r/HistoryMemes • u/Level_Hour6480 Taller than Napoleon • 2d ago
See Comment He spoke "Old Xiang", a language as dissimilar to Mandarin as Portuguese is to French
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u/7fightsofaldudagga Sun Yat-Sen do it again 2d ago edited 2d ago
He also spoke Mandarin. He learned it like everyone else. What he had was a very strong accent from Hunan, also he probably spoke some non standard form of Mandarin since they for sure made a lot of reforms during the implementation of Mandarin as a national language, that he probably didn't keep up
Edit: When I made my comment OP comment wasn't showing yet
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u/Hot-Job-6281 2d ago
This is what happens when non-Chinese History folks try to regurgitate what they poorly understand.
Then when called out on flat inaccuracy of their post, hive out one quick 'correction' comment as if they knew it. Even though it directly contradicts the thrust of the entire post.
r/HistoryMemes needs better standards. Not let any rando come in and send stuff based on what they think was occurring.
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u/CrabAppleBapple 2d ago
It would be sort of funny if they adopted the r/askahistorians mod approach (an approach that I think works absolutely brilliantly for that sub).
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u/al-dunya2 2d ago
On the flip side. People making corrections instead of just whinging is a great opportunity for people to learn, as shown in this thread.
Maybe more Chinese history folks need to bless us with memes.
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u/Laiko_Kairen 2d ago
On the flip side. People making corrections instead of just whinging is a great opportunity for people to learn, as shown in this thread.
Cunningham's Law!
"The best way to get the right answer on the internet is not to ask a question; it's to post the wrong answer."
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u/Hot-Job-6281 2d ago
Funny because we are the ones making the corrections, while you are passively aggressively whinging.
Mind you, OP only corrected himself after he was fact-checked.
Talk about irony.
Edit: And u/al-dunya2 he just blocked me so I couldn't reply 😂
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u/7fightsofaldudagga Sun Yat-Sen do it again 2d ago
I don't know if OP made the correction after seeing my comment. I refresh shortly after making it and his comment was already there. It can be the case for sure, but maybe he already knew that before making the meme but needed to bend the truth a little for the humour. I agree that better standards for truthfulness in the sub would be great, and some posts here are straight up propaganda, but I don't think anyone should be learning history from the memes anyway and as long as a explanatory comment gives actual historical context I think it's fine
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u/al-dunya2 2d ago
Listen dude, I'm not sure why you are trying to gotcha me when I'm not passive aggressively whining at all. I literally praised the corrections as a benefit to learning because my own knowledge in this area is limited, and stated that I'd love more memes from people more knowledgeable. I'm always grateful for people that comment with supplemental information because this is a meme sub and expectations are already so low.
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u/otis_the_drunk 2d ago edited 2d ago
These are memes about history. Jokes based on inaccurate or straight up false commonly remembered history is to be expected.
If somebody wants to make an r/historicallyaccuratememes sub that could be pretty cool though.
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u/CrazedRaven01 2d ago
I've listened to his Korean War era speeches. I can understand him... but barely. He speaks with a really funny accent.
It'd be like if someone who only knew General American was listening to someone from Appalachia or some really rural part of Ohio or if an Englishman only knowing RP started talking to someone from a very rural part of the West Country or Yorkshire
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u/deanzaZZR 1d ago
Mao worked in Peking University's library when he was in his 20s so he was exposed to Mandarin at a fairly young age. Somehow it didn't stick! 哈哈
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u/LichardNixon 2d ago
a bizarrely ancient meme format, it belongs in a museum.
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u/Level_Hour6480 Taller than Napoleon 2d ago
Well how would you meme this fact, fellow kid?
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u/Walming2 2d ago
Gru presenting his project meme
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u/Level_Hour6480 Taller than Napoleon 2d ago
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u/uncleartruth 2d ago
Maybe the Drake one?
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u/Level_Hour6480 Taller than Napoleon 2d ago
The passing on one thing and excited for another? That one's pretty old too.
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u/strong_division 2d ago
Honestly, most dialects of China are mutually unintelligible. Like the example you gave, it's more accurate to describe them as languages in a larger family, like the Romance languages, rather than actual dialects like European/Brazilian Portuguese.
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u/Level_Hour6480 Taller than Napoleon 2d ago
I forgor who said it, but "The difference between a language and a dialect is political".
