AHC: Cantonese instead of Mandarin as Standard Chinese.

[Dan1988]

For those that like languages/linguistics, and for those that are interested in China-related subjects:

While looking around some stuff on the 'Net for a post in Chat, I came across this South China Morning Post article:

Cantonese almost became the official language

Putonghua is the official language on the mainland, but if history had played out differently the vast majority could have been speaking Cantonese....

web.archive.org

In 1912, shortly after the fall of the Qing dynasty, the founding fathers of the republic met to decide which language should be spoken in the new China.

Mandarin - now known as Putonghua [the common language] - was then a northern dialect spoken by the hated Manchurian officials. While it had served as China's lingua franca for centuries, many perceived it as an 'impure form' of Chinese.

Many of the revolutionary leaders, including Sun Yat-sen, were from Guangdong - which has long been China's land of new ideas. A great debate started between the delegates and eventually led to a formal vote. Cantonese lost out by a small margin to Putonghua and the rest is history.

While historians today still argue about the authenticity of the story, it is something Guangdong people love to tell.

Your challenge, should you accept it, is to actually make that story actually authentic, so that if I, a Westerner, wanted to learn Chinese, I would learn it in its Standard Cantonese form almost exclusively.

Now, around this time Cantonese was going through some sound shifts at the time, so it is okay for some older pronunciations to be retained in the resulting Standard Chinese, especially one particular one which is still retained in some older Romanization schemes and those derived from it, like the Government's Romanization of place names, for example. After all, even in Modern Standard Mandarin (however you want to call it) older pronunciations sit side by side with the standard Beijing-based pronunciations.

So, who's interested?

 

[Green Painting]

I’m of the opinion that some form of Mandarin was more likely to be dominant since terrains favored the formation of a super-dialect (mandarin) in the north, and several very different dialects on the south.

However, the basis of the Beijing tone wasn’t formed until the Qing Dynasty‘s constant campaigning brought variant people together in Hebei, fermenting a lingua Franca. A Guangdong-based Dynasty in the aftermath of the fall of Ming would definitely help.

 

[ramones1986]

I’m of the opinion that some form of Mandarin was more likely to be dominant since terrains favored the formation of a super-dialect (mandarin) in the north, and several very different dialects on the south.

I thought of Jianghuai/Nanjing variant

 

[Deleted member 143777]

Even if they decided to start using Cantonese, once Yuan Shikai comes along that decision's going to get reversed. He was hugely in favor of maintaining Beijing's position as the political center of China, so he'd probably feel the same about language.

Moreover, the fact is, as other users have pointed out, that the majority (plurality?) of the population of China (basically the entire Han/Hui population north of the Yangtze) already spoke some variety of Mandarin, whereas the Yue (e.g. Cantonese, Toisanese), Min (e.g. Hokkien, Teochew), Wu (Shanghainese, Wenzhounese), etc. 'dialect groups'/languages were each largely confined to a province or two - hardly suitable for the role of a national language. You'll end up having to teach most of your population and civil service what is essentially a different language; with Mandarin, more people (and crucially the entire existing educated classes) already know the language. More realistically, you might see other dialect dialects of Mandarin being used instead of the Beijing dialect, e.g. Jianghuai (as @ramones1986 mentioned) or even Sichuanese (which I think was proposed at one point?).

That being said, a southern dialect/language like Cantonese, Hokkien, or Hakka would be more linguistically 'pure'/'authentic', could be used represent a clean break with the past and an embracement of modernity, and might help strengthen the relationship with the Chinese diaspora in the US and Southeast Asia (who were primarily Southern Chinese in origin).

 

[Dan1988]

Even if they decided to start using Cantonese, once Yuan Shikai comes along that decision's going to get reversed. He was hugely in favor of maintaining Beijing's position as the political center of China, so he'd probably feel the same about language.

It should be pretty feasible to get Yuan Shikai out of the scene. How that happens, I don't know.

That being said, a southern dialect/language like Cantonese, Hokkien, or Hakka would be more linguistically 'pure'/'authentic', could be used represent a clean break with the past and an embracement of modernity, and might help strengthen the relationship with the Chinese diaspora in the US and Southeast Asia (who were primarily Southern Chinese in origin).

And considering the Overseas Chinese were a big part of getting the Xinhai Revolution off the ground in the first place, . . .

More realistically, you might see other dialect dialects of Mandarin being used [. . .] or even Sichuanese (which I think was proposed at one point?).

Now that's something I never heard of before. Would be interesting to see the details of that proposal as well as the reasons for why Sichuanese (which would probably imply/mean Chengdu-Chongqing, as those two are the major cities in that area).

 

[Deleted member 143777]

Now that's something I never heard of before. Would be interesting to see the details of that proposal as well as the reasons for why Sichuanese (which would probably imply/mean Chengdu-Chongqing, as those two are the major cities in that area).

Sadly I don't remember where I saw this (or the credibility of the source). After scouring the web I'm afraid that it might be apocrypha.

 

[Green Painting]

It should be pretty feasible to get Yuan Shikai out of the scene. How that happens, I don't know

It’s too late. In early RoC. The debate was between the Beijing Tone and the “Old National Tone”, which was just an artificial tone based on the Beijing tone. Southern dialects weren’t even brought to the scene.

 

[Dan1988]

The debate was between the Beijing Tone and the “Old National Tone”, which was just an artificial tone based on the Beijing tone. Southern dialects weren’t even brought to the scene.

I thought the ONP was more general Mandarin (hence the comment earlier about Sichuanese, since it contains three additional initials that are shared with the ONP)?

Otherwise, I guess a pre-1900 POD could work better here - but still, it would be nice if Cantonese had a shot (if not in its entirety, than in at least shaping a good portion of the contours of Modern Standard Mandarin).