中国的汉语方言无法相互理解，中国究竟是如何实现所谓的种族和文化同质性的？
Exactly how does China get its alleged ethnical and cultural homogeneity with more than 4 times the USA population (4.35 times as populous) and without a common language (Chinese dialects are not mutually intelligible)?
译文简介
就口语而言，不同的方言在发音和语法上存在一些差异，尤其是南方方言。但如果用书面语言写出来，它们基本上是一致的。
正文翻译
就口语而言，不同的方言在发音和语法上存在一些差异，尤其是南方方言。但如果用书面语言写出来，它们基本上是一致的。
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, PhD Physical Sciences, Major US University
It came to my notice that many people who claim that Chinese dialects are mutually unintelligible are missing a subtle point. I will not talk about some obscure mountain dialect spoken by 1000 people in the far corner of Hunan Province, but the major dialect groups, like Shanghainese, Cantonese, Hokkien (aka Taiwanese), Hakka, etc., which have been considered the most deviant, and their differences from Mandarin.
Actually a big factor responsible for the apparent mutual unintelligibility between say, Taiwanese and Mandarin, is not that they have drastically different pronunciations of the same Chinese character (there is a small difference of course), but that they use different characters to describe the same obxt, which makes the speaker of a different dialect totally confused.
我注意到，许多声称汉语方言彼此无法理解的人都忽略了一个微妙的点。我不会谈论湖南省偏远地区的1000人所说的一些晦涩的山地方言，但我会谈及主要的方言群体，比如被认为最离经叛道的上海话、广东话、福建话（又名台湾话）、客家话等，以及它们与普通话的差异。
事实上，造成台湾话和普通话之间明显的相互不理解的一个重要因素，不是因为它们在同一个汉字的发音上有很大的差异（当然有一点差异），而在于它们用不同的汉字来描述同一个对象，这使得讲不同方言的人完全困惑了。
For example, 事情, or “thing/matter” in Mandarin becomes 代誌 in Taiwanese/Hokkien, which means the same thing with a more ancient root. How can you expect a Mandarin speaker to anticipate that? If you force a Taiwanese to say the characters 事情 in the Taiwanese dialect (or vice versa), then it doesn’t sound that different, actually quite close, although it doesn’t mean much.
例如“事情”这个词，或者普通话中的“thing/matter”在台湾话/福建话中变成了“代誌”，这意味着相同的事物具有更古老的词根。你怎么能指望一个说普通话的人能想得到呢？如果你强迫台湾人说台湾方言中的“事情”的字符（反之亦然），它听起来没有那么不同，实际上非常接近，尽管意义不大。
你可以在任何时候看到这一点，比如说，一个说普通话的人观看一段用台湾话或广东话演唱的歌曲视频，歌词以清晰的中文字幕显示，那么这一切都是有意义的。他只需要读普通话字幕，就会对其与演唱内容的接近程度印象深刻，二者比你想象的要近得多！
Of course I am not claiming these dialects all use exactly the same syntax in sentences. That would be asking too much. But even with that, if they all used the same characters to describe an obxt, their mutual intelligibility would improve drastically right away.
That, of course, gives partial answer to your question. Namely, the written characters played a key role in this.
甚至当我在看带有中文字幕的韩国或日本电影时也会这样做，我也经常会笑出声来，因为我真的听懂了他们说的话。
当然，我并不是说这些方言在句子中都使用完全相同的语法，这个要求太高了。但即便如此，如果他们都使用相同的字符来描述一个对象，他们的相互理解能力也会立即大幅提高。
当然，这部分回答了你的问题。也就是说，文字在其中起着关键作用。
Anubisred
, lives in China (1976-present)
Language is developed based on characters, and no matter what your accent is, as long as you are in Chinese, you will quickly blend into the same culture.
Chinese dialects in different regions differ only in accent, or have some unique nouns and verbs, but the grammar is exactly the same.
So they are just dialects, not another language.
In 221 BC (2241 years ago), After the First Emperor of Qin unified China, he unified the written language.
Compared to the US? No, just compare it with Britain, America's "father".
The concept of England was invented in the 5th century...
Chinese can easily read and understand 1000-2000 year old poetry, are you sure English speaking people can do that?
So, are you sure you want to talk to the Chinese about cultural homogeneity?