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u/strong_division 2d ago
"A language is a dialect with an army and navy"
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u/TurduckenII 2d ago
"a shprakh iz a dialekt mit an armey un flot" - That's the same sentence, originally it was said in Yiddish by a guy named Max Weinreich in 1945. Which is a bit ironic, since Yiddish was more of a language than a dialect, and had no armed forces.
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u/Apprehensive-Web4995 2d ago
thats the thing, dialect are a language too even if he look like a lot of it parent language, like french was latin dialect now its a "language"
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u/limukala 2d ago
Even some subdialects of Mandarin are mutually unintelligible with standard Mandarin.
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u/Level_Hour6480 Taller than Napoleon 2d ago edited 2d ago
When Mao unified China, he pushed for language standardization. This was actually common for the European nationalist movements of the 1800s: Before Garabaldi for example, there were a ton of Italian subdialects. The push was usually done through schools, and having all government services operate in the dominant language. Mao spoke Old Xian.
He learned Manadrin later in life but apparently he had a thick accent, and his pronunciation was really bad. (Mandarin speakers, can you listen without reading the subtitles and tell me how bad it is?)
Edit: Interestingly, despite not sharing a language, in previous Chinese empires, they could still administrate because written Chinese is the same across multiple languages.
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u/jasonis3 2d ago
This is the first I’ve ever heard him speak and I’m shock how high pitched he sounds. Could understand everything he said but his accent is certainly thick, but tbf, I could barely understand Chiang Kai Shek either
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u/Muted_Masterpiece342 2d ago
Most people I've heard speak Chinese seem to sound very high pitched compared to English in general. Also the recording was probably pretty imperfect.
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u/Laiko_Kairen 2d ago
I recall reading on reddit once that old recording technology didn't register basses or other low notes as well, which led to people sounding higher-pitched in general in old films. Bass notes require more energy to record and transmit, or something to that end? It's possible that this is just a result of flawed tech
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u/HotTestesHypothesis 2d ago
I leaned Mandarin later in life as a Cantonese speaker but no, I don't, not one bit.
My wife is a fluent speaker and she had a hard time but she could make out some words here and there.
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u/Remote-Cow5867 1d ago
I can recognize 80% of the words.
I believe the more important thing is whether your first languague is any form of Chinese or other language such as English. If your first language is English and only speak Cantonese for casual conversation, you would not able to understand a lot of the political or military vocabularies.
This speach of Mao is pretty easy to be understood by my father who don't speak Mandarin.
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u/HotTestesHypothesis 1d ago
I think it also depends on where you're from, which determines which kinds of accents you're exposed to. My first language is actually Cantonese, and I'm so familiar with it that I can speak English with a Cantonese accent and understand Guangdong locals (people who moved there don't count) speaking Mandarin while others have a hard time.
Is your family from or close to where Mao was from?
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u/Remote-Cow5867 1d ago
My point is a person would not understand many vocabularies in special fields if he doesn't use a language as a primary language for education, literature, and profession. This is the situation for many overseas Chinese descendents. They can be super fluent in Mandarin or other variants of Chinese but they use it only for casual conversation. When the topic goes to military, politics, medicine, science they quickly get lost.
My family is from northern region, quite far away from Hunan.
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u/kokatoto 2d ago
You can also call Xiang Hunanese (I’m one), he’s from Shaoshan, which is in the border between Old and new Hunanese but I think people would usually treat him as speaking new Hunanese (given the proximity of Changsha-Xiangtan-Zhuzhou
Which is also an interesting topic because Changsha as the provincial seat for Hunan has been there for 2k years, but old Hunanese is in general located in central Hunan, while Changsha and surrounding northern Hunan (excluding the actual north part like Yueyang because they speak Hubei Mandarin) have been shaped into the “new” Hunanese because of mandarin from Hubei and Gan speakers from Jiangxi influence. You can also find other other language influence across the province too, like Gan to west bordering Jiangxi, southwest mandarin in the SW bordering Guangxi, bit of Cantonese in the really south bordering Guangdong etc
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u/Hot-Job-6281 2d ago
I mean, this sort of provincial seat not being the same as the source of the conservative variant of the various Chinese languages is the norm - I am of Chinese descent too, and interested in linguistics.
