An Interesting interview in Hokkien

[amhoanna]

Sim, thanks for the rundown. Fascinating stuff. You should write a book, or an e-book.

The Baba cultural complex was also found up in Phuket and down on Java, in and around Jakarta esp., where the Betawi dialect of Malay shows spectacular traces of Hokkien. Semarang too, I think.

Ransek, in the TWese context, 海口腔 refers to the dialects spoken along the west shore from former Taitiong 台中 County down to poss. the corner of former Tailam 台南 County. These dialects are based on a mix of Coanciu varieties, but the most famous one -- the Lokkang 鹿港 dialect -- is based on Coanciu City.

In the Coanciu context, 海口腔 refers to a dialect spoken in 泉州港, much of Hui'oann 惠安, and poss. elsewhere, I'm not sure where. The first time I heard it, I thought to myself: Wow, this is Manila Hokkien! I find it easier to understand b/c the vowels are generally in line with Amoy, and most of the vocab. overlaps w/ Taiwan. I also have a little exposure to Manila Hokkien.

TWese Hoklo nowadays is more and more Ciangciu-biased. This might be b/c Coanciu-speaking districts have born the brunt of language erosion in the Japanese and Tionghoa 中華 eras (so too near the Straits of Malacca w/ the rise of Manducation). Older TWese in many parts of the island -- the north, esp. -- would've grown up around a mix of dialects and would prob. have an advantage in understanding "PRC Hokkien".

Ngu zi Dewe ñing. I hv the same ethnic background as U: 3/4 Wo (Wu) and 1/4 Mandophone. I can speak Mand., but I can't really speak any Wo language. There are deep ties btw Wo, Hokkien / Teochew, and the languages in btw like Hokciu 福州. Hopefully U can shed some light on these ties for us. I'm impressed that U were able to learn Hoklo just by watching TV. News and political speeches ("High Hoklo" -- my term) would be more accessible b/c the grammar and vocabulary are generally Pan-Chinese. Casual conversations ("Low Hoklo) would be tough b/c much of the vocab. and even grammar is at odds with, say, Cantonese or Wo.

[Mark Yong]

ransek, 儂好 nong hO!

In my previous work-life, I spent a bit of time in-and-out of Shanghai, and have always been very fascinated with the 吳 Wu dialect - to the extent that I even purchased 湯志祥’s books/CD's on 上海閒話 Zanhe Eiwo.



Note that I said that “吳 Wu dialect”, and not 上海話 Shanghai dialect. As I understand it, up until the 1950’s or so, the 蘇州 Suzhou dialect (which I gather is your dialect?) was treated with greater esteem compared with the 上海話 Shanghai dialect, which is very much a mixture of several 吳 Wu dialects, including that of 寧波 Ningbo. I also understand that over time, the 上海話 Shanghai dialect has gradually lost a number of tonal distinctions that are still preserved in the 蘇州 Suzhou dialect.

What is the current situation with the recent attempts at revival of the 上海話 Shanghai dialect in Shanghai today? And are there more people who are able to read Chinese texts using the 吳 Wu standard phonology today?

[ransek]

Hi SimL，

Thanks a lot for your detailed explanation! I agree with amhoanna that you should definitely write a book!
And I'm very glad that I joined such a forum. Never expected so much knowledge and great interaction like this!

Now I see Penang Hokkien has a really long history! So do Baba Hokkien and Sinkheh Hokkien somehow "converge" into today's Penang Hokkien?

I got the impression that Baba spoke Malay natively because one of my college roommates is of Malacca Baba background. He told me his dad only spoke Malay and English but sent him to a Chinese school. Also he claimed that Hokkien was rarely spoken in Malacca. I thought it was the case until I met another Hokkien guy (apparently of Sin-khek background) from Malacca who speaks fluent Hokkien and told me the opposite (that Hokkien was widely spoken there). His Hokkien is quite different from Taiwanese or Singapore Hokkien though.

