Is Japanese similar to Korean or Mandarin?

[hitotsz]

Originally Posted by komitsuki

Honorific system in Korean is rather simplified as it doesn't have the humble form and is almost absent compare to Japanese.

What do you mean by the humble form? I can think of Korean humble form as "주세요, 드리다," (or perhaps since it rather exalts the hearer rather than humbling the speaker it might not be truly humble?)

[KyleGoetz]

Originally Posted by godwine

I am Chinese, and I grew up speaking and reading both systems, so my knowledge wasn't from an INTRO BOOK.

Fair enough, and to be fair, I was a bit rude in my post. We're both arguing from valid positions and both of our staked-out positions are backed up by mountains of linguistic scholarship. It's not a settled issue at all.

You need to look at the history of the language itself. Mandarin was only used in a very small area back in the days, its originated form Beijing.

This may be correct, but I don't know how it's related to what I said. Feel free to explicate.

Your example of Hokkien is not correct, Hokkien is a modified form of a dialect known as "Fukien", which is from the "Fukien" province of China, and you should ask your wife again, the "Hokkien" should be what is commonly known as Minnan.

I may have made a mistake in giving it the name Hokkien. We just call it "Taiwanese" in my family. My wife speaks a language that is unintelligible to Mandarin-only speakers. It is spoken in Taiwan and her parents raised her speaking it (as it were, her father was a diplomat from Taiwan who speaks multiple languages, so I value the family's opinion on matters of language).

Its still only a dialect.

Honestly, we're really playing at semantics. It is not a settled issue of linguistics in either direction. Many linguists would say Mandarin/Cantonese/etc. are dialects of Chinese, but many would say that, because the are mutually unintelligible (which they are very much so!), they are absolutely different languages. I fall into the second camp. You fall into the first.

I really think it's silly to call Mandarin and Cantonese the same language because they are mutually unintelligible. My wife speaks natively (among other languages) Taiwanese and Mandarin. She cannot understand Cantonese at all. That being said, I have never met an English speaker whom I cannot understand with a slight bit of effort, and that includes people speaking Geordie and the English of certain areas of Louisiana (two of the places in the world with the most "non-standard" accents I've ever heard of). There probably close to a billion Chinese who cannot understand both Mandarin and Cantonese (only understanding one, or none, of these two), even with a lot of effort.

In school, the type of "Cantonese" that people are taught (Writing and reading) share the same grammar, structure and meaning as their "Mandarin" counter part. Any Chinese character thats used in Cantonese and not in Mandarin are considered Slang.

Well of course in a school run by Mandarin-speaking Beijing party elites, the Cantonese grammar taught in school would be Mandarin grammar with a different accent. But, as has been confirmed by multiple friends from Guangdong and Hong Kong, the "Chinese" subtitles at the bottom of movies that is supposed to be standard across all dialects is more than a few times not correct grammar to a Cantonese speaker. It reads like Mandarin to them, and they will tell you "this is not Cantonese; we do not speak/write that way."

All this being said, I don't place much stock in this sort of evaluation of language. I have never studied any French, Italian, or Portuguese, yet I can read all three to a certain degree because I studied Spanish and am a native English speaker.

Even intelligibility is a difficult metric to use well. My wife also speaks Spanish natively, and when we watched The Passion of the Christ (which is in Latin), she turned to me and told me she understood a bunch of it! If I am remembering correctly, she can also understand Portuguese without ever having even studied it for one minute. (This comports with my experience; I can read a bunch of Portuguese simply because I speak Spanish and they are quite similar—I would argue they are more similar than Cantonese and Mandarin!)

The written system is not call Mandarin, there is no such thing as written Mandarin, its Simplified Chinese. The reason why they call it Simplified Chinese because it was modified from the original "Traditional" Chinese, this was done within the last 100 years (Since 1956ish to be exact), they were once written the same way.

I absolutely understand the history behind all this. I only called the writing system "Mandarin" in my previous post because I took the position that Cantonese and Mandarin are languages and not dialects. It was merely a rhetorical choice on my part.

Ok, I accept your argument that I was using just one or 2 character as an example, I didn't say I was correct either, everyone is just posting base on their opinion, myself as well. As I said, I grew up speaking both Cantonese , Mandarin, and some very limited Japanese. And base on my limited knowledge of Japanese, I just find it closer to Cantonese

Fair enough. Japanese kanji readings did come out of multiple dialects because of the kanji importation and language exchange over hundreds of years from different regions of China, before either modern Mandarin or Cantonese existed!

EDIT: Have a look at these 3 wiki sites:

Mandarin Chinese - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Just read the first 2 paragraphs....

Simplified Chinese characters - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Read the introduction.

