandarin, whereas Putonghua belongs to Beijing Mandarin. In addition, although Putonghua belongs to Beijing Mandarin, it is not collected from Beijing. It is collected from another city in the Beijing Mandarin region, which is called Chengde -- to be precise, not from Chengde, but from a county that is very close to Chengde,which basically means it is identical with being just from Chengde.
Your English is phenomenal considering your native language is Mandarin. Also you provided useful feedback rather than just non-sensical criticism. On a side note... I am currently trying to learn Mandarin and it is extremely difficult. ): You seem to know a lot about "Chinese" culture and is there any way I could ask you some questions regarding the language?
The 中 "middle" character in 中国 doesn't imply "the center of the world", but "between the earth and the skies". It's literaly the country of human beings, while the sky and the underground (the sea in chinese mythology) are where the divinities live.
The 7th I personally type in my tablet, and you can get a Japanese/Chinese keyboard (they share a ton of the same kanji symbols. I think all of them.) from the play store from Google. it's pretty cool! またね七！
Hey Xidnaf I am a Sinology student and I have some points I want to correct. I'll start with the language and maybe do the rest later. Guanhua 官话 and Putonghua 普通话 are not the same thing. Guanhua indeed was used by the officials, but regular people couldn't really understand it; they used baihua 白话 (a somewhat colloquial language without set grammar rules). Putonghua is a mixture between both baihua and guanhua, taking the elaborate grammar of guanhua and the vocabulary of baihua, to create a language with an actual set of grammar rules and words that are commonly used. But still today, Putonghua by isn't the only language and there is not a single standard because Putonghua is a mixture of all kinds of historical dialect. In a lot of regions people still speak regional languages 方言 ("dialect" wouldn't be right to use here, since those languages mostly aren't dialects of Putonghua) or they use Putonghua with local variations (which would technically be a Putonghua dialect). And there were some pronunciation mistakes, since I cannot write IPA from my tablet all I can say is that the "ou" in Zhou 周 are pronounced like the German "ou".
+itsMEE1111 No such german word comes to my mind, but in styrian dialect e.g. "Most" is pronounced like "Moust" btw: the 语 in 汉语 is pronounced like "jü" (as in Jürgen), not "ju"
+Ittoqqortoormiit “ᐃᓄᔨᒌᑦᑑᓗᐊᖅᑐᑎᒃ” From the Land of Green You must mean those kids in the region with the same written language but has different spoken language, which are the descendants of the Zhou Rén, who make everything westerners use, from Dildos to Happy Meal toys.
1) a system of governance 2) an agreed opon set of meanings that enable communication 3) a collection of inderviduals that have simular traits 4) yes 5) a property that an object can have
Neither Ireland, Austria or Switzerland!11!!!1! Hey, we guys should unite, let's call us "the parts of the world that Xidnaf forgot to highlit when he showed his opinion on the word 'free world' in this one video about china" Ok, maybe this is a very bad name. And a bad idea. :P
TrolleyMouse You guys definitely should've been on there New Zealand is one of our best allies and that should say something because we have a ton of allies. We have some sort of defense pact with 69 countries, obviously including New Zealand.
+TrolleyMouse NZ should definitely qualify as "free", now that we've overthrown Lord Sauron anyway :-) Not sure the US views us as an Ally though, they might still be butthurt about our anti-nuke policies. Go Rainbow Warrior!
I feel like you could have done a slightly better job of making it clear that most states have ethnolinguistic minorities and that diglossic relationships are common around the world. The video gave the sense that China is unusual, and Europe is ethnically homogenous. You specifically chose France, which had an early nation state and has virtually eradicated other ethnic identities. No doubt you realise this, but I think it would have been useful to clarify this, particularly for the American audiences as their identities are typical national rather than ethnic.
Yes, especially since a bunch of states in Europe doesn't fit this Wesphalian state definition. Think of Switzerland, Belgium, Bosnia-Herzegovina or eventually Spain or Russia (and other now dissolved states like Yougoslavia or Austria-Hungary). Though, the cleaning of ethnicities of France was tardive : it mostly happened in the XXth century and began only from the XIXth century, you're right too about it to be an early nation state. Also, there was clearly two visions of the Wesphalian state that happened : the French one 'Conquest of the heart' the will of the people to be French, and the German 'Kultur' the "natural" and "spiritual" nation of Germany come to fruition with the unification and every ethnic german should join the German nation.
Oh don't speak to me of that one xD I have encountered an Italian guy so fanatical about his irredenta "geological" Italy he wanted to apply it to all of Europe >< In the end, I believe such short passing is a bit of the reason why this video got so much of hate. Xidnaf clearly made a great job to explain such linguistical/sociolgical idea but some of the way he did it lack of substance stopping the larger layman audience to grasp the concepts.
block9699 The point was not to say that Saudi Arabia is a free country. But that the leader of the free world is just a made up title. And that the free world is so darn vague and silly concept that it could even be applied to Saudi Arabia because there allied status with USA. There of of course tons of nations more free then Saudi Arabia. And lot of the most free countries in the world (by most measures) are not allied to USA (though pretty much all of them have good relationships with USA)
A few inaccuracies. "Zhou" was not the name of the ruler (and you're horribly mispronouncing it, incidentally). So your analogy with "Obama" doesn't work. Middle Chinese is not the ancestor of all the modern Chinese daughter languages. Fujianese and Taiwanese, for example, are almost certainly not descended directly from Middle Chinese. Don't forget the many unrelated languages that have always been spoken in the region, too (like Miao, Yao, Zhuang). "Mandarin" is directly from Portuguese, only indirectly from Malay. (And the Malay word is actually borrowed from Sanskrit.) Anyway, it means "an official," so the Mandarin language is "the language of the officials," i.e. guanhua.
Zhou was actually based on the Last Ruler of Shang Dynasty (King Zhou of Shang) which was the Overthrowned by Emperor Wu which established the Zhou Dynasty and that Name was based on him,the most Cruel Emperor on its Era
@@messier8379 商紂 is infamous in Chinese legends as a cruel tyrant, and his toppling by the 周武王 is recounted as one of the greatest victories of all Chinese legends. why would one adapt the name of the tyrant one toppled for the name of one's dynasty? it makes no sense.
As a Taiwanese, I'm grateful that Xindaf did mention the fact that People's Republic of China (PRC) and Republic of China (ROC or Taiwan) are different existing political entities and both have "China" in their names. The (over)simplified version of the history causing this situation is that during the Second Chinese Civil War (1945-1979), the winning political party Communist Party of China (CPC) gained full control over mainland China, and the losing political party Kuomintang (KMT or Chinese Nationalist Party) retreated from mainland China to the southeastern island Taiwan. Before KMT, people in Taiwan had been governed or colonized by different groups, including Qing dynasty(1684-1895) and Japan(1895-1945). During the KMT one-party system period (1945-1987), the government didn't entirely give up the plan to retake the mainland China and the legitimacy of the one true "China". This is why people born and educated in this period are more likely to identify themselves as Chinese and consider ROC as the orthodox China. Nowadays, most of the people in Taiwan will agree that they are Taiwanese. But when Taiwanese being asked the question "Are you also a Chinese?" or "Does your self-identity include Chinese culture or Japanese culture?", I believe the answers will be highly diversified and contentious, depend on the background of each individual and his/her family. This is an extremely complicated situation and even the most well-educated Taiwanese will frequently get lost in the details of the history and ideology during debate.
Mandarin actually has a well documented and recognized etymology - it is of portuguese origin. It refers to the ruling class, with whom they had to arrange the right to trade, and it provided a means of conferring maximum respect to all such people they met while practicing their trade. it is related to the words "mão" -> hand and the verb from that word: "mandar" -> to rule.
for future readers: 橙子 means orange, 橘子 means tangerine. Chinese colours are mostly named after stuff, except for the most basic colours. So orange can be: 橙色 (orange colour) 橘色 (tangerine colour) 黄色 (yellow, in a broader sense) 金黄色 (golden yellow) 橘黄色 (orange yellow) 橘红色 (orange red) Just like in English, the colour is named after the fruit. The choice of word depends on the speaker and context. If there is an orange and a purple jacket, one might simply refer to the orange one as "yellow". If you talk about pastry being backed till the colour changes, you would say "golden yellow". ...
The history of china reminds me a little bit to the history of austria, my home country, which is a little bit younger, though: First of all, there where a bunch of principalities all over middle europe. Than a noble family founded the realm of "Ostarrichi", the "eastern domain" Meanwhile, the thousands of principalities (and austria) united to a big empire, the "Holy Roman Empire", nevertheless, they all remained as own shires (or whatever you want to call this pieces of land). The languages in the HRE where all kind of related to each other, and so, they called all this dialects just "Deutsch". The german language got a name. Than some peasants revolted against the austrian nobles and a new, democratic state was born- Switzerland. The austrian nobles, the House of Habsburg, where kind of the ruler of the whole HRE and after a long time of opportune weddings with other noble families, the Habsburgs holded the Empire, parts of Italy, parts of eastern Europe, the spainish peninsula, the netherlands and (for a few years) mexico. And austria, of course, because they where austrian nobles. Than some complicated things happened and at the 18th century, there where only austria left. The german principlaties (and therefore the main territory of the HRE) crowned a new king and got separated from austria, but some it's parts of it where still part of the Empire. Than the german state was foundet in the 19th century and austria- hungary (it's new name) struggled to keep up it's former glory. After World War I. the allies split austria- hungary in several countries, depending of the language spoken in this regions, like jugoslavia, hungary, czechoslovakia and of course austria. Now austria pretended to be a part of germany and called itself "Deutschösterreich" (german austria), but the allies, in particular the USes, forbade this name and it's annexation to germany. In 1938 NS-germany (just say: the Nazis) annexed austria peacefully, since they wanted that, or at least the goverment of austria. After WW II. the allies revived austria and supported the young state. My grandpa tells me a lot of stories from this dirty, miserable and hard time. So... now there is just one question: What is austria? What are austrians? Like "China", noone here really uses the name "Austria", we call it "Österreich" (do you remember the first realm Ostarrichi? ;) ) Are we germans, since our grand- and grand- grandparents wanted to be part of it and we speak (kinda) the same language? No, this times are finally over. Are swiss man austrians, since they where part of it? Are eventually even hungarians and mexicans austrians, since they where part of it? (sarcasm) But everyone just call us "Austrians" or, worse than that, lump us together with germans and swiss man, because we speak "kind of" the same language and had (kind of) the same culture. And this whole pile of crazy ethnical shit happened in the past few centurys, not millenniums, like in "China". So it's "fresh", if you know what i mean, and with a bad feeling i see culture and language of my country influenced by germany once again. (I am not one of these hardcore patriots, btw, i just want to keep the culture of my ancestors)
+RobinsonCrouse24 well, I never cared that much about my own identity, i think i'm firstly a person, then chinese, from beijing, etc. Cultures can and will change, there's things worth preserving, but we could let go of some old and invent some new and stuff. It's a living thing after all.
