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April 11

文, 语, 言, 话

I was trying to understand many names for the Chinese language (a short list here, and a longer list here). While I can grasp the difference between the first elements, I was puzzled by these four words.

As I suggest, 文 [wén] refers to something written, while both 语 [yǔ] and 言 [yán] refer to something spoken. However, I'm confused of what is the actual difference between the latter two, given that there is also a compound 语言 [yǔyán]. Plus Classical Chinese is called 文言 [wényán] and even 文言文 [wényánwén]. And there is also 话 [huà] which adds to the confusion.--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 21:43, 11 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Someone more knowledgeable may correct me, but basically: 言 is an old word for "speech", now used only in compounds; 话 is a more modern word with the same basic meaning; 语 means, broadly, "language" rather than "speech". Henry ^Flower 22:01, 11 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Is there a Chinese dictionary which gives the dates of the first usage for a word like it is done for English in the OED?--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk)

话, huà, is often used for language; as well as Putonghua many local varieties of Chinese use it. Cantonese is called Guǎngdōng huà/广东话 for example, as well as 广州话, 白话 and 省城话. It seems to be used in China in places when we would use 'xxx dialect' or 'xxx English'. But translating it as such is tricky because of the contentious issue of whether Chinese is one language with lots of dialects or six or more languages which share a writing system.--JohnBlackburne^words_deeds 22:29, 11 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

The problem is all four words can, in theory and in practice, mean "language". Moreover, they can be equally used in very similar compounds, e.g., 中国话 [zhōngguóhuà] and 中文 [zhōngwén] (why the second drops 国 is also puzzling); while 中國語 is tagged "rare". On the other hand, let's take the names for Russian or English: judging by Google search, there are 俄语 and 俄文, 英语 and 英文, and the compounds with 语 look to be more widespread, but there seems no or few similar compounds with 话 (the absence of the compounds with 言 is understandable if the word is outdated as explained above).--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 17:14, 12 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I have only come across 话 for varieties of Chinese, in particular for varieties associated with a place. It’s always 'xx 话' where xx is a province, region or city, so you can think of them as local dialects. The odd one out is Putonghua, but it too is a dialect, of Mandarin, it just happens to be the official dialect. This only works to a point though, as Chinese uses 话 even for varieties of Chinese we would consider separate languages. See Varieties of Chinese for some discussion on this.

As for dropping the 国 this is common in Chinese. It’s 英国 and 英文 for example. It’s not so much the 国 is dropped, but those are two words 英国 and 英文 that share a common root, just as in English (England/English, France/French).--JohnBlackburne^words_deeds 18:02, 12 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, and it makes sense to use a word which means "speech" rather than "language"; firstly because the various Chinese dialects/languages are primarily oral, and secondly because, as you point out, for political reasons China considers them as not separate languages. Lüboslóv, the difference between 英文 and 英语 is what you said in your original post; the former is more in the direction of literature, and the latter more in the direction of spoken language. There's a lot of overlap and fuzziness and redundancy, of course, but that's why we love languages. Henry ^Flower 20:43, 12 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@JohnBlackburne: But why have they decided that in 中国话 there is a need for 国, while in 中文 there is no need for 国? Why not to write 国 in both or leave it in both? What's the logic?-Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 04:45, 15 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

logic and language make strange bedfellows. Explaining 'why' for Chinese is beyond me, but it’s easy to think of examples of similar variation in English. In fact exactly the same example, ways of saying xxx language, where language is some variety of English. Here are some ways you can do it.

British English – just "xxx English" where xxx is a place.
Received Pronunciation (RP) – sort of a one-time standard, also called BBC English
Yorkshire dialect – "xxx dialect" where xxx is a place
Scouse – a named dialect

That’s four different ways to specify a particular variety of English, the common name for each. None of them is better, they are all correct and valid. And the same is true in Chinese: each word is correct and means what it does. There is no rule saying it must be one way or another.--JohnBlackburne^words_deeds 05:19, 15 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]