Tianjin, as known as one of the four cities administered directly by central government of China, is becoming a modern metropolis in the north costal area of China. However, Tianjin dialect, being unique and unaffected by any of other neighbor dialects, is often regarded as a cultural thing. I am going to talk about my experiences as a Tianjiner. Furthermore, several opinions and reviews are provided from my point of view.
I was born in Tianjin, and had been living in Tianjin until I went to college in Shanghai. Though we were taught with standard Chinese (Mandarin) to meet the requirement of The Department of Education during the 18 years of compulsory education, teachers would still combine Tianjin dialect in classes, to some extent. So it’s natural that students speak Mandarin with Tianjin dialect. On the other hand, children are greatly affected by their parents, who are also speaking Tianjin dialect. In this case, well educated people still remain their Tianjin accent more or less. In my memories, the grownups even may speak dialect in formal situations like wedding ceremonies or company meetings. That may seems strange to you, but sometimes using Tianjin dialect properly could make others feel close and comfortable.
My parents had great influence on my learning of language. They were both born and grown up in Liaoning Province but not Tianjin (respectively in Dalian countryside and Yingkou countryside). After the graduation of local high schools they went to Harbin for college which also belongs to Northeast China. Throughout their first 22 years my parents spoke very rural “东北话” (Northeast dialect) according to my interviews. Until they were distributed to work in Tianjin, chances appeared to become government officers. D...
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...his may be the regional identity caused by different cultures. Then their own dialects become two marks for identification. Once there was a parade in Tianjin, and all people involved, no matter football fans or not, was yelling “国安傻逼” which means “Guoan players are assholes” which is really rude… And now this saying is popular all over the country and becomes a famous featured joke of Tianjin dialect…
Some Tianjin dialect sayings are gradually vanishing since the usage is not frequent, however, the remaining ones are still developed to a more modern state than before. Knowing and speaking Tianjin dialects for such many years, I would feel rather warm and happy when hearing it in a exotic country. The love of Tianjin citizens for Tianjin dialect is irreplaceable and unique; Tianjin dialect plays and will play a pretty important part in representing Tianjin culture.
Ghana was a British colony and most people there spoke English. The small native languages in Ghana were trampled because of the English language. When Ghana was able to get their independence from Britain, they rebuilt Ghana. After talking about Ghana, the video goes all the way to China. In China there are many people that speak Changsha Hua which is a dialect of Mandarin. The lady that was being interviewed in this segment talked in her native tongue, Changsha Hua. She was taught the dialect, but in school, she was taught Mandarin. The Chinese government wants people to speak Mandarin because it 's the most spoke languages around the world. Many jobs in China you have to be able to speak Mandarin. The lady in the interview said that when she has kids she will not teach them Changsha Hua because she does not think there is a need for them to know. I see how Changsha Hua is starting to become a loss
Although still adopting a traditional literary form, the poetry writing can be regarded as an example of the heterogeneity and border-crossing of cultural-scape in globalization period. Those poems were produced under the brunt of the international mobility that is propelled by the capitalist globalization, but precisely and paradoxically, in a suspending situation caused by national regulation, a “state of exception” of this mobility. The juxtaposition of the frustration on foreign life and the flare of nationalist emotion (with the rhetoric emulating ancient barbarian-expelling heroes), may imply a paradoxical consequence in globalization: the international mobility undergirding the national awareness instead of undermining it. Following this thread, the publication of this kind of poetry in 1930s, the oblivion of it after war, and the subsequent re-discovery, recognition, and research of it can be all taken as symptomatic traces of the localization, articulation, and transformation of national consciousness (both as “Chinese” and “American”) in the continuous globalization. Needless to say, those poems are deeply flawed in terms of aesthetics due to the rather poor literacy of their authors. It would be invoking to put these poems beside those “high art” works also produced in globalization context, such as the works on the Eiffel Tower and the London fog by Huang Zunxian (黄遵宪), a late Qin intellectual caught in between the East and the West, the
China has gone through many changes in its history. Changes include economic, political, and social. In the early 1500 and throughout history, mostly all social classes followed Confucianism. Confucianism is a type of religion based on an ideal society (Chang 2012, 22). China was molded though Confucianism but that slowly deteriorated as years went on. One main group that has been a main part in these changes is the Chinese literati. The Chinese literati include the higher-class people such as officials and scholars. The Chinese literati were the dominant social class during the 1500’s but their power slowly decreased throughout history. Throughout my paper, I will explain the Chinese literati involvement as centuries passed.