语言是根据汉字发展起来的，不管你的口音是什么，只要你说的是汉语，你就会很快融入同一种文化。
不同地区的汉语方言只有口音不同，或者有一些独特的名词和动词，但语法完全相同。
所以它们只是方言，而不是另一种语言。
公元前221年（2241年前），秦始皇统一中国后，统一了文字。
与美国相比？不，你可以将其与英国，即美国的“父亲”相比。
英格兰的概念是在5世纪发明的......
中国人很容易阅读和理解1000-2000年的诗歌，但你确定说英语的人能做到吗？
所以，你确定要和中国人谈谈文化同质性吗？
Paul Denlinger
, Have lived in China, Taiwan and Hong Kong; fluent in Mandarin (written, spoken)，Lives in Huntington Beach, CA
China is ethnically heterogeneous and culturally homogeneous (to a degree).
Many other ethnicities have been absorbed into what are now Han Chinese over several thousand years.
The Han Chinese are held together by the same language, cultural and social values. Everyone speaks Standard Chinese now, just as all Americans in the mainstream speak English.
中国在种族和文化上（一定程度上）是同质的。
几千年来，许多其他民族已经融入到现在的汉族中。
汉族人有着相同的语言、文化和社会价值观。现在每个人都说标准的汉语，就像主流美国人都说英语一样。
Do the different Chinese Dialects only have a different pronouciation? Is the Vocabulary, Grammar, Syntax, etc the same in every Chinese Dialect?
Are the writen forms of every Chinese dialect mutually intelligible? And I don’t mean only the simple day to day language but also the use of it for Political and/or Scientific reasons. Is a Political issue/essay or a Scientific paper written in X Chinese dialect mutually intelligible with every other (Y) Chinese dialect? Now for Politics and Science everyone uses Standardized Chinese but did they do so 2000 years ago? Isn’t the use of Standardized Chinese reletively recent? How many native Chinese speakers know Standardized Chinese?
不同的汉语方言只是发音不同吗？每种汉语方言的词汇、语法、句法等是否相同？
每一种汉语方言的书写形式都能相互理解吗？我指的不仅仅是简单的日常语言，还有政治和/或科学方面的。用X汉语方言写的政治问题/论文或科学论文是否能与其他（Y）汉语方言相互理解？现在对于政治和科学，每个人都在使用标准化的汉语，但2000年前他们是这样做的吗？标准化汉语的使用不是最近才开始的吗？有多少母语为汉语的人知道标准化汉语？
The dialects can have slightly different grammars depending on the dialect family.
Before Standard Chinese in the early 20th century, there was Official Chinese or 官话, which was the official language of the court. Usually this was a variation of the dialect spoken in the capital for that dynasty. Officials from different parts of the country would have to speak this language in the court.
Written Chinese was written in Classical Chinese or 文言文。
根据方言家族的不同，方言的语法可能略有不同。
在20世纪初标准汉语发布之前，有官方汉语或“官话”， 这是政府的官方语言，通常这是那个朝代的首都所说方言的变体，来自全国各地的官员必须在政府内说这种语言。
书面汉语是用古典汉语或称作“文言文”来书写的。
所有受过基础教育的中国人都能说标准汉语，所以我认为这个数量大约有12亿。
«The dialects can have slightly different grammars depending on the dialect family.» That. There are regional writings based on verbal sounds, such as Cantonese or Taiwanese and they are totally unintelligible to people who don’t speak that dialect. Which means they don’t have a common language. Unless of course all Han Chinese speak the same dialect.
«根据方言家族的不同，方言的语法可能略有不同»这一点。有一些地方性的文字是基于口头发音的，比如广东话或台语，不说那种方言的人完全听不懂，这意味着他们没有共同的语言。当然，除非所有的汉族人都说同一种方言。
“Which means they don’t have a common language. Unless of course all Han Chinese speak the same dialect.”
What is wrong with you? I give you an honest answer and you want to argue with me.
If you don’t want an honest answer then don’t ask it on Quora!
