Sunday, February 13, 2005, 08:02 GMT
To nishishe,
You seem to be professional. :-)
By saying that Han Yu used to be spoken exclusively by the Hans in ancient times, I didn't mean that the language was formed in the Han Dynasty. Here Han refers to one of the 56 nationalities of the Chinese nation.
Now I realize that the so-called Mandarin you guys talk about is just the Common Spoken Chinese I mentioned above.
It's Okay. Then I agree wth you that Cantonese is not a dialect of Mandarin but of Han Yu, and that Han Yu doesn't refer to just Mandarin.
As for how dialects differ, what you write above is of course more proper. But by writing about "difference in slang", I tried to include difference in grammar and core vocabularies, although it doesn't seem clear and proper.
The fact that the dialects differ greatly does surprise many us in spite of our awareness of the difference.
At university, how dialects differ usually becomes a dicussion topic when students from different provinces get together. And many students take great interest in imitating other dialcts.
You seem to be professional. :-)
By saying that Han Yu used to be spoken exclusively by the Hans in ancient times, I didn't mean that the language was formed in the Han Dynasty. Here Han refers to one of the 56 nationalities of the Chinese nation.
Now I realize that the so-called Mandarin you guys talk about is just the Common Spoken Chinese I mentioned above.
It's Okay. Then I agree wth you that Cantonese is not a dialect of Mandarin but of Han Yu, and that Han Yu doesn't refer to just Mandarin.
As for how dialects differ, what you write above is of course more proper. But by writing about "difference in slang", I tried to include difference in grammar and core vocabularies, although it doesn't seem clear and proper.
The fact that the dialects differ greatly does surprise many us in spite of our awareness of the difference.
At university, how dialects differ usually becomes a dicussion topic when students from different provinces get together. And many students take great interest in imitating other dialcts.