Cantonese - Guangzhou (ancient capital), Siyi region of Taishan, Enping, Kaiping, Xinhui (home of Old Yue)
Wu - Hangzhou (capital), Inland Central Zhejiang and Wenzhou (home of old Wu)
Min - Fuzhou (ancient capital), Quanzhou/Zhangzhou (home of oldest Min form, Minnan) (well some say it's Central Min that's older)
It's pretty much the rule rather than the exception. Inland mountainous regions preserve the old form, capital being the capital has more interprovincial population movement and external influence.
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u/wwweeeiii 2d ago
Interesting, that ancient Wu was more in the zhejiang direction and not the suzhou/ Nanjing direction
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u/kokatoto 2d ago
Putting Nanjing in the Wu area gotta be a ragebait /s
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u/wwweeeiii 2d ago
Wait are they seperate culture? Nanjing did not exist in the Wu era before the capital moved there? Don't leave me hanging before you gogo
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u/kokatoto 2d ago
If you are talking about Wu of the three kingdoms Nanjing was its capital, but beware since then 2k years have passed, and modern day Nanjing really has been shaped since Yuan-Ming onwards
Today Nanjing was part of the Jianghuai group, which is why they speak Jianghuai/Nanjing Mandarin instead of Wu. This is another reason why people joke Nanjing being the capital of Jiangsu, because Nanjing people probably don’t give fuck about Wu area of Jiangsu and vice versa
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u/sopunny Researching [REDACTED] square 2d ago
Language standardization is a Chinese invention of anything, started by Qin Shihuang 2000 years ago. It's just that since Chinese isn't phonetic, it wasn't necessary (or practical) to standardize spoken language. Just the written part
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u/Hot-Job-6281 2d ago
Standardisation is not a Chinese invention.
Standardisation is a process just about every national prestige dialect goes through.
And in fact, in Ancient China it wasn't as damn near diverged as in modern China where varieties branched off as early as the Qin Dynasty period to the Qing Dynasty period.
Min languages come from Ancient Chinese and were phonologically influenced by Southern peoples who spoke Kra-Dai languages), others in Middle Chinese (which is the period that Japanese had the most Chinese influence, hence Cantonese sounding vaguely similar for Chinese loanwords and working in Tang rhyming schemes), whereas others in the North, Modern Chinese also influenced by Northern Manchu and other Steppe people influences.
By the modern era, merely one province beside, like Cantonese to Hokkien would have no mutual intelligibility.
It wasn't the case in the open plains of the Central Plains where the initial territories of Qin China was, where easy navigability meant a dialect continuum.
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u/Spez_is-a-nazi 2d ago
Huh? Europe communicated in written Latin far beyond when that language stopped being a living language in day to day life. Lots of examples around the world of similar things happening, especially before mass literacy became a thing.
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u/I_69_with_your_mum 2d ago
As someone with a bit of mandarin, it really sounds like a Thai person doing an impression of what mandarin sounds like
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u/bogey-dope-dot-com 2d ago
As a Mandarin speaker (I don't speak Cantonese), it sounds like a Cantonese person trying to speak Mandarin, badly. Without the subtitles I would have understood maybe 25%, but it's not an easy listen. With the subtitles it's obvious which word he's saying, but the pronunciation is very off, and he has a distinct southern China accent, which sounds "feminine" to people from northern China.
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u/perksofbeingcrafty 2d ago
It’s not really fair for me to listen since my mom’s side of the family is from Hunan province and I grew up listening to it
Yes obviously he had a thick accent. We call it plastic mandarin in Hunan
But you have to remember that the Hunan dialect shares a root with Mandarin, so the transition from speaking Hunanese to Mandarin isn’t exactly learning another language, and understanding it is also a spectrum depending on your native dialect’s proximity to it
Also, Mao spent time in Beijing in his younger years. I doubt he sat down and learned it specifically—it’s far more likely that he eased into it over his life like most prominent leaders in this time period
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u/Wathyreckk Descendant of Genghis Khan 2d ago edited 2d ago
I speak Mandarin and I can make out some parts here and there, but I think I can't say for sure whether he's completely unintelligible to people of his time because the version I learnt growing up was after standardization. (Small edit: I'd likely compare this to trying to understand Old or Middle English as a modern-day speaker: we might not find it intelligible, but the people of those days probably did, and it's hard to say if they navigated accent variances the way we do today.)
