Business is Personal (Finance)

Ask people for a generic skill to have to further job prospects and foreign language proficiency often comes up pretty high. And with more than a billion Chinese speakers and an economy growing in leaps-and-bounds, Chinese is right at the top of the list. But where as English spoken everywhere in the world is mutually understood, there are many Chinese languages that are mutually unintelligible. Even some dialects within the major languages are mutually unintelligible between each other. This map from Wikipedia shows the major languages, the number of speakers and where the languages are used.



The reason for the multitude of languages is history. China's history spans 4000 years to the Xia Dynasty in 2100BC and languages fracture with time and distance. Over the course of history, the regions that make up modern-day China often were conquered and united -- and then fractured when dynasties fell. And with each dynasty, a new prestige language would come into power. Only after the Communist takeover in 1950 did a sole language (Standard Mandarin) become required teaching in schools. (For map, the Mandarin listed is the overall Mandarin family -- not Standard Mandarin. Those who speak the Harbin dialect may not understand the Chongqing dialect.)

By comparison, English was solely concentrated in a small island country until the 1600s when European powers began colonizing the New World. 400 years of separation has led to different accents, different slang, different words but still a core language that is understood by everybody. (Late night shows periodically do skits with British people on who purposely use accents, slang, words not understood by Americans to great comedic affect.)

In the area of China I currently live in, three major languages can be commonly heard:

Taishanese - Cantonese Taishan Dialect is the language ordinarily spoken amongst the natives of this region. Amongst the locals, it is called "Toi San Wah" or "Hoi San Wah".  (The neighboring city Kaiping speaks almost the same language except with a few words different. Hence, they might refer to their language was "Hoi Hen Wah".) Locals speaking to each other will always use this dialect or run the risk of "putting on airs" by using more "prestigious" dialects.

My parents are from Taishan and Kaiping respectively so they clearly can speak and understand the language. However, they never spoke it to us -- instead, they solely used Standard Cantonese so for the longest time, I always thought our relatives just had accents so strong where I couldn't understand what they were saying. It's only after marrying my wife that she properly instructed me on the nuances.

After hearing my wife use this dialect everyday (speaking to friends and relatives) for many years, I can now understand Taishanese to the extent of everyday life matters. My brain periodically has to do translations to Standard Cantonese -- for example, the word "to drink" is pronounced "yum" in Standard but "yim" in Taishanese. Hence, when I hear new words, I have to search my brain for words that sound similar and then pop in the context.

Standard Cantonese - Standard Cantonese "Baak Wah" is the preferred common language across the Guangdong province. Amongst the major cities in the Guangzhou, Hong Kong, Macau triangle, it is often the prestige language and also the native language. (For Hong Kong and Macau, it was the official language before the China handovers.)

In the Taishan area, most of the popular TV and radio programs are broadcasted in Standard Cantonese from either Hong Kong or Guangzhou. Hence, even if the locals here don't use it often in everyday life, they hear it hours everyday in the media. They may periodically use the Taishanese word instead betraying their background but in terms of communications, those who grew up in the Guangdong province since the rise of Hong Kong's media will have no problems using this dialect. (I visited Yangjiang just 2 hours away and could not understand a single thing they were saying when they used their own Cantonese dialect.)

This does lead to an interesting case where many older residents in the Chinatowns across the world only speak Taishanese. 75% of overseas Chinese in North America up until the late 20th century trace their origins to Taishan. So the older demographics who did not grow up with either Hong Kong media or Mandarin in schools cannot speak anything else.

Standard Mandarin - In the 17th century, the emporers began the process of making the Beijing Mandarin dialect the standard for communications amongst government officials. Standard Mandarin did not spread amongst the common people until the Communist Party took over in 1950 and made it mandatory in schools. Everything is taught solely in this language although before/after class, teachers and students will often use other languages.

Unfortunately, my Mandarin skills have not improved much since being here. Everybody I interact with speak either Standard Cantonese or Taishanese. The only people I come in contact with that don't speak one of the above two would be the young ladies who wash hair at hair salons. So I can semi-understand when somebody asks what kind of shampoo I want to use or whether my ears need washing -- a pretty limited scope. However, my son's everyday immersion seems to be working. He will randomly speak in Mandarin (and English and Taishanese) when playing so it's sinking in at some level.

The written languages makes the picture even more complex. Although spoken languages may be mutually unintelligible, literate speakers of these languages will understand common written languages. All speakers that see the symbol for "cup" will understand it only their brains will convert to either "bei" or "bui" or whatever is the pronunciation in their dialect. This even applies to works words that don't even sound the same. For example. the prefecture capital of this area is Jiangmen. The symbol for "jiang" is pronounced "jiang" in Standard Mandarin but Cantonese dialects might say "gong" or "kong".

But wait, notice I used the plural of "language"? There is Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Security/Banking Chinese and then various romanizations of Chinese of which Pinyin is the government standard. In everyday life, people use Simplified. Books, signs, advertising, arts might use Traditional. The banking sector uses their own variation on Traditional to reduce errors on documents. Finally, Pinyin is used by anybody who types Chinese in a computer as the typical interface has a user entering the romanization to display a list of characters to choose.

If I have scared anybody off with the gory details of the Chinese languages, good. Remember, the fewer people who can bridge the gap between languages and cultures, the more opportunities there are for those who can. If I was not in China already, I might think about Chinese immersion schools for my kids where the first few grades are taught completely in Mandarin.

As a final side note, I will be in Hainan, the Hawaii of the Orient, for a 3 day vacation this weekend. According to the map, the local language is a Min dialect -- some variant of Min is also spoken in Taiwan. Obviously, my Cantonese knowledge won't help much so we'll be fully dependent on my wife's Mandarin. However, I just paid $4.99 for iPhone Odyssey Mandarin Pro to have at least the basics in my pocket.

(Filed in china, job skills)