To clarify, most of the punishment and repression for speaking non-Mandarin dialects referred to in this video were occurring in China and Taiwan in the 1970's and earlier. Since the 80s and 90s, both governments have invested in reviving the minority languages of China. The point of this video is not intended to be so much political, but to emphasize that as the percentage of proficient Mandarin speakers grows, the percentage of proficient minority language speakers naturally shrinks in the newer generations.
That is far from the truth. In fact, the punishment or repression for speaking non-Mandarin languages happened in different eras in Taiwan and in Mainland China. There is an overlapping period on both sides in 1980s and 1990s. But generally speaking, this policy began in mainland China much later than it did in Taiwan. 1990s were the heyday of the discrimination policies on Mainland China. The government there only reluctantly changed some too harsh policies after 2010s.
That’s hardly punishment, at least they didn’t set residential schools that stole children away from parents to eliminate native languages and culture.
I live in France, almost the French minorities cannot speak their original language, breton, corse, alsacien, savoyard.... But French media accuse China to destroy their minorities culture, not accuse themselves.
But CHINA did a lot of things to encourage them speak the minority language in past 70 years, discouraging minority languga happpened in the last 3 years maybe, but the minority language is still allowed to be taught in the frequency of several classes per week. It is much less than previous time. But it still exists.
@@骑着熊猫去打酱油 Fake news and disinformation. Xi isn't discouraging usage of minority languages ! This content creator is secretly spreading anti-Chinese messages .
UK has been doing the same in making sure people of Scotland, Wales, Ireland and Cornwall speak English. BBC is broadcasting using Queen's English throughout the British Isles. Even today i experience difficulties when listening to Scots and some northern counties such as Newcastle and Midlands.
People don't realize that there are many different types of English accents in England. Interesting when you think how small the country is. I was born and raised there so I can't understand all of them.
@@Novgorod_Republic Racial oppression and extermination are things that Britain and the United States have truly done. There is no credible evidence to prove that China has done it, but there is ample evidence to prove that China has not done it, and that China provides more benefits and privileges to their ethnic minorities
@@Novgorod_Republic Funny fake news and disinformation. That's already debunked ! Those faux "exiled" Uyghurs can read and write Uyghur script because they're taught in state-run schools .
@@Novgorod_Republic Punishing kids for speaking Welsh in school. Making Irish people feel inferior for speaking Irish. This is called cultural genocide and this is what happened not so long ago. The result. Today, only 20% of people in Wales speak Welsh fluently, and in Ireland it's about 3%, mostly in the Gaeltacht. People in China are allowed to speak and learn their own languages, becoming bilingual. The only exception is the non-Mandarin Sinitic languages which people learn outside of school, at home, etc. Hell will freeze over if the Irish or Welsh are convinced to stop any of their education in English. But it's not ok for ethnic minorities in China to learn Mandarin and thus have more opportunities in life?
I have travelled in Xinjiang quite a few years ago and I see people everywhere speaking their own Uyghur, kazakh or Tajik language, esp the older folks. So it isn't true that children of minority ethnicities in China aren't allowed to speak their own language, prob just not being taught as a language in mainstream schools. Mandarin Chinese and English class are taught in their national schools, pretty much like how English and our respective mother tongue (Chinese, Malay or Tamil) is taught in our schools in Singapore, just not the various Chinese dialects here. So I guess for their own spoken dialect or language (be it Cantonese, Hokkien, Uyghur, Mongolian, etc) it's up to parents to speak with them on a daily basis or send them to language schools on a weekend that teach the written form as well because if they don't, they will lose it. For example, the average Chinese Singaporean hardly speaks any dialect now, Mandarin Chinese is quite atrocious just basic because they mostly converse in English at home which isn't even their native language. Well at least for me I still can carry a decent conversation in Cantonese and Hokkien (with my grandparents), Mandarin and English at almost equal level of proficiency, some basic Malay, and a rusty language ability in French which I've picked up as a 3rd lang while still in school. But this is exactly the last point I want to make. Eg. My French has become very rusty because there isn't a conducive speaking environment in SG here for me to practise speaking at least on a daily basis. So having that speaking environment is important to keep the dialect/language alive. Dialects among young Chinese Singaporean are almost non existent now.
I think what he means is another non-mandarin languages are not encouraged to be spoken in school in mainland China today, even during break time. That is what friend's son/daughter told me about 6 years back. Some local languages are holding out better than others, like Cantonese. However, barely any young kids today can speak proper Shanghainese. edit: yes I agree it is up to the parents to ONLY speak their local language at home. That is the only way to preserve their language. Koreans living in Canaada for example, I have yet to meet one who can't speak and read Korean, because that is what they speak at home.
What the Chinese government should implement to their educational system is all students must pick up one minority language just as the minority has to learn Han Chinese. Provided Han Chinese dialects don't count as a minority language. This is being fair to minorities.
The video was interesting until it was politicized. China is still multiethnic and multilingual but the official language is Mandarin, even Uighurs, Mongols and Tibetans still have their own writings which can be seen on Chinese bank notes. There is nothing Wong about having a common language, it is essential for governance and collective understanding and cohesion. Why westerners always point fingers at others when they are the worst culture destroyers. The same collective west who brutally imposed their values somehow feels entitled to lecture others about language, how arrogant is that. Westerners are the minority, yet thinks it is the world.
Agreed. In addition, not being taught Mandarin would also severely limit the freedoms and futures of the minorities as they would be limited to living in their respective regions, as well as keep them disconnected from the rest of the country. That same problem would also exist if you live in the Western world and don't know English.
China is doing what all the western countries are doing by teaching the children of their in their national languages. Everybody in Csnada, Australia, New Zealand, US and Great Britain have to learn and speak in English including all immigrants without exception.
And those AUKUS countries used to punish kids, BIG TIME, for speaking in indigineous languages (like Welsh, Irish, aboriginal Australian languages or native American languages).
@@georgeinjapan6583 The damage is already done. Even the majority of the Celtic people do not speak their own languages anymore. I don't need to ask you about the Okinanwan and Ainu languages, especially the latter.
I am not aware about Thailand being racist , it's human nature after all. Let's move on healthy debate is good in end of the day it gives clarity. @@Utube1024
@@Utube1024This is due to the spreading of communism by PRC. In 50s, 60s PRC use Chinese as the language to spread communism among ethnic Chinese in South east Asia. This resulted in anti Chinese policies to annihilate Chinese culture and identity and encourage nationalism. So the Chinese lost their culture and identity as a result.
Singapore adopted the same policy in the 80s with the "Speak Mandarin" campaign. Dialects are discouraged in schools and media. Now we do a lot of business with China.
In South east Asia the Chinese speak more dialects like Hakka and Cantonese, but also mandarin…in China every ethnic also speak their language… but they also speak mandarin… I don’t see there is a problem, do you?
I live in the USA and can see on everyday interactions where English is not spoken as much. Mama and papa stores speaks Spanish and asian languages. I speak only Spanish at home, English at work, French as a hobby and Japanese will travel after the World Cup.
Speak Taiwanese? There’s no such thing as “Taiwanese”. Unless it’s an indigenous language, all the dialects that Han people speak in Taiwan are also spoken in mainland.
There is no such language. English doesn't all of a sudden become something else just because it's spoken outside of England. The "Taiwanese" languages are the aboriginal languages of indigenous people of the island. HAN people in Taiwan do NOT speak Taiwanese. They speak Mandarin and 閩南語 Southern Min, BOTH of which come from Mainland China and are STILL spoken in mainland. @@meganlee8235
@@danielzhang1916 Hokkien is spoken in Mainland China also. It’s not all of a sudden Taiwanese because it’s spoken on the island. That’s like trying to say Taiwanese mandarin. So some words and colloquial sayings differ. It’s not all of a sudden the language becomes “Taiwanese”
Most countries have their National Language or a common language for their citizens to communicate:-- France is French. Italy is Italian. Spain is Spanish. Indonesia is Bahasa Indonesia. Malaysia is Bahasa Melayu. Sweden is Swedish. Philippines is the Tagalog. UK is English...etc, But the dialectical and ethnic languages are still in use.
The difference is scale. China is about as big and was as diverse as the entire continent of Europe. It would be as if Europe were made to speak only one language.
You are wrong. 1: So let’s start with France they are discouraging use of Local languages and from last many decades they are considering many languages as dialects of French language which have affected those languages. 2: In Italy their are many different languages , but few centuries ago they decided to consider all languages as dialects of a single language and Today’s standard Italian’s base is Tuscan language specifically florentine dialect Like Standard Chinese base in Northern Mandarin language. 3: Condition of Spain is much better , they made the central language of Iberian peninsula the standard language of Iberian Empire which at that time included Portugal as well , Portugal was just a province in Iberia just like Catalonia , Galicia etc. The central province was Castile whose language is Castilian or which today is known as Spanish, other languages are Galician, Argonese, Catalan, Basque, Leonese. 4: Indonesia’s case is Different but not Better or even good at all , The National language which is Bahasa Indonesia isn’t even native to Indonesia and the base of Bahasa Indonesia is Melayu or simply Malaysian Language and the Standard Dialect of Malaysia’s Malaysian and Bahasa Indonesia is same , Even though Indonesia is having more than 1,000 Native Languages only less then 1 dozen language are Famous other then Melayu/Bahasa Indonesia. But Atleast they don’t do that Language considering or Language mixing thing like Italy & China are doing. 5: There is nothing wrong in Malaysia as it started as a Nation state which then got parts of Borneo island as well.As we know Malaysia is divided into two parts one which is in Mainland Asia and another is on Borneo Island, the Melayu People(57.3%) to which the Melayu language actually belong are natives of Malaysian part which is in Mainland Asia but many Melayu people have migrated to Borneo Island as well , But Borneo Island part of Malaysia have many different tribal and other ethnic languages. Apart from them there are 22.9% Chinese of different ethnic backgrounds and 6.6% Indians Mainly Ethnic Tamils and only few other ethnicities. 6:
People still speak their mother tongue in China (both Chinese dialects, and ethnic languages), even though they learn Mandarin in school. The languages of many major ethnic minorities are taught in schools too, which makes them multilingual. Some endangered languages like Manchu are seeing a revival. Now with so many languages present within China's borders, it is practical and advantageous to select one language as the offical language. This is no different from langue D'oil in France, Florentine Italian in Italy, and Standard High German in Germany.