I guess part of the reasons that Malacca Baba speaks Malay natively might be that they lived longer in MSia and intermarried more with Malays. Is my guess somewhat correct?

It was great to know so much about Penang Baba. I will probably visit Penang around Christmas and hope that I will have some chance to explore the culture of Penang. I will probably ask you for some suggestions later.

Again thanks for your warm-hearted welcome and the great stuff you wrote!

Hi Ransek,

Thank you for sharing about your background.

[ransek]

Hi amhoanna,

Thanks very much for the info about Coanciu Hokkien varieties in TW!

From your screen name i thought you were truly a "hoanna" (Taiwanese Aborigines) .
It is sad to see that so many Wu people have given up our mother tongue, both in and out of the Wu region. May I ask which part of Wu you family are from?

And did you grow up speaking Mandarin at home? If so, how did you pick up Taiwanese and become so good at it?

There is a theory saying that Wu and Hokkien belong to the same branch which was the first to split off the big Chinese language family tree. But Wu situated so closely to Mandarin-speaking regions that Wu had a very recent "layer" of northern linguistic influence which is mainly reflected in "literary readings" 文讀音. For example, palatalization of 見組字 occurred in the Wu literary readings, which is rare in Southern Chinese languages. On the other hand, Wu has influenced Mandarin greatly (mainly in vocabulary).

In fact, the similarities between Wu and Hokkien are more noticeable from a very "shallow" perspective. one example is that both have voiced plosives and nasalization. Of course these might be merely coincidence. In Wu the voiced plosives correspond to the voiced initials in Middle Chinese while the ones in Hokkien correspond to nasal consonants in Middle Chinese. Nasalization, on the other hand, might be a quite recent development in both languages. But these similarities already made it much easier for Wu people to learn Hokkien.

Note that up to now I've been talking about Northern Wu. Southern Wu (the Wenzhou speech 溫州話) is a very different language of which I have little knowledge. I heard that they share more similarities with the Min languages (including Minbei, Mindong and Minnan). And a very interesting fact (some of you guys may not be aware of) is that there exist a large Hokkien community (~1.5 million people) in Southern Wu region! And I heard they can understand Taiwanese Hokkien.

I will try to write more about the relationship between Wu and Hokkien later.

[ransek]

Hi Mark,

So great to know that you are so interested in the Wu language.

Yes Suzhou Wu is my dialect and you were right about the fact that Suzhou Wu had been the prestige dialcet of Wu region. The reason is that Suzhou was the cultural (and economic) center of Wu region. The popularity of 蘇州評彈 also helped a lot, extending the influence of Suzhou Wu into even non-Wu-speaking regions like Nanjing and even further north. In fact, Suzhou Wu also developed into a literary language. There had been quite a few great literary works written (at least the dialog part) in Suzhou Wu. Also, I read that Chiang Kai-shek corresponded with one of his lovers (might be a prostitute in Shanghai) in a largely Suzhou Wu-based writing.

Shanghai Wu was very recently developed. Before the 1940s, Suzhou Wu held much prestige in the city of Shanghai. In fact, Shanghai Wu is more similar to Suzhou Wu than to its neighboring dialects including 奉賢話， 金山話，松江話, etc. And you are correct that Shanghai Wu is a mixture of Wu dialects. But it is also important to notice that it is a somehow "simplified" version of Wu, not only in tones but also in phonology, vocabulary and grammar. And although most Shanghainese people would not agree, it has become closer to Mandarin even before the "Mandarinization era" in PRC (starting from 1980~1985). Mandarin and northern Chinese culture have become popular in Shanghai in the 1930's. For example, my grandmother, who was born in 1920s and grew up in Changzhou and Shanghai, speaks Mandarin fluently and is a fan of the Peking opera.

Due to the fact that Shanghai Wu is a mixed and simplified Wu, it is easier for most Northern-Wu-speaking people to understand. In fact, speakers of Suzhou Wu can in general understand >98% of Shanghai Wu and even speak some. All we need to do is to know the mapping (or merging) of some vowels and changing some tones.