Chinese language - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

3rd paragraph:

Standard Chinese (Putonghua / Guoyu / Huayu) is a standardized form of spoken Chinese, based on the Beijing dialect of Mandarin Chinese , referred to as 官话/官話 Guānhuà or 北方话/北方話 Běifānghuà in Chinese. Standard Chinese is the official language of the People's Republic of China (PRC) and the Republic of China (ROC, also known as Taiwan),

[/quote]With a bit of effort and access to a scholarship database, I could provide voluminous linguistic papers debating this topic and coming down on my side of the issue. I hope you will accept a bit of return fire in the form of wikilinks instead

Cantonese grammar - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia and other pages on WP:

Cantonese is an analytic language

Cantonese, or Standard Cantonese, is language originated in the vicinity of Canton

Although Cantonese shares much vocabulary and grammatical structure with Mandarin Chinese, the two languages are not mutually intelligible

Cantonese grammar - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

In any case, I'm sorry I likely sounded hostile in my previous post. You're a good, intelligent poster, and I took a very rigid stance against your position after a very long flight.

*offers handshake*

[godwine]

Originally Posted by KyleGoetz

This may be correct, but I don't know how it's related to what I said. Feel free to explicate.

No offense taken, don't feel that way at all... just an intelligent discussion, and I doget upset at people calling Simplified Chinese "mandarin"... .. thats just simmply how we were taught.... its Simplified and Traditional Chinese...

The relation is that, we are discussing whether its a dialect or a language. And there are also relation to the writing system, which I will try to explain.

China, is a country, consisting of multiple provinces. No debate, we all should agree to that. Mandarin, represent ONLY a small region, relative to the whole of China. Mandarin was the selected dialect as the national LANGUAGE, but its not THE language use by all Chinese. Provinces tend to have their own local dialect, just like how Beijing has Mandarin. And many choose to not use Mandarin to communicate

We cannot call the writing "Mandarin", and the reason is the same as above, there are provinces that uses the exact same writing system - Simplified Chinese, but they do not pronounce it the same as Mandarin. In that case, what do we call their writing? Its definitely not Mandarin, because the original intention was to tie "mandarin" to the dialect itself, but since they don't speak it, are they still writing in "Mandarin"??

And I agree, Cantonese and Mandarin are definitely NOT the same thing. For sure its not, they are 2 very distinctive dialect, belonging to one language group - The Chinese language...

Edit: One more thing, about your comment of the subtitles. The thing you have to understand is that, Cantonese are not spoken the same way as how Cantonese people would write, not officially anyways. I think thats where the confusion stems from. Spoken Cantonese contain a lot of slang, slang that is not used in formal literature. One example. The English word :Them, in Traditional Chinese its written as "他們" - "Taa Moon", in Simplified Chinese its written as "他们" - Tah Mun. Notice that they are very similar, with the only difference being the second character, and they sound very similar. This is how it will be written in any formal (and proper) literature by ALL Chinese, either in the Simplified or Traditional.

BUT, when people speak, only the Mandarin speaking crowd will use Tah Mun, the Cantonese crowd will "Kui Dei". Which is written - 佢哋. This is pure slang, and is not use in any written literature. Hence any Cantonese people will tell you that its different, because it is. But realistically, these 2 character, together or individually, does not carry any meaning of "Them" or "They" when written in any document, and should never be used as such, in fact, the second Character didn't exist until recently (I had to use a special input software to get this)

Another example: Tire (car tire), in Traditional Chinese its written - "輪胎" - lun tai, in Simplified Chinese - "轮胎", loon tai, as discussed above, it will be written as such in official documents, but Cantonese speakers will not read it as such, and will pronounce it as "車呔" - Che Tai. The second character are pronounced the same, but if you notice its not the same as either the simplified or traditional version.

Lets look at the example of a full sentence: The weather is great today

In Traditional Chinese: 今天的天氣很好 - Gum tin dic tin hei hun ho
In Simplified Chinese: 今天的天气很好 - Jin ten de ten chi hun hau

Again, this is how it will be written in proper literature. But Cantonese speaker will not say it like that, it will be 今日幾好天 - Gum yat gei ho tin

In this particular case, its not slang, its not not proper enough to be used in any literature or document.....

[komitsuki]

Originally Posted by hitotsz

What do you mean by the humble form? I can think of Korean humble form as "주세요, 드리다," (or perhaps since it rather exalts the hearer rather than humbling the speaker it might not be truly humble?)

That's because the Korean honorific system only has the respective form. The humble form died out around the early 20th century unless you watch Korean historical dramas.

One more thing. Korean has a mirative mood for expressing new information just like Turkish.