 This video is going viral right now because he's convincing people that the Chinese language doesn't exist. Yeah, but if Chinese doesn't exist, what accent am I using on my English right now? Let's run the clip. There's technically no such thing as the Chinese language. Linguists classify Chinese as a family of languages that are related but not mutually intelligible. Just like German and English and Dutch are related languages in the Germanic language family, they all descend from a common language that was spoken hundreds of years ago, but now they're distinct languages. The same thing happened with Chinese. The modern Chinese languages descend from a single language called Middle Chinese, which was spoken around 300 CE to 1100 CE. What people call standard Chinese is, for the most part, just a specific dialect of Mandarin spoken around Beijing. Since Beijing is the capital of China, this dialect gets used for official contexts and as a lingua franca across the country. Because of this, most people in China have to know at least some Mandarin in addition to their local language. So how different are these Chinese languages? Well, here's a comparison of words in Mandarin, Yue and Min. Sometimes you can tell that the words are related, but other times they look completely different. The different Chinese languages don't even have the same number of tones. Mandarin has four tones, while Cantonese has nine. So why do people think of Chinese as just a single language? First, all these Chinese languages use the same writing system. This works because Chinese characters generally represent words rather than sounds. The second reason people think of Chinese as a single language is because it used to be. A similar situation actually happened in Europe with Latin. For centuries, French and Spanish were just called dialects or vernaculars in the same way that the different Chinese languages are called dialects today. I'm Danny. I post about the science and diversity of language. Like this video if you want to learn more. Oh my goodness! I felt like he kind of saved himself with the Latin reference at the end, but at the beginning when he was like, yeah, it's just like Dutch, German, and English. I was like, I don't think so. I think the Chinese dialects are way closer than those are. All right, everybody, we're going to break this down. We actually did a lot of research on our own and we're going to talk about is he right or is he wrong? And let me tell you this. He's a linguistics PhD. He's right to an extent, but there's one big thing that he's missing, David, and we're going to break it down. So please hit that like button right now. Smallassoss is out for pre-orders. We're telling our YouTube channel first. We didn't even really announce it yet, except on the YouTube channel. Anyways, David, what is the big thing that he's actually wrong about? So basically, he's right when he's looking at it through a Western linguistics framework that because spoken Chinese dialects are not mutually intelligible, meaning that if you don't speak any Cantonese and I can only speak Cantonese, we can't really fully understand each other more than like 10% in a conversation, right? However, he's wrong because the Chinese language, Andrew, is based off the written language, which is extremely different than pretty much like any other language on earth. Right. And I think that he is right. Obviously, he's a PhD. So he is very smart guys, but also he's looking at it through, he's analyzing it through like the Western lens, which we all understand that Chinese is an Eastern language that comes from a completely different route. And the reason why people say that Chinese has 5,000 years of continuous history, like Chinese civilization, is mostly because of the written language, not as much because of the dialects, because the sounds and the dialects and the words coming out of your mouth have changed over time, but the written language is more or less the thing that kept it consistent. Right, right, right. It's essentially like if emojis existed a long time ago, the emojis never changed, even though the pronunciation of the emojis is completely different. I think nowadays it's easier to understand Chinese now that everybody speaks emoji, because if I use I emoji, there's what? Andrew, let's just say there's like 800 languages on earth, right, or 8,000. Everybody's gonna have a word for I. So what, are we all speaking the same language? If we all can read emojis or speak through emojis, which are essentially advanced hieroglyphics. No, if you come from one end of the world, but you're using the same emoji as me, I understand what you're saying only through the written, because your word for that emoji is different. Right, we're all speaking Apple emoji knees. Listen, if you send a girl the eggplant emoji, it's gonna mean the same thing in every... No, no, no, but you're right, not speaking, not speaking is the key. We're communicating in the same language, but we're not speaking the same language. So his point is true when you're just talking about speaking. Yes, yes, yes. But I guess Western linguistics pretty much mostly focuses on being able to have conversations. All right, David, let's real quick. Now that we got that out of the way, we're gonna go into the comments section soon. But David, what are some like Middle Chinese, like just to kind of rephrase it in our own terms? Right, right. What is Middle Chinese? So Middle Chinese in like, let's say in relation to like