Shanghai Wu and the northern Wu language in general, is not in "healthy" condition. While most people of my generation (born in late 1980s) still speak Wu fluently, most of them are more fluent in Mandarin and the Wu dialects they speak are very much "Mandarinized" in terms of pronunciation, vocabulary and grammar. This kind of bad Wu is particularly evident in Shanghai. I held the impression that many Shanghainese in my age speak a corrupted form of Wu, adopting many Mandarin-like sounds and words directly into their Wu speech and making it sound really weird. The older generation, on the other hand, speak the proper version of Shanghai Wu which is very close to Suzhou Wu.

The younger generation (born in 1990s) have worse command of Wu and I heard that the 2000s generation generally could not converse in Wu anymore. One of the main reasons that Wu declined so fast is the mass immigration into major Wu cities (due to the economic boom of Southern-Jiangsu and Shanghai). In my hometown Suzhou, more than half of the population are of non-Wu background. Inside the city proper, the percentage can be even higher. Therefore, Wu-speaking people have literally become the minority. These so-called "new Suzhou people 新蘇州人" and their children took little effort learning Wu simply because there is no such need. I am probably a rare exception in my generation for growing up in a Mandarin-speaking family but still being able to speak Wu fluently.

There has been some efforts to revive Wu throughout the northern Wu region. In the past decades I've seen more TV programs in Wu and more people (mainly Internet users or "netizens") aware of the existence and cultural value of the Wu language. But overall I'm not so optimistic.

As for "reading Chinese texts in Wu", I have to confess that I am not able to do that. Before 1980s, education is largely done in Wu; So people who went to school then would have no problem speaking Wu in any scenario. The Mandarin-educated generations, however, have lost such ability.

ransek, 儂好 nong hO!

In my previous work-life, I spent a bit of time in-and-out of Shanghai, and have always been very fascinated with the 吳 Wu dialect - to the extent that I even purchased 湯志祥’s books/CD's on 上海閒話 Zanhe Eiwo.



Note that I said that “吳 Wu dialect”, and not 上海話 Shanghai dialect. As I understand it, up until the 1950’s or so, the 蘇州 Suzhou dialect (which I gather is your dialect?) was treated with greater esteem compared with the 上海話 Shanghai dialect, which is very much a mixture of several 吳 Wu dialects, including that of 寧波 Ningbo. I also understand that over time, the 上海話 Shanghai dialect has gradually lost a number of tonal distinctions that are still preserved in the 蘇州 Suzhou dialect.

What is the current situation with the recent attempts at revival of the 上海話 Shanghai dialect in Shanghai today? And are there more people who are able to read Chinese texts using the 吳 Wu standard phonology today?

[SimL]

Hi ransek and amhoanna,

Thanks for your kind words about the information I gave on my Baba background. Well, in a sense I know a bit about this culture because I'm interested, and (through the years) I've asked my father about his childhood and Baba identity. But on the other hand, I'm also very aware that I left that culture at 14, and never went back. That might have the advantage that I can think more clearly or objectively about it, because of the greater distance, but has the disadvantage that I know a lot less about it than someone who continued to spend his or her teenage and early adult years in Penang. And there are lots of people like THAT, still living in Penang.

In a sense this Forum is the spot where I can share my knowledge of my Baba background with people who are interested. I hope it doesn't put people off that there is too much discussion about and space devoted to Baba and Penang Hokkien. I always encourage others to post about non-Penang Hokkien (and other Sinitic languages) because nothing exists in isolation. Everything we understand, we understand better if we know about other things. So, we understand about Penang Hokkien better if we know stuff about other Hokkien varieties (and vice versa); and we understand about Hokkien better if we know stuff about other Sinitic languages (and vice versa); and we understand "Chinese" better if we know stuff about other languages as well, etc. So, while I'm not claiming that any off-topic subject is cheerfully welcomed on this Forum, I think I can safely say that off-topic stuff is always welcome, if it has some connection with the topic .