That's a very good opinion, i like that. But its this traditions which sepparates us from germany. To compare an austrian with a german is like to compare a british man with a scottish one. And most of your traditions are worth to be konservated! Let's google "Krampus", Xiao, and you will see :P
+RobinsonCrouse24 To complicate the thing even more, the Habsburg weren't Austrian at the beginning, they were Alemanic (I'm talking about the time they inherited the march/duchy of Austria, of course they became more and more Austrian after this point). The sure part about where they came from is somewhere between Elsass and Aargau (where the castle of Habsburg is). The more probable possibility is that the house of Habsburg came from the house of Etichon, duc of Elsass from which the house of Lothringen also came from (that's why they were chosen to inherit the Habsburg realm from Maria Theresia, because they most probably are two branch of the same family and consanguinity has never stopped the Habsburg to marry each other :p).
かたつむり I can tell you a fun fact about it: People who live in China's province called "Inner Mongolia" still use the old vertical script while people in Mongolia use Cyrillic. That part you probably know, but did you know that there are more Mongolians living in this Chinese province than in the actual country of Mongolia? And more than 80% of Mongolia's population lives in the capital? So yeah, Mongolian learners should definitely learn the ancient script. It's arguably more useful
I think you forgot to mention we do have like, a common writing system between the languages of han family, which is different than (all of the) the speech, which is like how english is the academic language now. Modern spoken chinese probably goes way further than 100 years since the dialog in Song dynasty novels are very readable to me who dont have much education on classic chinese. and there's the 国语 which is still used for RoC and interestingly japan to refer to their national language.
Kind of, the characters used in the Sinitic languages are indeed (for the most part) the same, but a lot of the different languages use different characters for the same words. Like coming from reading Mandarin, to trying to learn Taiwanese Hokkien is very difficult, not only because of the differences in phonology & tone, but because the characters are different (e.g. 你吃飽嗎 = 你食飽未), and then because it was mostly a colloquial language, some words historically didn't have assigned characters so a lot of people actually just write them in the romanized writing system, Pe̍h-ōe-jī, in the middle of Hanzi.
“Han family” what are you on about? Han is the race, of a subset of China. The language family is Sino-Tibetan. Most people in modern day China are not even Han, that is a lie that Mao constructed to try to produce racial harmony in his newly acquired lands.
@@martinhawes5647 What? en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Han_Chinese - Literally first paragraph on wiki says China is 92% Han. However, "Han ethnicity is an artificial construct" - is somewhat true, and a point my Ancient Chinese History professor often emphasized. A) Han people are too biologically diverse to be considered a "race", so it's more of a ethnicity unified by culture. B) For most Chinese history, the people identified with their region more so than Han, similar to Roman provincials.
Aren't most countries like that? E.g. in US, they call themselves Americans, while there're at least black and white. Most people speak "English", while there're still families speak Germany, Hebrew, etc. In UK, they call themselves British, while there're English, Scottish, Irish. And if you go to Dublin, every road sign has 2 languages.
No one in the UK really says "British" if you are from England you say English and if your from Scotland you say Scottish. Although we are, no one really says British unless we are speaking of thr union as a whole. (I'm English is just based on my experience)
Han and guanhua were just about the only Mandarin words you got right in this video. zhou - /ʈʂou/ yayan /jajɛn/ zhongguo /ʈʂʊŋkwo/ qin /tɕʰin/ hanren /xanɻən/ hanyu /xany/ Beijing /peitɕiŋ/ putonghua /pʰutʰʊŋxwa/ Also, in English Malay /məleɪ/ While I can nitpick your pronunciation, your central point is well made, so good job!
honestly I wish he would just go into google translate and see how it pronounces those things. like he has the IPA in the video so he's seen it but he can't read it...
We usually just say the president. But yes, he is sometimes called the "Leader of the Free World" when people are trying to emphasize that he holds a lot of power. I don't think I've seen it outside of tv shows and news media, though.
+mciftw George Washington was going to be called something like "His Majesty, Protector of Freedom" until it was brought up how counter productive that was.
The symbols used in the video were simplified, which is inaccurate, considering many of the things described took place before its creation. Just a nitpick, great video!
@@NoCareBearsGiven Complicated / Traditional ones are the true proper ones. Simplified Characters don't belong in any ideographic/pictographic language anyways.
@@MaoRatto who are you to judge that? It seems to work fine for over a billion people. Would you say the same for Japanese simpllications? If not then your point makes no sense. Also “traditional” characters are literally simplifications of the seal script lol. Chinese characters have been being reformed for thousands of years what even is “traditional”
Well he gets a pass since he is talking about it TODAY Current mainland China uses simplified but I do see your point. Helps add more immersion perhaps
1st of. Today "周" or "Zhou" is a common Chinese last name, but around 1045 BC, "Zhou" was the country's name and the first King of that country was called "King Wu of Zhou". But don't get the wrong idea, the King's family name was "姬" (Ji), his given name was "發" (Fa). And the ppl from that country could have what ever the fuckin last name they had. And in fact no one really name "Zhou" at that time. 2nd "汉" or "Han" today is an ethnic group, and yes it is the originated from the ppl from the "Han dynasty" (汉朝), which was the country's name during that time. And yes later this country split, reunited, split, reunited, multiple times (same thing happened before Han dynasty as well so get use to it XD). And also the country got invaded by other ethnic groups. Two major examples are: "Yuan dynasty" China was ruled by Mongolian; and the very last empire "Qing dynasty" China was ruled by Manchu people. So no, not all Chinese are "Han", and the "Han" ethnic cannot be used to represent this country. 3rd, I don't see the logic that just because a nation is multi-ethnic, multicultural and has a very long history simply means its current form "doesn't exist". Talking about multiethnic and multi-language, US has ppl that are white, black, brown, Asian, Latino, natavie americans etc...., they all have their own languages, does that mean US "doesn't exist"? What about Canada, have two different OFFICIAL languages, so "the true north strong and free" doesn't exist? Talkin about long history, border changes, territory changes, nation's name changes, regime changes. Well, today Italy is a country and it exists. State of Vatican City is a country and it exists. You're not gonna deny their existence just because they use to be part of the Roman Empire aren't ya? "中国" or "Zhong Guo" were used as more like a geographical term and never used in the nation's name until 1912. But it's similar to "Kingdom of Great Britain", "Great Britain" was the geographical term of those islands. But at 1707 British named their country after that geographical term. Hell I just forgot isn't United States of America following the same naming procedure? Damn dawg, don't tell me Murca doesn't exist! XXXDD
+LeafyHotDog He dropped the ball pretty hard on this one fact. The "free world" was a term coined during the Cold War to describe Capitalist Democratic nations, as opposed to their Communist Authoritarian counterparts. So, if you are at least nominally both Capitalist and Democratic, you are part of the free world. Although, I can't really fault him too much, it is an archaic term that means very little in the modern context.
Bruh... if chinese isnt a language....then what do i speak? What does the china/asian people speak? What is the chinese language option for microsoft if you have one?
I've heard it said that the concept of the nation-state (meaning a group of linguistically and ethinically similar people with a single government) existed in china long before it did in europe. Nation-states only really became a thing in Europe in the 19th century when people began calling for German/Italian/Slavic unification based on linguistic similarity. China has had a shared identity which lines up with their government much longer.
nobody accepts brutal murder that is brought by invaders, so do Chinese. It is called "forced to". During Qing dynasty, China was already under Manchurian occupation.
That is closer to the western concept of emperor than you think. There was only Rome, and people not yet conquered by Rome, after all. It then later came to mean the supreme leader of Christianity, (those two concepts meant the same practical thing during the late Roman empire). The split between Orthodox and Catholic Christianity first created two European emperors. But this concept was still relevant for much, much longer after that: Napoleon could only be recognized with wearing the imperial crown after first having entirely dismantled the previous Catholic empire - the Holy Roman Empire.
This is how the Chinese language works: China: 中国 Chinese (people): 中国人 Chinese (language): 中文 England: 英国 English (people): 英国人 English (language): 英文
I'm coming back here to say, you have really sparked my interest in language. The idea of a language without the specification of singular and plural words is just incredible.
Great video! By the way, it's pronounced Malay as in muh-lay and not melee as in may-lay. And your theory is probably right since the British came into contact with (and colonised) Malaya more intensely before all the havoc that is the Sino-British relationship started in the 18th century (if I'm not mistaken). So they might've derived the term for the "official language" (Mandarin) from Malay which is "Bahasa Mantri" (?) which is actually "Menteri" (meaning: an official [person]) in Modern Standard Malay. However, "Bahasa Rasmi" would be a more accurate term for "official language" (the adverb official). I hope you can understand this lol.
Why would a non-native speaker be able to pronounce Chinese words properly without a lot of practice? Unless you're from Sweden, I doubt you'll be able to correctly pronounce the name of the people native to the region I live in. We are called "East Goths" and in Swedish it's "Östgöte". Even some Swedes from other provinces struggle with this one. Not to mention foreigners who may never be able to pronounce it properly. Tl;dr The real cringe here is your lack of self-distance :)
Because, maybe barring tonality, the words he mispronounces wouldn't actually be very difficult to learn to pronounce correctly, all you have to do is check. Especially in the case of someone who makes linguistics videos about IPA. For example, ZH makes a sound like an english J as in Jake. That's pretty easy to understand, right? I love xidnaf's videos but there's no justification for not doing some very basic research before publishing something.
I think what he meant is that Chinese is actually very easy unlike ur language liek rød where as chinese is basically English but spelled in a different way, which is very clear and straightforward
Just saying, Zhou is pronounced like "Jhou" Zhoungguo is pronounced like "Jhong-gua" Also, I don't really agree with your conclusions. The people of ancient China had a common identity due to the unification of China under the Zhou and Shang dynasties. The idea was certainly not nearly as strong as what exists today though, but it still did exist. Look at the philosophy of the Legalists, which inspired the Qin Dynasty to reunite China.
