Hokkiens Also Originally Not Chinese???

[Aurelio]

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[Aurelio]

P.S. to my message from 04-03-03:

If you see some nonsense characters there it's because I used the wrong encoding (trying to get unicode to show accents on vowels). It should have read:

My 1998 Xiamen Fangyan Cidian has 10 entries with [be?], the most commonly used ones being probably simply [be?] in the sense of Mandarin kuai-yao, jiangyao to express the near future and Hokkien [be?-si] for Mandarin ruguo or yaoshi - if. Douglas' "Dictionary of the Vernacular or Spoken Language of Amoy" has it, too (that's more than a hundred years old), same for Bodman's "Amoy Hokkien" from the 50s (Spoken Language Services) and "Elementary Hokkien" (Intellectual Publishing, Singapore, recent).

Most people seem to use the "yao4" character (Mandarin) to write it, but the Xiamen Fangyan Cidian explains:
"要 [be'] is a spoken character, the book-character is unknown (bĕn-ziweixiang 本字未祥). Popularily (min2jian 民间), it is often written "bŭ 卜" (the character that looks like the right hand side of wai as in waiguoren)".

Regards,
Aurelio

[Kai Cheng]

Well, I disagree, I think that Mandarins are the ones who are not traditionally Chinese. There is no idea of a China ever because it's all separate tribes just like there is no real German or no real French or no real American or no real Japanese. The most powerful class dominates and creates a new identity. America is obviously a crazy mix of Irish Americans, Italian Americans, African Americans. British identity is created by a mix of English, Scot, Welsh etc. And even the English themselves were formally a tribe Anglo-Saxon and English did not exist. France is made up of Bretagne, Picardie etc and the Francs from the ële de France dominated everyone else and expanded their borders.

Same for Chinese. If the Cantonese or Hokkien/Fujianese had been more powerful in voting after the revolution, Mandarin would not be the GUO2 YU3 but it would have been Cantonese. Chinese is not even a real word, in the Chinese language, Chinese cannot be translated. Should it be ZHONG1 GUO2 REN2 (People of the Middle Kingdom), the invention of HUA2 REN2 (The Majestic / Civilized People) in Singapore, or TANG2 REN2 (TNG NANG in Hokkien)? It's just as if Britain split up and people started identifying themselves more as Welsh than British. Of course, governments would never let them happen, always trying to homogenize whether formulating the HOMINUS SOVIETICUS in former USSR or the beautiful Aryan race in Germany or the homogenized Japanese race or the Singaporean, it's all BRAINWASHING. We are all unique and beautiful individuals the way we are and despite our differences, we are all the same human beings with a body and soul. Racial characteristics account for less than 10 per cent of differences between one human and another. That being said, I believe Mandarin Chinese is not the purest Chinese..since I am a Cantonese and Hokkien mongrel, I believe the real Chinese are closer to the South. Even though the seat of the capital has shifted throughout history. Once in Chengdu etc.

This says nothing about cultural purity or Chinese-ness etc. It's all a concept. History proves the most powerful will win and will always dominate and impose their culture. The unification of China has been so ancient that Chinese culture has been imposed on Japan, Korea for centuries. It's breakdown has only been a very recent 19th century phenomenon.

What I am curious about is Mongolian blood. They said that if your last nail on your feet is pointy, if means you are not pure Han is that true? Is Han Chinese a myth? Is there a particular racial characteristic of Han Chinese or is it a myth like the Aryan race?

[jiang fu jian, tjio hok]

we, hokkien lang, are not chinese, but , teng-lang.

[Ken]

I agree with Kai Cheng that 'Han-ism' was a concept used by rulers for assimilation and centralised control. It's quite true that southern dialects like Hokkien & cantonese are the original forms of ancient Chinese languages. Due to the invasion by northern tribes of the Khitans, Nuchens, Mongols and the Manchurians (actually the descendants of Nuchens), many fled to the south and brought these languages (Southern dialects). Mandarin evolved as a form of Northern language after much influence from the invaders.

I have a question for tjio hok kian: How do you define 'teng lang' and 'Chinese'? I suppose 'teng lang' is 'tng lang' or 'Tang Ren'. But wasn't Tang dynasty the golden age of China?

[ppk]

to ken and kai cheng,

being 'chinese' or 'han' in old china doesnt really mean racial composition. its more of a culture thing. if one cannot comprehen that he'll find it difficult or even controversal when looking at chinese history. any race that accepted and practiced the cultural and lifestyle of the central plains can be considered chinese. thats why in chinese history kublai khan and his descendants are considered a chinese ruler, thou of a different race. the mongols were overthrown not simply bcos they are from a different race, they discriminated the chinese culture half the time. the manchus, however accepted most of it and u see the majority han chinese siding them during the qing dynasty.

for mandarin being the official language of china, sorry to tell u, kai cheng, that the population of ppl speaking cantonese and other dialects put together is less 30% of china's population. the majority of them speaks mandarin or close-to-mandarin variations, therefore it was made official. and that didnt happen after the revolution. as early as song dynasty, there is something we called 'guan hua' or 'official tongue' that existed. and its no way cantonese. thats the predecessor of modern mandarin.