The setting of the story creates a better grasp on the intelligence of each character. The narrator of the story goes from her belief that there is no way she is Chinese to understanding her heritage and that she is really Chinese. The narrator states that she doesn’t really know what it means to be Chinese (Tan 133). She progressively learns throughout the story what it means to be Chinese. She mentions of Aiyi and her father knowing Mandarin only while the rest of Aiyi’s family only knows Cantonese (Tan 137). This relates to setting due to the time and areas that Mandarin was spoken compared to where Cantonese is spoken now. The narrator was shocked to see the elegance of the hotel they were scheduled to stay in and the pricing (Tan 138). This can be interpreted as her being inexperienced while the rest of her family were either used to this kind of service or had no outstanding opinions upon it. The narrator starts to see her father in a different manner once he and Aiyi start conversing and onc...
“In summary, each of these two Chinese special administrative regions offers its own strong link to China, and each of the regions can boast its unique contribution to the larger bridge between China and the rest of the world.” (Roberto Ignacio Diaz, 2014)
In a word, both family and school play a crucial role in American born Chinese’s socialization process. Both of them influence ABC’s behaviors, norms and personalities.
Unlike most other families mine had decided to live with the Chinese rather than in the isolated compound away from them. I and my parents, we saw no need for separation, after all, what bad could it be? The culture and language of China had begun to grab my attention from the moment I started to learn them. I went to
China is an extremely large country, and the customs and traditions of its people vary by geography and ethnicity. Since ancient times, China has been known as the “Celestial Empire.” This refers not only to China’s strength and position as East Asia’s Middle Kingdom, it also captures a more profound meaning. Chinese people, through various dynasties, created a rich and abundant culture to all over the world. And Chinese culture is the only culture in the world to have a continuous recorded history of 5,000 years. It has left behind countless literary classics, historical documents, cultural relics, and national records reflecting its immense scope. Culture includes religion, food, style, language, marriage, music, morals and many other things
I was in Ohio when I first came to America as an Chinese exchange student, I live in a little town surrounded by endless corn fields, basically in the middle of nowhere. I went to a small public high school, which has only 2 Chinese students, including me. All of a sudden my world is completely changed, nothing from my old days is left, and I’m totally not ready for that. I got so homesick, I began to miss everything about China, people, food, and of course, language. That’s probably the reason why I was so eager to speak Chinese every time I meet the other Chinese girl.
Hoobler, Dorothy, Thomas Hoobler, and Michael Kort, comps. China: Regional Studies Series. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Globe Fearon, 1993. 174-177.
The United States and China are two very large countries that have cultures that are well known throughout the world. There are many differences between the United States and China, but there are many contributing factors that shape the cultures of these two countries. Language is universal, but there are different meanings and sounds, which vary from one culture to another. In China, citizens speak many languages, but about 94% speak the Chinese language. The difference in dialects was overcome by the written word and eventually a version of Mandrin became the “official speech” (The Cambridge Illustrated History of China, 1996, p.304).
Sometimes we forget that China is similar in size to Europe, therefore customs vary tremendously depending on the region. Due to the fact that China has one of the oldest cultures in existence, the traditions keep growing over time.
and Culture of China-US Relations.." CHINA US Focus Urbanization Chinas New Driving Force Comments. N.p., 30 Mar. 2013. Web. 11 Apr. 2014. .
Overview of Chinese Culture, p16). China has a variety of languages, dialects and all these varieties belong to the Sino-Tibetan family of languages according to China – Languages, Culture, Customs and Etiquette, (2014). There is also the need for an individual to be affiliated with either a family, workgroup, school or even country thereby making the Chinese culture a collective society according to China – Languages, Cultures, Customs and Etiquette, (2014).
Although it is very difficult to actually say how many dialect exist in China, but they are categorized each into one of the seven different groups; they are the Putonghua (Mandarin), Gan, Kejia (Hakka), Min, Wu, Xiang, and Yue (Cantonese). The seven groups have different dialects, this is the reason why someone who speak Mandarin in the northern part of the country only understands little Cantonese and at the same time someone who is a non-Mandarin speaker usually speak the language but with a strong accent. This is due to the fact that Mandarin was established as the official national language since 1913. Although there are large difference in all the Chinese dialects, but they all share one common characteristics; they shared the same writing system based on the Chinese