Chinese Whispers: Is Mandarin bad for China?

Best of the Spectator

The Spectator

News Commentary, News, Daily News, Society & Culture

4.4 • 785 Ratings

🗓️ 28 November 2023

⏱️ 44 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Across the span of China, a country as big as Europe, there are countless regional dialects and accents – perhaps even languages. Often, they're mutually unintelligible.

The Chinese call these ‘fangyan’, and each Chinese person will likely be able to speak at least one fangyan, while also understanding Standard Mandarin, the official language of the People's Republic. It means that the Chinese are more multilingual than you might think.

But it also means that the question of language is inherently a political one. Standard Mandarin has a relatively short history, created by the country’s founding fathers to unify the spoken word in a huge country. But with the ubiquity of Standard Mandarin now, is fangyan at risk of dying out?

Joining the episode is Gina Tam, a historian and author of Dialect and Nationalism in China.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	The Spectator magazine combines incisive political analysis
0:03.7	with books and arts reviews of unrivaled authority.
0:07.6	Subscribe today for just £12 and receive a 12-week subscription, in print and online,
0:13.7	plus a £20 £20,000 Amazon gift voucher, absolutely free.
0:17.4	Go to spectator.com.uk forward slash voucher.
0:31.4	Hello and welcome to Chinese Whispers with me, Cindy Yu. Every episode, I'll be talking to
0:36.3	journalists, experts and long-time China I'll be talking to journalists, experts,
0:39.5	and long-time China watchers about the latest in Chinese politics, society, and more.
0:42.7	There'll be a smattering of history
0:44.0	to catch you up on the background knowledge
0:45.5	and some contacts as well.
0:47.5	How did the Chinese see these issues?
0:50.8	Have a listen to this.
0:52.4	You've seen fun, don't me?
0:53.9	You could eat fun, huh're going to eat fun.
0:56.5	You can't eat fun?
0:57.3	Have you?
0:58.0	Have you ever?
0:59.0	Have you ever?
1:01.1	I took a man?
1:02.0	I took it?
1:03.0	You've eaten?
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from The Spectator, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of The Spectator and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.