Quote:
Originally Posted by Penforhire
That sounds similar to Ebonics in the USA. Literacy is the result of education no matter where you are in the world. More education gives rise to more literacy and speaking in more-or-less the proper form of the language. Yes, languages change over time but not at the pace suggested by the speech of illiterates.
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I imagine it is less like Ebonics--whose arguable cousin Patois is rightly receiving increasingly more serious attention as a separate and unique dialect--and more like Cantonese.
It's a case of people speaking languages that, for cultural reasons, are never written... i.e.: Cantonese people (unless they actually learned to *speak* Mandarin) only speak Cantonese and only read/write Hanzi based on Mandarin.
Another good comparison might be Europeans speaking one language, but writing only in French or Latin. Many Europeans countries' *official* (i.e.: government produced), and often also private, written historical records are almost entirely in Latin until fairly late in history... because those who wrote rarely or never did so in the country's native language.
- Ahi