I was born in Chongqing, we speak SiChuan dialect in daily life which is one of Mandarin(官话，not means Putonghua). when I was a child in 1990s and in 2000s. in my county, almost all teachers are natives, they speak Mandarin(Putonghua) badly. so we spoke our dialect in school, the educational bereau always command that all teachers must speak Putonghua in class, but it would not last a long time, only a few days. because it is very hard to speak Putonghua fluently. I study in school (primary school and high school)for 12 years, we only speak our dialect except reciting in class. moreover, I can't speak Putonghua fluently and eaxctly.
I'm southeast Asian Chinese. The one of the most touching and inspiring moments regarding Mandarin was the anecdotal story of when Sun Yat Sun went to Malaysia (British Malaya back then) and he told the local communities, learn the new "language" -- learn Mandarin. And that way everyone will be understand each other. If someone from Beijing came, you'd be able to understand them, as would someone from say Guangdong. And if you went to Shanghai they'd be able to understand you too. Of course, being able to preserve the various tongues of the land would also be highly valuable. I don't blame any authority for this, but myself. It's ultimately me that failed to learn the dialect of either of my parents. That said, fortunately my grandparents learned enough Mandarin that I can still converse with them. In Singapore, sadly, because of the use of English, many Singaporean Chinese do not learn to speak Mandarin nor their own dialects well. They, like me, end up using English most of the time for everyday conversation, school and work. My brain isn't very good at languages, so let's say I only have the ability to keep to two. In that case, I'd pick both English and Mandarin, rather than my grandparent's native dialect. English because, well, I can watch videos like this. Mandarin because it allows me to communicate to anyone in China, from the various regions, beyond my grandparental hometown (where Mandarin is also comprehended today).
Singapore may be for economic reasons? Similar to Japan's reasons for "breaking away from Asia and entering Europe", the last reason is that they are not proficient in English and can not speak Chinese well, giving people the feeling that everything is half-baked. It doesn't matter if the West always leads the world in the future. Fear of the rise of China..
I agree, language is fundamentally about communication so communication should be prioritized above preserving cultural relics. I'm learning Chinese because it's the second most spoken language after English and if I ever learn a third I would pick Spanish because it's the third most spoken language
Can you substantiate the this Sun Yat-sen quote you speak of? There is lots of misinformation surrounding Sun. Also, what Sun Yat-sen said about the benefits of learning a common tongue does not outweigh the negatives that have resulted from modern day policy that he isn't alive to see the effects of.
Soppy Frog is a secret pro-DPP supporter . No punishment to students in public schools in both PRC and ROC . No banning of minorites speaking their languages in public places .
In Fujian, people are still speaking in Min dialects, although the trend dies down for younger generation. However, in my trip to Yunnan, I see ethnic minorities of almost all age ranges speaking their languages and dialects, with even the tourism promoting such aspects!
Same in Chaoshan region of Guangdong, but a lot of younger kids speak teochew incorrectly/not proficiently. Yunnan is less culturally integrated to han culture bc of the prevalence of tai, hmong, etc ethnic groups so ig thats why
I learned that mandarin was congressionally voted as the Chinese national language (Dr Sun yatsen’s vote). And People’s Republic of China continued the practice. To this date, Republic of China (Taiwan) still applies this constitutionally passed mandarin as her public education language. And as well, our English was congressionally voted as our national language. Throughout history, there were times when we forcefully (killing) pushed English on many ethnicities.
That makes a lot of sense, since aren't most Taiwanese from the Fujian province? If it was voted I. The Sun Yatsen era, I see why they didn't just stick to their original Fujian dialect
That's incorrect. The United States does not have an official language at the federal level, but the most commonly used language is English which is the _de facto_ national language, not de jure. In addition, 32 U.S. states out of 50 and all five U.S. territories have declared English as an official language. Outside of Puerto Rico, English is the primary language used for legislation, regulations, executive orders, treaties, federal court rulings, and all other official pronouncements. Nonetheless, laws require documents such as ballots to be printed in multiple languages when there are large numbers of non-English speakers in an area.
North America was like that, but only a hand full of Native Americans can speak their own language. It took 5000 years for the Chinese and they still have most of their dialects.
When the Native American kids went to THE English schools they had to speak English only. If they got caught by speaking their native languages they would be fed with soap water.
I went to a powwow and none of the native american language speakers i heard spoke without a strong american accent. Very sad for an identity when physical differences are very apparent.
That's your personal attitude, nothing to do with the language. I am confident in 5 languages, 2 of which I was required to learn in school, 2 of which I learnt growing up in my community, and one I pick up out of interest.
@@jivvyjack7723 yeah, you’re right I don’t really speak that much mandarin and I barely go to mainland china. So it makes sense I suck at mandarin. I’m also going to Canada this year so English is in my priority. But mandarin would still be useful when going to chinatown.
I have been given to understand that one of the good things the Brits did was to enable all Indians to communicate with each other in English. Wonder what their percentage of population who could understand English is though.
@@YoonLeeKok of course English is important .in China it's another problem ,too many people are learning English everyday ,but when people from different places meet together they don't speak English ,they speak Mandarin .it's kind of frustrated ,"we all learn English ,but when we speak it ?" this is the problem of many or most of Chinese learners in China ...
@@malorybertie8046 True. I also think that this is a problem that many countries have in general like France and Germany for example. Even when they air American movies in the theatres, they're dubbed into the native language of the country. You have to go out of your way to view those movies in English. American shows also gets dubbed on French channels.
Watching this video can help you understand a fact: the education level in the West has dropped to an astonishing level compared to the 1980s and 1990s. The most typical example is that the vast majority of Westerners only have one voice and one idea in their minds. Well, the great American media.
Going backwards in time of percentage growth is confusing. 30% mandarin (Chinese call it common language) speakers in the 50s is misleading because literacy rate was about 20% then. Basically Chinese speakers increased with literacy.
To be honest I thought the number would be a bit higher. Mandarin was dominant language since Jin dynasty. I expected the influence of Mandarin to be much much higher in 1900s
@@prasanth2601 China education system was disrupted during the colonial occupation. In 1949, the literacy rate was less than 20%. Education was prioritised after liberation. Today it is 97%. Most Chinese still speak their own dialect in addition to speaking and writing mandarin.
@@QuietJugung I'm talking bout literacy rate. The SPOKEN Mandarin's already penetrated much of central plains of china before the start of the 20th century itself.
Soppy Frog confuses his followers with inaccuracies and incorrectness . He said the Uyghurs don't want to be "Han-Chinese" ... which is false ! Only the traitors doesn't want to be a Chinese national . For all ethnic groups are Chinese !
@@kaleeysmith8801 You know you are full of crap, as anyone is free to make such a video and put it on TH-cam, even if it is full of half-truths and lies, like your comment.
UK was the super power that dominated the world in the 19th centaury. usa is the super power that is dominating the world from 1941 to now..but declining. Both anglos super power domination of the world past 200years had promoted english to be the dominant language of communication and business around the world between different countries.
Since "Mandarin" or "官話" meant the official's language, it meant different languages at different times. The "Mandarin" today is definitely not the language assigned with that name by Jesuits missionaries in the 17th century. That can be seen clearly in Matteo Ricci, Ferdinand Verbiest and Johann Adam Schall von Bell’s written records. Today's "Mandarin" is at most 250 years old. When Robert Morrison wrote the first English-Chinese dictionary in 1815, most people in Beijing, who lived in Beijing's Outer City, were still speaking the Mandarin language based on Nankinese, and was much closer to Middle Chinese. Based on that, the current form of Mandarin probably didn't gain its status until the 1850s, and grew out of the Manchu-Old Pekingese Pidgin created by Manchus living in Beijing's Inner City adopting the Sinitic language, poorly, as they spoke less and less Manchurian.
Slippery slope you are on there. They did not speak ‘poorly’, the were quickly assimilated within less than two centuries. Albeit culturally still practice much Manchu customs as in the military and court social structure, the language evolved with adoption of way of speech in a two way street within Beijing and the greater provincial region.
of course, having a unified language is always a plus for a nation. The sole purpose of language is to communicate and having different dialects does nothing but create carriers for communication, which is a shame since the language is the same but people can't understand each other. what's the use of diversity in language if there is no use for it except to create barriers to communication, huh?
