Same language or not? It's politics, stupid

One thing always amazes me is that there are so many different languages in the world. It could be the Babel tower which separates people from each other. But they are the results of our ancestors' creativity, and it makes the world so much more diverse that we will never get bored.

But language is also politics. I talked about the language situation in one of my previous posts, and today I want to talk about several examples in which two or more languages are virtually the same one, but they are named differently for a certain political or historical reason.

1. Hindi and Urdu:
Hindi and Urdu, together having about 500 million speakers, are spoken in a pair of political arch-rivals. True, there are considerable differences in vocabulary, especially in the formal language. Urdu draws much vocabulary from the fellow Muslim Persian and Arabic, while Hindi from the ancient Sanskrit. Plus, the written scripts are so different that many people wouldn't realize they are virtually the same language. In fact, they derive from the same dialect close to Delhi. Hindustani is a more academic and neutral way to address the two languages/two versions of the same language.

2. Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian and Montenegrin:
Under Comrade Tito, Serbo-Croatian was spoken by the majority of Yugoslav people, with the rest spoke closely related Slovenian and Macedonian. But today, nobody would claim that he/she speaks Serbo-Croatian. For them, it is either Serbian for Serbs, Croatians for Croats, Bosnian for Bosniaks, even Montenegrin for the newly-independent nation. There are indeed differences nowadays, since different countries are standardizing their language differently, and they have been based on different dialects. But their difference is still trivial. It is, of course, good for a guy to claim that he speaks five languages, including Serbian, Croatian or Bosnian. In response, I may claim I speak American English, British English and Chinglish. They are still the same language today. But they may become different enough to be separated linguistically after the bitter political division.

3. Romanian and Moldovan:
Moldova, a former republic of Soviet Union, maintains that its official language is called Moldovan, which is a continuation of the Soviet policy. This is aimed to damp down any talk of unification with Romania. Most part of Moldova was Romanian-speaking, and it was part of Romania until the Second World War. In the eastern part of the country, there are significant Russian and Ukrainian populations, who have established a break-away but unrecognized republic. But all of those cannot change the fact that Moldovan is identical to Romanian. The only difference is Moldovan is written in the Cyrillic alphabet.

4. Indonesian and Malay
When the "Thousand-Island Nation" gained its independence from the Netherlands, the government found that people speak so many different languages, and those languages can be very different on different islands. As part of the attempt to unite the newly-independent country, they "borrowed" the language from the neighboring Malaysia. The new Indonesian is not based on any language in Indonesia, but a dialect of Malay language. When Malaysia accused Indonesia stole their cultural heritage in a tourist commercial last year, what they really meant was that the whole language which unites Indonesia was stolen from Malaysia. For Malaysians, ss that actually something to be proud of?

5. Finnish and Karelian
Karelian is spoken in the Russian Republic of Karelian, but many people simply regard it as dialect of Finnish language. Karelians share their history with the neighboring Finnish, and a significant part of the republic was ceded by Finland after the Soviet invasion. Republic of Karelian was once at the equal level with other 15 republics, which showed Stalin's intention to annex Finland completely. Fortunately for Finland, he failed.

6. Persian and Dari
Dari, which refers to the historical court language of ancient Persian Empire, is spoken in Afghanistan. The name was encouraged by the Afghan government to distinguish with the language in the neighboring Iran. There are indeed some difference in phonology and vocabulary, but they are the same language. Mr. Ahmedinejad, any response?

7. Lao and Isan
Isan is the name given by the Thais to the combination of Lao dialect in their country. It is suffering from the official discouragement of the Thai government, which doesn't allow it in the public occasions. It doesn't even have its alphabet.

Please tell me if there are more examples.

Revolutionaries never retire!

Fidel Castro is back. Although without the usual endless diatribes, his short speech in the parliament showed his determination to continue leading his people. Weak as he is, no sign of retirement can be smelt in the air. As Fidel once said, "revolutionaries never retire."

Indeed, they don't. Mao, Stalin, Kim Il-Sung. All of them died at the height of their power. Similarly, Hitler, Mussolini, Franco, Chiang Kai-Shek and other non-communist dictators didn't give up their power voluntarily until they were beaten by enemies or their healths.

Some people asserted that had Hitler died in 1938, he would have been one of the greatest leaders in the history of Germany. Why don't they simply give up their power early to secure a good legacy? Because they believe they can do better to realize their ideals? Hitler might have thought so, but history proved it wrong.

The desire for power is certainly a main reason. When Alvaro Uribe reluctantly accept the decision of the Supreme Court that he wouldn't be allowed to seek a third term, Colombians felt relieved. They certainly admired Sr. Uribe, who has brought huge positive change to his nation in his two terms. But endless amendments of constitution will remind us of their increasingly dictatorial neighbor, Venezuela. Losing him is a loss, but the political structure is strengthened. Uribe will also be remembered as a great leader in the history. There is rumor that Uribe would like to run for the mayor of Bogota. The lust of power is unstoppable. But fortunately, Uribe has chosen to come to Georgetown. I hope he can stay longer to let his successor rule without his shadow.

