Chinese: 344 languages?

Moderator:OldBoring

burnlaur25
Posts:87
Joined:2009-08-20, 15:55
Real Name:Bob
Gender:male
Country:USUnited States (United States)
Chinese: 344 languages?

Postby burnlaur25 » 2011-09-28, 6:39

http://robertlindsay.wordpress.com/2008/12/27/a-reworking-of-chinese-language-classification/

I am a linguist and this is a longstanding treatment of Chinese that I have been working on. I found many posts on this forum where people asked about the intelligibility of various Chinese lects.

The splits were done on a basis of 90% intelligibility. >90% = dialect, ,90% = language.

Although the conclusions of this study are extreme, I have the support of some major Chinese linguists (who I will not name to preserve their privacy) in this endeavor. In fact, one of them told me that the actual situation is probably much worse than this. He said there may be up to 1,000 languages within Chinese.

Obviously, all Chinese lects are called "dialects" by the Chinese state for political reasons. This man is encouraging me in this project because he is mad at the Chinese government for their lie that all Chinese lects are "dialects."

Many of these lects are going out as everyone starts to speak Mandarin, but many others are still alive. Many older Chinese speak a non-Putonghua lect.

I have trouble working on this project because much of the source material is in the Chinese language, which I do not speak.

Your thoughts, criticisms and contributions are welcome, but if you have intelligibility information, please be scientific. I am not interested in "everyone can understand everyone" reports.

Return to “Chinese (中文)”

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 14 guests