@@NUSORCA No. But whenever China suddenly gained mass amounts of territory, it was because other places conquered the old dynasty. Then they Sinicized and became Chinese, which meant that the land they used to have also became Chinese. Very similar with what happened with the Mongols and the Manchus. The Manchus, or "Man zu" (aka Man tribe/ethnicity) basically don't really exist anymore because they just call themselves Chinese nowadays, and the Mongols, who have a somewhat stronger sense of identity, define themselves as Chinese and are pretty integrated with the rest of China. 80% of all Mongols live in the Chinese province of Inner Mongolia, and only about 20% live in Mongolia the country. However, traditional Mongolian script is still taught in Chinese schools in Inner Mongolia, while Mongolia uses Russian Cyrillic. Modern day Chinese Mongolians (younger generations) have perfect Chinese though, and they're very much part of the Chinese youth.
Today I learned! However one suggestion for you. The written characters that the Chinese people use are universal among all Chinese people although they are pronounced very differently in different dialects.
it's funny how you can see a phonetic transcription for 周 at 0:12 but people still remark that it's wrong pronounced. I don't really think he intented to do it right, guys. He even said "get used to..."
DAG2003 I don’t care about the tones, just get the consonants right. 周 is zhou not zhao. You don’t have to speak Chinese to get that right. For me as someone learning chinese, it sounded as annoying as someone pronouncing tacos as taecos
I was never that interested in anything Chinese. Not even language wise despite being an absolute language geek. But this is really interesting and I may or may not be a little bit obsessed with it now. I just love your videos.
+Li Na I'm part Chinese on my mother's side, and I'm still not that interested in much regarding China. I'm interested in how they do business because they are shrewd businessmen ... but I still find Europe /ancient Europe more interesting.
Some terrible misconceptions here. Firstly, it is called Zhou dynasty because the nation name is Zhou. Similarly, Qin was originally given the county by a Zhou king. They then eventually conquered the Zhou kingdom. That goes to the Han as well. Prior to that, the Zhou people were using Xia as their ethnicity, sometimes coupled with Hua to call Hua Xia. This may have stemmed from the Xia dynasty. To the south, there were the Chu people and Yue people with different languages and cultures. After Qin unification, the Chu and Yue rebel and Han had to do a reunification. It was then another more encompassing identity was forged, which was the Han people. Although the country name keep on changing with the preference of the founder, eg. Ming, Song etc., They gradually accepted Zhong Guo as a description of their kingdom. The Qing emperors also called themselves emperor of Zhong Guo.
My Eastern Thought professor taught that the term "China" came from the Qin dynasty after the warring states period when the people were united under their first emperor so thats why it was China because it was the first significant government after such turbulent times that actually united the Chinese people
China was culturally self recognized , its a totally different concept in comparision with European mono-nation countries . Han is the majority and most polulous race in the world . But in history whoever took the regime would soon recognize themselves as Han race . Like people from the north commonly have high noses curly hairs including me , peple from south like Hongkongers have flat face , smaller body structures . Biogenetically northern Chinese were mixed with caucations and mid-Asians ,while southerners shared more bonds with malays ... its a whole complicated story comparing to small countries . Better to not generalize any obscure concepts..
3:33 "In the US and the western world generally we like to think in terms of nation-states" Yes, but that's only a relatively recent idea. If we go back to the medieval times, the word "France" or as it was called "Francia" simply meant "the land of franks", regardless of what ethnicities lived there. Even though original franks didn't even speak the french language. Franks were germanic, while French is a romance language. So, although you have brought the concept of nation-states to China, that doesn't make their country any less legit. Practically all countries formed relatively the same way, only their names come from different sources. Just because China was called Zhong Guo, doesn't mean it didn't exist as a country. There's many countries in the world, that are called in native language something very different from the exonym given to them by other countries. China is just the way westerners called the same country, that the chinese called Zhong Guo. The concept of that country did exist throughout history, and the land of China was considered the land where chinese people live (among other ethnicities), just like in the case of France. In fact, the concept of nation-states is stupid and have caused mostly damage to the cultures of this world. We lived great without it for the majority of history, and we could go on without it. The whole intent behind it was to consolidate power in the hands of individuals basically.
Do not use modern concepts explain the ancient things. Dynasty's name just for each dynasty but China is still there, of course, nobody calls it as "China ”中国“, Why? because ancient have no modern concepts of "country", people call it as "the ground under the heaven 天下 ' which means the world. People think "the ground under the heaven 天下" must be united, that's why these "states" fighting each other. so does the ancient Chinese know any place exists outside "the ground under the heaven 天下 '? yes, they do, but they don't think these should be called "the ground under the heaven 天下 ', they just ignore it. In ancient "China", 5000 or 3000 years ago, people do speak and use different language, but it was NOT so quite different, maybe similar to French and English at most, and the key is "Chinese 汉语“ already united by "Qin Dynasty 秦" 2700 years ago, and that's why the modern can still read and understand people written things in 3000 years ago and even more than that, the Children learning ancient poem in primary school, take an example "诗经” almost 3000years ago. so, China exists as the civilization, by the way, it is a united civilization, united people, united culture and language, most united ground, not like Europe and Indian.
China are just like Egypt. Egyptian never call their country as "Egypt", they call it "Misr". During ancient times, Egyptian call their country as "KMT" (Kemet), during Ptolemic era (after Alexander the great) they call their country as "Hwkaptah", until Roman Empire conquer it and call it "AEGYPTUS"
I think you could also say the same thing about Japan: the Japanese don't use the term "Japan" in Japanese, instead using the terms "Nippon" or "Nihon", or as English-speakers render it, "the Land of the Rising Sun". "Japan" only came to the English language beginning with J instead of N through a Chinese term.
This goes for a lot of countries/languages/people. I'm from Hungary, and in Hungarian our language is "magyar" and our country is "magyarország" (literal: magyar/Hungarian country).
The reason that all of the various dialects of 中文/汉语 (Chinese language) are classified as one language is because， regardless of how they evolved from middle Chinese, they are all still able to be written with the same script, 汉子（hanzi, chinese characters) This is because Chinese characters are logographic, (rather than alphabetic, syllabic etc.) meaning one character can mean one or multiple word(s)/idea(s), (although most Chinese "words" or 词语 are two characters in succession, although they can be more characters or just a single character, a little bit difficult to describe because “词语’ is not quite the same as the English word for ‘word") If one word is one/(or multiple) ideas, then regardless of whether the words are pronounced differently, they can all be read as meaning the same thing, (so a Cantonese speaker can understand a mandarin speaker even if they don't speak each others' dialects by using the writing) So yes, you could say that the different Chinese dialects are different ”languages“ in the sense that, similar to the various romance languages evolving from Latin & turning into French/Italian/Spanish/Portuguese/Catalan etc., the Chinese dialects evolved from middle Chinese into Cantonese, (广东话 or 粤语) Hakka, (客家语) Mandarin, (普通话）Wu, （吴语）etc., & these languages' spoken form are INDEED as different from each other as these romance languages are from each other, BUT, they can all be said to be mutually intelligible in the sense that they can all understand each other using the written form of Chinese characters（汉子）. Since the 汉子 （Han characters) unify all of these languages it is only natural to call all of the Chinese "languages" 汉语 (Han language) ;)
So... the Chinese people live in the Middle Earth and speak the Common Language. No wonder why North Korea, just next to China, has that Sauron-like tower.
China/中國 should NOT be classified as a country. Xia, Zhou, Xuang, Qing, each of them are individual countries with different political factions, military, economy. Although they share many cultures, they are not some states or "dynasty" of another country. Today's PRC CANNOT use Ming's history and say Tibet, Taiwan, HK, Macao, Senkaku Island, East Vietnam Sea, etc belongs to them.
Wow, this is so wrong on so many levels. Let's expand your take on nation states. This is France. French people live here and they speak French. Also, Breton people. And Occitan people. And Basque people. Of course, nowadays they mainly just speak French, but recently they were all speaking their own languages. They definitely spoke their own languages in Middle Ages when the concept of France arouse, and that know happened because they were ruled by the same king. Spain is even a better example, because Catalonians, Basques, Galicians etc. still speak their languages. And by the way, the language we call Spanish should actually be called Castilian because it in fact is the language that was originally spoken in Castille and then imposed on other Spanish peoples. "Spain", again, only appeared after all those different peoples were united by a king. It's a geographical and political notation more than national. And don't even get me started on Italy, sewn together by politicians less than two centuries ago. And what about Belgium and Switzerland? Just to be clear, I'm not insinuating any of this is bad, I am not trying to offend anyone. I understand that nowadays Spanish, Italian or Swiss identity and national pride are a real thing to many people and there's nothing wrong with it, I'm just saying that it was a rocky road getting there, and you in your video are greatly oversimplifying the situation with European city states and overcomplicating the Chinese situation as if on purpose. Getting back to the Chinese - you yourself pointed out that they were unified by a single Han identity for several thousand years. That's what China is and that's what being Chinese is. And there is no ambiguity about who's Han and who's not. Tibetans or Mongols or Hui are not Han. People who have no identity besides Chinese are Han, even when they live in Guangzhou and don't understand a word of Mandarin. And yes, people from Hong Kong definitely identify as Han. And even though they speak a number of mutually unintelligible dialects, they share a written language (which is called ZhongWen in contrast to HanYu, the spoken Mandarin) and they have shared it, again, for several thousand years, even in times of political disintegration. That is also a big part of what China is.
Chinese dynasties very rarely used the family name of the imperial clan as the name of the dynasty, if at all. For example, the name of the imperial clan of the Tang Dynasty was Li, and the imperial clan of the Qing Dynasty was called Aisin-Gioro. Many of the early dynasty names were toponyms and many of the others were simply named after something positive, like the Jin Dynasty (Jin means gold) or the Ming Dynasty (Ming means bright). Others still were named after previous dynasties such as the Later Jin Dynasty, who was ruled by the same people as the previous Jin Dynasty and thus wanted to present itself as a continuation of it, in a way.
One correction: Guanhua did not evolve in Beijing(Peking) alone, it evolved from a much larger area, that area stretches from Manchuria to Yangtze river, from East China sea to Taklamakan desert. Only the Pekinese Accent (it's really just an accent, no more no less) became the official pronunciation ( only the pronunciation, not its vocabulary or grammar).
+Cats Cats Pretty much the same as most of the far east Asian countries I supposed. Neither Japan, Korea or China call themselves Japan, Korea or China. To make it even more complicated, they don't even call each other Japan, Korea or China in Japanese, Korean or Chinese.
actually “China” has been around in Chinese language for nearly some a thousand years. In buddhist literatures refer the geographic location of China as China or Chin-stan which both derived from dynasty Qin. The buddhist missionaries translated China ( sounds Chee-na) as “支那” and Cina-stan as “震旦” . The term 支那 was widely adopted by Japanese government in 20 century to refer to the Chinese region for political reasons that they refused to recognize China was the middle realm of civilization. Since then, 支那 has become a taboo word to say in Chinese. In the other hand, 震旦 is still pretty much alive.when people wanna create some posh vibe in the context, they use 震旦 a lot. just tried to provide you some more info. the video is informative and almost correct. Nice work!
