# A Comparison of the Standard German and Chinese Languages



## archibaldworthington

Are German and Chinese similar? Insofar as the standardized versions that people usually learn are in fact languages "invented" to be a lingua franca of people who speak similar, but not necessarily mutually intelligible, languages?

In other words, would it generally be agreeable to say that _Standarddeutsch_ is to _Plaatdeutsch_, _Niederdeutsch_ or _Hochdeutsch_, what _Pǔtōnghuà_ is to _Wú yǔ_, _Mǐn yǔ_, or _Guānhuà?
_
Would it also be agreeable to say that the "dialects" of these languages are called so because people within the preponderant country where the language is spoken say so? That is to say, they're called "dialects" of one language rather than completely separate languages.

I'm wondering because I've heard people emphasize the vast differences between the dialects of these two languages before.


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## bearded

Hi
I think you might be right, Archibald, but what you say concerning Germany and China is also valid for any country where there is a standard language. Be it for cultural reasons or military reasons, the preponderant country or zone imposes its language and calls other local languages 'dialects'.  Present German dialects derive from languages spoken in the past by Bavarian, Saxon, Aleman tribes and so on.  In my country, standard Italian rose from the language of Tuscany for cultural reasons and prevailed over other languages that are now 'dialects'. What is now the dialect of Venice, used to be the language of the Venetian Republic...From what I've heard and read, a similar development occurred in China where the northern language of Peking / Beijin has become the only official language, although in the past other chinese tongues were equally important.


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## akhooha

> אַ שפּראַך איז אַ דיאַלעקט מיט אַן אַרמיי און פֿלאָט


(A sprach iz a dialekt mit an armi un flot)
("A language is a dialect with an army and navy")
--- Max Weinreich


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## berndf

bearded man said:


> Hi
> I think you might be right, Archibald, but what you say concerning Germany and China is also valid for any country where there is a standard language. Be it for cultural reasons or military reasons, the preponderant country or zone imposes its language and calls other local languages 'dialects'.  Present German dialects derive from languages spoken in the past by Bavarian, Saxon, Aleman tribes and so on.  In my country, standard Italian rose from the language of Tuscany for cultural reasons and prevailed over other languages that are now 'dialects'. What is now the dialect of Venice, used to be the language of the Venetian Republic...From what I've heard and read, a similar development occurred in China where the northern language of Peking / Beijin has become the only official language, although in the past other chinese tongues were equally important.


German and Chinese are indeed a bit special in that they distinguish between *written* Standard language and *spoken* dialects. The written Standard (in German I know for sure, about Chinese someone else might want to elaborate) is indeed a synthetic language created from dialects and is not identical with any dialect. In recent times, standard German has increasingly become also a spoken language and in many regions the traditional distinctions between the written and the spoken language no longer exists. But this is, to repeat myself, a relatively recent phenomenon. The spoken version of the Standard language was traditionally only used when speakers from different parts of the country wanted to communicate. In Austria, e.g., the local expression for _speaking standard German_ still is _nach der Schrift reden_ (_to speak according to the writing_, i.e. _to speak the way you write_).


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## killerbee256

bearded man said:


> Hi
> I think you might be right, Archibald, but what you say concerning Germany and China is also valid for any country where there is a standard language. Be it for cultural reasons or military reasons, the preponderant country or zone imposes its language and calls other local languages 'dialects'.  Present German dialects derive from languages spoken in the past by Bavarian, Saxon, Aleman tribes and so on.  In my country, standard Italian rose from the language of Tuscany for cultural reasons and prevailed over other languages that are now 'dialects'. What is now the dialect of Venice, used to be the language of the Venetian Republic...From what I've heard and read, a similar development occurred in China where the northern language of Peking / Beijin has become the only official language, although in the past other Chinese tongues were equally important.