Russians are not that lucky. Mr. Putin found a better way to stick to power. In countries without a strong rule of law, positions in the government doesn't necessarily represent power. Deng Xiaoping ruled China as a Vice Premier, and after his semi-retirement, as the Chairman of Military Commission. But his influence was paramount, and different factions in the government needed to seek his approval to gain an upper hand. In Russia, Putin re-interpret the power distribution between the President and the Prime Minister. People are speculating whether he will return to the office after 2012, but it seems that being Prime Minister can prolong his influence forever.

But Uribe and Putin are not dictators. They were elected, and they are genuinely popular. What about the dictators without democratic mandate? Being in power can certainly give them more time to collect wealth as what many African leaders did. But when you are rich enough, why not leave the office and take their time to enjoy those wealth?

I think fear is the best reason to explain. Without the rule of law, there is no protection of former leaders. They can have immunity for life (Mr. Nazarbayev did that), but that can be revoked. They cannot even trust their proteges, because there isn't a lack of examples of betrayal. For leaders of rogue states like Bashir from Sudan, there's one more reason to stay put. As Professor Vreeland said, the arrest warrant issued by the International Criminal Court only strengthened their determination to stay in power for fear of being extradited by their successors. Gripping the power in their hands is the only way to prevent retribution. Passing power to their children can ensure that their tombs and legacies will be properly guarded.

But there are examples that show us transfer of power is possible without a liberal democratic system. Since 1980s, Chinese leadership has adopted the rule of retirement. For different levels of officials, there is a mandatory retirement age, up to 68 years old for politburo members. The welfare is luxurious, with private cars and private secretaries funded by taxpayers. Although the previous leaders keep their influence to some extent, meddling is rare. Political struggle exists, but no shots have been directed to retired top leaders. Apparently, China is not a good example of rule of law, but the ruling party can be run with proper self-regulation to ensure the continual survival of the party. This is certainly an interesting case to study. For Fidel, Chinese leaders are no longer revolutionaries. I think they wouldn't mind as long as there are golf courts for them to enjoy their lives.

Mr. Kim goes to China

It's time to end the hiatus. The school is scarily close, and I already can smell the challenges we are going to face in the next 4 months. But I will try to blog as often as possible.

According to some mysterious news sources, Kim Jung-Il is in China right now, in spite of his ill health. More interestingly, former President Jimmy Carter is paying a visit to North Korea to secure the release of a U.S. citizen.

When Bill Clinton visited North Korea earlier this year, Kim was glad to meet him and take a nice picture with his guests. Also a former president, is Carter not cool enough for him? Maybe he is too sick that he needs an excuse to not meet him. But wouldn't sickness be a better excuse than taking a trip to China, which clearly signals a snub.

Maybe Mr. Kim wants to snub his guests because he may have demanded the visit of a current official. Mr. Carter has been to many rogue states, Cuba as the most famous example. Obama administration maintains that dispatching a current official will send a wrong signal. Therefore, North Korea didn't get something big in exchange for the release of the American citizen. Why not sending Carter's counterpart, a former leader, to show him around? Unfortunately, in a dynastic dictatorship, they don't give up power until the divine being asks them to.

What can Mr. Kim do in China? He was in China in May. Repeated visit in a short period of time can tell us something, can't it?

Maybe some of you don't know that. The relations between China and North Korea is not as simple as what media described as "close allies". China paid a huge price to create a buffer zone from the West, but the increasing belligerent clearly annoy the Chinese leaders, who prefer a peace environment to continue the economic advancement in China. For North Korea, they have always been wary of China. Kim's father has never trusted China. Neither has he. They regard China as a bigger enemy than the United States, because China has exerted pressure on them to reform as what China has done. They regard this a threat to Kim's Dynasty. Therefore, North Korea has tried to abandon the Six-Party talks, which means they want to talk directly to the United States, giving China no role in its affairs.

But no matter how "naughty" North Korea is, China has to treat it properly, by providing it aid, and keeping Kim's schedule in China a secret. As Kissinger once said, they are SOB's, but they're our own SOB's.

Anyway, I hope Mr. Kim will enjoy his time in China. I also hope his son will not be afraid of taking flights, so that the railroad won't be blocked by his trains.

Who said China wasn't in South Africa?

Who said Colombia didn't make it to the World Cup? Shakira and her song is played again and again in every host city. Who said China was absent? True, Chinese football team was too much a joke to make it, but China was present, both during the game and after.

