Talk:Diglossia

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[edit] Too long and tangential

The article is getting too long and tangential. It’s also getting weighted down by POV. This article should define diglossia and give examples that increase readers’ understanding of the concept. Lively (i.e. brief and interesting) examples have a place here as well. Lengthy discussion about socio-linguistic disparity in specific countries and details about the dialects involved should be placed in different articles. In particular regard to the current Brazil section, I will use an American (L) expression and vehemently assert that “y’all is wack, for serious.” House of Scandal 13:38, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] African-American English, Tamil, and Chinese

This article seems somewhat unclear; is a diglossic language:

a) one that has a high-prestige variety and a low-prestige variety, both of which are spoken;
b) one in which there is a high-prestige variety and a low-prestige variety where the low-prestige variety is in daily use and the high-prestige variety is used for formal occasions; or
c) one that has a high-prestige variety and a low-prestige variety, where the high-prestige variety could be primarily the written language's form.

If a diglossic language is a), then maybe Tamil should not be included, but English in the United States should be. If a diglossic language is b) then I'm not sure if Tamil should be included, either. If a diglossic language is c) then it seems that Chinese should be included.

If none of my above interpretations are correct, then it would be nice if someone gave a clearer definition of diglossia. Easytoremember 07:46, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Catalan

Certainly the situation has radically changed and the Catalonian Nacionalist governments are doing just the other way around, and the pressure is on the education system and the public life in Catalonia. However diglossia can not be applied to these cases. Pablo, 28 April 2006 (Edinburgh)


The section on Catalan was in need of some serious grammatical revisions. I've tried to keep the content of this section the same while making the text more fluid and, well, grammatically correct. Daniel 00:56, 11 February 2006 (Paris)

While mostly true, it should be noted than from the end of Franco's regime the Catalonian situation has certainly improve, and cannot be considered a case of diglossia nowadays. The situation has even been reversed in some cases, being now Spanish the discriminated language.

To keep this article neutral, both point of view should be noted.

Chrul, 10 April 2006.

The situacion in Catalonia must be considered a case of diglossia nowadays.

see:

Castilian in catalan countrys is not disciminated. The discriminated lenguage is catalan. Castilians would seem as victims, but the are not discriminated, for example, in Balears, a catalan country the rate castilians to catalans is 4:1.

Pèrez 15:28, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

Si deixau parlar als castellanistes-espanyolistes sempre diran que estan discriminats i com que són més, perquè el català està en una situació de diglòssia, sempre guanyaran. Jo no som bilingüe, el castellà és una imposició per la força. La llengua pròpia dels països catalans és el català, i el demés són imposicions. Als països catalans no es parlava cap altre idioma que no fos el català, el castellà ha estat imposat per la força. Això de dir que som bilingües es una insídia per disfressar la situació de diglòssia en que està el català als països catalans. No vull aprendre el castellà. La meva parla és la catalana. Jo no som bilingüe. Pérez 06:05, 27 May 2006 (UTC)

"If you let castellanists[?]-Spanish nationalists to talk, they will always say they are being discriminated against, and, as they are the majority [in Catalonia? in Spain? in the known cluster of galaxies?] , as catalan is under a diglossia situation, they will always win. I am not billingual, Castillian has been imposed [on me] by force. The own language of catalan countries is the catalan language and all the others [including Aranès? German? English?] are impositions. At the catalan countries no other language was spoken but catalan [Arabic before Reconquista?] , Castillan has been imposed by force. Besides, to say that we [in the catalan countries] are billingual is an insiduous trick to disguise the catalan diglossia situation at the catalan countries. I don't want to learn Spanish. My tongue is the catalan one. I am not billingual"
Translated from catalan by User:Ejrrjs says What? 22:26, 11 June 2006 (UTC) Comments between [] are mine.