You've missed the point here sorry, language is the vehicle of culture, it carries the history, beliefs, myths, religion and the worldview of the people who speak it. Each ethnic group/language has its own history and all cultures and their languages by definition are just as interesting, valid and important as any other. Language is about communication, which isn't the same as talking at each other.
All Chinese have a common written language. Just look at SEA, a Cantonese can communicate with a Hainanese, Hakka etc. Really not an issue. And surprisingly, a Chinese can write and a Japanese will understand. And a hundred over years ago, the written Vietnamese is the same until the French romanized it.
@@HeinRichKocHPretoria Britain has no ships, colonial rule, so many colonies who can speak English? Each colony had its own language, destroyed by violence.
@@WAW90 Most of those colonies still have its own language, but for communication in between they need a bridge. English is that. Also America being a super power and the Internet is also a reason.
I am Hui Ethnic (muslim) grew up North West China and lived in the US for 10 years now back in China, i know that we speak our own dialect and we speak manderin. My question is that do indigenous people in Australia, New Zealand, US (maybe) still speak their own languages, AND, are they taught in their own languages in schools??? Funny that the reporter says in description that "Today, China has over 300 spoken dialects..." so does this mean that China perserved them well as in comparison to the West where there are no indigenous culture left cos the white supremacists wipped them all out??
China never oppressed the minority ethnic speakers at least not in my life time living there. I met people in Tibet, Sichuan, Hunan, Cantoon, Jiangxi, I don’t understand what they talking in their native tongue, but most people can switch to PuTongHua when needed. For a country so huge, diversity is really not a bonus. It is the foundation. So with one officially recognized language is key to China to stay unified.
I mean we think speak our dialects and languages. Its just more convient as official language of communication. And tbf, ccp are only following the ways of so many rulers. A country where every citizens can't lingustically understand each other is a disaster. And we're still better than a certain country whom's international airports only use english. The train and buses make announcements in regional language, mandarin, and english. This can be seem in the fact our tv dramas are 99% of the time dubbed/voiceover by a voice actor who got trained in standard mandarin pronunciation and voice acting. Bc if some actors were to voice themselves, they might be heavily accented or mispronounced. International cdrama viewers are always complaining about dubbing and culturally shocked by it, but part of the reason is the dialect. Chinese VAs are systematically trained usually and dont have that issue This is why I say Qin ShiHuang is a rlly underrated ruler. How many ancient civilizations are still standing today from the cradle of civilization eras? China is still the original Han Chinese bc he united the cultures into one. Han Chinese is actually made up of many different cultures and languages into one culture. This make it so all these different states sees each other as one culture/race and even if the country fall apart, the states will share the goal of reunification. People who judge are naive about how important language is for the stability of a country
In the Philippines here.. Theres a sizable Chinese minority, here for many centuries if not near a millennia, but they're all Fujianese from Amoy and speak a unqiue archaic dialect of Minnan called Lannang-oe (9 tones). There are a ton of newcomer Mainland Chinese here now, but these newcomers ALL have to learn Lannang-oe to speak with the local Chinese population, and of course Taglish (Tagalog+English) to conmunicate overall. it seems they pick up Taglish way quicker than Lannang-oe. Filipino-Chinese (known as Tsinoy) people outright reject the use of Mandarin overall, and associate it as a way to surpressing the varieties of different Han dialects/languages done by the CCP, to whom they are ideologically opposed. remember most tsinoys originate from "sangley" fujianese traders and rural farming clans, as opposed to the high class Mandarin speakers from the north. The same seems to be the case just south of us in Indonesia and there's an ongoing war happening in Malaysia and Singapore with the waning use of Fujianese among the ethnic Chinese people of thise countries. Its a huge shame aroudn the loss fo Aboriginal Austronesian languages in Taiwan, noting Filipino people originated among those people and their languages are the closest living relatives to Philippine languages.
These days most young Filipino Chinese couldn’t speak even their parents Hokkien dialects because the Philippines government reduced the number of subjects taught in Chinese. These days only Mandarin language is taught in Chinese schools as a second language. Also, with the influence of popular media, speaking Chinese is not considered cool by the young Chinese Filipinos compared to English and Filipino. It is doubtful even 10 % of young Chinese Filipinos can speak Hokkien fluently, much less Mandarin. Anyway, this is not surprising because knowing how to speak Chinese is not practical anymore in Philippines especially when they go to university where English is the language of instruction. Any language not spoken every day will eventually be forgotten.
Mandarin as CCP language is actually bias propaganda since Taiwanese also use Mandarin as official language. In fact, Mandarin as official language of China is predating CCP.
Op is just being political but that's understandable since from Philippines. Chinese languages where banned in Indonesia until recently. They have recently picked up mandarin again. There is also no 'war' happening in Singapore and Malaysia as touted by Op. Mandarin is an official language in Singapore and is taught in Chinese schools in Malaysia. Other ethnic languages are still spoken but there was never really formal education. Hope this helps.
Every country has an official language despite having millions of languages in a country- it’s not strange to me - it’s just common language communicate among its different citizens 😆
Nothing wrong, and everything right, when ONE nation of people has a Common Language. Also nothing wrong with some citizens being Multi-Lingual! BOTH Common Language & Multi-Lingual citizens do exist in most countries on the planet. All that is needed is the emphasis on properly educating the CHILDREN citizens.
Just like USA or any country, China has to have a common dialect to communicate with one another. China does not force them but encourage them to learn Mandarin together with their own dialect or language.
In the future I hope different languages within China get taught and covered by the media more, I’m learning Manchurian so far I could only say a few words but I don’t want these languages to die off
I respect people speaking their own languages, even if someone invents their own "family language". However, language is used to communicate. Having at least one common language in a country is crucial.
I dont have an issue with PRC promoting mandarin. I have an issue with them suppressing are freedom to speak our own Chinese dialects whether it be in school public etc.
Please visit Singapore and see the natural evolution of languages for the many races and dialects. It is just a phenomenal of human language being merged for effective communication every where.
Similarly, Indonesia is a multi lingual country (some 700 dialects) . Thanks to its founder fathers which stiipulated bahasa Indonesia as national language, everyone across the country can communicate with each other easily
Who says 'Mandarin' was used during the Qin dynasty? Mandarin is a very late language; a hybrid language created when nomads tried to speak the Han languages. No one is sure if 'Mandarin' is even an authentic Han dialect.
I have heard a story about how Cantonese lost to Mandarin to become the National Language by 1 vote because Dr Sun abstained. Being the president, his vote would have carried the day if he had voted for Cantonese (him being from the South, the people who told me the story expected him to vote for Cantonese). Not sure of the authenticity of this story though. It is unlikely that Mandarin was the national language since the Qin Dynasty. More likely, it was some for of a Yue-Min language. For example, some famous poetry from the Tang Dynasty doesn't rhyme when read in Mandarin, but does rhyme when read in Hakka.
@@brianliew5901 The Mandarin you know was established in the 1920's, the version of the script (simplified) is from 1956. That's your 2000 years. Mandarin is like the Esperanto of the Chinese languages. The pronunciation is based on Northern Chinese (the poorest in tones, sounds and endings). Because it's been codified in Shanghai it has quite an input of Wu languages words (the characters, pronounced with the northern reading if you see how it works). It has also an input from Japanese of the Meiji era, for neologisms and scientific words for wich the Japanese coined new character combinations.
The history behind the officialization efforts of ROC described here is incorrect. The Beiyang government's 1913 Commission on the Unification of Pronounciation did NOT choose the northern / mandarin dialect as the standard, but rather a comittee of 80 members from Jiangsu (18), Zhejiang (9), Zhili (8), Hunan (4), Fujian (4), Guangdong (4) and a few from the rest literally voted on how each word should be pronounced. This resulted in a mixture that's primarily mandarin, but with significant influence from the Yangtze delta area dialects, given the large number of Jiangsu and Zhejiang members. However, the effort was a complete failure -- the mixture of pronounciations was in good intention to represent the linguistic diversity of the country, but resulted in a set of 6500 words that only a handful of people know how to pronounce correctly. There is no practical way to retrain thousands of teachers the new pronounciation standard, especially not with an ongoing civil war and WWI in the background. In the end, a more logical decision was made -- Beijing, being the long time Qing capital, had the largest number of qualified teachers, and therefore the easiest way to establish a unified spoken language was simply to send all these teachers to teach across the country, which was eventually done in 1923. Progress was slow as civil war continued, and practically halted with the Japanese invasion. This led to the renewed post-WWII efforts of the two respective governments.
My parents and relatives born in 1950's, 1960's and my generation born in 1980's all can speak mandarin and also local dialect. My dad can speak Mandarin and other 2 dialect and also Cantonese. I never heard that non-Mandarin speaking was punished in the past. It there was, that policy must be very unsuccesful because nearly everyone around me back at home speaks local dialect. But I can see new generation can't speak local dialect anymore, which is up to their parents speaking Mandarin to them rather than local dialect. They want their kids speak better Mandarin without accent. But I think it doesn't work because if parents themselves have very strong accent, how can to teach your children speak standard Mandarin?
2:00 and that hindi isn't actually a complete language funny thing is in everyday conversation in hindi we speak 30 35% English words. hindi in school books and hindi which we speaks is lot different in daily conversation we use so many English words. even after independence we didn't form a proper language
Dont include other hindi speakers in your"we" . I use English words when i need it. The worst hindi speakers are the delhi people even though fundamentally hindi is a language of delhi.
