Some more videoclips

[AndrewAndrew]

I don't believe the "official" concept fully, but personally I also don't think they are totally wrong. Aren't there some tests done showing different mitochondria for Northern & Southern Han Chinese but both sharing similar Y-chromosome? I am not an expert and I forget where I read these... anyway from physical features we also can see that generally speaking Southern Han are somewhere in between Northern Han and Tai/Austroasian/Austronesian, and Northern Han also somewhere in between Southern Han and Mongols/Altaic, right?

Yes, my own Hakka family is definitely southern Chinese / southeast Asian in appearance, but by Y-DNA we belong to the group N1a, which is concentrated in Northern China, Mongolia and Siberia.

[Ah-bin]

I don't believe the "official" concept fully, but personally I also don't think they are totally wrong. Aren't there some tests done showing different mitochondria for Northern & Southern Han Chinese but both sharing similar Y-chromosome? I am not an expert and I forget where I read these... anyway from physical features we also can see that generally speaking Southern Han are somewhere in between Northern Han and Tai/Austroasian/Austronesian, and Northern Han also somewhere in between Southern Han and Mongols/Altaic, right?

Yes, the northern Chinese share more of their DNA with the people to their north and east who speak Altaic, Mongolian and Korean languages, and the southern Chinese share more with the peoples of Southeast Asia. I also forget the names of the scientists who did this research. They were PRC scientist though, and it was mentioned in an article by the former Professor of Chinese at Oxford, whose name I also forget.

The concept of "Han" is very new. I don't know when it started, but the texts I read from T'ang times only use the name to mean "a person of the Han Empire", after the fall of the Han, there were no more Han people. As far as I know no-one "identified as Han" until the recent past when they began to have people to compare themselves with on a daily basis. Those who could write usually just descibe themselves as "people" 人 of a particular locality, and anyone who is not a real "person" speaks a non-Sinitic language, has social customs or independent/semi independent leadership (in a southern context)is a "Ban" 蠻 "I" 夷 or one of the various names used for such people.

As for Han blood, I don't believe such a thing exists. Because status as "People" in ancien China was not based on people's genetic ancestry, but on their language use, social customs and political status. These are things that can be acquired by people of any genetic background. So the status of "people" that later became "Han" was actually open to any people that wished to adopt it, including those "Turks" who founded the T'ang and Wei. The turning point was the Mongols, I think after that time the division between Han and barbarian became more defined. I still don't know what they called themselves though. I think it was mainly just "people" in contrast to "barbarians". Frank Dikotter's "Discourse of Race in Modern China" is a reallt interesting book about how the idea of a Chinese race was constructed.

If I redefine "Han blood" as "a genetic ancestry shared with people who lived in the tiong-goan 中原" I suppose most people in China proper must have some of this somewhere, just like most of the old NZ Pakeha (=Orang Puteh) families have a Maori ancestor and most of the Maori families have a British ancestor somewhere back along the line.

[niuc]

Yes, my own Hakka family is definitely southern Chinese / southeast Asian in appearance, but by Y-DNA we belong to the group N1a, which is concentrated in Northern China, Mongolia and Siberia.

Andrew, you did Y-DNA test? Cool!

The concept of "Han" is very new. I don't know when it started, but the texts I read from T'ang times only use the name to mean "a person of the Han Empire", after the fall of the Han, there were no more Han people. As far as I know no-one "identified as Han" until the recent past when they began to have people to compare themselves with on a daily basis.

Yes, in fact it feels unnatural in my variant to call ourselves 漢人 Han3-lang5. We always call ourselves 唐人 Tng5-lang5. Anyway, regardless of the term used, I think the concept of "Han" Chinese had been there, may be as you said, they might simply called themselves 人.　

Terms used today can be confusing if compared to what historically used, and this is not only about Chinese. Greeks (rightly, after Eastern Roman Empire) used to refer to themselves as Romans and also referred to as "Rum" (Romans) by Ottoman Turks, and the Orthodox Church also known as Roman Church. What we know as Roman Catholic Church today was called Latin Church (by Greeks) at that time. So the terms can be confusing.

If I redefine "Han blood" as "a genetic ancestry shared with people who lived in the tiong-goan 中原" I suppose most people in China proper must have some of this somewhere, just like most of the old NZ Pakeha (=Orang Puteh) families have a Maori ancestor and most of the Maori families have a British ancestor somewhere back along the line.