That's a very apt comparison in some ways... Up until the 20th century they all used classical Chinese for writing as Latin was used in Italy and western Europe. But the comparison breaks down because Chinese writing is not phonetic in the same way as Latin/romance so there was less of a golf between the spoken Chinese languages and written classical Chinese.


berndf said:


> in German I know for sure, about Chinese someone else might want to elaborate


I've read a little about it, basically as I've already said until the early 20th century classical Chinese was used for writing, this worked because Chinese isn't a phonic alphabet as wikipidia says 





> Chinese characters do not constitute an alphabet or a compact syllabary. Rather, the writing system is roughly logosyllabic; that is, a character generally represents one syllable  of spoken Chinese and may be a word on its own or a part of a  polysyllabic word. The characters themselves are often composed of parts  that may represent physical objects, abstract notions,[1] or pronunciation.


After the Chinese monarchy fell in 1912 classical chinese was replaced by Mandarin as the written standard. In the 60s mao reformed the Chinese characters to be easier to write, and thus learn and use. Though this system is only used on the mainland. Chinese "dialects" are more like the romance or Germanic languages taken as a whole than just German dialects as some seem to vary as much as Standard German does with Swedish. That's about all I know, when I ate at Chinese restaurant in china town in Washington dc the waiters were talking to each other in mandarin and Cantonese. But I suspect this similar to how a Russian and Pol can understand each other if can "adjust their ears" over a few months or years as I managed to do with Italian.


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## Ben Jamin

akhooha said:


> (A sprach iz a dialekt mit an armi un flot)
> ("A language is a dialect with an army and navy")
> --- Max Weinreich


It's catchy, but not true. It sounds like communist propaganda. 
If it were true, then, for example: Hebrew between  597 BCE and 1947 CE would not be a language, and Yiddish never has been.
The same could be said about Armenian and Georgian before 1991, and many other languages.


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## Stoggler

Ben Jamin said:


> It's catchy, but not true. It sounds like communist propaganda.
> If it were true, then, for example: Hebrew between  597 BCE and 1947 CE would not be a language, and Yiddish never has been.
> The same could be said about Armenian and Georgian before 1991, and many other languages.



I don't think the saying was ever meant to be taken quite so literally - it's certainly not a model to used to determine what's a language and what's a dialect, and wasn't meant to be.


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## bearded

@ BenJamin
I think that Weinreich's  ''army''  can also be interpreted as ''cultural weapons'' or ''cultural instruments''.  As concerns Hebrew, don't forget that it soon became a hardly-spoken, just cult(ural) language, and it only survived thanks to the Holy Bible that was a sort of ''spiritual'' weapon...
And why do you say the sentence sounds like communist propaganda? It might as well be capitalist or colonialist propaganda.  I am thinking of ancient Romans who were proud to have imposed their noble Latin over barbaric languages like Gaulic, and they were by no means communist.


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## berndf

bearded man said:


> @ BenJamin
> I think that Weinreich's  ''army''  can also be interpreted as ''cultural weapons'' or ''cultural instruments''.


Weinreich's point was that the distinction between language and dialect is not a linguistic but a political one and has something to do with political power. If Ben Jamin takes it to mean that being a language is necessarily connected with statehood, than I agree with you that his interpretation of אַרמיי און פֿלאָט is a we bit too literal.


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## Ben Jamin

Stoggler said:


> I don't think the saying was ever meant to be taken quite so literally - it's certainly not a model to used to determine what's a language and what's a dialect, and wasn't meant to be.


Then it is just a platitude.


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## Ben Jamin

bearded man said:


> And why do you say the sentence sounds like communist propaganda? It might as well be capitalist or colonialist propaganda.  I am thinking of ancient Romans who were proud to have imposed their noble Latin over barbaric languages like Gaulic, and they were by no means communist.



Because it is so biased, belligerent and bombastic. I am not familiar with Roman propaganda.
I could as well write "any authoritarian propaganda", but communist propaganda is the one I know best from my own experience of living 30 years in that system.