In any gargantuan nation of very diverse races, cultures and language, the first step to consolidating and unifying the nation must be towards having one common language and culture. After achieving a level of unity, harmony and sense of who they are then the nation can focus on reviving the minorities' cultures and languages to enrich the nation and solidify further her sense of oneness as a nation!!!
Sloppy headline! It’s only in the written text that all Chinese/Mandarin is unified. The Chinese in China and its diaspora speak hundreds of different dialects.
Stop this nonsense of "everything's okay, they can speak whatever at home." Because each time that happens to a language, it's only a matter of time before it goes extinct. China is kiiling hundreds of Chinese and non-Chinese language in China until there's only one left. We've seen that many times.
I'm a Chinese in south china in suzhou,we dialect here is more close to Japanese than mandarin,we still use wa at the end of the sentence and use hai to represent yes,and our grammar is the same as the Japanese.We don't like to use the Manchurian influenced language for communication. But sadly more and more people don't use such pure Chinese language any more since the government banned it at schools 😢
China CCP propaganda says all Chinese in China speak Mandarin (guo yue); the facts are much less chinese in china can speak & write in Mandarin (guo yue). China has over 52 dialects, when I traveled in China most Chinese over 55 years old speak their own dialects; cantonese, tujia, hmong, zhuang, hui etc.
It is not mandarin as such, it is a han chinese languages, they had selected between cantonese or central dialects. By votes, only four votes differences, they selected as a common language for china. Mandarin is often refers to the Manchurians of north east of chinese people speak, but it is not manchu chinese langugages. Mandarin is a western bs forced name on china the languages they don't known Han languages as such because all han dialects are connected to it.
I m from hong kong in my late 30s, and when i could only understand like 80% of words in mandarin, i found it exhausting to spend few hours just chatting with a 7 year old girl from my parents friend in Mandarin during their visit to hong kong. I would parrot back like chatgpt, listen patiently to the extrovert kid talking nonstop, praphrase and ask questions whenever i don't understand some words, and it s like i have become a 5 year old kid who is dyslexic! Just realised introvert parents raising extrovert kids are no easy task.
Single language is extremely important, look at my country America. In fact, there should be one unified language for the whole world that would help literacy and poverty. Many ethnic groups do not have a written language they need to be able to communicate and do business in the modern world
The first thing they did was convincing non-Mandarin speakers that what they were speaking was just a dialect of "Chinese" instead of its own language. There is no "Chinese". Mandarin, Cantonese, Shanghainese, Teochew, these are different languages.
That’s the reason why in the days after the fall of the Qing dynasty, there were wars between the different provinces because they didn’t understand each other.
80% of truth and 20% of disinformation. Chinese govt never banned speaking any language, they just encourage people to learn mandarin. Never this silly idea of banning people of speaking their mother tongue been discussed. Thats the case for thousands of years, i bet most westerner can't understand this due to their own problems in their own history.
Language as a unifying factor? Yes & no. Revolutions in Russia, France, the US were all triggered by unjust rulers, bread & butter issues, citizens speaking common language can still rise up against the govt. or even against each other
You didn't mention the political aspect of the CCP's horror and paranoia about regionalism and regional identity as a threat to their hegemonic control of the empire - I mean nation. Since the 1950s the CCP has portrayed anyone who wants to maintain their regional language, culture, and history as counter-revolutionary and unpatriotic. I believe the s0-called efforts to maintain regional languages is just a weak attempt at window dressing while their aim is - as it has always been - to impose a bland and mindless CCP approved lingustic and cultural whitewash over the whole of China. The CCP is committing cultural genocide. Vandals!!
Spanish is one still larger Latin in South America, Central America, Europe and the USA. Today's English is like universal language and Mandarin is just beginning still difficult for people to write.
Every country on nation should have the one common language, just like a US everybody coming they have learn the English, plus their native language bilingual sent them with China. They gotta have a one unified language which everybody can understand again the government let them to develop their own traditional local cultural, both them works. I think that’s a perfect answer. Nothing wrong with that.
Singular unifying identity has been used by China since Qin Dynasty What mainland China did in the 21st century is that if you wanna make good money, gotta speak proper Mandarin first
It because it was from 1 split to 300, that why it reunited from 300 to 1 common language, and still manage to preserve others language that already there.
I see no problem with most people having proficiency in a national lingua franca, as long as they still can speak their own language. Is there a problem in Africa when people speak Swahili when conversing with people who don’t speak their own tribal language? In order to really know whether this trying to make all Chinese people speak Mandarin is destroying smaller languages, we need data on the amount of native speakers of mandarin.
Making one dialect or language as official within that state, eventually that language will dominate pushing others culturally and influentially to insignificant marginal, or even worse becomes abondaned completely.
To clarify, most of the punishment and repression for speaking non-Mandarin dialects referred to in this video were occurring in China and Taiwan in the 1970's and earlier. Since the 80s and 90s, both governments have invested in reviving the minority languages of China. The point of this video is not intended to be so much political, but to emphasize that as the percentage of proficient Mandarin speakers grows, the percentage of proficient minority language speakers naturally shrinks in the newer generations.
That is far from the truth. In fact, the punishment or repression for speaking non-Mandarin languages happened in different eras in Taiwan and in Mainland China. There is an overlapping period on both sides in 1980s and 1990s. But generally speaking, this policy began in mainland China much later than it did in Taiwan. 1990s were the heyday of the discrimination policies on Mainland China. The government there only reluctantly changed some too harsh policies after 2010s.
That’s hardly punishment, at least they didn’t set residential schools that stole children away from parents to eliminate native languages and culture.
首先这个视频混淆了一个问题，就是汉语普通话和汉语方言，中国的主体民族是汉族，中国汉族有12.9亿人，汉族说的都是汉语（各地方言）。汉语和西方语言的最大区别是它的文字，汉语是表意文字，虽然是读音不一样（即使像广东话、闽南话这种发音几乎像另外一种语言），但是书写下来的汉字都认识。另外一个部分是少数民族语言，中国对少数民族的语言保护并不差，少数民族地区的学校都是双语教学（本民族的语言和汉语）。
@@MarkMiller304 Annihilation of a culture starts from the repression of their language first.
@@paulyeou5687 yeah, that’s what residential schools did. There isn’t anything close to that in China.
I live in France, almost the French minorities cannot speak their original language, breton, corse, alsacien, savoyard.... But French media accuse China to destroy their minorities culture, not accuse themselves.
Like the U.S , Australia, Canada are taking about genocide when they are founded from the genocide of the natives
But CHINA did a lot of things to encourage them speak the minority language in past 70 years, discouraging minority languga happpened in the last 3 years maybe, but the minority language is still allowed to be taught in the frequency of several classes per week. It is much less than previous time. But it still exists.
@@骑着熊猫去打酱油
Fake news and disinformation.
Xi isn't discouraging usage of minority languages !
This content creator is secretly spreading anti-Chinese messages .
Still not good in the case of either. Still Breton is making a resurgence. Let's hope that other languages do as well.
@@骑着熊猫去打酱油
Fake news and disinformation.
Xi isn't discouraging the usage of minority languages in public !
UK has been doing the same in making sure people of Scotland, Wales, Ireland and Cornwall speak English. BBC is broadcasting using Queen's English throughout the British Isles. Even today i experience difficulties when listening to Scots and some northern counties such as Newcastle and Midlands.
People don't realize that there are many different types of English accents in England. Interesting when you think how small the country is. I was born and raised there so I can't understand all of them.
"The same" is what? Tell exactly. Putting people into concentration camps? Forcing people to live with English speakers in the same apartments?
@@Novgorod_Republic Racial oppression and extermination are things that Britain and the United States have truly done. There is no credible evidence to prove that China has done it, but there is ample evidence to prove that China has not done it, and that China provides more benefits and privileges to their ethnic minorities
@@Novgorod_Republic
Funny fake news and disinformation.
That's already debunked !
Those faux "exiled" Uyghurs can read and write Uyghur script because they're taught in state-run schools .
@@Novgorod_Republic Punishing kids for speaking Welsh in school. Making Irish people feel inferior for speaking Irish. This is called cultural genocide and this is what happened not so long ago. The result. Today, only 20% of people in Wales speak Welsh fluently, and in Ireland it's about 3%, mostly in the Gaeltacht. People in China are allowed to speak and learn their own languages, becoming bilingual. The only exception is the non-Mandarin Sinitic languages which people learn outside of school, at home, etc.
Hell will freeze over if the Irish or Welsh are convinced to stop any of their education in English. But it's not ok for ethnic minorities in China to learn Mandarin and thus have more opportunities in life?
I have travelled in Xinjiang quite a few years ago and I see people everywhere speaking their own Uyghur, kazakh or Tajik language, esp the older folks. So it isn't true that children of minority ethnicities in China aren't allowed to speak their own language, prob just not being taught as a language in mainstream schools. Mandarin Chinese and English class are taught in their national schools, pretty much like how English and our respective mother tongue (Chinese, Malay or Tamil) is taught in our schools in Singapore, just not the various Chinese dialects here. So I guess for their own spoken dialect or language (be it Cantonese, Hokkien, Uyghur, Mongolian, etc) it's up to parents to speak with them on a daily basis or send them to language schools on a weekend that teach the written form as well because if they don't, they will lose it. For example, the average Chinese Singaporean hardly speaks any dialect now, Mandarin Chinese is quite atrocious just basic because they mostly converse in English at home which isn't even their native language. Well at least for me I still can carry a decent conversation in Cantonese and Hokkien (with my grandparents), Mandarin and English at almost equal level of proficiency, some basic Malay, and a rusty language ability in French which I've picked up as a 3rd lang while still in school. But this is exactly the last point I want to make. Eg. My French has become very rusty because there isn't a conducive speaking environment in SG here for me to practise speaking at least on a daily basis. So having that speaking environment is important to keep the dialect/language alive. Dialects among young Chinese Singaporean are almost non existent now.
