“我恨方言”

The title of this post was the content of a text message Alex sent me late one night (ok, not that late but we were in the gorge and sleeping early...). Translated it means "I hate dialects." Like in France, Germany, and other European countries a few hundred years ago, Chinese people do not all speak the same language. A good majority, now, are competent in 普通话 (pu tong hua), or "common speech," or to most Americans, "Mandarin Chinese." This is the language that is spoken in schools, and what an educated person from Guangzhou would speak in while having a conversation with a colleague from Hebei. However, while it is the common language, in many places it is not at all common.

When leaving Beijing, I was relatively confident about my Chinese ability. For the most part, I could understand what was said to me and could also pick up bits and pieces of others' conversations around me. Everyone in Beijing speaks pu tong hua for two reasons: 1. the language is based on the native language of Beijingers. 北京话 is only different from standard mandarin in that the 儿 (er) sound is often added at the end of words. 2. people in Beijing are really from all over the country, so in order to communicate, one must speak Mandarin.

When I got off the train in Changsha, it was like arriving in a totally different country - I didn't understand anything that was being said around me. And in Hunan, even when people would talk to me in Mandarin, it was difficult to understand, as the accent was different, word usage tendencies were different, and often some Chansha hua would slip in. Changsha hua is not entirely different from Mandarin. While there, I attended Camille's end of the semester banquet with her. I spent most of the time being thankful that my end of semester dinner wasn't like this, as we sat through 2 1.5 hour speeches. Yes, really. CCP officials can really talk. I understood the main idea of the first woman's speech and a good portion of what she said, but during the second speech, I struggled to pick up whole phrases, let alone ideas. It sounded enough like Mandarin to have me perplexed as to why I couldn't understand his accent, but I found out later that he was speaking entirely in dialect.

Then when we moved on to Guangxi, things became even more complicated. In Beihai, my student told me that the dialect (basically the only language her parents speak) is basically Cantonese, as Beihai used to be a part of Guangdong. And Cantonese is basically a different language.

A cab driver who I had a long discussion with in Kunming, tried to teach me a few phrases of Kunming hua, if only to demonstrate that it was one of the most difficult dialects in the country. And while trekking in Xishuangbanna, we heard a bunch of different languages, Dai for example, that are much closer to South East Asian languages than to Mandarin. Thankfully, most of the people in the villages speak at least some Mandarin, learned, as our guide told us, by watching TV.

Now, back to Alex's comment. In many ways, I hate dialects too. Mandarin Chinese is an extremely difficult language in itself, and throwing in variants of that language only makes life more frustrating. Pu tong hua allows people from different parts of the country to communicate with each other, just as standardizing French (was that under Richelieu?) allowed people from all over France to communicate with each other. And, obviously, this is something that is increasingly important today. However, there is also something to be said for preserving dialects. There are entire languages lost at astonishing rates; only a few hundred people speak Manchurian. And with a language, goes many elements of a culture. So, its a difficult balance as are most questions about modernity and tradition are.