El cas de l'Aranès és un cas especial, l'Aranès és un dialecte de l'Occità, la llengua dels trobadors de l'edat mitjana, una de les llengues romàniques amb lliteratura més antigues d'Europa, que ha estat gairebé esborrada del mapa pel francès. L'Anglès és també, pot ser, un cas especial. A Mallorca ja hi havia els british owner unes botigues de Magaluf i altres llocs de la illa on es parlava l'anglès més que cap altre idioma. Degut a que l'Anglès és un dels idiomes que es parlen a més llocs del món, i moltes persones el tenen com a segon idioma —en aquest grup també m'hi podria encloure— ara ens el volen imposar als mallorquins i als habitants de la resta de les Illes Balears, amb això del trilinguisme, no ens poden ensenyar en i per la nostra pròpia llengua? Serveix de qualque cosa la Viquipèdia? Pérez 18:18, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

"The case of Aranes is a special one. It is an Occitan dialect, the language of Middle Age minstrels, one of the oldest Romance languages (and with one of the oldest European literatures), almost wiped out because of the generalization of the French language. The English language is also a special case. There were in Mallorca the british owner, shops at Magaluf and other places of the island where English was spoken more than any other language. As English is one of the most spoken languages all over the world, and many people have it as a second language (I could count myself in this group) they want to impose it too to Mallorquins and the inhabitants of the rest of the Balearic Islands, with this trilinguism thing we cannot be taught in and for our own language? What does the Viquipèdia [Catalan Wikipedia] serve for?
Translated from catalan by User:Ejrrjs says What? 19:09, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
This subsection is pure nonsense. It needs major rewriting. The Catalan society is bilingual in Catalan and Spanish, and if any diglossia exists in Catalonia it's between Standard and Colloquial catalan, which are quite different from each other, especially with regard to verbs and pronouns. Standard Catalan is used by the media, Colloquial Catalan is heard in the streets. The degree of diglossia is even higher in the Balearic Islands, where the standard article "el, la" collides with the colloquial article "es, sa." In other words, the diglossia is not between Catalan and Spanish as the article would suggest, but it's an intra-Catalan diglossia combined with bilingualism with Spanish. --Abenyosef 06:50, 12 February 2007 (UTC)
A prime example being the Catalan-language editor above, who finds himself ill at ease when switching from his native Balearic dialect to standard Catalan. --Abenyosef 06:54, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Brazilian Portugese debate

Facts from a Milton Azevedo's paper have been included (in form a short quotation and a link to full paper: Vernacular Features in Educated Speech in Brazilian Portuguese Milton M. Azevedo, University of California: http://www.cervantesvirtual.com/servlet/SirveObras/79117399329793384100080/p0000008.htm)

Milton Azevedo states that Considering the difficulty encountered by vernacular speakers to acquire the standard, an understanding of those relationships appears to have broad educational significance. The teaching of Portuguese has traditionally meant imparting a prescriptive formal standard based on a literary register (Cunha 1985: 24) that is often at variance with the language with which students are familiar. As in a diglossic situation, vernacular speakers must learn to read and write in a dialect they neither speak nor fully understand, [...] a circumstance that may have a bearing on the high dropout rate in elementary schools...

One more proof of diglossia in Brazil.

Standard American English differs only slightly (in spelling, vocabulary, and grammar) from standard British English. Likewise, there are only minor differences between standard Brazilian Portuguese and standard European Portuguese. Conversely however, substandard varieties of American English like African American vernacular English differ considerably from standard British English in a scale that is comparable to the divergence between standard European Portuguese and the popular Brazilian vernacular. An important difference though between Brazil and the U.S. is that, in Brazil, there is also an intermediate linguistic modality, the so-called "educated colloquial language" used by the middle-class, which, contrary to what happens in the United States, does not coincide with the standard language, but, at the same time, does not deviate from the standard as much as the popular vernacular does. In other words, contrary to what happens in Brazil, the spoken language of the urban middle-class in the U.S is roughly identical in grammar (and largely in vocabulary) to the written standard language, hence the usual claim that English teachers in the U.S. tell students to "write as they speak". That "admonition" from U.S. teachers does not apply though to African-American students whose spoken vernacular differs considerably from the standard. In that sense, one can say there is a state of mild diglossia between the written and spoken language among African-American students just like I would agree a state of mild diglossia also applies to popular (uneducated) vernacular speakers in Brazil. As far as Brazilian middle-class speech is concerned though, even assuming a certain degree of deviation from the standard grammar, one cannot really say that any form of true diglossia (not even moderate) exists between the spoken and written languages. By contrast, in a country like Switzerland for example, complete diglossia holds for all social classes in the sense the language used in schools, newspapers, TV newscasts and the federal Parliament (standard German) is literally different from and not mutually intelligible with the language (Swiss German) that is spoken at home or at work and is used in ads, cantonal parliaments, TV talk shows, and soap operas.Mbruno 12:26, 21 April 2006 (UTC)



just wanted to add some examples... i studied portuguese for 3 years from a woman from fortaleza, and spent alot of time talking to people from all over brazil online... the few things that jump out at me regarding Colloquial vs. Formal Brazilian portugese, most of these are almost never seen in any formal writing, unless it is quoted speech.... some of this may be more a dialectical pronunciation of things, but all seem to occurr throughout brazil