I think what he means is another non-mandarin languages are not encouraged to be spoken in school in mainland China today, even during break time. That is what friend's son/daughter told me about 6 years back. Some local languages are holding out better than others, like Cantonese. However, barely any young kids today can speak proper Shanghainese.
edit: yes I agree it is up to the parents to ONLY speak their local language at home. That is the only way to preserve their language. Koreans living in Canaada for example, I have yet to meet one who can't speak and read Korean, because that is what they speak at home.
*@mage9825* Maybe not encouraged, but certainly NOT PUNISHED as most (non- Chinese) viewers of this video seem to think.
@@ChinaSongsCollection Certainly there is no punishment by law. I heard teachers would remind you or scold you for it.
@@mage9825 不会上海话很正常了，毕竟1978年上海人才1100万（78年改革开放以后，人口可以自由流动了），现在上海有2500万人，这增加的1400万大多数是来自全国各地的新上海人。
What the Chinese government should implement to their educational system is all students must pick up one minority language just as the minority has to learn Han Chinese. Provided Han Chinese dialects don't count as a minority language. This is being fair to minorities.
The video was interesting until it was politicized. China is still multiethnic and multilingual but the official language is Mandarin, even Uighurs, Mongols and Tibetans still have their own writings which can be seen on Chinese bank notes. There is nothing Wong about having a common language, it is essential for governance and collective understanding and cohesion. Why westerners always point fingers at others when they are the worst culture destroyers. The same collective west who brutally imposed their values somehow feels entitled to lecture others about language, how arrogant is that. Westerners are the minority, yet thinks it is the world.
cause the 10% world population WESTERNERS, think they are SUPERIOR to the world, thus they THINK THEY ARE THE WORLD.
Well said.
Hear hear!
Agreed. In addition, not being taught Mandarin would also severely limit the freedoms and futures of the minorities as they would be limited to living in their respective regions, as well as keep them disconnected from the rest of the country. That same problem would also exist if you live in the Western world and don't know English.
@@zuriyel5368 It all depends on the details. I know some people from China who disagree with this.
China is doing what all the western countries are doing by teaching the children of their in their national languages. Everybody in Csnada, Australia, New Zealand, US and Great Britain have to learn and speak in English including all immigrants without exception.
And those AUKUS countries used to punish kids, BIG TIME, for speaking in indigineous languages (like Welsh, Irish, aboriginal Australian languages or native American languages).
@@pbworld7858 Indeed. Fortunatedly the key words here are *used to*.
@@georgeinjapan6583 The damage is already done. Even the majority of the Celtic people do not speak their own languages anymore. I don't need to ask you about the Okinanwan and Ainu languages, especially the latter.
@@pbworld7858 I still stand for the preservation of all languages. We need to be positive and not make it a competition. Never give up.
Modern Indonesia has already done this such thing since almost a hundred years ago
Old Indonesia was Racist. Chinese name must be in Indonesian. Same for Thailand racist as well.
I am not aware about Thailand being racist , it's human nature after all. Let's move on healthy debate is good in end of the day it gives clarity. @@Utube1024
The Jawanese language is becoming endangered due negligence and excessive use of Bahasa Indonesia.
not hundred ...but 30 years ago
@@Utube1024This is due to the spreading of communism by PRC. In 50s, 60s PRC use Chinese as the language to spread communism among ethnic Chinese in South east Asia. This resulted in anti Chinese policies to annihilate Chinese culture and identity and
encourage nationalism.
So the Chinese lost their culture and identity as a result.
Singapore adopted the same policy in the 80s with the "Speak Mandarin" campaign. Dialects are discouraged in schools and media. Now we do a lot of business with China.
"Dialects are discouraged in schools and media." ...
But NOBODY STOPPED YOU from speaking Chinese Dialects at home or among your friends.
😊
@@joyceching6487 And you think that discouraging languages in schools, media or administration is not killing them ?
Your biggest trade partner is and will always be the US. Keep on speaking English, less Singlish.
@@joyceching6487 niamah la
@@gasun1274
Google says Singapore's top trading partner is China.
In South east Asia the Chinese speak more dialects like Hakka and Cantonese, but also mandarin…in China every ethnic also speak their language… but they also speak mandarin… I don’t see there is a problem, do you?
👍👍👍!
Agreed.
As you simplify the matter that much, of course you can’t see a problem.
Young generation can barely speaks Hakka and Cantonese nowadays, the amount of speakers of those languages are dropping
20% of Chinese people doesn't speak Mandarin fluently, which is good, no need for it
I live in the USA and can see on everyday interactions where English is not spoken as much. Mama and papa stores speaks Spanish and asian languages. I speak only Spanish at home, English at work, French as a hobby and Japanese will travel after the World Cup.
Speak Taiwanese? There’s no such thing as “Taiwanese”. Unless it’s an indigenous language, all the dialects that Han people speak in Taiwan are also spoken in mainland.
You never heard Taiwanese before?
There is no such language. English doesn't all of a sudden become something else just because it's spoken outside of England. The "Taiwanese" languages are the aboriginal languages of indigenous people of the island. HAN people in Taiwan do NOT speak Taiwanese. They speak Mandarin and 閩南語 Southern Min, BOTH of which come from Mainland China and are STILL spoken in mainland. @@meganlee8235
It's Taiwanese Hokkien to be precise
@@danielzhang1916since you know hokkien, you must know that is another way to say fujian, so it's minnanyu, south fujian language
@@danielzhang1916 Hokkien is spoken in Mainland China also. It’s not all of a sudden Taiwanese because it’s spoken on the island. That’s like trying to say Taiwanese mandarin. So some words and colloquial sayings differ. It’s not all of a sudden the language becomes “Taiwanese”
Most countries have their National Language or a common language for their citizens to communicate:--
France is French.
Italy is Italian.
Spain is Spanish.
Indonesia is Bahasa Indonesia.
Malaysia is Bahasa Melayu.
Sweden is Swedish.
Philippines is the Tagalog.
UK is English...etc,
But the dialectical and ethnic languages are still in use.
The difference is scale. China is about as big and was as diverse as the entire continent of Europe. It would be as if Europe were made to speak only one language.
You are wrong.
1: So let’s start with France they are discouraging use of Local languages and from last many decades they are considering many languages as dialects of French language which have affected those languages.
2: In Italy their are many different languages , but few centuries ago they decided to consider all languages as dialects of a single language and Today’s standard Italian’s base is Tuscan language specifically florentine dialect Like Standard Chinese base in Northern Mandarin language.
3: Condition of Spain is much better , they made the central language of Iberian peninsula the standard language of Iberian Empire which at that time included Portugal as well , Portugal was just a province in Iberia just like Catalonia , Galicia etc. The central province was Castile whose language is Castilian or which today is known as Spanish, other languages are Galician, Argonese, Catalan, Basque, Leonese.
4: Indonesia’s case is Different but not Better or even good at all , The National language which is Bahasa Indonesia isn’t even native to Indonesia and the base of Bahasa Indonesia is Melayu or simply Malaysian Language and the Standard Dialect of Malaysia’s Malaysian and Bahasa Indonesia is same , Even though Indonesia is having more than 1,000 Native Languages only less then 1 dozen language are Famous other then Melayu/Bahasa Indonesia. But Atleast they don’t do that Language considering or Language mixing thing like Italy & China are doing.
5: There is nothing wrong in Malaysia as it started as a Nation state which then got parts of Borneo island as well.As we know Malaysia is divided into two parts one which is in Mainland Asia and another is on Borneo Island, the Melayu People(57.3%) to which the Melayu language actually belong are natives of Malaysian part which is in Mainland Asia but many Melayu people have migrated to Borneo Island as well , But Borneo Island part of Malaysia have many different tribal and other ethnic languages. Apart from them there are 22.9% Chinese of different ethnic backgrounds and 6.6% Indians Mainly Ethnic Tamils and only few other ethnicities.
6:
People still speak their mother tongue in China (both Chinese dialects, and ethnic languages), even though they learn Mandarin in school. The languages of many major ethnic minorities are taught in schools too, which makes them multilingual. Some endangered languages like Manchu are seeing a revival. Now with so many languages present within China's borders, it is practical and advantageous to select one language as the offical language. This is no different from langue D'oil in France, Florentine Italian in Italy, and Standard High German in Germany.
I was born in Chongqing, we speak SiChuan dialect in daily life which is one of Mandarin(官话，not means Putonghua). when I was a child in 1990s and in 2000s. in my county, almost all teachers are natives, they speak Mandarin(Putonghua) badly. so we spoke our dialect in school, the educational bereau always command that all teachers must speak Putonghua in class, but it would not last a long time, only a few days. because it is very hard to speak Putonghua fluently. I study in school (primary school and high school)for 12 years, we only speak our dialect except reciting in class. moreover, I can't speak Putonghua fluently and eaxctly.