By the way, in my Chinese History class at the university level, as i recall, my professor said that the chinese distinguished themselves as "farmer people" as opposed to the pastoralists elsewhere. Presumably, the pastoralists included the "Xiongnu" who used to be thought of as the Huns, and the Tibetans (who were shamans in those days, just for a fun fact). When I lived in China, and i mentioned that to chinese on an individual, they often seemed to think it was true, but it wasn't clear if they spent any time thinking of it that way. I dont know how far the "Chinese as farmer people" classification works, but you can just take it fwiw.
Hey xidnaf, love your videos. I know it feels weird to complain about free content that you spend hardwork and time on, but is it a possibility for you to release videos more frequently in the future? Sorry.
1, Chinese share the same(similiar) writing system, and we usually consider different speakings as accents of Chinese 2. Taiwan(RoC) and Mainland(PRC) are not two countries. This is extremely important when you talk about China 3. You didn't understand the history correctly especially Qin and before Qin.
I thought this was gonna be some kind of conspiracy theory
+McMuffin103 PLAAAAANK!!!!
+McMuffin103 Ikr. All those conspiracy channels have this kind of voice for some reason.
Kavya ;)
BioKnight "China isn't real. It was made up by our government to keep us obedient"
+McMuffin103 happily surprised?? ;)
Last week to call the US Obama.
lol yeah
last hours
Too late Trumpians
Let's call it Trumpistan.
At least trump sounds better than clinton......
That "super short dynasty that came between the Zhou and Han" was easily the most influential upon the persistence of China as a cohesive body. Qin Shihuangdi conquered the shit out of the pre-China rival states; brutally exterminated confucian intellectuals (imposing my-word-is-law 'legalism' instead); burnt countless texts non-Qin texts; simplified and mandated a common language; imposed national standards on weights, measures, road and axel widths; built/connected most of the Great Wall of China with drafted labour forces; and had a life-sized terracotta army built for his tomb so he could subsequently conquer the shit out of heaven in the afterlife. His legacy is mixed, but there's no denying he was instrumental in carving out a lasting mould for what would remain to be a single China (even though his son was totally incapable of continuing his specific dynasty).
Side note: crazy-wrong pronunciation of most chinese words in this video.
B.K. Laughton
The pronunciation wasn’t THAT bad XD
Hræð Af framhliðinni sadly it's surprisingly common among westerners. Every time I watch BBC or CNN I realise how hard it is for Americans and Europeans to pronounce the "zh" sound, "yü", and the word "Malay"
Hræð Af framhliðinni I agree
Borges wrote a short story about this emperor. It's quite charming to read (at least in Spanish). You should check it, the translation for the title would be "The wall and the books", I guess.
@@elliotw.888 It turns out asking a bunch of people who have no idea how to properly interpret a script they'll tend towards the phonetics of their own language, and I doubt this is a uniquely western problem.
European: hey you
east-asian:me?
eur.:ye ur china
asian:I'm china?
eur: ya
asian: k i guess we're china now
the distinguished boi well the Chinese people don't call their country "China" for the same reason why America doesn't call themselves "美国“ （Mei Guo or "America" in Chinese). Europeans just coined the term for themselves to use and did not change what the Chinese people call themselves.
Mongols: shut up I take u all
Undertale Fan
Its kind of the same with india
Arabs:called us people who live on the side of river sindhu which later became hindu when muslims came in india in 12 century AD
Europeans : called the river sindhu indus so they called us india
They later classified all people who dont follow christianity and islam and called them hindus
Korea; being called by the name that this land's kingdom used literally 9 centuries ago
If China doesn't exist then who the hell is Trump yelling about so much?
The Communist Middle Kingdom.
I mean it wouldn't be weird if he just made someone up to blame everything on.
It can't be both communist and a kingdom, sorry.
IT CAN BE WHATEVER IT PUTS ITS HEART TOWARDS DON'T YOU DARE CRUSH ITS DREAMS.
no he means the word (china ) is not the actual name of the country and he is 100 percent correct!
Sorry Xidnaf, as a native Chinese speaker, or to be precise, Madarin speaker, I need to point out two of your misconceptions on the Chinese language(s)/dialects:
1. Not all Chinese dialects/languages are derived from Middle Chinese, some are from Old Chinese. In fact, the only two dialects/languages derived from Middle Chinese are Mandarin and Cantonese. The proof is that some irregular consonant shift that Middle Chinese had undergone is not attested in the some modern dialects. For example, the krktr 中, meaning "middle", is "zhong" in Mandarin, "zung" in Cantonese but "tiong" in Hokkien; the krktr 茶, meaning "tea", is "cha" in Mandarin, "tsaa" in Cantonese but "te" in Hokkien. Significantly, Mandarin and Cantonese are inherited from some dialect which had undergone a "Depalato-Retroflexizing" consonant shift, but Hokkien is not.
2. Putonghua is not Mandarin, it is a subset of Mandarin. Mandarin is also a diverse dialect/language with vastly different subdialects/dialects. Yes, Mandarin itself etymologically means "official language", but etymology says nothing to its actual meaning. A native inhabitant from either Chengdu or Wuhan is also a native Mandarin speaker (like me), but his Mandarin is certainly not Putonghua. By the way, my home dialect is not Putonghua as well, although my hometown is close to Beijing enough. My home dialect belongs to Hebei-Shandong Mandarin, whereas Putonghua belongs to Beijing Mandarin. In addition, although Putonghua belongs to Beijing Mandarin, it is not collected from Beijing. It is collected from another city in the Beijing Mandarin region, which is called Chengde -- to be precise, not from Chengde, but from a county that is very close to Chengde,which basically means it is identical with being just from Chengde.
Xan Dibbens Tsi 我记得是除了闽语（包括闽南语）以外的大方言都是中古汉语的直系后裔吧，闽语是上古汉语直系后裔。个人觉得普通话更像是一个人造的语言就像切韵音也是人造的。
That is some complex stuff
也不算直系，闽语是上古漢语的一个方言演变来的，叫古吴-闽语。湖南话和江西话则来自古楚语。客家话是江西话的一个变種，也来自古楚语。
if U want to talk about China, nothing is simple.
Your English is phenomenal considering your native language is Mandarin. Also you provided useful feedback rather than just non-sensical criticism.
On a side note...
I am currently trying to learn Mandarin and it is extremely difficult. ):
You seem to know a lot about "Chinese" culture and is there any way I could ask you some questions regarding the language?
The 中 "middle" character in 中国 doesn't imply "the center of the world", but "between the earth and the skies". It's literaly the country of human beings, while the sky and the underground (the sea in chinese mythology) are where the divinities live.
Where do you get those symbols from an how do you type them?
The 7th I personally type in my tablet, and you can get a Japanese/Chinese keyboard (they share a ton of the same kanji symbols. I think all of them.) from the play store from Google. it's pretty cool! またね七！
I made that comment a long time ago, i know now.
jared Blood Not all the symbols. Chinese Hanzi have more than Japanese Kanji, and Japanese created some Kanjis that Chinese Hanzis.
Yes, but now every Kanjis and every Hanzis are potentially readable using each language.
*me, sitting in the White House...*
*reads the title*
*looks up*
“DONALD, I’VE GOT SOME GOOD NEWS!!!”
"Do Land" means "two ducks" in sanskrit, replace "u" with "i"
Hey Xidnaf I am a Sinology student and I have some points I want to correct. I'll start with the language and maybe do the rest later.
Guanhua 官话 and Putonghua 普通话 are not the same thing. Guanhua indeed was used by the officials, but regular people couldn't really understand it; they used baihua 白话 (a somewhat colloquial language without set grammar rules). Putonghua is a mixture between both baihua and guanhua, taking the elaborate grammar of guanhua and the vocabulary of baihua, to create a language with an actual set of grammar rules and words that are commonly used.
But still today, Putonghua by isn't the only language and there is not a single standard because Putonghua is a mixture of all kinds of historical dialect. In a lot of regions people still speak regional languages 方言 ("dialect" wouldn't be right to use here, since those languages mostly aren't dialects of Putonghua) or they use Putonghua with local variations (which would technically be a Putonghua dialect).
And there were some pronunciation mistakes, since I cannot write IPA from my tablet all I can say is that the "ou" in Zhou 周 are pronounced like the German "ou".
+Lane Moje 嗯我也写了一个类似的评论指出古白话的存在之类的问题（还有“国语”这个至今仍然在用的词）。不过说“中国的官方语言”的话，我觉得还不得不提藏语，蒙语，维吾尔语等其他经常被遗忘的官方语言。你见过人民币的纸币吗?
+itsMEE1111 No such german word comes to my mind, but in styrian dialect e.g. "Most" is pronounced like "Moust"
btw: the 语 in 汉语 is pronounced like "jü" (as in Jürgen), not "ju"
+internetmachtdumm isn't the "ou" in Zhou more like in English "ow"?
Seriously, English is awful at getting a clear sound across.
+internetmachtdumm show
princessvanee I thought it was like in "down", that's why I wrote "ow", as in the exclamation "ow!". But I can't speak Chinese, so I'll concede.
Who's making those Happy Meal toys, then?
+Ittoqqortoormiit “ᐃᓄᔨᒌᑦᑑᓗᐊᖅᑐᑎᒃ” From the Land of Green Taiwan.
+Ittoqqortoormiit ”ᐃᓄᔨᒌᑦᑑᓗᐊᖅᑐᑎᒃ” From the Land of Green ᐃᓄᒃᑎᑑᓲᖑᕖᑦ?
+Ittoqqortoormiit “ᐃᓄᔨᒌᑦᑑᓗᐊᖅᑐᑎᒃ” From the Land of Green The moon people we enslaved in the 70's of course
+Ittoqqortoormiit „ᐃᓄᔨᒌᑦᑑᓗᐊᖅᑐᑎᒃ“ From the Land of Green haha made me laugh
+Ittoqqortoormiit “ᐃᓄᔨᒌᑦᑑᓗᐊᖅᑐᑎᒃ” From the Land of Green You must mean those kids in the region with the same written language but has different spoken language, which are the descendants of the Zhou Rén, who make everything westerners use, from Dildos to Happy Meal toys.
Lol. What even is a state. What is a language. What is a people? Do nations exist? What is life.
Kleo3392 Jesus
Y'all need Jebus.
