Re: Fun with the Origin of Chinese spoken languages

From: SJ (donot_at_send.spam.net)
Date: 10/27/04 

Date: Wed, 27 Oct 2004 13:48:32 +0000 (UTC)

PaPaPeng <papapeng@yahoo.com> wrote in
news:2h1rn09o63q71b51cboebgnr2c5obkb1su@4ax.com:

>On Mon, 25 Oct 2004 17:39:32 -0700, Jacques Guy
><jguy@alphalink.com.au> wrote:
>
>>He's just learnt the meaning of wang2ba dan4. "Terrapin" is
>>a North American species of turtles (wang2ba)--the word is
>>believed to have been borrowed from Algonquian (a native
>>language spoken in Virginia and thereabouts).
>
>
>Reminds me of The ECONOMIST article on the early efforts that led to
>the adoption of the Beijing dialect as the common national language of
>China. I have that article filed somewhere.
>
>This was just after the 1949 Revolution and there was a national
>congress on a national language. The Shanghai clique of course wanted
>their dialect as the national language. Somewhere during the
>conference break the senior Shanghai delegate used the word "wang
>something" in reference to a rickshaw he wanted to hire. However, to
>the Peking delegate who overheard him, it sounded like Turtle, a word
>that has the power of calling one a whore. The Peking delegate was
>enraged and chased the Shanghai guy out of the hall. The Shanghai guy
>never returned to the conference and the Beijing dialect won by
>default.
>
>Thus when you ( SJ mainly) non Chinese guys talk with such authority
>about Chinese as it was spoken more than 2000 years ago you have
>totally no credibility. Even modern Chinese of different dialects can
>badly misunderstand one another.

Outsiders sometimes can understand better than insiders.

SJ.

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