On Dialects

Aided with a few footnotes, Chaucer is largely intelligible to a reader of modern English. Such a reader would endure peculiar forms of familiar words and other words not familiar at all, yet the written text could be enjoyed and largely understood. And yet listening to Chaucer is like entering a freshly cleaned college dorm room; everything is still there, it's just rearranged to the point of complete unfamiliarity. Chaucer's words have a ring to them that sounds like they should be English, and occasional bursts of familiar words lets us know that they are. But these few grains of familiarity are insufficient for a modern speaker to enjoy his work.

After seven-hundred years, we are unable to understand an ancestor of our own language. And yet Chaucer's English probably became unintelligible long before our own time; spoken Chaucer was probably opaque even to Shakespeare, whose rhymes suggest pronunciation similar to (if still distinct from) the current modern standard.

The history of English underscores that even in European languages, whose writing theoretically preserves and transmits pronunciation, pronunciation still changes. Words themselves change too; like last year's fashion trends, old words fall out of use and new words replace them. Like the species that created it, language is an organism that dies, evolves, and adapts.

Understanding the rapid evolution of English—which developed with a phonetic transcription in a small, politically centralized region—helps us understand the radically divergent dialects of Chinese. Though its borders have shifted throughout its history, China has always been vast. The Han people, the majority ethnic population that speaks related languages the West calls Chinese, have for millennia lived in nearly all regions of that territory, forming communities divided by huge rivers and impassable mountain ranges, severed by political realignments and incessant war. Isolation breeds evolution, and every town in China boasts a dialect that has been developing for millennia.

Sinologists argue about the particulars, but Chinese languages are generally divided into about seven languages: Mandarin, Hakka, Wu (Zhejiang province), Yue (Guangdong province), Gan (Jiangxi province), Min (Fujian province), and Xiang (Hunan province). Yet the Chinese languages are not languages as Dutch or Italian are languages--that despite wide regional variations have accepted spoken standards. Each Chinese language in turn has dialects and sub-dialects, so that nearly every town speaks with a distinct flair. Native speakers of Hakka are often unable to understand one another if they come from different cities; even dialects of Mandarin are not mutually intelligible.

Importantly, this classification into "languages" is a model created and sustained by the West. The Chinese themselves do not generally arrange their dialects under larger linguistic nodes. Instead, dialects are referred to simply by adding a character for "speech" (话 huà) to the end of a given place name; therefore "Beijinghua" denotes the language spoken in Beijing, and "Shanghaihua" refers to Shanghainese. This practice is convenient because discussion about the relationship between Chinese languages is really more a question of historical linguistics than it is practical usage.

For millennia, the written Chinese language (see later post on "characters") served as a means of linking the speakers of these distinct dialects. Written Chinese allowed the Han people to share literature and a recorded history; the lack of a clear phonetic system allowed speakers of different dialects to read a written text aloud in their own tongue.

Yet in the modern age, a written lingua franca alone has proved insufficient. Accordingly, the past dynasty—the Qing—made efforts to promote education in and of  putonghua（普通话, Standard Mandarin), an effort that has accelerated under the current Chinese government. As its English name suggests, Standard Mandarin was the language of the mandarins—the officials of the imperial court. However, English usage of the term became clouded in the twentieth century when "Mandarin" came to refer not only to the specific dialect of the imperial court, but rather to the wider branch of northern Chinese dialects. This widened usage has made the Western term "Mandarin" distinct from the Chinese term putonghua. A Westerner, for instance, would say that someone from Chongqing natively speaks Mandarin, whereas a Chinese person would say that their first language is Chongqinghua—the speech of Chongqing, but hardly standard putonghua. Accordingly, Western scholarship has recently sought to avoid confusion by borrowing the term Putonghua to refer to the lingua franca of China. That is a practice I have chosen to adopt.

Originally, Putonghua was modeled on the speech of Beijing. However in recent decades the two have begun to diverge. New words and accent changes spoken on Beijing streets have not been accepted as official Putonghua. So the question emerges—where is Putonghua actually spoken colloquially today?

A tempting answer is "nowhere", in much the same way that "proper English" isn't spoken colloquially anywhere either. "Proper English", like Putonghua, is a throwback to a time and place that has since passed away. Plenty of well educated English speakers, for instance, will use terms like "gotta" and "gonna" in colloquial speech, although they are well aware that they are "incorrect" and avoid such colloquialisms in other situations. Similarly, even educated Chinese speak in their dialects often, but will switch to Putonghua for formal occasions or when speaking to someone who does not understand their dialect. It is this function as a lingua franca that has led to the prominence of Putonghua in recent decades.

Putonghua, as a lingua franca, thrives in cities. Even in cities that speak dialects very distinct from Putonghua (i.e., Shanghai or Guangzhou), the influx of Chinese from other regions necessitates that locals speak it with high proficiency. This tendency has diminished the prevalence of local dialects, though they still persevere. Shanghainese, for instance, can still be heard on the streets of Shanghai, but in recent decades it is spoken increasingly behind closed doors among Shanghai natives.

Yet in rural regions, into which few non-locals venture for work, Putonghua is generally less common and more nonstandard. Although most people can understand Putonghua if it is spoken accurately, a large number are unable to speak it well, if at all. This is particularly true of the older generations, whose school system did not—as the modern system theoretically does—promote education in Putonghua. Yet the younger generations, too, often incorporate their native accents when speaking Putonghua. While accents are a natural part of any language, the accents of Putonghua are particularly disparate.