>> Now I see Penang Hokkien has a really long history! So do Baba Hokkien
>> and Sinkheh Hokkien somehow "converge" into today's Penang Hokkien?

I suppose they must have, along with the disappearance of a Baba identity. It wouldn't surprise me though if the descendents of Babas have a higher proportion of Malay words in their vocabulary than the descendents of Sin-khehs. However, I think I'm correct in believing that even the non-Baba, South Malayan varieties of Hokkien use "pun" and "tapi". [Please contradict me if I'm wrong!]

Ransek, with the two sorts of Malaccans that you met, you experienced what I was trying to say about how nothing is "black and white". From the first friend's experience, he might claim "All Malaccan Chinese speak Baba Malay" and from your second friend's experience, he might claim "Many/Most Malaccan Chinese speak Hokkien". And in a way, both are correct, if seen in the light of "most" or "all" meaning "most/all of the people I think about or I come into regular contact with". In the same way as we in the West and richer Asian nations might say "Nowadays, everybody has a warm shower every day", whereas there might be huge parts of central Asia or Latin America which doesn't have access to a warm shower every day". Or "Nowadays, everybody uses running water from a tap" or "Nowadays, every adult has gone to primary school". We make statements like these because they are the genuine reflection of our daily experience, not because we are being chauvinistic or arrogant or wilfully ignorant about the lives of other human beings. And these statements are "true", within a certain context. Similarly for your two Chinese Malaccans.

>> I guess part of the reasons that Malacca Baba speaks Malay natively
>> might be that they lived longer in MSia and intermarried more with
>> Malays. Is my guess somewhat correct?

I think so. Malacca was already a thriving port (and the centre of a minor empire) when Penang and Singapore consisted of just sparse rural coastal settlements, with lots of jungle. So, it's quite plausible that there was an expatriate Chinese community in Malacca for *much* longer, and hence that they would have "become Baba" to a great extent (even to the extent of giving up Hokkien as a native language) many generations before a similar process took place in Penang and Singapore.

In fact, one could even ask oneself if it is appropriate to use the term "Baba" to cover the "nativized Chinese" of all 3 cities (and other parts of Indonesia). Is this conceptualization and terminology just a product of "later historians and anthropologists"? Just because 3 communities undergo roughly parallel processes doesn't make them "3 times 1/3 of 'the same community' ". Say if one group of Manchu troops were sent to Southern Tibet and settled down there and preserved one form of Manchu speech, and another group of Manchu troops were sent to Northern Tibet one hundred years later and settled down there and preserved a slightly different form of Manchu speech. And, in the course of time, they adopted slightly different, and to differing degrees Southern and Northern (respectively) Tibetan customs. Then say these are the only 2 groups of Manchu descendents who continue to speak Manchu, because the "mainstream" Manchus switched to Chinese. Then, 400 years later, it is certainly true that both groups are "Manchus who have adopted some Tibetan customs, and who have preserved Manchu as their native language"; but are these two groups actually "the same ethnic group" (or even "two distinct versions of the same ethnic group")? It's very hard to say, isn't it?

That's why I said in my original long posting that issues of ethnic identity are very complex. If the "intellectuals" from both Manchu groups above started mixing with one another, and "emphasizing the commonalities", and if these ideas drift "down" into the lay population, then after another 50 years, perhaps they *do* become "the same ethnic group". If Tibet were to get split into 2 independent, mutually hostile nations, and there was no contact and positive feelings between these two Manchu descendents, then perhaps "No". So much of identity consists of what people believe or want to believe. (Which is not to say that are entitled to believe *anything*, however kooky or great a distortion of historical reality...) All very complex!