Vuvuzuela caught people's eyes, or ears rather, with its annoying loud noise being played non-stop during every game. It has become a symbol of South African culture, but where were they produced? Of course in China. It was reported that 90% of them were made in China. While the soccer fans around the world were enjoying expelling elephants with their vuvuzuelas, Chinese sweatshop owners were counting their money.

Another report said China exported more than a shocking 100 million condoms to South Africa this year in preparation for the World Cup. Of course, the demand rose when the tourists came to South Africa. As a country famous for its high AIDS rate, South Africa can benefit from the comprehensive trade relationship with China. But the sheer number was still big enough. Chinese products are known to be poor in quality. It is not a small risk to use this Chinese product. I hope the soccer fans had not only enjoyed the time in South Africa, both in the stadium and out, while China had contributed its part.

Anthony, the Octopus: The common misperceptions of languages of China

Paul, the Octopus, as you may know, has become an international celebrity. Although he doesn't have a spine, its bold predictions were certainly not spineless. So as a man with a spine, I would like to share my thoughts with you guys.

Many Chinese think the Western world doesn't understand China enough. There surely are a lot of misperceptions, but the question is, we don't understand ourselves any better.

The language issue is one of them. It has a big impact on the Chinese society. People rarely talk about it nowadays, but it can potentially cause a lot of trouble. The lack of attention is alarming. There is a lack of knowledge about the languages of China in the West, but that is very understandable since nobody can tell them the story. Let us now discuss what's wrong with our perception of Chinese languages.

1. Chinese language is Mandarin.
That is a common belief, and Chinese and Mandarin has become interchangeable in English. But there is a serious problem of that, what is Mandarin? If you bother to check Wikipedia, you would learn that Mandarin is a group of Chinese dialects. There is no doubt it is the most widely spoken one, but it doesn't mean that there are other groups. Actually, there are at least 6 other big groups (many linguists call them language). Cantonese is best known for it is the lingua franca for oversea Chinese. Wu includes Shanghainese. Taiwanese belongs to Hokkien (or Min Nan) which is a subgroup of Min. Hakka is widely spoken in the Chinese communities in South East Asia, and it is the native tongue of my grandpa. There are more.

2. All Chinese speak Mandarin as their first language.
First of all, there are ethnic minorities who speak their own language. But here, for ethnic Han Chinese, it is still not true. True, most Chinese nowadays can understand Mandarin (though it is not totally true for older generations), but their first language is not the same thing. We can say that most Chinese outside Beijing are bilinguals, since we not only speak our own "dialects", we learn the Beijing dialect of Mandarin in class. It is the only version allowed on TV, radio (although it is looser in Guangdong where Cantonese is allowed). Dialects everywhere are suppressed by the government. The government wants to build a national identity for more than 1 billion people. Needless to say, they need to do a lot to achieve that. But still, people speak there own dialects or languages at home and between each other. Although any dialects other than Mandarin has been described as uneducated language (such as improper during business conferences or other formal occasions), people still stick to their local culture. Just go to Shanghai, no matter how many migrants there are, people still speak Shanghainese on the streets. The situation of language in China is not as simple as many people think.
Also, Mandarin is also diverse. The Mandarin in Beijing and the Mandarin in Xiangtan, where Mao was from, is totally different. So is the Mandarin in Sichuan. We can well say that Mao does not speak Mandarin because when he is speaking, I don't understand what he is talking about.

3. The difference among different "dialects" in China is small. People can understand each other.
The difference is huge. People can speak one dialect for one hour and the other guy doesn't understand anything at all. I think this is not the case for Spanish and Italian speakers, but this is what is happening in China. I have mentioned that there are at least 7 different groups inside Chinese languages. Among different groups, they are totally unintelligible. Linguists think that their differences in phonology, syntax and lexicon are big enough to call that they are different languages. Although there is still a heated debate on the definition of language and dialect, if you call Croatian and Serbian two languages, there are hundreds of them in China.
One thing for sure is that there is only one official script in China. There is no written system for the other languages (although there are unofficial written systems for some, using Chinese characters with similar pronunciation). But this doesn't mean they are not independent languages. Written languages are based on oral ones. Each "dialect" can easily have its own written system if the language is recognized and there is an effort. It is amazing that although China mostly remained a unified country in its long history, the diversity in language is still huge.