Thanks.fir bringing up that 官話 and 普通話 are not the same thing. Guanhua is Mandarin, while Putonghua is the standard dialect of Mandarin.
I'm southeast Asian Chinese. The one of the most touching and inspiring moments regarding Mandarin was the anecdotal story of when Sun Yat Sun went to Malaysia (British Malaya back then) and he told the local communities, learn the new "language" -- learn Mandarin. And that way everyone will be understand each other. If someone from Beijing came, you'd be able to understand them, as would someone from say Guangdong. And if you went to Shanghai they'd be able to understand you too.
Of course, being able to preserve the various tongues of the land would also be highly valuable. I don't blame any authority for this, but myself. It's ultimately me that failed to learn the dialect of either of my parents. That said, fortunately my grandparents learned enough Mandarin that I can still converse with them.
In Singapore, sadly, because of the use of English, many Singaporean Chinese do not learn to speak Mandarin nor their own dialects well. They, like me, end up using English most of the time for everyday conversation, school and work. My brain isn't very good at languages, so let's say I only have the ability to keep to two. In that case, I'd pick both English and Mandarin, rather than my grandparent's native dialect. English because, well, I can watch videos like this. Mandarin because it allows me to communicate to anyone in China, from the various regions, beyond my grandparental hometown (where Mandarin is also comprehended today).
Why can't Singaporeans speak English properly? Instead it sounds like spoken English filled with Chinese dialect intonations.
Singapore may be for economic reasons? Similar to Japan's reasons for "breaking away from Asia and entering Europe", the last reason is that they are not proficient in English and can not speak Chinese well, giving people the feeling that everything is half-baked. It doesn't matter if the West always leads the world in the future. Fear of the rise of China..
Sad that you couldnt learn your native language but a dialect from beijing that is created by mongols
I agree, language is fundamentally about communication so communication should be prioritized above preserving cultural relics. I'm learning Chinese because it's the second most spoken language after English and if I ever learn a third I would pick Spanish because it's the third most spoken language
Can you substantiate the this Sun Yat-sen quote you speak of? There is lots of misinformation surrounding Sun. Also, what Sun Yat-sen said about the benefits of learning a common tongue does not outweigh the negatives that have resulted from modern day policy that he isn't alive to see the effects of.
"convinced" is such a nice word
Soppy Frog is a secret pro-DPP supporter .
No punishment to students in public schools in both PRC and ROC .
No banning of minorites speaking their languages in public places .
This channel went from decomposition timelapses of various foods and organic matter, to historical analyses of different countrys' geographies lol
Also propagandize the content with anti-Chinese agenda.
In Fujian, people are still speaking in Min dialects, although the trend dies down for younger generation. However, in my trip to Yunnan, I see ethnic minorities of almost all age ranges speaking their languages and dialects, with even the tourism promoting such aspects!
Same in Chaoshan region of Guangdong, but a lot of younger kids speak teochew incorrectly/not proficiently. Yunnan is less culturally integrated to han culture bc of the prevalence of tai, hmong, etc ethnic groups so ig thats why
Ironic,China promotes minority language families of Tibetan,Tai-kradai etc but stomps the Han dialects of Wu,Min
@@prasanth2601 southern Chinese are much more willing to give up our native tongue, unfortunately. Good and bad comes with it
I only say thanks for the exposure to this information
I learned that mandarin was congressionally voted as the Chinese national language (Dr Sun yatsen’s vote). And People’s Republic of China continued the practice.
To this date, Republic of China (Taiwan) still applies this constitutionally passed mandarin as her public education language.
And as well, our English was congressionally voted as our national language. Throughout history, there were times when we forcefully (killing) pushed English on many ethnicities.
That makes a lot of sense, since aren't most Taiwanese from the Fujian province? If it was voted I. The Sun Yatsen era, I see why they didn't just stick to their original Fujian dialect
your whole opinion is irrelevant since the US has no national language and you believe fake news without checking
根本没有这回事情。普通话是延续了前朝的官话，并不是投票决定的。每个省都说自己差一票成了普通话，包括广东话，四川话，陕西话，实际上根本没有这回事情
That's incorrect. The United States does not have an official language at the federal level, but the most commonly used language is English which is the _de facto_ national language, not de jure. In addition, 32 U.S. states out of 50 and all five U.S. territories have declared English as an official language. Outside of Puerto Rico, English is the primary language used for legislation, regulations, executive orders, treaties, federal court rulings, and all other official pronouncements. Nonetheless, laws require documents such as ballots to be printed in multiple languages when there are large numbers of non-English speakers in an area.
North America was like that, but only a hand full of Native Americans can speak their own language. It took 5000 years for the Chinese and they still have most of their dialects.
There were 150 million natives back then before Europeans arrived. Now there are only 20k natives
When the Native American kids went to THE English schools they had to speak English only. If they got caught by speaking their native languages they would be fed with soap water.
Much more than that,vast majority of mexico has mixed native ancestry @defjam137
I went to a powwow and none of the native american language speakers i heard spoke without a strong american accent. Very sad for an identity when physical differences are very apparent.
@@SlimJim3082 150 million? Where did you get that number from?
There were Shanghainese dialect radio stations in Shanghai in when I was a kid - 1970s, 1980s
There still is
I’m from HK and I have trouble speaking mandarin. I still learn it at school but I am much more confident when I speak Cantonese.
That's your personal attitude, nothing to do with the language. I am confident in 5 languages, 2 of which I was required to learn in school, 2 of which I learnt growing up in my community, and one I pick up out of interest.
@@jivvyjack7723 yeah, you’re right I don’t really speak that much mandarin and I barely go to mainland china. So it makes sense I suck at mandarin. I’m also going to Canada this year so English is in my priority. But mandarin would still be useful when going to chinatown.
@@jivvyjack7723 信心来自于用这些语言与其母语者辩论时，语料库是否够用。
@@WAW90 没错。所以，要多说, 多用。没有其他的方法。
@@jivvyjack7723没必要强迫，说什么语言是他人的自由。
your Mandarin is good 😄,I don't know deeply ,but I guess India must envy China for whole Chinese using one language Mandarin .
I have been given to understand that one of the good things the Brits did was to enable all Indians to communicate with each other in English. Wonder what their percentage of population who could understand English is though.
@@YoonLeeKok of course English is important .in China it's another problem ,too many people are learning English everyday ,but when people from different places meet together they don't speak English ,they speak Mandarin .it's kind of frustrated ,"we all learn English ,but when we speak it ?" this is the problem of many or most of Chinese learners in China ...
@@malorybertie8046 True. I also think that this is a problem that many countries have in general like France and Germany for example. Even when they air American movies in the theatres, they're dubbed into the native language of the country. You have to go out of your way to view those movies in English.
American shows also gets dubbed on French channels.
Watching this video can help you understand a fact: the education level in the West has dropped to an astonishing level compared to the 1980s and 1990s. The most typical example is that the vast majority of Westerners only have one voice and one idea in their minds. Well, the great American media.
Going backwards in time of percentage growth is confusing. 30% mandarin (Chinese call it common language) speakers in the 50s is misleading because literacy rate was about 20% then. Basically Chinese speakers increased with literacy.
there are people in the countryside that only learned how to speak but not how to read nor write
To be honest I thought the number would be a bit higher. Mandarin was dominant language since Jin dynasty. I expected the influence of Mandarin to be much much higher in 1900s
@@prasanth2601 China education system was disrupted during the colonial occupation. In 1949, the literacy rate was less than 20%. Education was prioritised after liberation. Today it is 97%. Most Chinese still speak their own dialect in addition to speaking and writing mandarin.
@@QuietJugung
I'm talking bout literacy rate. The SPOKEN Mandarin's already penetrated much of central plains of china before the start of the 20th century itself.
Im glad you differentiated between china vs han, china is a nationality not an ethnicity. Many still dont get that.
Soppy Frog confuses his followers with inaccuracies and incorrectness .
He said the Uyghurs don't want to be "Han-Chinese" ... which is false !
Only the traitors doesn't want to be a Chinese national .
For all ethnic groups are Chinese !
you can also say:
''How the US empire convinced 3 billion people to speak English'' ??
not allowed on facist youtube, only china bashing allowed, plus cia pays good $money.
Haha
@@kaleeysmith8801 You know you are full of crap, as anyone is free to make such a video and put it on TH-cam, even if it is full of half-truths and lies, like your comment.
UK was the super power that dominated the world in the 19th centaury. usa is the super power that is dominating the world from 1941 to now..but declining. Both anglos super power domination of the world past 200years had promoted english to be the dominant language of communication and business around the world between different countries.
Showing Marilyn Monroe to the world...
做得很好，很有意思。Great work and very interesting!
Linguistic & Ethnic Diversity has to be preserved in China.
Since "Mandarin" or "官話" meant the official's language, it meant different languages at different times. The "Mandarin" today is definitely not the language assigned with that name by Jesuits missionaries in the 17th century. That can be seen clearly in Matteo Ricci, Ferdinand Verbiest and Johann Adam Schall von Bell’s written records. Today's "Mandarin" is at most 250 years old. When Robert Morrison wrote the first English-Chinese dictionary in 1815, most people in Beijing, who lived in Beijing's Outer City, were still speaking the Mandarin language based on Nankinese, and was much closer to Middle Chinese. Based on that, the current form of Mandarin probably didn't gain its status until the 1850s, and grew out of the Manchu-Old Pekingese Pidgin created by Manchus living in Beijing's Inner City adopting the Sinitic language, poorly, as they spoke less and less Manchurian.