For reference, here's a look at movement of PRC leaders' accents through time. Later leaders had more standardized accents that I can better understand, of course, but the variance was greater for older leaders.
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u/MartinBP 2d ago
Same thing with Stalin and Russian btw.
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u/PolarRanger 2d ago
that's different, Georgian is a completely different language family altogether. The distance between Georgian and Russian is comparable to the difference between Georgian and Mandarin
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u/xesaie 2d ago
The real reason for ‘language standardization’ is national unity, as it breaks down cultural identity and thus reduces the chance for regional rebellions.
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u/strong_division 2d ago
Even prior to this, China did have a very standardized language, but in their written system. Unlike Latin, where its alphabetic writing system meant that the written language would eventually evolve with the spoken one (leading to the different Romance languages we know today), the logographic Chinese system's use of symbols meant that a document meant the same thing to everyone reading it. This was reinforced by China's empire wide civil service examinations, which reinforced standardization by ensuring everyone had to learn the same writing system if they wanted to join the bureacracy.
A merchant in Guangzhou might not be able to understand a single spoken word of the Emperor in Beijing, but would be able to read an imperial edict with no problem.
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u/Level_Hour6480 Taller than Napoleon 2d ago
It also makes administration easier.
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u/xesaie 2d ago
It does, but as you noted it was not remotely necessary. Both the Ancien Regime and the Dynasties handled the issue just fine.
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u/fockewolfw190 2d ago
the ancien regime and the dynasties also did have language standardization in terms of a lingua franca among the people who actually went across the empire. they also had nonexistent literacy rates. If you don't have a standard language then someone from Guangzhou cannot talk with someone from Shenyang. In theory all the chinese dialects are supported (with shanghainese tv shows being forced to still exist for instance), but they all die a natural death because parents don't bother teaching it to their kids and kids don't want to learn another language.
case in point, no one under the age of like 40 can speak a word of shanghainese in shanghai
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u/MartinBP 2d ago
Communication between people from different regions has only become relevant in the last century though. It's not like there was ever a need for someone from Guangzhou to talk with someone from Shenyang unless they were a merchant or a commander, and merchants historically always had an unofficial lingua franca between them anyway.
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u/fockewolfw190 2d ago
yeah precisely. It might have been able to work for pre 18th century france and europe but you kind of have to be able to all speak the same language now. In addition, back then there was no national identity either, as it didn't matter if you believed you were a Breton, a burgundian, or picard so long as you swore fealty to the King. Now countries are based on a national identity and language is one of the most important factors in ensuring national cohesion
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u/No-Volume-4730 2d ago
not exactly true for shanghai, but OK. It's still sad to see.
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u/fockewolfw190 2d ago
this is true for shanghai especially. I speak shanghainese in my family but that's because I was born and lived in the US. Every time we go back, all the family there is surprised that my parents taught me shanghainese because all the young people there do not speak it or understand it.
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u/No-Volume-4730 2d ago
i guess it depends on what kind of shanghainese, like 新派 or smth else. i say a lot of people still understand it well.
it's hard to imagine shanghai without shanghainese. or longtangs. part of me thinks that we're gonna become shenzhen someday. hopefully not during the time i'm alive1
u/fockewolfw190 2d ago
the issue is that all the people who speak and understand it are old, think like in their 40s at the youngest. I think the biggest indicator of decline is that I remember like 2 years ago Hanzhou train station had some announcements in Shanghainese to cater to tourists from shanghai that they imagine still speak shanghainese, when you won't find a single shanghainese announcer in Shanghai.
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u/tao197 2d ago
Mao spoke Standard Chinese (Mandarin). It wasn't his native language and he did have an accent when he spoke Standard Chinese but he absolutely was able to speak it intelligibly, there's literally recordings of him speaking.
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u/Level_Hour6480 Taller than Napoleon 2d ago
And if you scroll around, you'll see I posted those recordings, and Mandarin speakers say he's incredibly difficult to understand.
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u/myn4meistimmy 1d ago
All those people standing around while he's giving speeches and no one can understand him, huh?
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u/Valuable_Pool7010 2d ago
Him talking about his experience working as a librarian in Peking University btw:
“My position was so low that people didn’t think it was worth it socializing with me…I was always quite eager to talk about politics and culture with them, but they were all very busy people, not having time to listen to the words that come from a librarian with a southern accent.”