  • shortened forms of some verbs
  estou -> tou/tô
  esta -> tá
  estava -> tava
  ...
  entendo -> tendo
  • use of 'a gente' and corresponding verb form instead of 'nós'
  nós estamos -> a gente tá (spoken and written)
  • more use of contractions
 para o -> pro (this is pronounced this way all the time, but i've never seen it written that way, even in the most informal contexts)
  • loss of word final -o on some masculine nouns
espaço -> espaç (never written this way)
  • loss of word inital 'e' on some words
espanhol -> spanhol


I'm sure there are more examples... however, I'd rate this situation in Brazil as a bit less intense than in Finland and it seems the finns are quite content without the terminological burden of 'diglossia'.

Exit 01:17, 28 September 2005 (UTC)

Most, if not all of the examples you quote above (e.g "tou"/"tô", "spanhol", etc...) are also found in spoken European Portuguese (EP). Should we conclude EP speakers are diglossic as well ?


Hello,

I´m not an expert in linguistic issues, but I have to disagree with some of the content of the section labeled "Brazilian Portuguese". I´m a member of the brazilian middle class and live on the south of Brazil, and maybe my opinions are influenced by this factors. But, even in this case, I hope to make clear that some statements expressed by the text don´t really apply to Brazil and to the brazilian portuguese as a whole.

Basically, I think that the author of this section is confusing the differences of informal and formal speeches as well as slang and regional particularities with a situation of generalized diglossia in Brazil. Some authors actually make a analogy between disglossia and the fact that formal and informal speeches in Brazil can be very different in some situations, but that surely ain´t enough to characterize a generalized disglossia, for that would mean that informal speech has become a separate and uniform language.

Some of the statements presented in the text try to characterize the informal speech as a L-variant, but are at least controversial:

  • The influences of Amerindian and African languages certainly exists, and that´s a great difference between the language spoken in Brazil and Portugal. But brazilian academics recognize this situation, and this influence is taught and discussed in brazilian schools, being present in the written language, in dictionaries and the media. Some of this influences have even reached the language spoken in Portugal.
  • The fact that H-variant would be avoided in informal writings and L-variant would be avoided in formal speechs certainly denotes that this is just a matter of formal or informal speeches ( I´m quite sure that lawyers all over the word use a highly formal speech in court, that can´t be easily understood by the average listener ). L-variant being used in songs, movies, book dialogs, etc. is just more evidence pointing to the fact that this is just informal speech. None of this facts are enough to show that informal speech has become a new language.
  • The fact that there are syntatic differences between Portugal and Brazil´s languages just indicates that these coutries may have different languages. It doesn´t say much about a diglossia situation in Brazil. I can´t recall a relevant syntatic difference between formal and informal speeches right now, but if it exists (and it could exist), it´s just a particular case.

Now, for some further considerations...

The spoken informal portuguese, in Brazil, is different from the spoken informal portuguese of Portugal. In Brazil, we sometimes omit the final 's' of plurar words, the final 'r' of verbs in infinitive, and so on. I would consider this more a question of accent ( do you want more "letter omission" than in french? And I don´t see a section in the text talking about french diglossia ). We also use word contractions, but most of those are already recognized and "dictionarized", at least in Brazil. The fact that this differences don´t appear much in written form is because newspapers, magazines, books and television prefer a more formal speech. What I mean by this is that it won´t help to compare the informal language spoken in Brazil with the "standard rules" used in Portugal, for the rules of Brazilian Portuguese are slightly different, and Portuguese dictionaries are also different from brazilian ones.

Now, if you would consider the language used by contryside population or poor comunities in Brazil, which have less access to media and education, and evaluate it using the "standard rules" of brazilian portuguese, than you surely would have to say that they are not talking "correctly". But this is far from constituting a uniform L-variant language, as every comunity will have a different set of "common errors". That´s just natural, and I suppose the results would be the same in every other country (take an american hick, for example). Maybe you can consider this a case of localized disglossia, but never a general one.

