{"id":45418,"date":"2019-12-16T13:34:31","date_gmt":"2019-12-16T18:34:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/?p=45418"},"modified":"2019-12-16T13:55:05","modified_gmt":"2019-12-16T18:55:05","slug":"cross-talk-about-topolects","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/?p=45418","title":{"rendered":"Crosstalk about topolects"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In the last few days, we've been discussing the notion of \"national language\" and its relationship to other languages and topolects spoken in China.\u00a0 Here's a famous 6:47 comic skit filmed in 1980 featuring the late M\u01ce J\u00ec \u9a6c\u5b63 and his <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Straight_man\">straight man<\/a>, Zh\u00e0o Y\u00e1n \u8d75\u708e, called \"Gu\u01cengd\u014dng hu\u00e0 \u5e7f\u4e1c\u8bdd\" (\"Cantonese\") (I will describe its contents below):<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"\u9a6c\u5b63\u3001\u8d75\u708e \u76f8\u58f0-\u5e7f\u4e1c\u8bdd\" width=\"500\" height=\"375\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/Trzwv1QUcAQ?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Double_act\">Comedy duos<\/a>, like <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Abbott_and_Costello\">Abbott and Costello<\/a>, have been quite popular in China for the past century and more.\u00a0 In Chinese, they are usually referred to as <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Xiangsheng\">xi\u00e0ngsheng \u76f8\u58f0<\/a> (\"crosstalk; comic dialog\"), which is centered in Beijing, but also is much loved in Tianjin, Nanjing, and elsewhere, particularly in the north.\u00a0 The Northeastern equivalent of crosstalk is called xi\u01ceop\u01d0n \u5c0f\u54c1 (\"comedic sketch\").<\/p>\n<p>Ma begins the skit by saying that when he does crosstalk he speaks P\u01d4t\u014dnghu\u00e0 \u666e\u901a\u8bdd (lit., \"common speech\", i.e., \"Mandarin\"), which Zhao calls Hu\u00e1y\u01d4 \u534e\u8bed (lit., \"florescent language\", i.e., \"Chinese\").\u00a0 Ma immediately follows by repeating the designation P\u01d4t\u014dnghu\u00e0 \u666e\u901a\u8bdd (lit., \"common speech\", i.e., \"Mandarin\").\u00a0 He says that we should speak Putonghua, not just in crosstalk, but also in daily life.\u00a0 Zhao stresses that this is for the purpose of t\u01d2ngy\u012b y\u01d4y\u00e1n \u7edf\u4e00\u8bed\u8a00 (\"unification of language\").\u00a0 Ma agrees that this will result in a g\u00f2ngt\u00f3ng y\u01d4y\u00e1n \u5171\u540c\u8bed\u8a00 (\"common language\") and says that we (Chinese people) shouldn't just speak in f\u0101ngy\u00e1n \u65b9\u8a00 (\"topolects\").\u00a0 When people from different parts of the country speak their own topolects, they can't understand each other, which results in people making fools of themselves.<\/p>\n<p>By this point, Ma is really warming to his topic.\u00a0 With the help of Zhao, he emphasizes that China is a big country and that it has many topolects and t\u01d4y\u01d4 \u571f\u8bed (\"patois\").\u00a0 Ma says that we shouldn't speak that kind of language because others won't understand.\u00a0 If we only go several tens of kilometers away, we encounter another topolect that we can't understand.<\/p>\n<p>Ma tells us that his name is M\u01ce J\u00ec \u9a6c\u5b63 (lit., \"horse season\"), but when he goes to Shanghai, people there pronounce his name as though it sounds like m\u01d4j\u012b \u6bcd\u9e21 (\"hen\"), and he milks that for all it's worth.\u00a0 (I won't go into all the silly details [e.g., he can't lay eggs like a hen].)<\/p>\n<p>Then he turns to Guangzhou, where they speak Cantonese.\u00a0 There they pronounce his name so that the second syllable sounds to him as though it means gu\u01d0 \u9b3c (\"ghost\").\u00a0 In the north he is human, in the south he's a ghost.\u00a0 So that's a problem with the topolects.<\/p>\n<p>After that, Ma rattles off the numbers from 1-10 in Putonghua \/ Mandarin.\u00a0 He shows that there's a difference even between Beijing and Tianjin, which are only a little over a hundred kilometers apart.\u00a0 The difference is much greater when you get to Shanghai, and when you get to Guangzhou, the numbers sound so different that they make Zhao's head hurt.<\/p>\n<p>Ma repeats that, if you don't understand topolects, it's easy to make a fool of yourself.\u00a0 As an illustration, from around 3:30 in the video, Ma tells how, once when he and his wife were in Guangzhou, they rode their bicycles to a market to buy a hen.\u00a0 Since he couldn't speak Cantonese, he was unable to ask where they could park their bikes.\u00a0 Finally with lots of gesturing, his Cantonese interlocutor comprehends that he wants to know where to park their bikes, whereupon the man says \"over there\", which sounds to Ma as though he were saying \"z\u00e0i H\u01cein\u00e1n d\u01ceo \u5728\u6d77\u5357\u5c9b\" (\"on Hainan Island\") (the Cantonese for \"over there\" is heard by Ma as something like hai2 ni1dou6 <span class=\"chinesemed\">\u55ba<\/span><span class=\"chinesemed\">\u5462\u5ea6, which actually means \"over here\"<\/span>).\u00a0 After they get their bikes parked, they go into the market where the wife tries to buy an old hen, but the person working there keeps giving her roosters.\u00a0 Frustrated at not being able to explain that she wants a hen, not a rooster, she shouts that what she wants is a chicken that is \"the same as me\".<\/p>\n<p>The skit ends with a rapid stream of Cantonese that only leaves the audience thoroughly confused and convulsed with laughter.<\/p>\n<p><b>Readings<\/b><\/p>\n<p>\"<a title=\"Permanent link to \" href=\"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/?p=45371\" rel=\"bookmark\">'National Language' in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region<\/a>\" (12\/14\/19)<\/p>\n<p>\"<a title=\"Permanent link to Multilingualism in Philadelphia's Chinatown\" href=\"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/?p=45367\" rel=\"bookmark\">Multilingualism in Philadelphia's Chinatown<\/a>\" (12\/14\/19)<\/p>\n<p>\"<a title=\"Permanent link to A Chinese analog to English \" href=\"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/?p=45063\" rel=\"bookmark\">A Chinese analog to English you know'<\/a>\" (11\/22\/19)<\/p>\n<p>\"<a title=\"Permanent link to \" href=\"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/?p=41940\" rel=\"bookmark\">'Rondle it!'<\/a>\" (2\/25\/19)<\/p>\n<p>[Thanks to Diana Shuheng Zhang]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In the last few days, we've been discussing the notion of \"national language\" and its relationship to other languages and topolects spoken in China.\u00a0 Here's a famous 6:47 comic skit filmed in 1980 featuring the late M\u01ce J\u00ec \u9a6c\u5b63 and his straight man, Zh\u00e0o Y\u00e1n \u8d75\u708e, called \"Gu\u01cengd\u014dng hu\u00e0 \u5e7f\u4e1c\u8bdd\" (\"Cantonese\") (I will describe its [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[23,224],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-45418","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-humor","category-topolects"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45418","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=45418"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45418\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":45439,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45418\/revisions\/45439"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=45418"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=45418"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=45418"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}