[I hasten to acknowledge that amhoanna is sensitive and aware enough to use terminology like: "The Baba cultural complex was also found up in Phuket and down on Java, in and around Jakarta esp..." (my italics). This is obviously a very different sentence from "Babas were also found up in Phuket and down on Java, in and around Jakarta esp...", and shows that he's using the term for the sake of convenience (as I did in my initial long posting), and because there are indeed a lot of commonalities, but that he too is aware of the issue I'm talking about here.]

It was fascinating to read the discussion and information exchanged between both of you and Mark regarding Wu, Mandarin, and the loss of Wu over the years etc.

BTW, I think Ah-bin reported the same thing for Hokkien in Amoy: so many people living there nowadays come from other parts of China, that Amoy is no longer really a "Hokkien-speaking city" anymore. I wonder if people realised, in the 1950's, just what serious consequences there would be to making Mandarin the "national language of China". But I suppose if one is in charge of trying to build up a war-torn, previously Japanese-invaded, terribly poor, technologically way behind country, then perhaps a bit of sadness about loss of regional identity was the very least of one's concerns. (I say this in defence of the people I normally grumble about, in order to try to be fair!)

But, whatever the pros and cons, there's no doubt that the loss of these non-Mandarin Sinitic languages all over China is quite a sad loss for human cultural diversity. On the other hand, it's re-assuring to hear that there are efforts to preserve and revive Northern Wu. Whether these efforts have come in time - and whether they will succeed - is a totally different thing, of course.

One further reassuring thing I got out of your discussions was that I realised that you (ransek) would have easily understood all the qualifications I was making about Baba culture changing over time, and the markers of Baba identity changing, etc. The position of Wu - even just in the last 100 years, and even just in the city of Shanghai (or Suzhou) - has changed so dramatically that it's impossible to say "Suzhou Wu is <X>" or "Shanghainese is <Y>". And yet, it would also not be true to say that there are no generalizations possible. There are broad outline facts or patterns which are valid for the last 100 (perhaps even 200) years, for Babas, for Wu languages, etc; broad outline facts or patterns which are worth documenting and explaining, despite all their limitations. Which is obviously why I attempted to do this for "Baba culture".

Anyway, I'm really looking forward to lots of future discussions on these topics here .

[ransek]

Hi SimL,

I completely agree with you that nothing is "black and white" and people tend to generalize what they observed and experienced.

Surprisingly, this seems to be the ONLY active forum in this discussion site. And I'm glad to see so many interesting and in-depth (and equally importantly, friendly) interactions. In some other forums (mainly Chinese) I used to visit, many people are simply not tolerant of different opinions and discussions often become very hostile.

I like your Manchu example. The development of ethnic identity is a very complex subject. Social and political propaganda sometimes played an important role. In ancient times, most people only identify with their village or town, and are not aware of what the world is like outside their small life circles, let alone the fact that the neighboring communities might share a lot of commonalities with them. In the Wu dialect of my grandpa's hometown, Changshu 常熟(in Changshu Wu: zran-zruk), people from other towns are sometimes referred to as 野人 (barbarian people). This shows how narrowed and isolated people's views might have been, at least at some point in the history.

An interesting (although a little off-topic) thing is that there does exist a Manchurian-speaking community in Xinjiang. They were probably Manchurians who migrated to western China in the mid 1800s.

>> I wonder if people realised, in the 1950's, just what serious consequences there would be to making Mandarin the "national language of China".

I would like to point out that the concept of "national language" actually came into existence with the idea of "nation-state" and the popularity of nationalism in the western world. The nation-state model over-emphasizes the commonality of all people in the state, and promotes the mission of creating "one people, one culture and one language". Very typical example is how the government of France, a country labels herself as the role model of human liberty and equality, has continued to brutally oppress non-French languages within its border for the past few centuries, even to this day.

Unlike the "nation building" efforts, not until very recently did the world realize and (largely) agree upon the importance of preserving cultural diversity. And that's when people around the world started to promote minority cultures and languages. Yet it is sad to see a lot of these things were manipulated by politicians who did not really care about cultural and linguistic diversity.

