Talk:Beijing dialect

Untitled

What's with,

?

100110100 03:13, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

It’s different Pu tong hua

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)

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)

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)

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.

===============================

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)

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)

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)

Books on Beijing dialect

Radical index to Pocket dictionary and Pekingese syllabary (1893)

https://archive.org/details/radicalindextopo00goodrich

A syllabic dictionary of the Chinese language; arranged according to the Wu-Fang Yuen Yin, with the pronunciation of the characters as heard in Peking, Canton, Amoy, and Shanghai (1874)

https://archive.org/details/syllabicdictiona00willrich

https://archive.org/details/chinesediction00willrich

https://archive.org/details/wufangyuenyin00willrich

https://archive.org/details/syllabicdictiona00will

Chinese-English pocket dictionary, with Mandarin and Shanghai pronunciation, and references to the dictionaries of Williams and Giles (1911)

https://archive.org/details/chineseenglishpo00davirich

A Chinese and English dictionary : arranged according to radicals and sub-radicals / by P. Poletti (1907)

https://archive.org/details/chineseenglishdi00pole

Premières leçons de chinois, langue mandarine de Pékin: accompagnées de Thèmes et de versions et suivies d'un exposé sommaire de la langue écrite By Arnold Vissière

http://books.google.com/books?id=2DZCAAAAIAAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false

Rajmaan (talk) 21:55, 5 May 2014 (UTC)

Phonology table

Where does this table come from? It looks interesting, but some of the "Typical pronunciation in Beijing" seem to be exaggerated pronunciation. --2.245.179.189 (talk) 22:56, 29 October 2014 (UTC)

Beijing Dialect Dipthongs

There are a number of finals which differ from Standard Chinese because they are often different dipthongs with nasalised consonants. These are present on the other language versions of Wikipedia but might need some English language references. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Linguapalaeo (talk • contribs) 05:44, 14 April 2020 (UTC)

This article is entirely misconceived

Beijing Dialect is a sub-dialect of Hebei dialect. It is entirely distinct to the Beijing speech described here, which is the "Beijing dialect of Northern Mandarin".

I personally have studied Chinese for 47 years, and would hardly understand a word of Beijing Dialect. The most common two-syllable word in Beijing Dialect is m3me, which means "we, us".

Like everything one reads about Chinese, this article is pushing the idea that Putonghua originated in Beijing. In fact, it originated in Manchuria and Eastern Mongolia and was brought into China when it was invaded by the Manchus in 1644.

The proof: well, for one thing, you cannot find any Han Chinese who speaks Northern Mandarin correctly. If you wish to hear good Mandarin you need to go to Luanping. This is a town inhabited entirely by Manchus of the two yellow banners. I recommend that readers search "China Daily" and "Luanping". China is now, to some extent, willing to admit the truth about this language. The China Daily article confirms that outside Luanping nobody speaks Chinese correctly.

Chinese, as taught both inside and outside China, is a nonsensical form of speech which very often puts the weight of each pulse onto its middle, rather than at its beginning. This has created total confusion.

It is this incorrect pulse which has led to the invention of three sounds which simply do not exist in correct Northern Mandarin: x, j, and q. No wonder that linguists wonder at the "ambiguity" of these sounds. It's always difficult to pin down something which does not exist.

These three letters were invented in 1913, with the invention of the Bopomofo system -- entirely the work of scholars from southern China.

I doubt that anyone today still speaks Beijing Dialect, save a few very old people. It is evident that whoever wrote this article has no knowledge of Beijing Dialect.Luo Shanlian (talk) 08:27, 21 June 2020 (UTC)