Saturday, July 13, 2024

20160202 Trio of Chinese

I usually eat a kebab of three meatballs at 7-11. There are essentially three Chinese topolects that seem important: Mandarin as the big bully from the Mainland; Cantonese from Hong Kong, Guangdong, and the Anglosphere; and Hokkien from Taiwan, Fujian, and Southeast Asia. Hokkien is on the verge of standardization in Taiwan and is in a renaissance. Other non-Mandarin topolects such as mentioned need supplementary logograms for words that aren't cognate with Mandarin. Some estimates are that other topolects have about 60% cognate compatibility with Mandarin in terms of logograms. The Sinosphere is a big jungle...

No comments:

Post a Comment