Now back to the issue in China. The national language movement in China started in Qing dynasty, and became an important government policy in the 1930s (largely due to western influence). However, standard Mandarin did not become truly popular until the late 1990's when large scale of migration took place and Mandarin gradually became the medium of instruction in schools. Even in the early 1990's, most Chinese dialects (including Mandarin dialects and non-Mandarin southern Chinese languages) were in very good shape. I still remember some teachers taught entirely in Wu when I went to primary school (in mid-to-late 1990's). And even if the teacher taught in Mandarin, he/she often switched to Wu after class or even during class. Just a few years later when I went to high school, however, I found that most teachers were from the North and spoke only Mandarin (often heavily accented).

What I want to say is that the Mandarinization of China is quite different from that of Taiwan and Singapore. For one thing, there had been very few systematic efforts from the government to eradicate the usage of non-standard Mandarin or the non-Mandarin languages in China. Also, it happened quite recently (mainly after 1990). Compared to Taiwanese of my age (especially those live in the urban area), Chinese from Southern China actually use Southern Chinese languages a lot more often and probably (in general) better.

[Mark Yong]

Hi, ransek,

One of the best available single-volume resources on Baba-Nyonya history and culture (daily life, traditions, language, cuisine, clothing, architecture) is Dr. Khoo Joo Ee’s The Straits Chinese - A Cultural History.


http://pepinpress.com/catalogue/view/30
http://www.amazon.com/The-Straits-Chine ... 9054960086

While the section on languages is rather brief (and some parts, in my opinion,
inaccurate), it nonetheless provides a very good overview of this unique Chinese sub-culture, complemented by excellent photographs (both old and new).

Another book, but one that covers specifically the history of the Chinese in Penang is 陳劍虹 Tan Kim Hong’s “檳城嶼華人史圖錄” The Chinese in Penang - A Cultural History”.

http://www.arecabooks.com/?product=the- ... al-history

Sim raises some interesting points on Baba-Nyonya Hokkien vs. the Sin Kheh 新客 Hokkien in Penang. In a previous thread (http://www.chineselanguage.org/forums/v ... f=6&t=8795), I addressed the topic about what I found to be subtly different strains within the Penang Hokkien dialect group itself, one of them being the Baba-Nyonya strain.

I would be keen to further explore the 吳 Wu dialect, which I think I will reserve for posts under the actual 吳 Wu dialect Forum on this website (which has not been quite as active as this one!). But in the meantime:

Here is a recording of a speech made by 宋慶齡 Song Qingling (Mdm. Sun Yat Sen) using the 吳 Wu dialect. Would many people in the 吳 Wu-speaking region today be able to understand it without the sub-titles?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EJ7BkBZotX4

[Ah-bin]

While the section on languages is rather brief (and some parts, in my opinion,
inaccurate), it nonetheless provides a very good overview of this unique Chinese sub-culture, complemented by excellent photographs (both old and new).

I'll just pop up for a second to mention that I was going to write a bit on this soon. I think the misinformation in this book (and a good many other books about Hokkien) derives ultimately from the book "The Chinese Language" by R.A.D. Forrest, published back in 1965 (second edition) when there was not much known about the Chinese languages outside the bigger cities along the coast, or those that the missionaries had studied. It is from this book where we hear that Min languages are unique for not having developed the f- sound, even though there are Gan languages in Jiangxi that have never developed it either. I think the "Tang min" thing comes from there as well. It was one of the few books for the general reader about Chinese linguistics written in English.

I also wanted to welcome Ransek along. It's so rare and wonderful to find any PRC Chinese who cares much about their local language, let alone the languages of other areas enough to go into a detailed study of them. Actually my own opinion here is based largely on the behaviour of people in Guangxi, who seemed to want their children to learn nothing but Mandarin, even though they themselves often spoke three languages well.