Kleo3392 what is love?
+Jason Chronojet Cancer Baby don't hurt me
1) a system of governance
2) an agreed opon set of meanings that enable communication
3) a collection of inderviduals that have simular traits
4) yes
5) a property that an object can have
Yo, you’re pronouncing “Zhou” as my last name 😂 it’s pronounced “joe”
It's not pronounced "Joe" either
@@enkor9591 Actually... it kind of is.
@@angeliquewu8318 no, it's more like "Choe" but the 'ch' is harder and further back in the throat than the English 'ch' and unaspirated.
@Daffa Mutaqin Tetaputra Zhou mother
@@andyzhaott that was beautifully executed
> Didn't highlight New Zealand as part of the free world
M80pot80 you're just jelly of our Best At Freedom status.
Neither Ireland, Austria or Switzerland!11!!!1! Hey, we guys should unite, let's call us "the parts of the world that Xidnaf forgot to highlit when he showed his opinion on the word 'free world' in this one video about china"
Ok, maybe this is a very bad name. And a bad idea. :P
TrolleyMouse Ye we are totally the the most free NZ represent
TrolleyMouse q
TrolleyMouse You guys definitely should've been on there New Zealand is one of our best allies and that should say something because we have a ton of allies. We have some sort of defense pact with 69 countries, obviously including New Zealand.
+TrolleyMouse NZ should definitely qualify as "free", now that we've overthrown Lord Sauron anyway :-) Not sure the US views us as an Ally though, they might still be butthurt about our anti-nuke policies. Go Rainbow Warrior!
I feel like you could have done a slightly better job of making it clear that most states have ethnolinguistic minorities and that diglossic relationships are common around the world. The video gave the sense that China is unusual, and Europe is ethnically homogenous. You specifically chose France, which had an early nation state and has virtually eradicated other ethnic identities. No doubt you realise this, but I think it would have been useful to clarify this, particularly for the American audiences as their identities are typical national rather than ethnic.
Yes, especially since a bunch of states in Europe doesn't fit this Wesphalian state definition. Think of Switzerland, Belgium, Bosnia-Herzegovina or eventually Spain or Russia (and other now dissolved states like Yougoslavia or Austria-Hungary).
Though, the cleaning of ethnicities of France was tardive : it mostly happened in the XXth century and began only from the XIXth century, you're right too about it to be an early nation state.
Also, there was clearly two visions of the Wesphalian state that happened : the French one 'Conquest of the heart' the will of the people to be French, and the German 'Kultur' the "natural" and "spiritual" nation of Germany come to fruition with the unification and every ethnic german should join the German nation.
Or the Italian version, an unsuccessful cross between the two.
Oh don't speak to me of that one xD I have encountered an Italian guy so fanatical about his irredenta "geological" Italy he wanted to apply it to all of Europe ><
In the end, I believe such short passing is a bit of the reason why this video got so much of hate. Xidnaf clearly made a great job to explain such linguistical/sociolgical idea but some of the way he did it lack of substance stopping the larger layman audience to grasp the concepts.
Yeah, these are constructive criticisms, he's doing his best.
@@PaulRausch Minorities in France still exist, even if they're mostly ignored
>saudi arabia >free world
boy if you don't
no
+Skylar mcSucc Yet Saudi Arabia is the leader of human rights in UN.Funny UN.
Yay titles!
+Skylar mcSucc The kid who made this video is quite ignorant.
block9699
The point was not to say that Saudi Arabia is a free country. But that the leader of the free world is just a made up title. And that the free world is so darn vague and silly concept that it could even be applied to Saudi Arabia because there allied status with USA.
There of of course tons of nations more free then Saudi Arabia. And lot of the most free countries in the world (by most measures) are not allied to USA (though pretty much all of them have good relationships with USA)
“AND IF YOU CLOSE YOUR EYES”
5:38 you could say that and accurately describe all of human history.
WTF IS HAPPENING - that's more like it.
Smart
A few inaccuracies.
"Zhou" was not the name of the ruler (and you're horribly mispronouncing it, incidentally). So your analogy with "Obama" doesn't work.
Middle Chinese is not the ancestor of all the modern Chinese daughter languages. Fujianese and Taiwanese, for example, are almost certainly not descended directly from Middle Chinese.
Don't forget the many unrelated languages that have always been spoken in the region, too (like Miao, Yao, Zhuang).
"Mandarin" is directly from Portuguese, only indirectly from Malay. (And the Malay word is actually borrowed from Sanskrit.) Anyway, it means "an official," so the Mandarin language is "the language of the officials," i.e. guanhua.
Zhou was actually based on the Last Ruler of Shang Dynasty (King Zhou of Shang) which was the Overthrowned by Emperor Wu which established the Zhou Dynasty and that Name was based on him,the most Cruel Emperor on its Era
@@messier8379 Wrong, Zhòu 紂 the name of the last Shang ruler and Zhōu 周 the name of the dynasty that succeeded the Shang are completely unrelated.
@@messier8379 商紂 is infamous in Chinese legends as a cruel tyrant, and his toppling by the 周武王 is recounted as one of the greatest victories of all Chinese legends. why would one adapt the name of the tyrant one toppled for the name of one's dynasty? it makes no sense.
Finland's not part of the free world ? Ok then :(
LOL
郎一.....
郎一 I don't believe in one. I believe in a goddess sry.
郎一 Joulupukki's not religious.
FannomacritaireSuomi You guys have crappy self defense rights.
As a Taiwanese, I'm grateful that Xindaf did mention the fact that People's Republic of China (PRC) and Republic of China (ROC or Taiwan) are different existing political entities and both have "China" in their names.
The (over)simplified version of the history causing this situation is that during the Second Chinese Civil War (1945-1979), the winning political party Communist Party of China (CPC) gained full control over mainland China, and the losing political party Kuomintang (KMT or Chinese Nationalist Party) retreated from mainland China to the southeastern island Taiwan. Before KMT, people in Taiwan had been governed or colonized by different groups, including Qing dynasty(1684-1895) and Japan(1895-1945). During the KMT one-party system period (1945-1987), the government didn't entirely give up the plan to retake the mainland China and the legitimacy of the one true "China". This is why people born and educated in this period are more likely to identify themselves as Chinese and consider ROC as the orthodox China.
Nowadays, most of the people in Taiwan will agree that they are Taiwanese. But when Taiwanese being asked the question "Are you also a Chinese?" or "Does your self-identity include Chinese culture or Japanese culture?", I believe the answers will be highly diversified and contentious, depend on the background of each individual and his/her family. This is an extremely complicated situation and even the most well-educated Taiwanese will frequently get lost in the details of the history and ideology during debate.
It same with singapore
Zachary Bryan I'm Chinese from mainland China and I think Taiwan belongs to China. But I never thought Singapore is a part of China
@@darkblunight How is Taiwan apart of mainland China
@@mr.alfredo4177 unless you're indigenous to Taiwan, you're Chinese lol
@@hyacinna nationality is different from ethnicity. Taiwan is not apart of mainland china
Mandarin actually has a well documented and recognized etymology - it is of portuguese origin. It refers to the ruling class, with whom they had to arrange the right to trade, and it provided a means of conferring maximum respect to all such people they met while practicing their trade. it is related to the words "mão" -> hand and the verb from that word: "mandar" -> to rule.
What about the orange
And why 橘 and 橙
And the colour is both 橘色 and 橙色
I thought it came from the Spanish word "mandarín" as a funny name for someone that bosses around other people
The word before that is of Indian descent
for future readers:
橙子 means orange,
橘子 means tangerine.
Chinese colours are mostly named after stuff, except for the most basic colours. So orange can be:
橙色 (orange colour)
橘色 (tangerine colour)
黄色 (yellow, in a broader sense)
金黄色 (golden yellow)
橘黄色 (orange yellow)
橘红色 (orange red)
Just like in English, the colour is named after the fruit.
The choice of word depends on the speaker and context.
If there is an orange and a purple jacket, one might simply refer to the orange one as "yellow".
If you talk about pastry being backed till the colour changes, you would say "golden yellow".
...
I cringe everytime he says 中国 ”zhoughua" he's pronouncing it wrong
Lin Chen How's it pronounced?
A simple Google text to speech tells me "Zhōngguó".
KarstenOkk cool cool
For IPA fans, it's pronounced /ʈ͡ʂɔŋ˥.ku̯o˨˩˦/.
EDIT: Everything is unaspirated.
Astronomy487 thx
yesss!!! new video....and on my country!! however the sound quality is weird,.,,,
+Evi1M4chine lol m8 XD
The history of china reminds me a little bit to the history of austria, my home country, which is a little bit younger, though:
First of all, there where a bunch of principalities all over middle europe.
Than a noble family founded the realm of "Ostarrichi", the "eastern domain"
Meanwhile, the thousands of principalities (and austria) united to a big empire, the "Holy Roman Empire", nevertheless, they all remained as own shires (or whatever you want to call this pieces of land).
The languages in the HRE where all kind of related to each other, and so, they called all this dialects just "Deutsch". The german language got a name.
Than some peasants revolted against the austrian nobles and a new, democratic state was born- Switzerland.
The austrian nobles, the House of Habsburg, where kind of the ruler of the whole HRE and after a long time of opportune weddings with other noble families, the Habsburgs holded the Empire, parts of Italy, parts of eastern Europe, the spainish peninsula, the netherlands and (for a few years) mexico. And austria, of course, because they where austrian nobles.
Than some complicated things happened and at the 18th century, there where only austria left. The german principlaties (and therefore the main territory of the HRE) crowned a new king and got separated from austria, but some it's parts of it where still part of the Empire.
Than the german state was foundet in the 19th century and austria- hungary (it's new name) struggled to keep up it's former glory.
After World War I. the allies split austria- hungary in several countries, depending of the language spoken in this regions, like jugoslavia, hungary, czechoslovakia and of course austria.
Now austria pretended to be a part of germany and called itself "Deutschösterreich" (german austria), but the allies, in particular the USes, forbade this name and it's annexation to germany.
In 1938 NS-germany (just say: the Nazis) annexed austria peacefully, since they wanted that, or at least the goverment of austria.
After WW II. the allies revived austria and supported the young state. My grandpa tells me a lot of stories from this dirty, miserable and hard time.
So... now there is just one question: What is austria? What are austrians? Like "China", noone here really uses the name "Austria", we call it "Österreich" (do you remember the first realm Ostarrichi? ;) )
Are we germans, since our grand- and grand- grandparents wanted to be part of it and we speak (kinda) the same language? No, this times are finally over.
