Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2020 August 4

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August 4

the Chinese diaspora

A generation ago I was told that the Chinese language most spoken outside China is Cantonese. Is that still true, or has Mandarin replaced it since China's opening? —Tamfang (talk) 02:25, 4 August 2020 (UTC)

I am not sure what you mean by "China's opening". Usually, this refers to the transitioning of the economy of China from a centrally-planned system to a more market-oriented economy, a gradual process since 1978 that is still ongoing. I see no reason to think it has had a major influence on the prevalence of varieties of Chinese spoken outside China. Almost all people who can speak any variety of Chinese, whether in China or outside China, are of Chinese descent and acquired it as their mother tongue. Outside China, most are not expats but descendants of migrants in the third or later generations. Most who can speak Mandarin probably learned it by attending a Chinese school, especially in North America. But of these, I expect very few will use this for everyday communication, unless they work in an overseas office of a Chinese company. See also Language and overseas Chinese communities, which states that Mandarin is much more prevalent among new arrivals, but still not dominant.  --Lambiam 10:03, 4 August 2020 (UTC)

Most Chinese British people have their origins in Hong Kong or its hinterland, where Cantonese is the main language. This forum thread says that many Chinese immigrant families in London originally spoke SeiYup (a dialect of Yue Chinese) but more recently, "I've only heard the ungraceful-sounding Hong Kong Dialect of lazy-Cantonese being spoken in the London".

You may also be interested in Cantonese v Mandarin: When Hong Kong languages get political. Alansplodge (talk) 14:21, 4 August 2020 (UTC)

Tamfang -- for decades, Chinese immigration to the U.S. predominantly came from a very small area of of China (the "seven counties"), which meant that what is now called Taishanese was the form of Chinese mainly spoken in the U.S. It broadly falls under the Cantonese linguistic grouping, but apparently is not too similar to Cantonese in its Hong Kong standard form... AnonMoos (talk) 19:30, 4 August 2020 (UTC)

For Canada, the table in Languages_of_Canada#Speakers_by_mother_tongue shows Mandarin overtaking Cantonese between 2011 and 2016. 70.67.193.176 (talk) 20:59, 4 August 2020 (UTC)

Which are the Seven Counties? DuncanHill (talk) 22:10, 4 August 2020 (UTC)

Chinese emigration#19th-early 20th century... AnonMoos (talk) 00:42, 5 August 2020 (UTC)

For Australia, census records also show Mandarin has overtaken Cantonese in terms of languages spoken at home: see Demography of Australia#Language. However, there are two caveats to this:

• this is not the number of people who can speak Mandarin or Cantonese. As you noted, a bigger portion of earlier Chinese migrants spoke Cantonese, so it's reasonable to infer that amongst people who speak English at home but can speak a Chinese language, there would be more Cantonese speakers.
• the census questions are biased towards Cantonese and Mandarin, which are offered as tick box options. Anecdotally, speakers of other Chinese languages/dialects tend to choose "Mandarin" (not Cantonese) rather than write in another language/dialect. So the count for Mandarin is likely to overstate the number of people who actually speak Mandarin at home as opposed to a different Chinese language/dialect.

Even people who genuinely speak Mandarin at home are unlikely to be speaking standard Mandarin, given that standard mandarin is an artificially constructed standard language and has relatively few native speakers, even after decades of efforts to propagate it in China. --49.255.185.235 (talk) 04:37, 5 August 2020 (UTC)

"Little help"

Saying "Little help!" instead of "get that bloody skip off my foot" or "I have impaled myself on a tree" or suchlike seems to have become A Thing of late. Is it a thing from telly or a film? Thanks, DuncanHill (talk) 21:19, 4 August 2020 (UTC)

I wouldn't know for English, but we have almost the same phrase in that context in Croatian (and it's not new). Sounds like typical use of meiosis, for which Brits are fairly well known. 93.136.213.247 (talk) 22:06, 4 August 2020 (UTC)

Is this "malu pomoć" in Croatian? Is it used as such as an interjection?  --Lambiam 10:09, 5 August 2020 (UTC)

"Malo pomoći?" or "Može malo pomoći?" ("How about a little help [here]?"). "Malo" is nominative/accusative, "pomoći" is partitive genitive. It's not an interjection like "HELP!" but something you'd use when you'd be saying something of the sort of ironic "Can you come over here for a sec?" in English. I imagine you'd use "Little help!" in the same situation with the same tone of voice. It's not something you'd use in written text except in direct speech. 93.136.199.101 (talk) 19:49, 5 August 2020 (UTC)

I have yet to encounter this as an interjection. It looks like it may be a shortening of "I need a little help". Has this been used in written texts?  --Lambiam 10:09, 5 August 2020 (UTC)

I've definitely seen it in American films, TV shows, etc.—often in the context of an informal ball game when the ball has been inadvertently thrown/kicked out of the field of play, landing near some bystander or bypasser. The meaning is "Please go (minimally) out of your way to help by returning the ball to me." It's a difficult expression to Google because of the plethora of irrelevant hits, but I did find this baseball/chess T-shirt. Deor (talk) 17:00, 5 August 2020 (UTC)

That situation is a bit less dramatic than finding oneself inadvertently impaled on a tree.  --Lambiam 22:42, 5 August 2020 (UTC)

Well, so is this (go to 4:00), but it's a somewhat analogous mishap. Deor (talk) 18:52, 6 August 2020 (UTC)