I don't have much time at the moment...but there's a lot I'd like to write about ethnic groups and Wu and so on....some day I'll have time to concentrate!

[SimL]

Hi ransek,

Surprisingly, this seems to be the ONLY active forum in this discussion site.

Yes, and even then, activity fluctuates here. Until your posting with the Cuan-ciu interview, it had been pretty quiet compared to some of the earlier peaks of activity. I recall one of the regular posters pointing out that it was often the new posters who stimulated a huge amount of discussion with their questions about Hokkien. There were certainly major bursts of activity when Ah-bin joined. This makes sense - some of us longer-term Forum members have been here for more than 10 years, and after a while, we've said most of what we have to say to one another .

But as you can see if you look at some of the older threads, this Forum has had periods of remarkably active and interesting discussion in the past. (And such a period seems to be happening right now again!)

And I'm glad to see so many interesting and in-depth (and equally importantly, friendly) interactions. In some other forums (mainly Chinese) I used to visit, many people are simply not tolerant of different opinions and discussions often become very hostile.

Yes, the politeness and friendliness is certainly a much-valued aspect of this Forum. Even when discussions have got slightly unpleasant in the past, they were nowhere near the flame wars which one can get in other forums. (And such times were extremely rare here anyway.) It helps that many of us have contact with one another outside the Forum, and a number of us have met in person as well.

I like your Manchu example. [...] An interesting (although a little off-topic) thing is that there does exist a Manchurian-speaking community in Xinjiang. They were probably Manchurians who migrated to western China in the mid 1800s.

Thanks. Yes, indeed, I invented my example because I had read a little about one such community. I've always had a sort of peripheral interest in Manchu people and language - the Manchu people because they form a very interesting case of a dominant group which gave up their own language and culture; and the Manchu language because I think the script looks so beautiful. Other readers might like to get some information about the last remaining speakers of Manchu from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manchurian_language" - look under "Current situation". Is this the same community as you had in mind? I didn't think there was a second such community, so that part of my example was invented .

Very typical example is how the government of France, a country labels herself as the role model of human liberty and equality, has continued to brutally oppress non-French languages within its border for the past few centuries, even to this day.

Indeed. Another example is the suppression of Catalan during the Franco era (though there of course, fascist Spain never claimed to be a role model for human liberty and equality!). I think, historically, there have been instances where such repressive policies worked *against* the people who instigated such a policy - people came to take pride in and defend their language against persecution, to a greater extent than they would have done if the oppressive policies hadn't existed. Sadly though, it's very often not the case, and such policies often do work.

And that's when people around the world started to promote minority cultures and languages. Yet it is sad to see a lot of these things were manipulated by politicians who did not really care about cultural and linguistic diversity.

Yes. This is very often the case. IIRC, Ah-bin gave as an example the Zhuang of Guangxi and Guangdong (not sure which province exactly, could have been only one of the two or both).

But on this topic, I remain a "relativist". One could say the same thing about the forging together of the various German regional identities (Swabians, Bavarians, Prussians, etc) into one German national identity, starting from about 1871, upon the creation of the (first) unified German state; or about the forging together of the various Jurchen tribes into one Manchu identity, by Nurhaci, in the early 1600's. I mean, one could condemn them as "fake creations", driven only by political motives. But I also see other aspects.

I'm basically agreeing with you, but perhaps not quite ready to label such an act (even when carried out for political motives) as exclusively negative. I say this because I think there are also positive aspects to greater numbers of people having a shared identity - for example, a greater willingness to help one another, when one of the sub-components is in crisis, like a flood or an earthquake. I think North Italians would probably be more inclined to help South Italians than to help Spaniards, if they were in crisis, or North Germans helping South Germans rather than helping the Austrians or the Dutch, etc. Obviously I don't mean they would refuse to help another country, but if there's a feeling that they're helping their fellow countrymen, or people of the same ethnicity, then there is a greater willingness.