Are swiss man austrians, since they where part of it? Are eventually even hungarians and mexicans austrians, since they where part of it? (sarcasm)
But everyone just call us "Austrians" or, worse than that, lump us together with germans and swiss man, because we speak "kind of" the same language and had (kind of) the same culture.
And this whole pile of crazy ethnical shit happened in the past few centurys, not millenniums, like in "China". So it's "fresh", if you know what i mean, and with a bad feeling i see culture and language of my country influenced by germany once again. (I am not one of these hardcore patriots, btw, i just want to keep the culture of my ancestors)
+RobinsonCrouse24 well, I never cared that much about my own identity, i think i'm firstly a person, then chinese, from beijing, etc. Cultures can and will change, there's things worth preserving, but we could let go of some old and invent some new and stuff. It's a living thing after all.
That's a very good opinion, i like that. But its this traditions which sepparates us from germany. To compare an austrian with a german is like to compare a british man with a scottish one. And most of your traditions are worth to be konservated!
Let's google "Krampus", Xiao, and you will see :P
+RobinsonCrouse24
To complicate the thing even more, the Habsburg weren't Austrian at the beginning, they were Alemanic (I'm talking about the time they inherited the march/duchy of Austria, of course they became more and more Austrian after this point).
The sure part about where they came from is somewhere between Elsass and Aargau (where the castle of Habsburg is).
The more probable possibility is that the house of Habsburg came from the house of Etichon, duc of Elsass from which the house of Lothringen also came from (that's why they were chosen to inherit the Habsburg realm from Maria Theresia, because they most probably are two branch of the same family and consanguinity has never stopped the Habsburg to marry each other :p).
When he read “Zhōng Guó” as “Shoung gou”
I laughed hysterically because I know Chinese and he pronounced it like that I- I- can’t 😂
yea lol same thing with zhou pronounced like "zhaw"
to be fair we also pronounce he he as hur hur
@@enochchow4099 not In cantonese
I think his pronunciation is good enough. Native speaker here. Why don’t you say something nice about the content.
@@deqinwu yet not understandable
Even in Europe they just started using the "nation state" thing relatively recently
I'd say the french revolution made it big
Xidnaf, would you sometime please make a video about traditional mongolian writing? There isn't almost any videos about it.
yeah, that'd be really cool.
Vertical writing system.
Yesss, that would be awesome!
xidnaf, could you sometime make a video?
かたつむり I can tell you a fun fact about it:
People who live in China's province called "Inner Mongolia" still use the old vertical script while people in Mongolia use Cyrillic.
That part you probably know, but did you know that there are more Mongolians living in this Chinese province than in the actual country of Mongolia? And more than 80% of Mongolia's population lives in the capital?
So yeah, Mongolian learners should definitely learn the ancient script. It's arguably more useful
I love how it ends with "I'm gonna stop here" and then it actually stops.
Correction: Mantri is actually sanskrit.
R u dead
not yet.
Xidnaf yaaaaaaaaaaaaay
when do you wanna upload a new video
when will you post your next video?
I love your videos, thanks!
chiptune animation I don't know. Soon I hope!!!
I think you forgot to mention we do have like, a common writing system between the languages of han family, which is different than (all of the) the speech, which is like how english is the academic language now. Modern spoken chinese probably goes way further than 100 years since the dialog in Song dynasty novels are very readable to me who dont have much education on classic chinese. and there's the 国语 which is still used for RoC and interestingly japan to refer to their national language.
Kind of, the characters used in the Sinitic languages are indeed (for the most part) the same, but a lot of the different languages use different characters for the same words. Like coming from reading Mandarin, to trying to learn Taiwanese Hokkien is very difficult, not only because of the differences in phonology & tone, but because the characters are different (e.g. 你吃飽嗎 = 你食飽未), and then because it was mostly a colloquial language, some words historically didn't have assigned characters so a lot of people actually just write them in the romanized writing system, Pe̍h-ōe-jī, in the middle of Hanzi.
“Han family” what are you on about?
Han is the race, of a subset of China.
The language family is Sino-Tibetan.
Most people in modern day China are not even Han, that is a lie that Mao constructed to try to produce racial harmony in his newly acquired lands.
@@martinhawes5647 What? en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Han_Chinese - Literally first paragraph on wiki says China is 92% Han. However, "Han ethnicity is an artificial construct" - is somewhat true, and a point my Ancient Chinese History professor often emphasized. A) Han people are too biologically diverse to be considered a "race", so it's more of a ethnicity unified by culture. B) For most Chinese history, the people identified with their region more so than Han, similar to Roman provincials.
Zhou is pronounced like Joe
yes
+zs Xie No.
SprightlyPianist close
+Dan of the Table Reconstructed by linguists as "Tiw"
zs Xie close = no :P
5:30 Now we call it "menteri" which means minister. Prime minister - Perdana menteri.
"So I'm going to stop here." AND THEN IT DOES. No like share and subscribe nonsense. Literally just for that, you're getting a subscriber.
I'm not even Chinese but the way you pronounce it… ;W;
Just saying, your drawings of eighth notes are backwards #musicnerdproblems
0:19 You had me on the "Oba-... Oh
PLEASE!!! START MAKING VIDEOS AGAIN YOU ARE THE REASON I STARTED LOVING LINGUISTICS
@Rede Emitel what happened?
Me, reading the title: yeah I don't believe in China it's a myth created by the government 😂
Em lol so is america and europe lol
@@VicmundLim im a myth created by the government
@@satgurs lol
bhutan be like:
@@lionberryofskyclan India claims the whole of the subcontinent while yelling akhand Bharat XD
Aren't most countries like that? E.g. in US, they call themselves Americans, while there're at least black and white. Most people speak "English", while there're still families speak Germany, Hebrew, etc. In UK, they call themselves British, while there're English, Scottish, Irish. And if you go to Dublin, every road sign has 2 languages.
Yeah, but I thought China was a particularly good example.
You're alive!!!
No one in the UK really says "British" if you are from England you say English and if your from Scotland you say Scottish. Although we are, no one really says British unless we are speaking of thr union as a whole.
(I'm English is just based on my experience)
I am British, I was born in England, I live in Wales. I would never call myself English
St33l Butterfly Why? Isn't that your nationality?
Is it just me, or does Xidnaf's representation of the nation-state concept look kind of like a fidget spinner?
Han and guanhua were just about the only Mandarin words you got right in this video.
zhou - /ʈʂou/
yayan /jajɛn/
zhongguo /ʈʂʊŋkwo/
qin /tɕʰin/
hanren /xanɻən/
hanyu /xany/
Beijing /peitɕiŋ/
putonghua /pʰutʰʊŋxwa/
Also, in English
Malay /məleɪ/
While I can nitpick your pronunciation, your central point is well made, so good job!
honestly I wish he would just go into google translate and see how it pronounces those things. like he has the IPA in the video so he's seen it but he can't read it...
Hahaha 'muricans really call their president "leader of the free world" ? :'D
+mciftw Never in movies or on TV, but when the foreigners aren't around we're all like "President Obama Leader of the Free World should..."
kidding
+mciftw no
+Evi1M4chine I don't think you have any basis on what you're talking about.
We usually just say the president. But yes, he is sometimes called the "Leader of the Free World" when people are trying to emphasize that he holds a lot of power. I don't think I've seen it outside of tv shows and news media, though.
+mciftw
George Washington was going to be called something like "His Majesty, Protector of Freedom" until it was brought up how counter productive that was.
UR BACKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKK
+Evi1M4chine that's why I like extending the vowels instead of the consonants
+Evi1M4chine The anticipation is fulfilled and the surprise triggered a distorted laughter ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ
+Pawan Kumar I read that as [ər bæχχχχχχ]
+Evi1M4chine
The velar plosive becomes a fricative. What's the problem?
wats this bs
The symbols used in the video were simplified, which is inaccurate, considering many of the things described took place before its creation.
Just a nitpick, great video!
Who cares? It’s a writing system, both complicated characters and simplified characters can be used interchangeably.
@@NoCareBearsGiven
Complicated / Traditional ones are the true proper ones. Simplified Characters don't belong in any ideographic/pictographic language anyways.
@@MaoRatto who are you to judge that? It seems to work fine for over a billion people. Would you say the same for Japanese simpllications? If not then your point makes no sense. Also “traditional” characters are literally simplifications of the seal script lol. Chinese characters have been being reformed for thousands of years what even is “traditional”
Well he gets a pass since he is talking about it TODAY
Current mainland China uses simplified but I do see your point. Helps add more immersion perhaps
@@NoCareBearsGiven he just says it's historically inaccurate
1st of. Today "周" or "Zhou" is a common Chinese last name, but around 1045 BC, "Zhou" was the country's name and the first King of that country was called "King Wu of Zhou". But don't get the wrong idea, the King's family name was "姬" (Ji), his given name was "發" (Fa). And the ppl from that country could have what ever the fuckin last name they had. And in fact no one really name "Zhou" at that time.
2nd "汉" or "Han" today is an ethnic group, and yes it is the originated from the ppl from the "Han dynasty" (汉朝), which was the country's name during that time. And yes later this country split, reunited, split, reunited, multiple times (same thing happened before Han dynasty as well so get use to it XD). And also the country got invaded by other ethnic groups. Two major examples are: "Yuan dynasty" China was ruled by Mongolian; and the very last empire "Qing dynasty" China was ruled by Manchu people. So no, not all Chinese are "Han", and the "Han" ethnic cannot be used to represent this country.
3rd, I don't see the logic that just because a nation is multi-ethnic, multicultural and has a very long history simply means its current form "doesn't exist".
Talking about multiethnic and multi-language, US has ppl that are white, black, brown, Asian, Latino, natavie americans etc...., they all have their own languages, does that mean US "doesn't exist"? What about Canada, have two different OFFICIAL languages, so "the true north strong and free" doesn't exist? Talkin about long history, border changes, territory changes, nation's name changes, regime changes. Well, today Italy is a country and it exists. State of Vatican City is a country and it exists. You're not gonna deny their existence just because they use to be part of the Roman Empire aren't ya?
"中国" or "Zhong Guo" were used as more like a geographical term and never used in the nation's name until 1912. But it's similar to "Kingdom of Great Britain", "Great Britain" was the geographical term of those islands. But at 1707 British named their country after that geographical term.
Hell I just forgot isn't United States of America following the same naming procedure?
Damn dawg, don't tell me Murca doesn't exist! XXXDD
Guess whos back,
Back again.
Xidnafs back,
Tell a friend,
Saudi Arabia sure as fuck isn't part of the free world
what does "free world" even mean tho
+LeafyHotDog He dropped the ball pretty hard on this one fact. The "free world" was a term coined during the Cold War to describe Capitalist Democratic nations, as opposed to their Communist Authoritarian counterparts. So, if you are at least nominally both Capitalist and Democratic, you are part of the free world.
