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masterq 发表于 2016-12-23 14:26 
粵語也稱廣府話，它是一種語言而不是一種方言，可以參考聯合國教科文，廣東有很多種地方語言，如客家話潮 ...
https://www.quora.com/Should-Cantonese-be-considered-as-a-language-or-as-a-dialect
It's complicated. Instead of answering the question directly, I'll shed some light on this issue, some aspects of which are unique to Chinese and thus may not exist in other languages you may know about.
First of all, one should re-phrase the question: "Cantonese is a dialect relative to what?" For example, if someone speaks "English and Cantonese", then you would certainly say they speak "two languages", not "one language and one dialect", because English and Cantonese have nothing to do with each other (other than loanwords). But if it's relative to other varieties of Chinese, the picture is more interesting. To put things in perspective, Cantonese is the most prestigious form of Yue Chinese (粵語), a branch of Chinese spoken in Guangdong and Guangxi provinces. Since Cantonese is mutually intelligible with other Yue tongues to varying degrees, is Cantonese just a dialect of the larger Yue language? Or is a "Yue language" non-existent, with Cantonese and other Yue tongues each a language in their own right? Or are they all dialects of the Chinese language?
Although the question does not mention Mandarin, I am assuming the questioner wants to know: "Are Cantonese and Mandarin separate languages, or are they dialects of the same language?" From the linguistic and European point of view, it can be argued that Mandarin and Cantonese are separate languages due to their mutual unintelligibility. However, it would be naive to use mutual unintelligibility as the sole measure of "different-ness"/"same-ness". From the Chinese point of view, they may be considered dialects of the same language due to a common history, culture, modern literature, and ancient literature. In fact, the Chinese term 「方言」 (fangyan), often translated as "topolect" (speech of a geographic region), is very appropriate for China's situation because the term avoids the negative connotations of the terms "dialect" (something being non-standard or uneducated) and "language" (might suggest a separate nation or equality in usage). There shouldn't be anything wrong with being a dialect anyway; I think Cantonese people are insulted by that English term because of its negative connotations.
It is true that Mandarin and Cantonese are no more mutually intelligible than, say, French and Spanish, but importantly, the differences are not the same. Most of the differences between Mandarin and Cantonese are in the pronunciation of characters, with much smaller differences in vocabulary, usage, and grammar. French and Spanish, on the other hand, have significant differences in all four areas. Furthermore, Cantonese and Mandarin share the same writing system. In contrast, a uniform writing system is not possible with European languages. Finally, Chinese people --- regardless of their language/dialect --- all look back to the same historical figures, dynasties, and literature. Of course, there are always local cultures and customs (especially food!), but these are not coherent enough (and distinctive enough from others) to form separate ethnic identities.
The significance of sharing the same literature cannot be ignored. Before the 20th century, literate Chinese all wrote in Classical Chinese (文言文), a written language based on the Old Chinese from over two thousand years ago, even though they would pronounce the characters in their own dialect. Thus, Cantonese- and Mandarin-speaking peopleread the same books. This continued when Modern Mandarin replaced Classical Chinese as the standard form of written Chinese. Literate people all over mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan can read the same newspaper articles, though they would not be able to understand one another if they read them aloud in their native tongues. Even in Hong Kong --- where over 90% of the population speaks Cantonese as their native tongue --- magazines, newspapers, and books are generally printed in Standard Chinese, under both British and PRC rule. They would read the characters aloud with Cantonesepronunciation, but with Mandarin vocabulary, usage, and grammar.
I'll provide an example where Cantonese normally uses very different vocabulary. The Standard Chinese for "This book is not mine" is 「這本書不是我的」. In Mandarin, this is pronounced "zhe ben shu bu shi wo de" (for simplicity, I'll leave out the tonal markings). A Cantonese person would read those characters aloud as "ze bun syu bat si ngo dik". However, in normal conversation, a Cantonese would say 「呢本書唔係我嘅」, pronounced "ni bun syu m hai ngo ge", which is a one-to-one replacement of vocabulary that Cantonese prefers; the grammatical structure remains identical. This is comparable to "translating" an American English text into British English by replacing"elevator" with "lift". Thus, there are really two parallel forms of Cantonese: A colloquial version ("real" Cantonese), and a formal version based on Mandarin. The formal version is not just "imitating Mandarin with a Cantonese accent". Therefore, if Cantonese were considered a separate language, it would be rather strange that its formal written form is based on the standards of another language (Mandarin); this suggests Cantonese and Mandarin are dialects of the same language. As far as I know, such a situation does not really exist in European languages. I suppose it would be like an English speaker reading aloud the German text "mein Hund" as "my hound", even though"dog" is the usual English translation for "Hund". ("Hund" and "hound" are cognates, so if Germanic languages were written in Chinese-style characters, they'd be the same character.)
Ironically, whenever this "Is Cantonese a language or dialect?" question pops up on online media or in conversation, someone (usually a Cantonese person) invariably points out that older Chinese poems, such as the Tang Dynasty poems from 1,400 years ago, rhyme better when read aloud in Modern Cantonese than in Modern Mandarin. These Cantonese people aren't separating from their Chinese heritage, but rather the opposite: They are claiming their language is perhaps more "authentically Chinese" than Mandarin is --- and they would be right. Mandarin has diverged far more from Middle Chinese, the common ancestor of Mandarin and Cantonese from a thousand years ago, than Cantonese has in both pronunciation and vocabulary. Thus, from a historical standpoint, Cantonese should be considered the "correct language", and Mandarin should be the "corrupted dialect"!
To summarize, I would argue that the neutral terms "topolect" (方言, fangyan) and"variety" best describe what Cantonese is in relation to Mandarin and other forms of spoken Chinese. However, if the choice is between "language" and "dialect" , then it depends on the context, which, as discussed above, can be quite complex.
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夫以銅為鏡,可以正衣冠;以古為鏡,可以知興替;以人為鏡,可以明得失.
发表于 2016-12-23 14:13:43
