Topolects and "Standard" Language

[Nachtswalbe]

In China and the Arab world, there is a de facto diglossia between the "standard" language and mutually unintelligible topolects.
The governments of these areas prefer the Standard language and in China's case, promote it at the expense of topolects.
To what extent is there a "high culture" in the topolects (modern literature, music - not just folk songs or opera that happen to use the topolect), and are there cases where both a topolect and a "standard" language are placed on an officially equal footing?

[Otto Kretschmer]

In China Standard Mandarin is spoken by most young people. Almost all Chinese media is in Mandarin

[Creyeditor]

IIUC, maybe Egyptian Arabic is what you are looking for?

[Nachtswalbe]

IIUC, maybe Egyptian Arabic is what you are looking for?

Probably although since I'm not an Arabophone I don't know how much modern culture is produced in it

[Moose-tache]

IIUC, maybe Egyptian Arabic is what you are looking for?

Probably although since I'm not an Arabophone I don't know how much modern culture is produced in it

Egypt is the TV capital of the Arab world. Everyone from Morocco to Muscat can probably name a half-dozen Egyptian soap operas. I couldn't tell you what ratio of standard to non-standard dialect they use, but I'm sure some Egyptian Arabic is heavily featured in at least some of their TV shows.

[Man in Space]

IIUC, maybe Egyptian Arabic is what you are looking for?

Probably although since I'm not an Arabophone I don't know how much modern culture is produced in it

Egypt is the TV capital of the Arab world. Everyone from Morocco to Muscat can probably name a half-dozen Egyptian soap operas. I couldn't tell you what ratio of standard to non-standard dialect they use, but I'm sure some Egyptian Arabic is heavily featured in at least some of their TV shows.

Thanks to my college experience I can confirm that much non-state, non-press media is in the vernacular. Al-Bāb fī-l-Bāb (described to me as the Egyptian Everybody Loves Raymond), for instance.

[zompist]

The governments of these areas prefer the Standard language and in China's case, promote it at the expense of topolects.
To what extent is there a "high culture" in the topolects (modern literature, music - not just folk songs or opera that happen to use the topolect), and are there cases where both a topolect and a "standard" language are placed on an officially equal footing?

The best example might be Hong Kong, where Cantonese is the language of daily life, education, and culture, including the film industry, but Mandarin is the national language and also the everyday language of a substantial minority.

[vegfarandi]

In China Standard Mandarin is spoken by most young people. Almost all Chinese media is in Mandarin

My friend, a highly educated millennial from Chengdu, says he speaks Mandarin but from what I've been able to gather, he really speaks Sichuanese with Mandarin vocabulary. Or Mandarin with a Sichuanese pronunciation. Either way, it's quite different and I started to realize it because I'd ask him questions about Chinese (thinking Mandarin) and he'd give me answers that contradicted my understanding. Slowly, I realized it's because he's thinking in Sichuanese. Phonology-wise, Sichuanese doesn't distinguish the retroflex sibilants from the palatal ones and doesn't distinguish /l/ and /n/, it has /v/ and /z/ phonemes and a lot less erhua. And a lot of points of grammar are also pretty different. So I believe that Mandarin is growing at the expense of local languages/dialects, but I think the extent of Mandarinization is exaggerated.

[Travis B.]

In China Standard Mandarin is spoken by most young people. Almost all Chinese media is in Mandarin

My friend, a highly educated millennial from Chengdu, says he speaks Mandarin but from what I've been able to gather, he really speaks Sichuanese with Mandarin vocabulary. Or Mandarin with a Sichuanese pronunciation. Either way, it's quite different and I started to realize it because I'd ask him questions about Chinese (thinking Mandarin) and he'd give me answers that contradicted my understanding. Slowly, I realized it's because he's thinking in Sichuanese. Phonology-wise, Sichuanese doesn't distinguish the retroflex sibilants from the palatal ones and doesn't distinguish /l/ and /n/, it has /v/ and /z/ phonemes and a lot less erhua. And a lot of points of grammar are also pretty different. So I believe that Mandarin is growing at the expense of local languages/dialects, but I think the extent of Mandarinization is exaggerated.

Isn't Sichuanese a dialect of Mandarin?

[vegfarandi]

Isn't Sichuanese a dialect of Mandarin?

Depends on who you ask.

[Linguoboy]

Isn't Sichuanese a dialect of Mandarin?

Depends on who you ask.

Not to mention which definition of "Mandarin" you're using.

[Travis B.]

Isn't Sichuanese a dialect of Mandarin?

Depends on who you ask.

Not to mention which definition of "Mandarin" you're using.

Is this like whether one categorizes Scots as being a dialect of English or a separate Anglic language?

[Linguoboy]

Is this like whether one categorizes Scots as being a dialect of English or a separate Anglic language?

In the sense that all questions of dialect affiliations have certain similarities.

"Mandarin" translates a range of Chinese terms, including 官話, 北方話, and 普通話. Recently I've seen more use of "Standard Mandarin" or "Standard Chinese" to refer specifically to the official standard (variously called Pǔtōnghuà, Guóyǔ, Huáyǔ, or Hànyǔ depending on what country you happen to be in) and "Northern Chinese" for the larger dialect grouping. Whether "Northern Chinese" includes "Southwest Chinese" (the dialect grouping of which Sichuanese is a part) or whether these are better viewed as distinct sublanguages is a fraught question and one of more interest to specialists than the average Mandarin-speaker.