The precursor of Mandarin may be from 250 years back, but in its form, with its corpus of vocabulary, Mandarin has been standardized in the 1920's.
Slippery slope you are on there. They did not speak ‘poorly’, the were quickly assimilated within less than two centuries. Albeit culturally still practice much Manchu customs as in the military and court social structure, the language evolved with adoption of way of speech in a two way street within Beijing and the greater provincial region.
of course, having a unified language is always a plus for a nation. The sole purpose of language is to communicate and having different dialects does nothing but create carriers for communication, which is a shame since the language is the same but people can't understand each other. what's the use of diversity in language if there is no use for it except to create barriers to communication, huh?
You've missed the point here sorry, language is the vehicle of culture, it carries the history, beliefs, myths, religion and the worldview of the people who speak it. Each ethnic group/language has its own history and all cultures and their languages by definition are just as interesting, valid and important as any other. Language is about communication, which isn't the same as talking at each other.
All Chinese have a common written language. Just look at SEA, a Cantonese can communicate with a Hainanese, Hakka etc. Really not an issue. And surprisingly, a Chinese can write and a Japanese will understand. And a hundred over years ago, the written Vietnamese is the same until the French romanized it.
How did the British “convince ” half the world to speak English?😂
British Common wealth + English is easy to learn for most people.
@@HeinRichKocHPretoria Britain has no ships, colonial rule, so many colonies who can speak English? Each colony had its own language, destroyed by violence.
GUNS n rosesconvince
@@WAW90 Most of those colonies still have its own language, but for communication in between they need a bridge. English is that. Also America being a super power and the Internet is also a reason.
@@sooraj1104 所以他们学习英语是自愿的还是殖民历史的原因？
I am Hui Ethnic (muslim) grew up North West China and lived in the US for 10 years now back in China, i know that we speak our own dialect and we speak manderin. My question is that do indigenous people in Australia, New Zealand, US (maybe) still speak their own languages, AND, are they taught in their own languages in schools??? Funny that the reporter says in description that "Today, China has over 300 spoken dialects..." so does this mean that China perserved them well as in comparison to the West where there are no indigenous culture left cos the white supremacists wipped them all out??
Good point.
China never oppressed the minority ethnic speakers at least not in my life time living there. I met people in Tibet, Sichuan, Hunan, Cantoon, Jiangxi, I don’t understand what they talking in their native tongue, but most people can switch to PuTongHua when needed. For a country so huge, diversity is really not a bonus. It is the foundation. So with one officially recognized language is key to China to stay unified.
It is the the Chinese character United all Chinese
I mean we think speak our dialects and languages. Its just more convient as official language of communication. And tbf, ccp are only following the ways of so many rulers. A country where every citizens can't lingustically understand each other is a disaster. And we're still better than a certain country whom's international airports only use english. The train and buses make announcements in regional language, mandarin, and english.
This can be seem in the fact our tv dramas are 99% of the time dubbed/voiceover by a voice actor who got trained in standard mandarin pronunciation and voice acting. Bc if some actors were to voice themselves, they might be heavily accented or mispronounced. International cdrama viewers are always complaining about dubbing and culturally shocked by it, but part of the reason is the dialect. Chinese VAs are systematically trained usually and dont have that issue
This is why I say Qin ShiHuang is a rlly underrated ruler. How many ancient civilizations are still standing today from the cradle of civilization eras? China is still the original Han Chinese bc he united the cultures into one. Han Chinese is actually made up of many different cultures and languages into one culture. This make it so all these different states sees each other as one culture/race and even if the country fall apart, the states will share the goal of reunification. People who judge are naive about how important language is for the stability of a country
Bro, today Qin Shi Huang is the most decorated ruler of Chinese history. Because literally the united Chinese history was mostly weaved by him.
@@kianakaslana1210 a villainized ruler
In the Philippines here.. Theres a sizable Chinese minority, here for many centuries if not near a millennia, but they're all Fujianese from Amoy and speak a unqiue archaic dialect of Minnan called Lannang-oe (9 tones). There are a ton of newcomer Mainland Chinese here now, but these newcomers ALL have to learn Lannang-oe to speak with the local Chinese population, and of course Taglish (Tagalog+English) to conmunicate overall. it seems they pick up Taglish way quicker than Lannang-oe.
Filipino-Chinese (known as Tsinoy) people outright reject the use of Mandarin overall, and associate it as a way to surpressing the varieties of different Han dialects/languages done by the CCP, to whom they are ideologically opposed. remember most tsinoys originate from "sangley" fujianese traders and rural farming clans, as opposed to the high class Mandarin speakers from the north. The same seems to be the case just south of us in Indonesia and there's an ongoing war happening in Malaysia and Singapore with the waning use of Fujianese among the ethnic Chinese people of thise countries.
Its a huge shame aroudn the loss fo Aboriginal Austronesian languages in Taiwan, noting Filipino people originated among those people and their languages are the closest living relatives to Philippine languages.
These days most young Filipino Chinese couldn’t speak even their parents Hokkien dialects because the Philippines government reduced the number of subjects taught in Chinese. These days only Mandarin language is taught in Chinese schools as a second language. Also, with the influence of popular media, speaking Chinese is not considered cool by the young Chinese Filipinos compared to English and Filipino. It is doubtful even 10 % of young Chinese Filipinos can speak Hokkien fluently, much less Mandarin. Anyway, this is not surprising because knowing how to speak Chinese is not practical anymore in Philippines especially when they go to university where English is the language of instruction. Any language not spoken every day will eventually be forgotten.
Mandarin as CCP language is actually bias propaganda since Taiwanese also use Mandarin as official language. In fact, Mandarin as official language of China is predating CCP.
Op is just being political but that's understandable since from Philippines. Chinese languages where banned in Indonesia until recently. They have recently picked up mandarin again. There is also no 'war' happening in Singapore and Malaysia as touted by Op. Mandarin is an official language in Singapore and is taught in Chinese schools in Malaysia. Other ethnic languages are still spoken but there was never really formal education. Hope this helps.
Every country has an official language despite having millions of languages in a country- it’s not strange to me - it’s just common language communicate among its different citizens 😆
Nothing wrong, and everything right, when ONE nation of people has a Common Language.
Also nothing wrong with some citizens being Multi-Lingual!
BOTH Common Language & Multi-Lingual citizens do exist in most countries on the planet.
All that is needed is the emphasis on properly educating the CHILDREN citizens.
In 7:18.. Cantonese pronounce 吃 as “Hek”. “Sik” is the Cantonese pronunciation of 食
Just like USA or any country, China has to have a common dialect to communicate with one another. China does not force them but encourage them to learn Mandarin together with their own dialect or language.
In the future I hope different languages within China get taught and covered by the media more, I’m learning Manchurian so far I could only say a few words but I don’t want these languages to die off
"Convince" is not the correct word, I believe.
It is the most refined and poetic language. It can use the least amount of words to express vast extent of information and knowledge
I respect people speaking their own languages, even if someone invents their own "family language". However, language is used to communicate. Having at least one common language in a country is crucial.
I dont have an issue with PRC promoting mandarin. I have an issue with them suppressing are freedom to speak our own Chinese dialects whether it be in school public etc.
lol and you think you’re not brainwashed 😂
Please visit Singapore and see the natural evolution of languages for the many races and dialects. It is just a phenomenal of human language being merged for effective communication every where.
Similarly, Indonesia is a multi lingual country (some 700 dialects) . Thanks to its founder fathers which stiipulated bahasa Indonesia as national language, everyone across the country can communicate with each other easily
No such issue it is an effective national language since Qin dinasty more than 2,000 years ago, no problem it a old tradition
Who says 'Mandarin' was used during the Qin dynasty? Mandarin is a very late language; a hybrid language created when nomads tried to speak the Han languages. No one is sure if 'Mandarin' is even an authentic Han dialect.
@@brianliew5901 what ever you call it it is one official language since Qin dinasty till today , after many evolution on Chinese characters..
I have heard a story about how Cantonese lost to Mandarin to become the National Language by 1 vote because Dr Sun abstained. Being the president, his vote would have carried the day if he had voted for Cantonese (him being from the South, the people who told me the story expected him to vote for Cantonese). Not sure of the authenticity of this story though.
It is unlikely that Mandarin was the national language since the Qin Dynasty. More likely, it was some for of a Yue-Min language. For example, some famous poetry from the Tang Dynasty doesn't rhyme when read in Mandarin, but does rhyme when read in Hakka.
@@brianliew5901 The Mandarin you know was established in the 1920's, the version of the script (simplified) is from 1956.
That's your 2000 years.
Mandarin is like the Esperanto of the Chinese languages. The pronunciation is based on Northern Chinese (the poorest in tones, sounds and endings).
Because it's been codified in Shanghai it has quite an input of Wu languages words (the characters, pronounced with the northern reading if you see how it works).
It has also an input from Japanese of the Meiji era, for neologisms and scientific words for wich the Japanese coined new character combinations.
@@qrsx66 Mandarin is two thousand years old? You must be from Mars.😂😂😂😂
Mandarin is recognized by the world for year. Therefore, it should be a national language. .
Other dialect should maintain to enrich the culture.