4. There is no language issue in China.
Language has become an important issue. There are debates in Shanghai about the status of Shanghainese. There is a Defend Shanghainese Campaign. There is also huge opposition from those new migrants. Shanghainese could well be a good example. Most people in Shanghai are descendants of recent immigrants. My grandparents are from 3 different regions and none of them were originally from Shanghai. But people came to Shanghai, a metropolic transformed by the West from a small fishing village. They not only came, they adapted to the local culture. They spoke Shanghainese, and they also changed it, just like immigrants did to English. But the more recent immigrants, who envied the opportunities in Shanghai, turned out to be less willing to learn the local culture. They prefer to study more foreign languages. Worse is that they demand Shanghai people to stop speaking Shanghainese. The government stands on their side, and the officials in Shanghai government, few of whom are from Shanghai because they are not elected, don't stand up for the local population. This is also happening around the country. Many local culture has been lost, but more people are fighting on. This is not about local pride. People should cherish the local culture their ancestors created. I agree that China needs to a language that everybody can communicate with each other in, but it doesn't mean that you have to kill their mother tongues. Han Chinese, as described by the government, is the majority of the population, but Han Chinese is so diverse inside, it can hardly call it an ethnic. There needs to be some changes, otherwise, the language issue will be a potential thong that will cause trouble in addition to the numerous problems existing today.

Russian spies in New York suburb? Nothing is too strange to believe.

Obviously, several Russian spies, who pretend to be normal American families, were arrested recently. This happened right after President Medvedev's visit. The Russian President and President Obama were still in Canada for a G8/G20 summit. The reaction from the Russian government is noticeably silent.

This event is significant not only because this reminds of us the spy war between these two Cold War nemeses. It raises a lot of questions because people are wondering what kind of intelligence they can collect. It seems what they can learn from their presence in the United States is not more than what we can find on the internet. So why on earth did Russia keep those spies? Why was this ring broken at this particular moment when the US-Russia relations has just started a reset? There could be two scenarios.

First, some hawks in the U.S. intelligence community wanted to embarrass the Russian President and strangle the recent chemistry between those two countries. It is known that those alleged Russian families have been under CIA surveillance for quite some time. Why did they arrest them right now, right after the two presidents had their nice hamburgers in Rosslyn? After watching several U.S. TV shows, I have learned that how hawkish the generals in the Joint Chiefs can be, and how they tend to snub the judgment of the politicians (like what General McChrystal did). I can imagine the same situation in the intelligence community. This can explain a lot.

Second, a more daring guess was made by a Russian media. They claimed that those spies were actually abandoned by the Russian government. The Russians gave their information to the U.S. as a gift of the better attitude towards them. For them, they started to realize how useless they were and they had been thinking about getting rid of them. Keeping their mouth shut requires the Russian government, who was hit by the global slowdown, to pay them in U.S. dollars. Probably it's time to end this endless and meaningless operation. Considering the recent behavior of the more pragmatic President Medvedev, this doesn't sound that implausible after all.

Anyway, this story sounds very weird. The truth, I am afraid, won't be revealed to us, the general public, before long.

What can unite a continent? The World Cup.

Finally I am back from China and Colombia. It's time to come back from the long hiatus.

The lackluster World Cup has occupied the headlines these days. 32 countries have the honor to compete in this competition, but people from other countries also focus on the results. Many of them also have their teams to cheer on, not only for their favored stars, but the teams from their own continent.

You can see that the African fans cheering for all the African teams, and even Chinese fans cheering for Japan and South Korea. We all know there is no chemistry among China, Japan and Korea. Nor do Chinese fans care about Australia. Very few African fans would regard Algeria as African. These support is not selfless. This is due to that FIFA distributes the slots of next World Cup to different continent confederations according to their performance.

Let's see what can happen. Africa used to have 5 slots and this time 6 because South Africa is holding. There hasn't been a inter-continent playoff involving Africa because the distinct system in Africa (in which 20 teams in 5 groups play for the first place in each group to qualify) makes it impossible to find a team to take part in the playoff. Considering their below-par showing, they will definitely lose 1 slot and have only 1 slot.

For South America, Brazil will host the game next time. Therefore, only 9 teams will take part in the qualifying rounds and giving them another 4 slots will be the maximum accepted by the other continents. As a result of the changes in Africa and South America, a half slot will be available to the other continents.

For Oceania, they will never get a full slot because this will mean an automatic seat for New Zealand, which was impossible even when Australia was in that confederation. But anything less than a half seat is also not viable. You need to give every team some chance to qualify, however remote it is.

Europe can also lose half a seat if the FIFA finds it necessary. This all means that Asia and CONCACAF (Confederation of North-Central Americas and Caribbean Associations of Football) will compete for the increase of slots. South Korea and Japan are doing well this time and a draw will be suffice for both of them to get to the knockout stage, although it is still too early to say. Mexico is also doing well and the United States looks having a good chance to qualify by beating Algeria. The other teams from these two continents are struggling, although Australia still has a slim chance.

This means that the result of those teams, which will tell us which continent will outperform the other, will be vital. Enough for fans in those two continents to cheer, right? Not necessarily. Your country at least, shoud have a chance to benefit from the increase. For me, I optimistically consider China as a potential benefector. Therefore, I am crossing my fingers for Japan and South Korea. Good luck!