Dutch, German, and English would be the original root language that they all broke off from. For example, Andrew, French, Italian, Spanish, all at one point were considered, he said in the video, dialects of Latin. Latin is the original root. Middle Chinese is the root of a lot of East Asian languages. Like I don't want to say fully, but there's like a reason why like Toshugwan means library and Dosukan is library in Korean and Dosukan is the library in Japanese. Because they're all driven from Middle Chinese. Now there are certain dialects like modern day Cantonese is a little bit closer to Middle Chinese than modern day Mandarin is. Right. But a lot of the vocab, if we're gonna draw, like even English is a Germanic language, but it has a lot of Latin vocabulary. It's like all from one root language like a thousand years ago. Yeah, and you know, credit to Cantonese, I believe, and you could read this all over the internet, that yeah, middle, that there's poems, ancient poems written in Middle Chinese that make more sense when you read it or you translate it through Cantonese. No, because they rhyme. Yeah, because it rhymes in Cantonese because Cantonese is closer to Middle Chinese. So the original Chinese language, the one that you could say is the more cohesive written language sounds more like Cantonese or maybe even like Hokkien Fujinese, possibly write the southern languages. Hokkien Fujinese actually came from old Chinese, not even Middle. Whoa, so they came out for poor. You know what I always found was interesting and this is just a personal point is that certain words in Cantonese are very similar to the words in Korean for the same thing. So I'm guessing that those words in Korean didn't come from Mandarin, but they came from Middle Chinese. For example, I always use this and this is a very old food, so you know that it could come from this time. Right, because it's from like 1,000 years ago, right? Kanji, porridge, right? The rice porridge in Cantonese, it's juk, right, essentially? It's juk, right. And then in Korean, it's juk. What in Mandarin, it's joe? So it is similar even in Mandarin, but if I had to say possibly the Korean word for this one in particular comes from Middle Chinese which is more similar to Cantonese. And even when we go to Vietnam, Andrew, what their word is for North and South in Cantonese is pa-fong, lam-fong, but their word is bak and nam. So very similar to bak and lam. Right, right. That's where you get the buckies and namers. Yeah, yeah. So basically guys, Middle Chinese was this era of Chinese where they were exporting a ton of culture to Japan, Korea, Vietnam, but then there was like, then it's like different now because obviously Koreans are going to get tanghulu, which is really trending in Korea right now to eat it. That's just like a full Mandarin word. Yeah, obviously for a lot of the modern things, I would assume that it comes from Mandarin that just because Mandarin is such a popular language now that they're just going to borrow that word. Listen guys, study Middle Chinese. Like I'm not saying learn to speak it, but it's actually very interesting about the development of the language based off this whole written thing. And it's just, it developed. It's interesting because now we're just starting to see the linguistic charts of the East pop up because for the longest time, obviously Western scholars and obviously we're living in America, they're just going to have the good charts for the Western language. Dude, you know what's crazy, David? Is that this Middle Chinese is so old. Like we're speaking of it like, you know, it's been around for a thousand plus years, but it's only considered Middle Chinese. It's not even the oldest Chinese out there. This is Middle, meaning that there's something even older than Middle. It's called Old Ancient Chinese. Old Ancient Chinese, I don't know how many years ago. A lot of people don't understand for English. We have that too. It's just because in America, we don't really study the history of English like they do in England, Andrew. Beowulf from 500 years ago is considered the first thing and it's still hard to read if you're a modern English speaker. It's the first thing that modern English scholars can even read because even old English, O-L-D-E English was like a whole another thing that you can only read like 10% of. Right. That's true. Anyway, let's get to the comment section. Somebody said it's just different accents. There's no differences when you write and someone said no, no, no, it's much more than accents. And this kind of got political. Do you know what I mean? Because obviously right now this whole debate about whether Chinese is a language or are these separate things, it's like because modern China is trying to push Mandarin on everybody, right? It's true for unified reasons, for a lot of reasons. Some people like it. Some people don't. I think there's legitimate arguments on both sides. But a lot of Cantonese people are like saying, oh, but you can't really write colloquial. Like if I write out a Cantonese comic book, which is very slang filled, a Mandarin reader can't read the colloquial slang canto. Because you know, like Haileito in Cantonese just translates to Shini Du in Mandarin, which doesn't mean anything. But here's the thing, Andrew, when you write informal Cantonese, it will make about 95% or 90% chance to a Mandarin reader. Like in terms of intelligibility. Right. So some people said, no, it's all about political oppression. Somebody