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## Ben Jamin

berndf said:


> Weinreich's point was that the distinction between language and dialect is not a linguistic but a political one and has something to do with political power. If Ben Jamin takes it to mean that being a language is necessarily connected with statehood, than I agree with you that his interpretation of אַרמיי און פֿלאָט is a we bit too literal.


We have already had a long discussion about what a language at this Forum. We didn't come to any common conclusion, but my point was that the word "language" has so many meanings, that one should first define in which of the meanings one uses the word. A language (in the meaning of a codified natural language) can very well survive without statehood or other means of coercion, if there is enough of voluntary consensus.


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## berndf

Ben Jamin said:


> Because it is so biased, belligerent and bombastic. I am not familiar with Roman propaganda.
> I could as well write "any authoritarian propaganda", but communist propaganda is the one I know best from my own experience of living 30 years in that system.


C'mon, there is nothing bobastic or propagandistic about the statement. It is just an ironic and derisive remark about any attempt to formulate an objective, scientific and purely linguistic demarcation-criterion between _language_ and _dialect_.


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## Ben Jamin

berndf said:


> C'mon, there is nothing bobastic or propagandistic about the statement. It is just an ironic and derisive remark about any attempt to formulate an objective, scientific and purely linguistic demarcation-criterion between _language_ and _dialect_.


Maybe it was meant as a sarcasm when it was uttered for the first time, but a sarcasm works only in a context. Many people that repeat this sentence take it literally, and it becomes a platitude, or even nonsense, depending on when you take it up. And well, for me it sounds arbitrary and conceited "I know the truth".


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## Johnnyjohn

Beijing Mandarin was a pseudo creation based on existing dialects, unlike German, they decided to make something as simplistic and watered down as possible, 
not something more schwer and conservative (compare Hochdeutsch to Swiss German), but this only extends within the Mandarin dialect continuum. Other languages like Teochow (which is like Icelandic in terms of being conservative) and Cantonese are not mutually intelligible. The Han ethnicity is in my own opinion a construct, the Hakka are different to the Cantonese as the Danes are to the Germans. But they don't believe that.

http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=6654
Cantonese is just a "dialect".

I can't stand going to wiktionary and looking up a word, but only one word is given for Chinese, no, many of them have completly different pronouns and particles that don't always overlap. Last I checked, Cantonese has more aspect words too.

Edit: This is coming from someone who is half-Hakka (like Faroese then)


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## Ben Jamin

Johnnyjohn said:


> Beijing Mandarin was a pseudo creation based on existing dialects, unlike German, they decided to make something as simplistic and watered down as possible,
> not something more schwer and conservative (compare Hochdeutsch to Swiss German), but this only extends within the Mandarin dialect continuum. Other languages like Teochow (which is like Icelandic in terms of being conservative) and Cantonese are not mutually intelligible. The Han ethnicity is in my own opinion a construct, the Hakka are different to the Cantonese as the Danes are to the Germans. But they don't believe that.
> 
> http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=6654
> Cantonese is just a "dialect".
> 
> I can't stand going to wiktionary and looking up a word, but only one word is given for Chinese, no, many of them have completly different pronouns and particles that don't always overlap. Last I checked, Cantonese has more aspect words too.
> 
> Edit: This is coming from someone who is half-Hakka (like Faroese then)


What is a pseudocreation?


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## Johnnyjohn

Something not made from scratch completely but heavily mutated into being distinct in its own way. Beijing Mandarin is pretty much one of the most grammatically simple languages there is due to its historical steering. Only Indonesian can compete.


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## Ben Jamin

Johnnyjohn said:


> Something not made from scratch completely but heavily mutated into being distinct in its own way. Beijing Mandarin is pretty much one of the most grammatically simple languages there is due to its historical steering. Only Indonesian can compete.



It seems that you have created the word by yourself, but I don't see any purpose with this creation.


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