Although, I can't really fault him too much, it is an archaic term that means very little in the modern context.
Please don’t pronounce “malay” as melee
-not a malay
Super smash bros malay
I hate how you pronounced every Chinese word incorrectly. I'm very triggered.
he never learned chinese so let it slide... (yes im asian and i know how speak chinese)
It is now
Bruh... if chinese isnt a language....then what do i speak? What does the china/asian people speak? What is the chinese language option for microsoft if you have one?
Mandarin. Most common dialect.
***** techically yes,i was partially wrong lol, its just that other dialect are kinda dead in my country...
I've heard it said that the concept of the nation-state (meaning a group of linguistically and ethinically similar people with a single government) existed in china long before it did in europe. Nation-states only really became a thing in Europe in the 19th century when people began calling for German/Italian/Slavic unification based on linguistic similarity. China has had a shared identity which lines up with their government much longer.
nobody accepts brutal murder that is brought by invaders, so do Chinese. It is called "forced to". During Qing dynasty, China was already under Manchurian occupation.
That is closer to the western concept of emperor than you think. There was only Rome, and people not yet conquered by Rome, after all. It then later came to mean the supreme leader of Christianity, (those two concepts meant the same practical thing during the late Roman empire). The split between Orthodox and Catholic Christianity first created two European emperors. But this concept was still relevant for much, much longer after that: Napoleon could only be recognized with wearing the imperial crown after first having entirely dismantled the previous Catholic empire - the Holy Roman Empire.
This is how the Chinese language works:
China: 中国
Chinese (people): 中国人
Chinese (language): 中文
England: 英国
English (people): 英国人
English (language): 英文
+Yingjie Zhao England sign looks like electric train. :)
Lol
I'm coming back here to say, you have really sparked my interest in language. The idea of a language without the specification of singular and plural words is just incredible.
RIP this channel... 7 months :-(
whyyyy what happened??
Great video! By the way, it's pronounced Malay as in muh-lay and not melee as in may-lay. And your theory is probably right since the British came into contact with (and colonised) Malaya more intensely before all the havoc that is the Sino-British relationship started in the 18th century (if I'm not mistaken). So they might've derived the term for the "official language" (Mandarin) from Malay which is "Bahasa Mantri" (?) which is actually "Menteri" (meaning: an official [person]) in Modern Standard Malay. However, "Bahasa Rasmi" would be a more accurate term for "official language" (the adverb official). I hope you can understand this lol.
I cringed at your Chinese pronunciation especially "Zhou" omg
Why would a non-native speaker be able to pronounce Chinese words properly without a lot of practice?
Unless you're from Sweden, I doubt you'll be able to correctly pronounce the name of the people native to the region I live in. We are called "East Goths" and in Swedish it's "Östgöte". Even some Swedes from other provinces struggle with this one. Not to mention foreigners who may never be able to pronounce it properly.
Tl;dr The real cringe here is your lack of self-distance :)
Because, maybe barring tonality, the words he mispronounces wouldn't actually be very difficult to learn to pronounce correctly, all you have to do is check. Especially in the case of someone who makes linguistics videos about IPA. For example, ZH makes a sound like an english J as in Jake. That's pretty easy to understand, right? I love xidnaf's videos but there's no justification for not doing some very basic research before publishing something.
Loooool nice job there
I think what he meant is that Chinese is actually very easy unlike ur language liek rød where as chinese is basically English but spelled in a different way, which is very clear and straightforward
isnt chinese complicated because of its entonation more than its pronunciation?
Just saying,
Zhou is pronounced like "Jhou"
Zhoungguo is pronounced like "Jhong-gua"
Also, I don't really agree with your conclusions. The people of ancient China had a common identity due to the unification of China under the Zhou and Shang dynasties. The idea was certainly not nearly as strong as what exists today though, but it still did exist. Look at the philosophy of the Legalists, which inspired the Qin Dynasty to reunite China.
It annoyed me when he kept pronouncing it wrong
What about the cultures in the later claimed territories? Are they supposed to be a part of China?
@@NUSORCA No. But whenever China suddenly gained mass amounts of territory, it was because other places conquered the old dynasty. Then they Sinicized and became Chinese, which meant that the land they used to have also became Chinese. Very similar with what happened with the Mongols and the Manchus.
The Manchus, or "Man zu" (aka Man tribe/ethnicity) basically don't really exist anymore because they just call themselves Chinese nowadays, and the Mongols, who have a somewhat stronger sense of identity, define themselves as Chinese and are pretty integrated with the rest of China. 80% of all Mongols live in the Chinese province of Inner Mongolia, and only about 20% live in Mongolia the country. However, traditional Mongolian script is still taught in Chinese schools in Inner Mongolia, while Mongolia uses Russian Cyrillic. Modern day Chinese Mongolians (younger generations) have perfect Chinese though, and they're very much part of the Chinese youth.
the word Mandarin comes was derived from Malay? That's new to me.
terkejut gak aku memula
akram radhi tak pernah ku sangka
Aku pun tak tahu dari perkataan 'menteri'.
Sy pun terkejut...
+Luqman Nazery bukan bodoh, mandarin dari kelas elite di china "mandaren"
0:12 REEEEEEEEEEE Why bother putting IPA if you're going to pronounce it totally differently and wrong???????
No, they aren't named after their first names.
Examples
First Names | Dynasty
姬 gei¹ | 周 Zau¹ (Zhou)
嬴 jing⁴ | 秦 Ceon⁴ (Qin)
劉 lau⁴ | (西/東)漢 Hon³ (Han)
李 lei5 | 唐 tong⁴ (Tang)
趙 ziu6 | (北/南)宋 (Song)
maybe you could consider China as "a more united Europe" (thanks to the First Emperor of China)
Its Menteri.. not Mantri, you got me confused for awhile there
Today I learned! However one suggestion for you. The written characters that the Chinese people use are universal among all Chinese people although they are pronounced very differently in different dialects.
it's funny how you can see a phonetic transcription for 周 at 0:12 but people still remark that it's wrong pronounced. I don't really think he intented to do it right, guys. He even said "get used to..."
Yeah these people are retarded lmao
DAG2003 I don’t care about the tones, just get the consonants right. 周 is zhou not zhao. You don’t have to speak Chinese to get that right. For me as someone learning chinese, it sounded as annoying as someone pronouncing tacos as taecos
As a Malaysian-Chinese I cringed when he said 中国 (zhong guo), then had a heart attack when he pronounced Malay.
Please stop this,stop not making videos.
Why
+Toasted Bread I love his Videos.
+HCN 27.0253g/mol Oh
Hydrogen Cyanide!
Etymosemanticology has 9 syllables wtf
I was never that interested in anything Chinese. Not even language wise despite being an absolute language geek. But this is really interesting and I may or may not be a little bit obsessed with it now. I just love your videos.
+Li Na whitewashed bitch!!
+Li Na :) Thanks!
+Li Na I'm part Chinese on my mother's side, and I'm still not that interested in much regarding China. I'm interested in how they do business because they are shrewd businessmen ... but I still find Europe /ancient Europe more interesting.
+Li Na
Nobody want to have anything to do with PRC, it is a hellhole build by Mao Satan.
Some terrible misconceptions here. Firstly, it is called Zhou dynasty because the nation name is Zhou. Similarly, Qin was originally given the county by a Zhou king. They then eventually conquered the Zhou kingdom. That goes to the Han as well. Prior to that, the Zhou people were using Xia as their ethnicity, sometimes coupled with Hua to call Hua Xia. This may have stemmed from the Xia dynasty. To the south, there were the Chu people and Yue people with different languages and cultures. After Qin unification, the Chu and Yue rebel and Han had to do a reunification. It was then another more encompassing identity was forged, which was the Han people. Although the country name keep on changing with the preference of the founder, eg. Ming, Song etc., They gradually accepted Zhong Guo as a description of their kingdom. The Qing emperors also called themselves emperor of Zhong Guo.
Mandarin came from SANSKRIT word Mantri meaning Minister
Yehaw
The history of the Chinese languages is amazing. I suggest further reading.
My Eastern Thought professor taught that the term "China" came from the Qin dynasty after the warring states period when the people were united under their first emperor so thats why it was China because it was the first significant government after such turbulent times that actually united the Chinese people
And this folks is where you get when you're on TH-cam at 3 in the morning...
China was culturally self recognized , its a totally different concept in comparision with European mono-nation countries . Han is the majority and most polulous race in the world . But in history whoever took the regime would soon recognize themselves as Han race . Like people from the north commonly have high noses curly hairs including me , peple from south like Hongkongers have flat face , smaller body structures . Biogenetically northern Chinese were mixed with caucations and mid-Asians ,while southerners shared more bonds with malays ... its a whole complicated story comparing to small countries . Better to not generalize any obscure concepts..
+尾生子煦 You missed paleomongoloid part, which may count more than caucasian and tungus
+Theo Yeh yeah that's for sure
+尾生子煦 Any population of Caucations ,Tungus or Paleomongoloid was not over 500,000. I dont think it should be called mixture.
Xidnaf I know you read fans comments. Just wanted to remind you that your channel is one of the best I know, subjectively THE BEST :D Love you :>
^^ Thank you!
Xidnaf I love you videos you have to make more.
What's with the hiatus? Your videos are really fun. I've been waiting for you to make a comeback.
Zinouweel fun but wrong.
Zhou is pronounced like "Joe," man. C'mon, you had the IPA right there.
3:33 "In the US and the western world generally we like to think in terms of nation-states"
Yes, but that's only a relatively recent idea. If we go back to the medieval times, the word "France" or as it was called "Francia" simply meant "the land of franks", regardless of what ethnicities lived there. Even though original franks didn't even speak the french language. Franks were germanic, while French is a romance language. So, although you have brought the concept of nation-states to China, that doesn't make their country any less legit. Practically all countries formed relatively the same way, only their names come from different sources. Just because China was called Zhong Guo, doesn't mean it didn't exist as a country. There's many countries in the world, that are called in native language something very different from the exonym given to them by other countries. China is just the way westerners called the same country, that the chinese called Zhong Guo. The concept of that country did exist throughout history, and the land of China was considered the land where chinese people live (among other ethnicities), just like in the case of France. In fact, the concept of nation-states is stupid and have caused mostly damage to the cultures of this world. We lived great without it for the majority of history, and we could go on without it. The whole intent behind it was to consolidate power in the hands of individuals basically.