said it's about, you know, basically like, you know, language gets politicized. Would you agree, Andrew? Yeah, because language comes from culture and if you try to erase a language or you say, oh, that language isn't as important, then you're saying, oh, is that culture not as important? Those people are now not as important. People of that culture are not as important. That is the implication. Or become like our dominant tribe or your tribe will become irrelevant, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. That is the implication for sure. No, for sure. And I think that there's some, I totally understand those are all human feelings that people would have. Somebody said, how come Western people always define everything through their own lens? You have to understand the difference between a logogram and an alphabet, like in a pictogram and a hieroglyphic based system. Right. But isn't that just what he's doing? He's a Western man analyzing through a Western lens. I mean, he is an educated Western man, but and I'm sure he understands what we're saying in this video. You know, Danny, if you're watching this, but, but yeah, like obviously he is seeing it, categorizing it using the Western kind of categories. Basically, Chinese are sort of like, if the ancient Egyptians, Andrew, would have just refined their hieroglyphic system over like many, many phases and just kept writing in hieroglyphics. Obviously, they don't anymore. Right. But I'm saying Chinese basically never stopped. Yeah. They never stopped with the hieroglyphics. They just turn the hieroglyphics into logograms and epictograms and they got the radicals now. And that's just what it is. It's almost, some people said, Andrew, it's more like reading musical notes. Oh. Because you know how musical notes can be played by many different instruments and they sound different, but the notes are the notes. Yeah. And it's more like pictographs because the notes, they tell you what it sounds like, but no, the pictographs actually give it meaning. Like there's a lot of characters that, not all characters, but a lot of Chinese characters that literally look like that thing that they come from. Right. Tian Guo, or if you look at Guo Jia, it just looks like a painting of a country. Like literally, it's kind of crazy if you really understand it. Like middle is like, you know, Chua has like the skewers has the- No, Chua is just literal. Chua might be the most literal one. Yo, Chua is crazy. Chua is crazy. Chua and fire, I would say, are the most literal- You mean like hieroglyphic-like? Most literal pictures, yeah. Somebody said, people just don't understand in America, Andrew. When you see two LB, that means libra pondo. Libra pondo is actually Latin for way by the pound. But how come when we in America see two LB, we are really really read it as two pounds, but we don't even know that it means libra pondo? So it goes to show you in America, we actually do use more Latin than we even know that we use. Oh man. Yeah. So it goes to show you basically like, there's more linguistic like, Andrew, did you know that Italian and Persian actually share a decent amount of loan words with each other, even though Italy and Persia are really far from each other, because they're part of the same language family? So there's just a lot of things that are true, but it's so ancient that everybody like, just doesn't care anymore or doesn't study it. Yeah, well, it's tend to be like, Oh, like your word sounds like, like if you wanted to be a petty Chinese person, you'd be like, oh, Koreans, you stole our word from there. Japanese, you stole the word from there. Those are our words. See, you guys are just. Jiazhengmian, Jiazhengmian. You guys are just Chinese people. First of all, that's not true. But there are borrowed words, and obviously there is some relation. That's a fact. Yeah, I think it's because there's maybe more beef amongst like the modern day Asian countries that came from middle, that were influenced by middle Chinese than the Latin countries. The Latin countries feel more like, Yeah, we are all Latin. Like it's all tied together by what the Pope says. They shared religion and things like that. Somebody said, when you know, when you see the character for Shui, I'm going to pop that up right now, a Mandarin person sees Shui, a Cantonese person sees Shui, a Japanese person sees Mizu, and even ancient Koreans or ancient Vietnamese would read it as water too, but they would all just say it completely different in their own languages, right? Well, that is how I guess you're able to have such a long documented history is that your written language is somewhat consistent over the years. Right, that makes sense. Andrew, of course, it got into the arguments of why Mandarin is dominating mainland China now. Some people are saying all the school teachers are going everywhere now around the country and they don't speak the local dialect. They're only trained in formal, what is like standard, like neutral Mandarin. So that's going to make the kids not speak as much local dialect. And also people are saying, for example, me and you recently went to Guangzhou, Andrew, remember, people could not speak Cantonese, some people, and you couldn't believe it at first, but you realize there's so many people and there's so much movement and migrant things, and also people were saying that media matters too, because Cantonese media, Andrew, is far from its peak in the 1990s. Right, right, it's almost like what if... I mean, it's