Well, I guess this is it. I was just worried that people reading this article would be led to think, erroneously in my opinion, that there are two different languages in Brazil, when actually there are formal/informal and regional differences.

The notion that there is diglossia in Brazil is a POV which is advocated mostly by a minority of Brazilian linguists, including US-based linguist Milton Azevedo. In reality though, there is no such thing as a single, monolithic "Brazilian vernacular", but rather a continuum of dialects/sociolects, ranging from the educated speech of the urban middle-classes (the speech of TV soap operas and talk shows) to the popular speech of the countryside. All the varieties within this continuum differ to a greater or lesser degree from standard (written) Brazilian Portuguese, but unlike e.g Swiss German/Standard German in Switzerland, or Creole/French in Haiti, ALL of them are still mutually intelligible with the standard. In fact, even a heavily creolized caipira dialect in Brazil would still be intelligible to an EUROPEAN Portuguese speaker. Attempts to equate the differences between spoken and written BP to those between, let's say, standard French and Haitian Creole, are ludicrous to say to least. Diglossia in Brazil, to the extend that it exists (I personally dispute that claim), is actually less severe than in several European countries, like the Flemish region of Belgium, where mutually unintelligible dialects are still spoken at home on a daily basis. Conceivably, Brazilian nationalists like Milton Azevedo could propose a written standard language based e.g. on "caipira" (or more generally, low-prestige popular vernacular), as the Afrikaners did in South Africa towards the end of the 19th century. If any such hypothetical "Brazilian" language ever achieved official status in Brazil, as Afrikaans did in SA in the 1920s, then it would probably eventually replace Portuguese similarly to the phasing-out and eventual disappearance of Dutch in South Africa (replaced by Afrikaans). Since, however, there is no cultural or political support for initiatives of that sort in Brazil, I would say the status of Portuguese as the standard language of Brazil is well secured.

Hello, I am sorry, but Brazilian linguist Milton M. Azevedo in his monography PORTUGUESE (A Linguistic Introduction) [Cambridge University Press. 2005] has a chapter on Diglossia in which he states: The relationship between Vernacular Brazilian Portuguese and the formal prescriptive variety fullfills the basic conditions of Ferguson's definition [of diglossia].

  • There is a group of people in the internet spreeding this things among English and German speaking Internet. It obviously is POV. The situation of Portuguese is very far from the German one. --Pedro 5 July 2005 19:01 (UTC)

Hi, I'm an American living in Rio, I've been here for 3 years and have perfectly fluent portuguese by now. In my opinion, the idea that Brazil has two languages seems a bit outlandish...yes, an essay is written in more formal language, but the same is true in English. How often do you use the word "Secondly" or "Latter" in conversation? Brazil has stronger dialects than the US, but I don't quite understand how Brazilian Portuguese has 'diglossia' and not English? Would 'ebonics' qualify for diglossia? How is diglossia fundamentally any different from formal and informal speech?

Why wouldn't ebonics qualify? It's generally analysed as a separate language from standard English. This is a difficult question though. Can anyone post examples from Azevedo of diglosses? This would be easy to do for, say, Swiss German or Greek. What I mean is that you should be able to provide examples of words or usages that are universal or nearly so in the vernacular but do not exist or have different counterparts in the formal language -- it's something beyond dialectal differences or that rural people have an accent. Do other scholars discuss this? If they do, can they please be sourced? English does have diglossia in some parts of the world. Ebonics is a good example. Singlish is another. Clair de Lune 07:31, 24 August 2005 (UTC)

I don't have enough personal knowledge of Brazilian Portuguese to take a position on this debate, but if it's true that there is published research making the claim that Vernacular BP and Standard BP are different enough to be considered separate languages and that diglossia exists between them, then there's no problem in mentioning this research. However, since it's certainly a rather surprising claim, and far from being a widespread view, we should be careful not to sound like we're supporting this view. We should just say that the research is out there, cite the appropriate publications, and, if there are any, published refutations of the view. We should not spend too much time dwelling on all the arguments, as that will tend to imply that we are supporting the view. A brief mention should be sufficient. --Angr/tɔk tə mi 10:50, 2 September 2005 (UTC)

One more quotation on Brazilian diglossia:

“Há no Brasil uma peculiar situação de diglossia, porque à variedade padrão e às variedades populares cabem funções bem distintas, mas grande parte da população não é bidialetal já que o acesso à língua padrão do Português Brasileiro (daqui por diante PB) é muito restrito.”