THE CHINESE USE THE COMMON WRITING SYSTEM （CHINESE CHARACTERS ）TO UNIFY CHINA FOR SO MANY YEARS.
I can't even understand the people from the next village, barely two hundred yards away from mine. They speak Wai Tou Wah, and I speak Hakka.
You can have one common language and also your local language, living together, like other countries do. ( like spain )
Like Blackrock s CEO said- forced behviour
6:08 NOT Ch'ing--Ch'in. The Ch'in Shih Huang Ti founded the brief Ch'in Dynasty--the Ch'ing Dynasty was two thousand years later.
It’s 1.4 billion and not 1.5 !
One official language unifies a country.
That’s why immigrants to the US must learn English so well in the US.
that's the slogan of a communist.
Well said.
The history behind the officialization efforts of ROC described here is incorrect. The Beiyang government's 1913 Commission on the Unification of Pronounciation did NOT choose the northern / mandarin dialect as the standard, but rather a comittee of 80 members from Jiangsu (18), Zhejiang (9), Zhili (8), Hunan (4), Fujian (4), Guangdong (4) and a few from the rest literally voted on how each word should be pronounced. This resulted in a mixture that's primarily mandarin, but with significant influence from the Yangtze delta area dialects, given the large number of Jiangsu and Zhejiang members.
However, the effort was a complete failure -- the mixture of pronounciations was in good intention to represent the linguistic diversity of the country, but resulted in a set of 6500 words that only a handful of people know how to pronounce correctly. There is no practical way to retrain thousands of teachers the new pronounciation standard, especially not with an ongoing civil war and WWI in the background. In the end, a more logical decision was made -- Beijing, being the long time Qing capital, had the largest number of qualified teachers, and therefore the easiest way to establish a unified spoken language was simply to send all these teachers to teach across the country, which was eventually done in 1923.
Progress was slow as civil war continued, and practically halted with the Japanese invasion. This led to the renewed post-WWII efforts of the two respective governments.
National language is mother tongue,❤ever great china 🇨🇳 ever great 🌎👍
My parents and relatives born in 1950's, 1960's and my generation born in 1980's all can speak mandarin and also local dialect. My dad can speak Mandarin and other 2 dialect and also Cantonese. I never heard that non-Mandarin speaking was punished in the past. It there was, that policy must be very unsuccesful because nearly everyone around me back at home speaks local dialect. But I can see new generation can't speak local dialect anymore, which is up to their parents speaking Mandarin to them rather than local dialect. They want their kids speak better Mandarin without accent. But I think it doesn't work because if parents themselves have very strong accent, how can to teach your children speak standard Mandarin?
2:00 and that hindi isn't actually a complete language funny thing is in everyday conversation in hindi we speak 30 35% English words. hindi in school books and hindi which we speaks is lot different in daily conversation we use so many English words. even after independence we didn't form a proper language
Dont include other hindi speakers in your"we" . I use English words when i need it. The worst hindi speakers are the delhi people even though fundamentally hindi is a language of delhi.
What a concept. It's like saying how England convinced (more like forced) 1 billion people to speak Englishv😂
In any gargantuan nation of very diverse races, cultures and language, the first step to consolidating and unifying the nation must be towards having one common language and culture. After achieving a level of unity, harmony and sense of who they are then the nation can focus on reviving the minorities' cultures and languages to enrich the nation and solidify further her sense of oneness as a nation!!!
Sloppy headline! It’s only in the written text that all Chinese/Mandarin is unified. The Chinese in China and its diaspora speak hundreds of different dialects.
The title refers to the country China not including its diaspora.
Stop this nonsense of "everything's okay, they can speak whatever at home." Because each time that happens to a language, it's only a matter of time before it goes extinct.
China is kiiling hundreds of Chinese and non-Chinese language in China until there's only one left.
We've seen that many times.
But most of them can speak and understand Mandarin, that's the main purpose.
4:05 the sudden Italian accent made milk come out of my nose.
and I wasn't even drinking any milk.
@@jw1731 apologies for the wasted milk
1.4billion
I'm a Chinese in south china in suzhou,we dialect here is more close to Japanese than mandarin,we still use wa at the end of the sentence and use hai to represent yes,and our grammar is the same as the Japanese.We don't like to use the Manchurian influenced language for communication. But sadly more and more people don't use such pure Chinese language any more since the government banned it at schools 😢
China CCP propaganda says all Chinese in China speak Mandarin (guo yue); the facts are much less chinese in china can speak & write in Mandarin (guo yue). China has over 52 dialects, when I traveled in China most Chinese over 55 years old speak their own dialects; cantonese, tujia, hmong, zhuang, hui etc.
I like that painting :)
It is not mandarin as such, it is a han chinese languages, they had selected between cantonese or central dialects. By votes, only four votes differences, they selected as a common language for china. Mandarin is often refers to the Manchurians of north east of chinese people speak, but it is not manchu chinese langugages. Mandarin is a western bs forced name on china the languages they don't known Han languages as such because all han dialects are connected to it.
the script is very hard to learn though
I m from hong kong in my late 30s, and when i could only understand like 80% of words in mandarin, i found it exhausting to spend few hours just chatting with a 7 year old girl from my parents friend in Mandarin during their visit to hong kong.
I would parrot back like chatgpt, listen patiently to the extrovert kid talking nonstop, praphrase and ask questions whenever i don't understand some words, and it s like i have become a 5 year old kid who is dyslexic! Just realised introvert parents raising extrovert kids are no easy task.
Single language is extremely important, look at my country America. In fact, there should be one unified language for the whole world that would help literacy and poverty. Many ethnic groups do not have a written language they need to be able to communicate and do business in the modern world
The first thing they did was convincing non-Mandarin speakers that what they were speaking was just a dialect of "Chinese" instead of its own language. There is no "Chinese". Mandarin, Cantonese, Shanghainese, Teochew, these are different languages.
That’s the reason why in the days after the fall of the Qing dynasty, there were wars between the different provinces because they didn’t understand each other.
You should talk about why English is spoken all over the world!
You lying of Mongolia, Xinjiang and Tibet.
you are barking
Barking you ass@@sengchuanng2004
Barking you ass@@sengchuanng2004
let go with me to proved to be a fact@@sengchuanng2004
80% of truth and 20% of disinformation.
Chinese govt never banned speaking any language, they just encourage people to learn mandarin. Never this silly idea of banning people of speaking their mother tongue been discussed.
Thats the case for thousands of years, i bet most westerner can't understand this due to their own problems in their own history.
I support China a lot
It's a personal choice to learn whatever languages you want to. And it should always be a choice.
Ask the same question for the United States.
China appreciates diversity. But unity is above all.
It was always like this. But they all can communicate through writing.
Language as a unifying factor? Yes & no. Revolutions in Russia, France, the US were all triggered by unjust rulers, bread & butter issues, citizens speaking common language can still rise up against the govt. or even against each other
Is Mandarin a Chinese language or a Manchurian one?
bastard language
Go to my hometown in west China, drive out of the town 30 minutes far away from different directions, people speak various languages 😂 even now.
Ii is a misnomer, there is only one language, one written version; roughly 2000 counties speak somewhat different dialects.
You didn't mention the political aspect of the CCP's horror and paranoia about regionalism and regional identity as a threat to their hegemonic control of the empire - I mean nation. Since the 1950s the CCP has portrayed anyone who wants to maintain their regional language, culture, and history as counter-revolutionary and unpatriotic. I believe the s0-called efforts to maintain regional languages is just a weak attempt at window dressing while their aim is - as it has always been - to impose a bland and mindless CCP approved lingustic and cultural whitewash over the whole of China. The CCP is committing cultural genocide. Vandals!!
"convinced". What a lovely way of saying. I'd need to remember this.
Yes they also "convinced" lots of people to get forced abortion (soon forced insemination) or go freely to a labour camp or organ removal center.
The channel owner is a white supremacist in disguise
Spanish is one still larger Latin in South America, Central America, Europe and the USA.
Today's English is like universal language and Mandarin is just beginning still difficult for people to write.
Every country on nation should have the one common language, just like a US everybody coming they have learn the English, plus their native language bilingual sent them with China. They gotta have a one unified language which everybody can understand again the government let them to develop their own traditional local cultural, both them works. I think that’s a perfect answer. Nothing wrong with that.
Being bilingual is the only optimal solution. A bit of more effort in studying is largely compensated
Singular unifying identity has been used by China since Qin Dynasty
What mainland China did in the 21st century is that if you wanna make good money, gotta speak proper Mandarin first
Asia chinese have their own dialects, so we speak to all different dialects people with mandarin.😊
4:06 HILARIOUS 😂
Make a video about why America, Australia, Canada and South Africa speaks english.
It because it was from 1 split to 300, that why it reunited from 300 to 1 common language, and still manage to preserve others language that already there.
I see no problem with most people having proficiency in a national lingua franca, as long as they still can speak their own language. Is there a problem in Africa when people speak Swahili when conversing with people who don’t speak their own tribal language? In order to really know whether this trying to make all Chinese people speak Mandarin is destroying smaller languages, we need data on the amount of native speakers of mandarin.
Making one dialect or language as official within that state, eventually that language will dominate pushing others culturally and influentially to insignificant marginal, or even worse becomes abondaned completely.
Westerners love when China does this because it confirms that when they do the same thing, it's the 'right' and 'white' thing to do.