kind of like because K-pop is so popular, a lot of people are learning Korean. Right, and then the last people are learning Kanto because Kanto, pop is not as popular. Right, but if Cantonese pop music was like hyper, hyper globally popular, yeah, I'm sure there would be more incentive to maintain Cantonese on some level, you know. Right, right, right. Well, you know what's interesting is as the Korean population shoots downwards, non-Korean people learning Korean is shooting upwards. Yeah, no. I think the Korean language is, in a way, as popular as it's ever been. Globally, for sure. Somebody said Cantonese having nine tones is a myth. I'm actually a linguist and there's only six due to synchronic analysis. So basically, this is like some linguistic nerd's talk where it's like, you know, in the past, Andrew, people used to say all the tones in Cantonese were that was like all nine of them. But some people are saying that's six, but then what characterizes the tone, what doesn't. Do you think it's interesting that Fujianese and Hokkien were more related to old Chinese than middle Chinese? I mean, it does sound pretty different than Mandarin. I'm not gonna lie. I hear a lot in New York and it does sound different. Like when I hear it, I'm like... Yo, what is that? It does sound more old, right? Yeah, no, I don't... Yeah, I don't know what an old language sounds like. Yeah, but I will just tell you this. I like try to listen with my minimum, you know, Mandarin ears that I have. And I try to... And I hear... I maybe recognize one word every like 15, 20 words. Right. Specifically, food's old dialect. Yeah, it's pretty different. It's more than shaman. Yeah. Um, somebody said, funny how Westerners try to point fingers at a language it was just had a longer civilization than theirs. And then somebody said, oh yeah, feeling superior, longer history is not giving China any advantage now. And this turned into, of course, Andrew, though, this is sort of like a geek thing on the internet of just like, just because you come from a more ancient place, does it mean anything or does it mean nothing? Dude, it's so funny to see the argument in the comments now of like, oh, so you had a longer civilization, huh? You think that's better? Well, you know, I'm just looking at the timeline through the past 50 years and your country sucked. Right. And you guys aren't making anything cool right now. Yeah. And then the other comment is coming about, yeah, what do you mean? Yeah, if it wasn't for us, like you guys wouldn't have paper and gunpowder and look at our languages. It's so we were able to keep it. America is so young, how America is not even going to be around. And then it's like, what are you talking about? We're only speaking for our like, dude, you just, it's a funny, it's a funny battle that goes on in the comments. Well, the truth is if you, I guess the battles of those would just take place on what timeline you're looking at. But I would say most people in America, they look on like a, honestly, like a 20 year timeline. That's how I feel like most people in the West look at it. Ultimately, Andrew, what did you think of this video? Did it, did it connect with you? Did it not connect with you? Is it interesting like to see people debating whether Chinese is even a language? No, I think shout out to this guy, man. Like I appreciate the video. You know, I'm also glad we made a video, but I'm glad he made a video because first of all, he's a studied guy. Obviously he's not Chinese, but like, and he left out certain things, but from his perspective- He did call the Yue language Yue. Yeah, I mean, he made good content. That was good content. It sparked a discussion and good. Now everybody can actually learn more from it. I agree with you. And I think that sometimes, Andrew, it takes these guys with a completely outside perspective on the East. And maybe because the East is so economically relevant now, they're like probably studying it more than they did in their early PhD days. And it's like, then we get to react off that because sometimes when Chinese analyze their own culture to the West, it's different than a purely Western eye looking at it. And then now we get to see Indo-European, and then, you know, the Germanic languages and the Latin language family, and we get to see all the spread. And people are talking about Castilian Spanish and, you know, Italy has a bunch of dialects. Can some people understand people in Sardinia or Sicily? Does that still Italian? Yes or no versus standard Italian? It brings up a lot of like, I guess Western world comparisons to help people understand the East, even though sometimes they're not like, 100 out of 100 lockdown. Ultimately, I'll say this, my final takeaway is this. I wish more Chinese Americans or any Asian American would watch these expert opinions from Western people on their culture and use it as an opportunity to learn more. Because sometimes like, I feel like sometimes even Asian Americans, we just like, we just know what our parents told us. Right. Because we're not doing any independent study because obviously on a day-to-day basis in terms of living a lit life or fun IRL life in America, you don't need to know any of this. But I think it would help some people. People who are searching for more deeper truth. Anyway guys, let us know what you think in the comments section below. Is Chinese a language? Are they separate dialects? What are the frameworks? Until next time, we're the Hop Hop Boys. We out. Peace.