Of course, ideally, all human beings should help one another in such crises. But in the absence of the ultimate ideal, I'll settle for a scaled down version which is still positive.

And all this to say that while I acknowledge the point that identity creation can be manipulative and politically driven (and that I would, in many such cases, condemn such manipulation), some of the results can still be viewed as positive. (And, in any case, the resultant identities can be very "real" to the people who are born into that identity. And that it would be pointless and cruel to say to such people: "Your identity isn't a real one, it was created as a result of power-hungry political manipulation".)

Finally, thank you for sharing the very interesting information on the Mandarinization process in the PRC. It was all totally new information to me, and broadened my horizons a lot.

As you may have already worked out, in Malaya and Singapore (and presumably most other countries of S.E. Asia too), teaching in Chinese schools was done exclusively in the non-Mandarin forms of Sinitic up to the end of the 19th century. But probably, by the 1940's, all of these had given way to teaching in Mandarin* (people like Ah-bin and Mark will know the precise details much better).

Because I was so familiar with this pattern, AND because I felt that the Mandarinization was driven by such a movement in the "Fatherland" (a feeling which was probably in fact correct)**, I had always assumed that this process had - in S.E. Asia - followed more or less the same pattern as what had happened in mainland China, only lagging behind the same process on the Mainland.

Thanks to your exposition, I now realise how inaccurate this image was.

I also now see that there would have been more incentive for this process to take place more quickly in S.E. Asia than in mainland China. That is because (under the explanation I've just right now formulated) there were so many "dialect groups"***. It would have been difficult to have Teochew schools, Hockchew schools, Hakka schools, Cantonese schools, Hokkien schools, etc. Particularly as - with so much fragmentation - the support base for each of these schools would have been so much smaller. In contrast, on the mainland, one would have whole cities and towns where the vast majority of speakers would have been of such a "dialect group", giving a far bigger support base.

Having said all that, it's still with extreme amazement that I read that this degree of preservation of non-Mandarin forms existed up to the 1990's!

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Notes (these are subsidiary points I would like to make, but didn't want to put in brackets to break up the main flow of my text):

*: My sin-kheh maternal grandfather (born in 1900) had his primary education in Hokkien (in China), but by the time he was a headmaster in Malaya at the end of the Second World War, the primary school for which he was headmaster of (founded and run by the Hakka-based hue-kuan) was using Mandarin exclusively as its medium of instruction. This was in Seremban, near KL, in the southern part of peninsular Malaysia. In the case of Penang, my father thinks that there were still a few non-Mandarin Chinese schools when he was a young boy growing up there in the 1930's, but he says that by the end of the Second World War, all the Chinese-run schools in Penang were teaching in Mandarin. ("All" is the sort of "all" that we've been discussing recently. There might have been one or two non-Mandarin ones, in obscure parts of town, but all the major, "famous" Chinese schools were using Mandarin.)

**: I had a reasonable idea that the Mandarinization movement would have started (a lot) earlier than the 1950's. My saying 1950's in my earlier posting was influenced by the fact that pinyin was promulgated in 1958, and I saw that as one of the most important milestones in the standardization of Mandarin (and its subsequent promotion/spread). As with so many of these topics, nothing is black and white. The "bai hua" movement was already embryonic in the middle of the Qing Dynasty (or perhaps even earlier), by the very existence of the great novels not written in Classical Chinese. So, the "starting point" could be placed anywhere between mid 1600's and 4 May 1919... Anyway, I hope you understand what I mean.

***: Ah-bin should not wince at my use of the word "dialect" here . I subscribe totally to her view that these are independent Sinitic languages, but even I get tired of saying "non-Mandarin Sinitic forms", so I will occasionally lapse into the use of the word "dialect". My apologies!

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PS. Please don't think that I'm knowledgeable enough to produce information about the date of German Unification or when Nurhaci lived, etc just off the top of my head. I know this sort of stuff "in broad outline", but when I need to write about it in detail, I have to look it up on Wikipedia!