/In Brazil, there is a specific case of diglossia, because standard variety and popular varieties have very distinct functions, but large part of population is not bialectal for they have very limited access to the standard variety of Brazilian Portuguese./

(1994:84 Stella Maris Bortoni .Variação Lingüística e atividades de Letramento em Sala de Aula. Revista Internacional de Língua Portuguesa, (82-94), 1994. ________. A análise do português brasileiro em três continua: o continuum rural-urbano, o continuum de oralidade-letramento e o continuum de monitoração estilística. Sybille Grobe / Klaus Zimmermann (eds.): “Substandard” e mudança no português do Brasil, Frankfurt am Main (101-118), 1998)

A very good article on Brazilian Portuguese already exists. Shouldn't the question whether a diglossia exists in Brazil be added there instead? NPOV aside, this long discussion of one specific language inside the diglossia article appears unencyclopedic to me (same for Tamil).


  • I agree with our American and our Brazilian southern posters said. There is no such thing as Diglossia in Portuguese. There are formal and informal speech (just like any language) but nothing more than that. PMLF 03:44, 25 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Another thing this article "forgets" is that although European Portuguese is not well understood by many Brazilians, Portuguese people in general understand quite well Brazilians. That's due to a big influence of Brazilian music and Brazilian TV in Portugal, as well as a growing Brazilian imigrant community.

I would argue more easily that Portuguese and Brazilian teenagers have a diglossia between the written language they use on the internet and cell phones, and the one they learn at school.

Gabriela Sousa I am entertained. he he he. Hi, I am portuguese and my personnal experience regarding the brazilians understanding me speak has to do with accent. If I speak slowly (we in Portugal speak quite fast) and open the vowels things go smoothly. When a word is different it is explained and there is no problem. I am speaking of non educated brazilians. I understand fully the brazilians speaking. Your accent is a piece of cake. Look, I have the impression you have a colonialist trauma, and I wonder if after 200 years it is not time for you people to grow up. Just a thought.

Er, have you read the discussion? Most Brazilians here (Me included) are arguing that there is no actual diglossia in Brazil, only a gradient of more formal/educated dialects and informal/uneducated dialects, but they are all mutually intelligible to the point where most people can't distinguish between them; quite simply, you write in a certain way and speak in a certain way. Contractions such as pro (Para o) are no different from the use of ain't (Which doesn't appear in written English) can't, don't, won't, shouldn't, and several others; the difference is that the written standard of Brazilian Portuguese does not recognize the contractions as words on their own right, and instead writes them as separate words - Syntactically and gramatically, this makes sense since it makes understanding the syntactical relationship between words in a phrase easier when reading; the tendency to run words that are commonly spoken together into a single word happens in numerous languages. However, there is no actual syntactical distinction between written and spoken Portuguese in Brazil, and the pronounce varies more regionally than it does socially; Brazilian Portuguese doesn't have a single, specific standard of pronounciation, and while spelling is mostly phonetic (We've kept the umlauts in words where they are necessary to avoid phonetic ambiguity - The Portuguese didn't, and they keep extraneous cs in words where they're hardly ever pronounced anymore.) there is a lot of variation on how each vowel and consonant is spoken. Even written Brazilian Portuguese isn't strictly the same language as Portuguese, since substantial spelling and syntactical differences exist - And while Portuguese and Brazil Portuguese aren't mutually unintelligible, Brazilians tend to have a difficulty in understanding Portuguese - This is not reciprocous mostly because Brazil exports culture, particularly television shows, to Portugal, while Portugal does not export any significant cultural manifestations to Brazil. However, colloquial Brazilian Portuguese and its formal counterpart are variants of the same language, share most of their vocabulary; I can't think of a word right now that is exclusively informal; most informal terms that can't be used in a formal context are actually slang, although some words have more formal connotations than others. Formally, it is now perfectly acceptable to drop the second person and use the third person of verbs when talking in second person - você (You) is now used almost exclusively instead of tu (Thy/Thee/Thou) although, ironically, it is still used in some southern informal accents. Informal and formal Brazilian Portuguese are mutually intelligible; what is commonly taught in schools in Brazil now is that there isn't a 'right' and 'wrong' way of using the Portuguese language, merely an informal and a formal one; particularly, the lines between formal and informal speech have been blurred in the last twenty years, to the point where the only syntactic distinction is a disregard for certain grammatical rules which most of the educated population follows; use of a gente is actually recognized grammatically and doesn't replace nós (In fact, replacing nós with a gente without changing the rest of the phrase is a notorious error which is now used as slang, or ironically.) In short, the view that there is true diglossia in Brazil isn't widely accepted and is definitely disputed by nearly all linguists, and that piece of the article doesn't reflect a NPOV as it doesn't present alternatives to the notion that there is diglossia in Brazil.
--Verithrax 05:08, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