Do not use modern concepts explain the ancient things. Dynasty's name just for each dynasty but China is still there, of course, nobody calls it as "China ”中国“, Why? because ancient have no modern concepts of "country", people call it as "the ground under the heaven 天下 ' which means the world. People think "the ground under the heaven 天下" must be united, that's why these "states" fighting each other. so does the ancient Chinese know any place exists outside "the ground under the heaven 天下 '? yes, they do, but they don't think these should be called "the ground under the heaven 天下 ', they just ignore it. In ancient "China", 5000 or 3000 years ago, people do speak and use different language, but it was NOT so quite different, maybe similar to French and English at most, and the key is "Chinese 汉语“ already united by "Qin Dynasty 秦" 2700 years ago, and that's why the modern can still read and understand people written things in 3000 years ago and even more than that, the Children learning ancient poem in primary school, take an example "诗经” almost 3000years ago.
so, China exists as the civilization, by the way, it is a united civilization, united people, united culture and language, most united ground, not like Europe and Indian.
Ayyy when are you putting out a new video?
Dunno. Soon I hope.
HOLY SHIT XIDNAF ISN'T DEAD?! WHAT?!
xu la'e lu jungo gugde li'u zasti
o
How could this be the happened? I sure he got hit by the car or something!
China are just like Egypt.
Egyptian never call their country as "Egypt", they call it "Misr".
During ancient times, Egyptian call their country as "KMT" (Kemet), during Ptolemic era (after Alexander the great) they call their country as "Hwkaptah", until Roman Empire conquer it and call it "AEGYPTUS"
I think you could also say the same thing about Japan: the Japanese don't use the term "Japan" in Japanese, instead using the terms "Nippon" or "Nihon", or as English-speakers render it, "the Land of the Rising Sun". "Japan" only came to the English language beginning with J instead of N through a Chinese term.
This goes for a lot of countries/languages/people. I'm from Hungary, and in Hungarian our language is "magyar" and our country is "magyarország" (literal: magyar/Hungarian country).
The reason that all of the various dialects of 中文/汉语 (Chinese language) are classified as one language is because， regardless of how they evolved from middle Chinese, they are all still able to be written with the same script, 汉子（hanzi, chinese characters) This is because Chinese characters are logographic, (rather than alphabetic, syllabic etc.) meaning one character can mean one or multiple word(s)/idea(s), (although most Chinese "words" or 词语 are two characters in succession, although they can be more characters or just a single character, a little bit difficult to describe because “词语’ is not quite the same as the English word for ‘word") If one word is one/(or multiple) ideas, then regardless of whether the words are pronounced differently, they can all be read as meaning the same thing, (so a Cantonese speaker can understand a mandarin speaker even if they don't speak each others' dialects by using the writing) So yes, you could say that the different Chinese dialects are different ”languages“ in the sense that, similar to the various romance languages evolving from Latin & turning into French/Italian/Spanish/Portuguese/Catalan etc., the Chinese dialects evolved from middle Chinese into Cantonese, (广东话 or 粤语) Hakka, (客家语) Mandarin, (普通话）Wu, （吴语）etc., & these languages' spoken form are INDEED as different from each other as these romance languages are from each other, BUT, they can all be said to be mutually intelligible in the sense that they can all understand each other using the written form of Chinese characters（汉子）. Since the 汉子 （Han characters) unify all of these languages it is only natural to call all of the Chinese "languages" 汉语 (Han language) ;)
So... the Chinese people live in the Middle Earth and speak the Common Language.
No wonder why North Korea, just next to China, has that Sauron-like tower.
"This is France. French people live here, and they speak French." :D ROFL
It's not Mantri.its Menteri whom is a minister of the Government.
Came for the clickbait, stayed for a history lesson.
China/中國 should NOT be classified as a country.
Xia, Zhou, Xuang, Qing, each of them are individual countries with different political factions, military, economy. Although they share many cultures, they are not some states or "dynasty" of another country.
Today's PRC CANNOT use Ming's history and say Tibet, Taiwan, HK, Macao, Senkaku Island, East Vietnam Sea, etc belongs to them.
Taiwan wasn't part of Ming.
Ken Wong
I was just using Ming as an example, I could have used Qing or Tang or other countries.
Wow, this is so wrong on so many levels.
Let's expand your take on nation states. This is France. French people live here and they speak French. Also, Breton people. And Occitan people. And Basque people. Of course, nowadays they mainly just speak French, but recently they were all speaking their own languages. They definitely spoke their own languages in Middle Ages when the concept of France arouse, and that know happened because they were ruled by the same king. Spain is even a better example, because Catalonians, Basques, Galicians etc. still speak their languages. And by the way, the language we call Spanish should actually be called Castilian because it in fact is the language that was originally spoken in Castille and then imposed on other Spanish peoples. "Spain", again, only appeared after all those different peoples were united by a king. It's a geographical and political notation more than national. And don't even get me started on Italy, sewn together by politicians less than two centuries ago. And what about Belgium and Switzerland?
Just to be clear, I'm not insinuating any of this is bad, I am not trying to offend anyone. I understand that nowadays Spanish, Italian or Swiss identity and national pride are a real thing to many people and there's nothing wrong with it, I'm just saying that it was a rocky road getting there, and you in your video are greatly oversimplifying the situation with European city states and overcomplicating the Chinese situation as if on purpose. Getting back to the Chinese - you yourself pointed out that they were unified by a single Han identity for several thousand years. That's what China is and that's what being Chinese is. And there is no ambiguity about who's Han and who's not. Tibetans or Mongols or Hui are not Han. People who have no identity besides Chinese are Han, even when they live in Guangzhou and don't understand a word of Mandarin. And yes, people from Hong Kong definitely identify as Han. And even though they speak a number of mutually unintelligible dialects, they share a written language (which is called ZhongWen in contrast to HanYu, the spoken Mandarin) and they have shared it, again, for several thousand years, even in times of political disintegration. That is also a big part of what China is.
Why am I watching this I have to study for a test
Just write what you learnt here in the test. You might fail, but look intellectual while doing so
+Pablo Quiles Why am I watching this? I have to turn term papers in and study for finals.
Chinese dynasties very rarely used the family name of the imperial clan as the name of the dynasty, if at all. For example, the name of the imperial clan of the Tang Dynasty was Li, and the imperial clan of the Qing Dynasty was called Aisin-Gioro. Many of the early dynasty names were toponyms and many of the others were simply named after something positive, like the Jin Dynasty (Jin means gold) or the Ming Dynasty (Ming means bright). Others still were named after previous dynasties such as the Later Jin Dynasty, who was ruled by the same people as the previous Jin Dynasty and thus wanted to present itself as a continuation of it, in a way.
As a northern chinese, I can testimony Cantonese is another language.
+Geralt Snake no, in fact, it is another chinese dialect and most chinese dialects (95%ish) are sino-tibetan
VzXiao Still harder than English for me tho.
Geralt Snake lol ofc
cantonese is much more complicated, in fact, i speak all three languages fluently, but i understand cantonese would be the hardest for foreigners
That's not how you pronounce Zhong or Zhou... can't you research your material?
Zhou is pronounced cho. We'll sort of. It's kinda hard to explain in words. And zhong guo is pronounce chong guo
More like jo than cho
+Vinesh Khemlani 我不知道你说哪国语言但是我觉得英语可以有的最近的拼写是joe，cho完全不make sense
+Vinesh Khemlani vocaroo.com/i/s0i6lRKgV2ax
vocaroo.com/i/s0pgkVhnLZ4L
How'd I do?
+Dudemar
Like the name "Joe"?
Damn if only everyone used letters like Finnish does.
YeH I guess it is. I just didn't know how to explain it in words.
One correction: Guanhua did not evolve in Beijing(Peking) alone, it evolved from a much larger area, that area stretches from Manchuria to Yangtze river, from East China sea to Taklamakan desert. Only the Pekinese Accent (it's really just an accent, no more no less) became the official pronunciation ( only the pronunciation, not its vocabulary or grammar).
Even Xidnaf sounds confused as heck about China
India is pretty similar to this, India isn't called India in Indian languages. interesting video.
+Cats Cats Pretty much the same as most of the far east Asian countries I supposed. Neither Japan, Korea or China call themselves Japan, Korea or China. To make it even more complicated, they don't even call each other Japan, Korea or China in Japanese, Korean or Chinese.
+h3csc yup, agreed.
+Cats Cats Originally the name was to be Hindustan but they did not want to marginalize the non hindus.
+Evi1M4chine I haven't lived in India in a long time, but I don't think the country needs to be cut up any further.
+Lycurgus80ofsparta I meant the name Bharat. or in my native language, 'Bhaaratam'.
actually “China” has been around in Chinese language for nearly some a thousand years. In buddhist literatures refer the geographic location of China as China or Chin-stan which both derived from dynasty Qin. The buddhist missionaries translated China ( sounds Chee-na) as “支那” and Cina-stan as “震旦” . The term 支那 was widely adopted by Japanese government in 20 century to refer to the Chinese region for political reasons that they refused to recognize China was the middle realm of civilization. Since then, 支那 has become a taboo word to say in Chinese. In the other hand, 震旦 is still pretty much alive.when people wanna create some posh vibe in the context, they use 震旦 a lot. just tried to provide you some more info. the video is informative and almost correct. Nice work!
Nobody:
*Europe: hey, let’s go invade and loot Asia cause I’m bored and broke*
you make Taiwan separate from China, okay...
but why even Hainan?
By the way, in my Chinese History class at the university level, as i recall, my professor said that the chinese distinguished themselves as "farmer people" as opposed to the pastoralists elsewhere. Presumably, the pastoralists included the "Xiongnu" who used to be thought of as the Huns, and the Tibetans (who were shamans in those days, just for a fun fact). When I lived in China, and i mentioned that to chinese on an individual, they often seemed to think it was true, but it wasn't clear if they spent any time thinking of it that way. I dont know how far the "Chinese as farmer people" classification works, but you can just take it fwiw.
Hey xidnaf, love your videos. I know it feels weird to complain about free content that you spend hardwork and time on, but is it a possibility for you to release videos more frequently in the future? Sorry.
Believe me, I wish I had time to make more videos to. It's just been kind of tricky recently, but I am working on changing that.
Xidnaf Oh okay, that's cool!
1, Chinese share the same(similiar) writing system, and we usually consider different speakings as accents of Chinese
2. Taiwan(RoC) and Mainland(PRC) are not two countries. This is extremely important when you talk about China
3. You didn't understand the history correctly especially Qin and before Qin.
Taiwan and China are two separate countries
NON of the UN member agree this, Even taiwan itself, are you from non-UN member country?