LINGUIST List 7.1184

Sat Aug 24 1996

Disc: Guanhua

Editor for this issue: Ann Dizdar <dizdartam2000.tamu.edu>

Directory

1. Hua Lin, Re: Conference on Guan(1)hua(4)

Hi, Wendan,

While not claiming an authority on Guanhua, the dialect or the term, I
think your understanding of the meaning of Guanhua is correct, at the
very least, not wrong. In my effort to provide an English version to
the term in the announcemnt I sent, I have come up with several, yet
none a satisfactory match. That is why in the announcement, I decided
to provide the original Chinese term instead (rather than run a whole
paragraph--or paragraphs?-- of explanations about the substance the
conference is on) and enclosed its dictionary English translations
only in brackets, hoping that anyone who is interested in this
conference would know the Chinese term with its many offical and
regional meanings.

I have decided to send our correspondance to the LINGUIST list, for I
believe your mail will help give the LINGUIST subscribers,
particularly those who do not know the original Chinese term well but
nevertheless are contemplating about attending the conference, a
better understanding of the term. Hope you do not mind.

Thank you very much for writing, and thank you for giving me
a chance to clarify the matter a bit.

If anyone wishes, further discussions, if any, about the meaning
of Guanhua may perhaps be sent to the LINGUIST list directly so that they
can be shared with other fellow linguists.

Hua Lin
Assistant Professor
Department of Linguistics
University of Victoria
P.O. Box 3045
Victoria, BC
Canada V8W 3P4

On Tue, 13 Aug 1996 21:55:19 -0600 (MDT)
>Wendan Li <wligpu.srv.ualberta.ca> wrote:
>
>Hi, Lin Laoshi,
> Sorry to bother you. But, before I go further, I'd like to make
>sure that my understanding of "Guanhua" is correct. To me, Guanhua is the
>speech produced by people who usually speak rigional dialects when they
>try to speak standard Mandarin. Therefore, Guanhua is the result of the
>attempt to speak standard Mandarin, but marked by features of local
>dialects. For example, there are Hunan Guanhua, Shanghai Guanhua,
>Guangdong Guanhua, etc.
> Is this right?
>
>
>Wendan Li
>Department of East Asian Studies
>University of Alberta