To add to Gabriela Sousa, I fully agree with her statement. In virtually all cases, all that needs to be done is some midification of the accent, and speak slower then usual, and understanding becomes no problem in all varieties. Thus, any half-educated person can certainly adjust and make some modifications in both EP and BP to be fully understood, a situation not much different then say, Quebec French and European French, or Peninsular Spanish(Spain) and for example Spanish from Chile. Thus, between Brazilians a certain form is spoken, as it also does in Portugal. But between Brazilians and Portuguese, it becomes unofficlally expected for these speakers to adjust to improve fluency. This however, cannot be defined as either diglossia, or different languages altogether that have diverged so much that they become unintelligible, as some here would have us believe.

I've added a merger proposal for the section on diglossia in Brazilian Portuguese with Brazilian Portuguese. FilipeS 11:34, 2 November 2006 (UTC)
Section merged into Brazilian Portuguese. FilipeS 14:51, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Tag issues

Please the use the section dispute tag when you are disputing a specific section, not the entire article. --Jpbrenna 01:38, 23 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Has anyone written an article on Cypriot Turkish?

Despite popular belief, the Turkish Cypriots have their own language, which is not the same as that spoken in Turkey. Cypriot Turkish is one of the 3 official languages of Cyprus, which is a British Commonwealth country. The other 2 official languages are Cypriot Greek, which is not the same language as spoken in Greece, & English. - (Aidan Work 01:40, 19 December 2005 (UTC))

Actually its not the cypriot dialects but the Athens greek (or katharevousa before 1974) and Istanbul turkish standards that are the official languages of the republic. English is not an official language of the republic according to the constitution. Mavros 03:06, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for that, Mavros. English can be regarded as a very important form of communication between the 2 communities, just like the Indian situation as people in southern India have their own languages, so they speak in English to people from northern India. - (Aidan Work 03:14, 19 December 2005 (UTC))

The British Commonwealth ceased to exist by 1949. It is now the Commonwealth of Nations and has been for many years. Hu 04:02, 21 February 2006 (UTC)


[edit] Chinese

"Chinese is an interesting case due to its quasi-phonetic writing system. Even though a Cantonese speaker will read and write in the Mandarin-based written language, when the characters are read aloud, they will generally be read using the Cantonese pronunciation of the characters. The result is Mandarin grammar and vocabulary spoken as if it were Cantonese...."

I have issues with this statement. The paragraph implies that Cantonese speakers use Mandarin as the basis for their written language, when in fact Mandarin is just one of many verbal system for pronouncing the common written system, which it just happens to share with Cantonesse speaking regions.

If you want to nitpick, Cantonese speakers don't write in 'Mandarin', they write in traditional form Hanzi (literally: Chinese Characters), and they read using the Cantonese prununciations for these characters. Mandarin speakers write using simplified form Hanzi (an easier to write form of Chinese characters that was derived from traditional for Chinese Characters used in Hong Kong and Japan), which is modern (post communist system. They read it using the Manderin Prununciation. Other verbal variations exist in different regions of China, as well as in Korea Taiwan and Japan using the same characters (or characters that have been modified slightly with time).

perfectblue 10:49, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

This is confusing spoken and written language, Hanzi are used to write different languages/dialects. Modern standard written Chinese IS based on the Mandarin dialects, when Cantonese speakers who don't speak putonghua (Mandarin) use standard written Chinese they are using a language that is different from spoken Cantonese. That's why there is written Cantonese.
As for traditional and simiplfied characters; the are simply different versions of the same characters. LDHan 21:22, 4 December 2006 (UTC)
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