[Na Ren]

I agree that Chinese refers to cultural and not necessarily racial factors. But even if it was based off of racial factors, I would still say that Hokkiens and the other southern Chinese are still in fact Chinese. The area has been directly controlled by the various Chinese dynasties for a long time, so who is to say that intermarriage between the northerners and southerners has not taken place? Based on Y-chromosome testings, it seems that all the people of the Chinese mainland are descended from two waves of human migration that left from what is now in Kazakhstan, one settling in the north and one in the south. With no barriers dividing the two populations, but mountains and desert isolating the two from others, the mutations characteristic of the south appear in the north and vice versa. And culturally, we are Chinese, how many of the Hokkiens and Teochews in this site actually practise Dai or Austronesian customs? If there are any, let me know.

[A-hiong]

I'm an ABC living in the States. Regarding to what I believe...the definition of "Chinese" is simply this... China in Chinese means(中國) "Middle Kingdom." This is where Westerner kind of misunderstand us. Being Chinese is not a racial or ethnic thing, its a national identity. We are all Chinese regardless if we are Hokkien, Cantonese, Hakka, Mongolian, etc... My best explanation is, if the EU was one whole nation and had been that way for along time then it would somewhat be like a China today. We are kind of more like a collective of different peoples that have similiarities yet are unique. Using a the word Chinese can be such an adaptive word I think. With all the sub-groups we want to be distinctive, unique from other groups yet we also want everyone in the world to know we are one people in one nation that's been this way for thousands of years. We are definitely a unique people, I don't think you can find anywhere in the world where so many different groups of people have been living under one nation for such a long time. And over time we've become one, yet have been able to distinctively separate ourselves from another group from the country. In Europe they have so many small countries that they've separated because of ethnic identity. In China we have our different groups, some in these groups we have a population more than any other European nation out there. Only difference between us is that we have no borders to cross. Everyone in China is Chinese! I don't think in the history of the world there has been a country like China where so many different peoples become one people. We definitely are a special people!

I don't think its as bad as some people think. I know in Taiwan there is a good base for Hokkienese, on tv a lot of the most popular tv shows speak Taiwanese all the time. There's a good budding music interest in Taiwanese. A lot of TV shows in Taiwanese(sorry, I'm just used to using Taiwanese than Minan or Hokkienese because I believe we speak a little differently than the Minan or Hokkienese in the Mainland). There is even news broadcasted in Taiwanese. Taiwanese is definitely alive in the countryside. In the cities its not used as much because Taipei and Kaoshiung are actually mixed. Most people who fled China after the civil war live in the cities and so Mandarin has become dominant there. I have friends from the Philipines that speak only Hokkienese! Not Mandarin! So its not too bad, but not as good as the Cantonese. It could be better. I hear in Taiwan some political groups want to make it a requirement in school that all students learn Taiwanese.

Bilingualism is very important. I think Westerners don't want to give us credit because for many generations China has been a bilingual nation. Europeans boast how many of them can speak different languages, just because we've become one nation doesn't mean that we haven't created the same feat... Everything is referred as Chinese, most westerners from my perspective(my whole life actually) refer everything as "Chinese," most people don't know the distinction on how very unique and different we are. To tell you the truth we are the first nation to become a real melting pot. We've blended so many people into on concotion. Everywhere in China people can call themselves Chinese and they can call themselves something else as well. Where else in the world can you go about from one nation talk in a common language and hear a different language on the streets? Yet can also read and write the same to communicate? There really aren't that many nations that have done this for thousands of years.

[Aurelio]

Dear A-Hiong,

your post opens up a lot of different interesting perspectives. It's good to hear that you think that everybody living in China is Chinese, regardless of their Han- or non-Han ancestry (kind of "We are all Americans"). Where does that leave the 100s of millions of Han-ren, though, that are living outside of China, e.g. in the United States? What about Taiwan itself (in the status quo)? Looks like there is a second meaning of "being Chinese" which is cultural, irrespective of where you were born (I'd agree with you and previous posters that this is way more important than whatever your genes might say).

Every once in a while one of those nonsensical "XYZ fangyan group is not truly Chinese" topics will come up (I do not mean this particular one where the question was asked in a very reasonable way). I guess that the motivation is usually a political one, trying to find linguistic/ cultural/ biologic reasons why a certain part of SE Asia should not be part of the PRC (see some posts in the Cantonese group on this server about this). For similar political reasons every once in a while there is somebody claiming that some cultural feat of Chinese history was indeed brought about by the now "suppressed" neighbours (Korea, Vietnam, what have you). Luckily, we've been spared most of this on this thread (not enough people knowing Hokkien ....?)

There's no doubt that Hokkien has a significant portion of words which do not have modern Mandarin counterparts. In a different post I have estimated them to be around 10 % of the language's vocabulary
(http://www.chinalanguage.com/forum/read ... #reply_642)
and a significant part of these might not have Han-counterparts in Middle/ Ancient/ Archaic Chinese. Some of them are very common, as the words for "field", "woman", "cow", "meat" which makes it unlikely (though not impossible) that these are borrowed from another language. From all we know from other "case histories" of language contact, there will have been a pre-Han substrate of which some is left even after 1000s of years of mixing with Han-speakers.

