Among every language existing within China, Shanghainese sounds most beautiful and comfiest to my ears! Could you do compliment or romantic phrases, please? I wanna learn for my bf :D
Agreed. I'm from Spain and the country would be much less of a cultural wonder if it killed off minority languages like Basque, Catalán or Galician. Protecting linguistic diversity is always a plus.
So true! My coach is from Spain and he always says how the country's defined by its diverse cultures. A language shows the history and progress of a nation, and that's by no means insignificant.
There's no clear distinction between dialects and languages. The people who use mutual intelligibility have a point, but there's several cases such as Arabic and Scandinavian languages which break the rules, so it's not definitive either. For example, Arabic isn't considered several languages even though some dialects aren't mutually intelligible; it is considered a single language because dialects close to one another are intelligible. Swedish, Norwegian, and Danish are usually understandable by all 3 groups, especially dialects in closer geographic proximity. Despite mutual intelligibility, they are considered 3 different languages. Personally, I go by the wikipedia rule, and I think Shanghainese is a dialect of Wu Chinese, which is also spoken in Zhejiang and southern Jiangsu. I speak Mandarin with a Northeastern accent, and there are those who speak Northeastern dialect such that you can't understand them only knowing Standard Mandarin. So is Northeast dialect a separate language? I don't think so. It's just like a stronger version of Beijing dialect with a few differences, and northerners can all understand each other, with a bit of familiarity. Clearly, Wu is much more different, so it deserves its own category, but is Shanghainese really that much different from Ningbo or Hangzhou dialect? I don't know; I would have to do more research to figure it out. The problem is most overseas people only think of Mandarin and Cantonese, so they never learn about all the varieties or discuss which categories should be used. In Chinese linguistics, they're all considered dialects. In my opinion, the groupings/categories/branches are distinct languages, but the specific variety of a locality is not and only a dialect.
Among every language existing within China, Shanghainese sounds most beautiful and comfiest to my ears!
Could you do compliment or romantic phrases, please? I wanna learn for my bf :D
Great suggestion! Stay tuned!
Agreed. I'm from Spain and the country would be much less of a cultural wonder if it killed off minority languages like Basque, Catalán or Galician. Protecting linguistic diversity is always a plus.
So true! My coach is from Spain and he always says how the country's defined by its diverse cultures. A language shows the history and progress of a nation, and that's by no means insignificant.
There's no clear distinction between dialects and languages. The people who use mutual intelligibility have a point, but there's several cases such as Arabic and Scandinavian languages which break the rules, so it's not definitive either. For example, Arabic isn't considered several languages even though some dialects aren't mutually intelligible; it is considered a single language because dialects close to one another are intelligible. Swedish, Norwegian, and Danish are usually understandable by all 3 groups, especially dialects in closer geographic proximity. Despite mutual intelligibility, they are considered 3 different languages.
Personally, I go by the wikipedia rule, and I think Shanghainese is a dialect of Wu Chinese, which is also spoken in Zhejiang and southern Jiangsu. I speak Mandarin with a Northeastern accent, and there are those who speak Northeastern dialect such that you can't understand them only knowing Standard Mandarin. So is Northeast dialect a separate language? I don't think so. It's just like a stronger version of Beijing dialect with a few differences, and northerners can all understand each other, with a bit of familiarity. Clearly, Wu is much more different, so it deserves its own category, but is Shanghainese really that much different from Ningbo or Hangzhou dialect? I don't know; I would have to do more research to figure it out. The problem is most overseas people only think of Mandarin and Cantonese, so they never learn about all the varieties or discuss which categories should be used. In Chinese linguistics, they're all considered dialects. In my opinion, the groupings/categories/branches are distinct languages, but the specific variety of a locality is not and only a dialect.
You look nerdy but has a healthy body, keep it up
Thanks......
Nice username