Talk:Beijing dialect/Archive 1

Archive 1

Untitled

What's with,

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100110100 03:13, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

It’s different Pu tong hua

Pirate external link

What's the use of a website to buy a Beijing Pirate T-Shirt? This website is absolutely useless and if someone really wanted to, a sentence like "there are distinctions in the Beijing dialect like in every other language, and the "arr" ending is one of them (link to the Erhua article). Some people think it looks like a pirate speaking, some others don't." could be much better.

Though that sentence wouldn't really be encyclopedic, so I propose to just remove the link and forget about all this. Thanks! --BahaFura (talk) 21:38, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Traditional characters

I know this is a typical war, but why would one go to the trouble of transcribing a bunch of words from a dialect spoken in the capital city of mainland china in traditional characters? Wouldn't that be a bit like writing Hindi slang in the Urdu (Arabic) script? Especially since, overall, traditional characters are used much less than simplified by Mandarin speakers? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 70.132.11.78 (talk) 01:48, 19 January 2007 (UTC).

True. But if we only include simplified scripts it would be difficult for those (from Hong Kong/Taiwan etc.) who cannot recognise simplified characters. I propose we use simplified characters but include traditional ones in brackets. j.t. (talk) 11:19, 8 June 2011 (UTC)

Profanity

"京骂"(Beijing swearing) is also something that is very distinct in Beijing dialect, and I think it deserves a sentence or two and a few examples. Considering there is a whole list of *Profanity by language on Wikipedia, I do not think such topic is unacceptable here. j.t. (talk) 11:30, 8 June 2011 (UTC)

grammar section?

the example makes no sense whatsoever. the beijing version is hardly "long-winded" -- it's actually shorter (by a bit)! furthermore, the "beijing reductions" listed are in fact totally standard mandarin. in fact, the example overall shows hardly any difference other than a couple of -r's and use of "dei".

Benwing (talk) 04:17, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

I agree that Beijing hua is generally shorter than Standard Mandarin when said. But in actuality, its "long-winded" due to it being written out as for example, "Jintian-r". Not necessarily the same thing. I think the "Beijing reductions" examples are accurate. After all, colloquial Beijing dialect is famous for its "er" sounds. And Standard Mandarin is supposed to be very similar to the Beijing dialect - which is the model its based upon. Laoganma (talk) 04:45, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

except prove that most, much less all, people consistently type '儿' when not necessary (i.e. 份儿, instead of 份). and don't forget that variations like 今儿 are acceptable.

There are a few other problems in this article. I'll just list them, I suppose.

"The grammar of the colloquial Beijing dialect utilizes more colloquial expressions than does Standard Chinese."
Aside from redundancy, this claim is unclear. Does the Beijing dialect utilize more idioms than Standard Chinese? Most dialects (of any language) have colloquial expressions. Regardless, different idioms does equate to a difference in grammar. In the example given below, the Standard Chinese uses 'huì' to mark future where the Beijing example is using 'děi'.

"In general, Standard Chinese is influenced by Classical Chinese, which makes it more condensed and concise; Beijing dialect can therefore seem more long winded (though note the generally faster speaking rate and phonetic reductions of colloquial Beijing speech)."

This claim is not strictly about grammar either. It's about speakers' attitudes. A language can seem more long winded than another if it requires more words to convey the same thing. This is often said about German compared to English. "Condensed" and "concise" are often used to describe Classical Chinese, but this not really a linguistic fact.
Also, the term "Classical Chinese" is ambiguous, because it's not clear if it is referencing the spoken language (i.e. Old Chinese or the written form. As this article is about the Beijing dialect, I'm assuming it's the spoken language. This is problematic, because most linguists assume that all Chinese languages/dialects evolve from Old Chinese (see Chinese language). When putonghua was standardized, did they choose to reduce total words because of the influence of Classical Chinese? If so, this needs to be stated explicitly and cited.

If I ever get time over the next few weeks, I'll try to correct these problems. Otherwise, somebody else should. Iank125 (talk) 22:51, 7 December 2012 (UTC)

Classical Chinese is essentially written Old Chinese pronounced like a modern language which has a "Sino-lexicon" (traditional readings of Chinese characters), not necessarily (Standard) Mandarin, if your native language is a different language (Cantonese, Min Nan, Wu, or even Vietnamese, Japanese or Korean). The closest analogue in the west would be something like the Traditional English pronunciation of Latin or other modern regional pronunciations of Latin, the analogue of Classical Chinese being New Latin. The article Lion-Eating Poet in the Stone Den serves as an excellent introduction to the problem, and should help understand what exactly Classical Chinese is and why it is so concise.

I agree that the example is thoroughly useless at illustrating the claimed phenomenon – and actually confusing – since the Mandarin version is actually more concise in every way, irrespective of reductions. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 21:34, 5 December 2013 (UTC)

North-west portion of language map?

The north-west portion of the language map indicates that Beijing dialect is spoken there, but there's no apparent reference in the article. I'm wondering what the story is here :) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 220.146.133.178 (talk) 03:27, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

I, too, was annoyed by exactly the same thing.

A curious parallel, by the way: Tokyo Japanese is also the language of Sapporo and much of Sendai, northern cities settled from the South -- and in which a cynic might think that the national bureaucracy is the major industry.

I rather wonder whether some such thing might be true of China's extreme northwest?

David Lloyd-Jones (talk) 08:15, 25 December 2013 (UTC)

Vocabulary section

The word "怂”(meaning timid) is spelt wrongly. The most correct spelling is a "从“ under a “尸” although this character isn't found in modern Chinese dictionaries anymore, so forgive me for not typing it out.

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The bizarre unsigned comment above my line of ===='s is so utterly stupid that one can at least understand why the writer would not sign his name. Quite possibly he doesn't know what his name is, or perhaps can't spell it.

No, I won't forgive you for not typing it out. If it were so common (it's not) it would be in the Microsoft collection on your machine, fool.

DavidLJ (talk) 12:17, 1 January 2014 (UTC)