That's what I think also, but not sure about the degree.

[AndrewAndrew]

Yes, my own Hakka family is definitely southern Chinese / southeast Asian in appearance, but by Y-DNA we belong to the group N1a, which is concentrated in Northern China, Mongolia and Siberia.

Andrew, you did Y-DNA test? Cool!

Yes, I did it via the National Geographic's Genographic project and then later through ftDNA.

[amhoanna]

In TW, it's Hànjîn, and it also feels unnatural. Whereas "Tn̂glâng" just isn't understood. I'm not sure what term was used before KMT indoctrination, but nowadays Tiongkoklâng seems to be more popular. Then there's "Hoâjîn". Despite the lack of a "natural" word for Tn̂glâng, the concept is definitely there. I think when the Japanese arrived, the term "Ji̍tpún hoan" was thrown around. But there was no such word used on the New Chinese post-1945, except as a direct insult. The use of the word hoanná is proof of the "Han concept"...

I'm also under the impression that Hokkiens have never called the Vietnamese hoanná. So maybe the Hoklo psyche considers VNese to be Han, in an unofficial way.

[amhoanna]

Amhoanna, one of my Teochew friends said that he could understand the 陸豐 video.

Thanks, Niuc! So maybe 海陸豐 Hoklo is really close to Teochew.

Is your friend a Teochew from China, or has he spent time there? If not, then it's pretty impressive that he understood the video. Does he speak any Hokkien? Were your other Teochew friends able to understand some of the video?

[niuc]

Hi Amhoanna

Is your friend a Teochew from China, or has he spent time there? If not, then it's pretty impressive that he understood the video. Does he speak any Hokkien? Were your other Teochew friends able to understand some of the video?

He is from Singapore and speaks Teochew, Hokkien and Cantonese [beside Mandarin & English] fluently. The other one from Indonesia has not replied my email. Not many of my friends can understand or speak Teochew well.

[amhoanna]

Thanks, Niuc. Khoey hou sailei 佢好犀利!

'Another veteran getai artiste Zhuang Qingyu, 42, believes that "Hokkien just has the unique ability to bind people together".'

Going back to this nugget of discussion.

I'm reading a how-to book that talks about how to use one's voice to better effect, and I just got to the part that discusses how nasality has an effect of drawing the audience closer, or narrowing the gap btw speaker and listener, etc.

It happens that in Holo, nasality is not optional, it's phonemic.

I just started teaching some classes recently. I teach these classes using a mix of English and Mandarin. I speak both of these languages w/ minimal nasality most of the time. Maybe it's not surprising that I've had a hard time getting the students to warm to me. But today I used the sentence "I bô simkoann" with that nice nasal -oann. I was surprised at the response in the classroom. It got warmer all of a sudden and suddenly there was rapport.

[niuc]

I'm reading a how-to book that talks about how to use one's voice to better effect, and I just got to the part that discusses how nasality has an effect of drawing the audience closer, or narrowing the gap btw speaker and listener, etc.
... But today I used the sentence "I bô simkoann" with that nice nasal -oann. I was surprised at the response in the classroom. It got warmer all of a sudden and suddenly there was rapport.

Amhoanna, thank you for this very interesting info & experience! I always love nasal vowels/diphtongs in Hokkien being quite unique among Chinese. Do all dialects of Min & Wu have nasal vowels (not -n/-m/-ng)? From what I know, Cantonese, Hakka & Standard Mandarin don't have it, right?

Bagan people say 他 as tha*1 (thann) in Mandarin due to Hokkien influence. Even as I have known that in Mandarin 'a' there is not nasal, I still often (subconsciously) say it that way. And I always find French language sounds nice, unique and special due to its nasal vowels.

[amhoanna]

Do all dialects of Min & Wu have nasal vowels (not -n/-m/-ng)? From what I know, Cantonese, Hakka & Standard Mandarin don't have it, right?

To the best of my knowledge, yes. But it seems that for some speakers of Mandarin, esp girls and young women, some final n's have vanished, leaving a nasalized vowel...

A lot of Holo speakers in Taiwan, esp women, speak nasalized Mandarin. I think maybe their Holo ears "heard" the nasalization in Mandarin when they were learning the language, then mimicked it using full-blown Holo-style nasalization. Kind of like with the retroflexes in Indian English.