The problem, in part, is that standard Putonghua has very few syllables and phonemes. The language has a mere 400 syllables (ignoring tonal variation); most begin with a consonant and end with a vowel, "n", "ng", or (rarely) "r". This means that—at most—a Putonghua syllable has two consonants, rendering syllables that sound similar to both foreign and Chinese ears. This paucity of syllables is particularly difficult for Westerners, who are used to a greater flexibility in syllable formation, as evidenced by such consonant-packed English syllables as "splurge" and "strapped."

Because many phonemes in standard Putonghua are absent in local dialects, speakers of dialects often fail to produce them when speaking Putonghua. In many regions the phonemes "zh", "sh", and "ch" are indistinguishable from "z", "s", and "c". This phenomenon is increasingly widespread in some communities—notably Taiwan. Other regions have still more changes. In my town in Hunan, these and other convergences shrink the 400 syllables of standard Putonghua to under 250 syllables. Consequently, words that are distinguishable in standard Putonghua are indistinguishable when Putonghua is spoken with a strong Hunanese accent.

In order to promote literacy and the pronunciation of standard Putonghua, the Chinese government introduced the pinyin (拼音) Romanization system in 1958, though widespread teaching of it did not occur until later. The pinyin system provides a consistent pronunciation guide that young Chinese use to learn characters and literate Chinese use to learn to the pronunciation of obscure ones. Originally designed to help combat illiteracy by facilitating self-study, the pinyin system has proved useful as a simple way to type characters and send text messages. And yet, as knowledge of pinyin is not widespread among older generations, it has only exacerbated the technological and generational gap.  Those who speak nonstandard Putonghua struggle to type or send messages as they are often unaware of the "correct" pronunciation and Romanization of a character.

Schools, theoretically, are the realm of Putonghua. At my Hunan high-school, faded signs adorn hallways that remind students to speak in Putonghua, yet they are most often ignored. Lectures are given in Putonghua, and questions are asked in Putonghua, yet as soon as the bell rings, students and teachers revert to the local dialect. Hardly a word of standard Mandarin is heard in offices, cafeterias or basketball courts.

The campaign to create a nation speaking Putonghua principally and fluently has been under way for over a century, and has been increasingly successful in recent decades. In an age of technology and greater mobility, spoken Putonghua has been disseminated in a way it never could have been a few generations ago. A more mobile population needs a lingua franca and a national spoken media has offered one.

Though they may not be able to replicate it, older generations still enjoy listening to Putonghua television in their homes and shops, aided perhaps by the subtitles that accompany every Chinese television program. Younger generations move to cities and universities in which poor Putonghua is increasingly unacceptable—perhaps even shameful. An era has ended, an era in which the likes of Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping could stand as the most powerful and respected men in China although they spoke Putonghua only with heavy accents. Instead, this modern Chinese era laughs off films like Western critics' beloved Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon because Michelle Yeoh and Chow Yun-Fat speak Putonghua with perceivable Cantonese accents. This is an era in which tongue twisters are designed just to expose (and occasionally ridicule) southern accents.

Putonghua is often viewed (in the West as in China) as the "proper" form of Chinese, the standard against which all other dialects are measured. While Putonghua has long been the accepted language for all things legal or official, other dialects have gained prestige too. The clearest example is Cantonese (a dialect of the Yue branch of Chinese), that enjoys official status in Hong Kong and Macao as Mandarin does elsewhere. Cantonese is also an important language of cinema, music, and other art forms. It remains the most widely spoken and best understood dialect among the Chinese diaspora.

In the mainland, music has long used local dialects. Notable examples include Xiang opera (which uses the Changsha dialect) and Peking opera (which uses a pronunciation of Mandarin distinct from both modern Putonghua and the Beijing dialect). Some younger singers have chosen to record in local dialects, or to learn and sing in Cantonese to appeal to a wider audience—generally to Hong Kong and the Chinese diaspora.

It is questionable too, that Putonghua best preserves the language spoken by the great Chinese poets or philosophers. Many argue that classical Chinese poetry sounds more natural when read in many southern Chinese languages, as their phonology better preserves the intended rhyme schemes than does modern Putonghua. Moreover, many words that are considered archaic in Putonghua are alive and well in southern dialects.

The rich diversity of the Chinese languages and dialects is a testament to the diversity of China. The dialect is as much a part of a place as its food or its history; it is the lens through which people understand each other and express themselves. But in today's China, too, people seek to communicate—to communicate across the geographical boundaries from which the dialects diverged. Putonghua—literally "the common speech"—can facilitate these new conversations and friendships. It is the bridge over provincial borders and even national ones, as overseas Chinese perfect their Putonghua and record numbers of non-Chinese seek to learn it.


With a little luck, modern China can hope to avoid the linguistic wars that have plagued India, Indonesia, Canada, and even Spain. Whether their dialect closely resembles Putonghua or not, many young Chinese take great pride in it—in its literature and its media, and in the interconnected China that the dominance of Putonghua represents. In the end they can have their Mandarin and their dialect too; they can preserve the unique dialect that has incubated for millennia among their ancestors while mastering the language that is the voice of modern China.