language+writing question

[fluked1911]

I know that many (or all?) languages of China (and then some) can be written using the Chinese characters. Given the great number of languages and that they fall into different language families; sino-tibetan, mon-khmer, tai, altaic to name a few, I would believe there must be differences in the grammatical structure of their sentences. So, does each language written in the Chinese characters get written using their own grammar, or is there a uniform way of writing that may not coincide with the way these languages are spoken?

[anonymoose]

Firstly, Chinese characters are only used to write "native" Chinese languages (meaning languages belonging to the same broad family as mandarin). Languages such as tibetan, uyghur, dai, etc. belong to different language families, and are not written using Chinese characters (except for place names, in which case just the sound is transcribed using characters). Most of the other languages have their own script, or no script at all, and are not written.

As for writing "native" Chinese languages, generally speaking, only mandarin is written, at least for anything formal. The exception is that some things in Hong Kong are written in Cantonese using characters (informal magazines, for example), but this is still a very small proportion of what is printed.

Writing dialects in characters is problematic, because many words do not have corresponding characters, and even those that do, many native speakers will not be aware of them. My experience in Shanghai is that some people, just for fun, like to type in Shanghainese if chatting on the net, and then select any similar sounding character to transcribe what they wish to say. But this is still a minority of people. In 99.9% of cases you are likely to come across, anything written down will be in mandarin (although choice of words and expressions may be influenced by dialect). Of course, this does not include classical chinese, which is a different kettle of fish altogether.

[fluked1911]

So, if you were a student, for example in Beijing learning to write; how you would speak and write would grammatically would be identical, where as if you were a student in Hong Kong, Taiwan or Shanghai you would have to learn to write your sentence structure different than the way you would speak it?

[anonymoose]

So, if you were a student, for example in Beijing learning to write; how you would speak and write would grammatically would be identical, where as if you were a student in Hong Kong, Taiwan or Shanghai you would have to learn to write your sentence structure different than the way you would speak it?

Schooling in Shanghai and Taiwan is all in mandarin, so writing and speaking would be the same. But in Hong Kong, yes, written grammar and spoken grammar would be different (although mandarin and cantonese grammar aren't hugely different, so it shouldn't be a big obstacle).