Does that make the Hokkien people non-Chinese (in the cultural sense)? According to virtually all posters on this thread - obviously not! (as a waiguoren I don't have much of a say in this, but I'd agree).

As far as preserving Hokkien, the situation seems to be very different in Taiwan and the rest of SE Asia. Over the last 5 (?) years there has been a growing support for Hokkien in Taiwan leading to a whole flood of publications and internet websites. That's what I currently put my hope in for the preservation (and growth) of the language. If you go to Malaysia/ Singapore, however, you will hardly find any written Material on Hokkien, though. So, I guess the fate of Hokkien still needs to be determined. I'm sure the internet helps.

I'd agree with you that the Chinese culture and the degree of homogeneity within China are truly impressive. As far as multilingualism is concerned I'd have some remarks, though: Are you sure that multilingualism applies all across the PRC? It's definitely common in Malaysia and the neighbouring countries where people speak 6 languages easily, and I wouldn't be surprised if it holds true on the southern coast of China, but what happens if you go north (i.e. into the majority's language territory - how many people will know, say, Cantonese?). It's a common feature that minority populations speak many languages but not the other way round. Finally: Give the poor ang-mo some more credit for their linguae francae: Latin was used for almost 1900 years in most of Europe and is still (in a modified way) in Portugal, Spain, France, Italy, Romania and parts of Switzerland. Granted, people don't use classical Latin as a univeral means of communications anymore, but it looks like English is taking over that position now.

Best regards,
Aurelio

[A-hiong]

I guess if you put it in a certain aspect that Hokkiens in certain areas are losing their ancestry tongue but I think it may come out different sometime later. Taiwan is thriving and I think may one day be in the same position as the Hong Kong media. Today I hear on the radio and tv a lot Taiwanese phrases and conversation. To younger people its becoming a "cool" thing to know Taiwanese. Of course one of the lures to young people to learn Taiwanese is to learn curse words. Mandarin doesn't have very good curse words. Mandarin is always considered like a "formal" language or a polite language to most Taiwanese. So I guess that helps in a way. Also so many younger artists out there are using Taiwanese in their music nowadays. Even Hong Kong popstars are trying to cash it in by singing in Taiwanese as well.

I didn't mean to not give credit to European languages. Its just it confuses me that they call Spanish and Italian two languages. They have sooooo much in common, yet when you compare Taiwanese and Mandarin, its called a dialect. Its not, Dialects would sound much closer alike than how Taiwanese and Mandarin are. It would be more like comparing German and Spanish when comparing with Taiwanese. About the northerners. To some degree it can be considered bilingualism. Some northern provinces speak differently, which I would consider a "dialect." For instance Shandongnese sounds like Mandarin but I wouldn't know what a Shandongnese are talking about. I can pickout a some phrases and words but I don't understand what they are saying. Its like me and Cantonese, I don't know what they are saying but without knowing Cantonese, I can probably understand a good 40% -60% of the lanuage. My point is that if you consider the "dialect" and common or standard Mandarin as two different tongues then I guess you could considered it Bilingualism.

However if you don't consider "dialects" as bilingualism then I understand. Northerners would be less likely to be bilingual but then again, many of the intellectuals in China know English. I wouldn't say that many Chinese are bilingual as Malaysians (6 languages, OMG!) but then again, with people going to the cities to work these days, many Chinese have to adapt to their surroundings. They eventually learn a whole new language to get around. I know a lady who knows Shanghainese (her birth place), Cantonese, Taiwanese, and Mandarin...she learnt Cantonese and Taiwanese because she moved around in her job. Overall for a country its size, I think it has a pretty high percentage for bilingualism. I would really like to see statistically how many Americans are bilingual. Small countries I notice are more likely have bilingual citizens because how small it is and to do business its required that they learn another way to communicate with others. As China grows I think bilingualism will grow. I think one disadvantage of having English as your native tongue is that you can easily feel that you don't need to learn another language since most other people are learning English. Some pros and cons there.

10% of Taiwanese are actually from Mandarin words. Also, what perplexes me as well is the grammatics is different. Its not the same as Mandarin. Neither are the "sayings" or phrases. Some of them don't make any sense in literal translation but mean something only in Taiwanese.

Taiwanese itself has its own dialects. My dad is from Keelung and mom is from Chiayi. They both speak a little differently. Some words are pronounce differently. Sometimes I think its two separate words but its not. And I hear people in the Kaoshiung and Tainan area of Taiwan really speak different from Taipei people. I don't know much about Hokkien from other places because the only people I speak Hokkienese are with people from Taiwan and Philippines (but they originally came from Taiwan too). So I wouldn't know how different their Hokkien would be from my parents. I heard that in Fujian province alone they say that there are over 100 dialects in that province! Crazy huh? But I think it would be fairly intelligently mutual. Although, I've heard people speak in Chaozhounese and I had trouble keeping up with what exactly they were saying. Maybe its just their accent????