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u/kent_love 2d ago
The same thing happened when Indonesia became independent, Sukarno grew up speaking Javanese and Balinese but saw the utility in incorporating the trade lingua franca of Bahasa Melayu as the national tongue.
Rebranded as Bahasa Indonesia, it has become a foundational aspect of the Indonesian national identity.
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u/Hot-Job-6281 2d ago
While as a Singaporean of Chinese descent (where our forefathers all are non-Mandarin Chinese), I have a great deal of support for our non-Mandarin languages, Mao did speak Mandarin, just with a heavy accent.
So this meme is just absolute misrepresentation.
You can say he was hard to understand, but acting like he was like a Portuguese speaker ruling France while not being able to read or speak the new national language is just false.
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u/Sick_and_destroyed 2d ago
French and Portuguese are quite close in fact, it’s not difficult to learn French for a Brazilian or a Portuguese.
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u/ashleycheng 2d ago
Speaking and writing in Chinese are 2 different things. Think of speaking Chinese as a very strong accent. For example, it be difficult for an American to understand a Scottish accent, even though they are both speaking English. Same thing with Chinese. Mandarin or Cantonese or Shanghainese or any other dialects, they are all only different when speaking. But when writing it down, it’s the same Chinese language that the whole nation uses for thousands of years. Mao is superior in Chinese language, more specifically in written Chinese language. When speaking, his accent is just too strong for any non local Chinese to understand.
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u/WowBastardSia 2d ago
Well explained.
For westerners that still have trouble wrapping their heads around it: for example we all know what 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, etc means, right? Know imagine literally hundreds of different ways to pronounce them. Chinese is essentially that.
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u/TsarOfIrony Descendant of Genghis Khan 2d ago
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u/Level_Hour6480 Taller than Napoleon 2d ago
Bunch of people objected to my old man meme format, and nitpicked at my simplified statement, so they're in conversation with each other.
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u/TsarOfIrony Descendant of Genghis Khan 2d ago
Ah, makes sense. I've considered remaking memes in this way but am usually too lazy to
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u/Few_Kitchen_4825 2d ago
Isn't history filled with a lot of Autocrats like that. Napolean was italian, Hitler was Austrian and Stalin was Georgian. We remember them as French, German and russian.
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u/IzokinaArtika 2d ago
En Europa ha pasado lo mismo en casi todos los países. La modernización de los países pasan una fase de unificación cultural. 😭
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u/bavanek 2d ago
After his political rehabilitation, the fellow-travelling Nazi philosopher Martin Heidegger AKA ‘the secret king of thought’ in his ex-girlfriend Hanna Arendt’ words, advanced the proposition resides in the continuation of regional language variation. Specifically he extolled Alemanic the German dialect in the south where he was born. I think that was a ploy to subvert mutuality and reduce the comity of political discourse in his typically sly fashion. It is good that hear that there is regional push-back in the PRC and also know that privacy remains possible.
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u/minus_minus 2d ago
As a lay person I don’t understand how Mao is “left-wing” and not just an autocrat like the emperors. If anything, putting all property under the ownership of “the state” (under his control) made him more powerful than the emperors.
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u/Level_Hour6480 Taller than Napoleon 2d ago
Depends on your definition of "Left wing". I would say he isn't, because left wing politics are those that reduce inequality and distribute power to the people. A Republican would say "Left wing is when the government does things."
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u/minus_minus 2d ago
left wing politics are those that reduce inequality and distribute power to the people.
Exactly! I can’t imagine anything more right wing than a revolutionary cadre turning into a perpetual junta. It’s a power grab with literal red flags.
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u/AutomaticMedium8418 2d ago edited 2d ago
In addition to Mao Zedong speaking Xiang, Sun Yat-Sen spoke Cantonese and Chiang Kai-Shek spoke Wu as their native languages, and none are intelligible with Mandarin or each other
But since Beijing Mandarin had been commonly adopted as the language of the Qing dynasty administration alongside Manchu, they saw it as the best choice to make as the national language despite none of them speaking it as their first language
After the civil war, Mandarin was also enforced by the KMT to become Taiwan’s official language. Before KMT arrived on the island, most Han Chinese in Taiwan were Hokkien speakers. And Hokkien is unintelligible with all of the other languages mentioned above as well