“这意味着他们没有共同的语言。当然，除非所有汉族人都说同一种方言。”
你有毛病吗？我给你一个诚实的回答，你却想和我抬杠。
如果你不想得到一个诚实的答案，那就不要来Quora上问！
I want a honest answer but also want to understand it. I am not trying to argue. Neither I am trying to support/argue for the view that Chinese don’t have the same language (Logically Equivalent to arguing against the view that they do) nor am I trying to convince you of it (I myself am in doubt). I simply want to understand your point; how do you insist that they have the same language when even the grammar differs. If the grammar differs then the vocabullary should differ much more so (the same logogram meaning different things in different dialects or even more probably the same idea being written with different logograms in different dialects). If “Politics” is written as X in one dialect and Y in a different one how can they understand each other.
我想要一个诚实的答案，但我也想了解它，我不是想跟你抬杠。我既不想支持/论证中国人没有相同的语言的观点（逻辑上等同于反对他们的观点），也不是想试图说服你（是我自己对此存在有疑问）。我只是想理解你的观点，即为什么你在它们语法不同的情况下坚持认为它们是同一种语言。如果语法不同，那么词汇就应该有更大的差异（相同的符号在不同的方言中意味着不同的东西，或者更可能是相同的想法在不同的方言中用不同的符号书写）。如果“政治”这个词用一种方言写成X，用另一种方言写成Y，他们怎么能相互理解呢？
There are two different definitions of language and dialect: one is the linguistic definition, and the other is the political definition.
You are applying the linguistic definition, I am telling you the political reality.
You cannot understand the evolution of Chinese language and history without understanding the history of Chinese politics. The evolution of Chinese language did not happen in a political vacuum.
If you try to understand Chinese linguistics PURELY FROM A LINGUISTICS BACKGROUND without understanding Chinese history and Chinese politics, you will ALWAYS come to a wrong conclusion.
语言和方言有两种不同的定义：一种是语言学的定义，另一种是政治上的定义。
你在运用语言学的定义，而我在告诉你政治现实。
如果你不了解中国的政治史，你就无法理解中国语言和历史的演变过程。汉语的演变并不是在政治真空中发生的。
如果你试图纯粹从语言学的角度来理解汉语，而不了解中国的历史和中国的政治，你总是会得出错误的结论。
Maybe you don't know much about Chinese culture, characters, and language. Chinese is an ideographic writing, and different dialects may have very different pronunciations of the same Chinese character. If two people use completely different dialects, there may be barriers to face-to-face oral communication, but there is no barrier to written communication at all. It's all the same text. Nowadays, except for the elderly in remote areas, everyone else actually has two voices, one is the dialect of their birthplace, and the other is Mandarin. Therefore, there is no communication barrier in most occasions.
也许你对中国的文化、汉字和语言了解不多。汉语是一种表意文字，不同的方言对同一个汉字可能有非常不同的发音。如果两个人使用完全不同的方言，面对面的口头交流可能会有障碍，但书面交流根本没有障碍，因为他们使用的都是一样的文字。现在，除了偏远地区的老人，其他人实际上都会两种方言，一种是他们出生地的方言，另一种是普通话。因此，在大多数情况下他们没有沟通障碍。
Jiaquan Huo
China has had a common written language for more than 2000 years.
China has been on a common system for measurement for more than 2000 years.
China has been on a common standard for roads for more than 2000 years.
China has been free from racial segregation for more than 2000 years.
Chinese have been on a common state maintained trading network for more than 2000 years.
Chinese have been competing against each other on common standardized examinations, both civil and martial, for over 1000 years.
China has had multiple tsunamis of internal migration in the past 2000 years at least.
Ethnic groups in China have engaged in intermarriage for more than 2000 years.
I guess most importantly, Chinese has never had a rigid idea of “ethnicity”.
What else can one expect?
中国采用共同的书面语言已有2000多年的历史。
中国采用共同的度量衡已有2000多年的历史。
2000多年来，中国一直采用共同的道路标准。
中国2000多年来没有种族隔离。
2000多年来，中国人一直有一个由国家维护的共同的贸易网络。
1000多年来，中国人在共同的标准化考试（包括民事和军事考试）上相互竞争。
至少在过去2000年里，中国发生过多次国内移民潮。
中国的种族通婚已有2000多年的历史。
我想最重要的是，中国人从来没有一个严格的“种族”观念。
有人还想期待什么呢？
Are the writen forms of every Chinese dialect mutually intelligible? And I don’t mean only the simple day to day language but also the use of it for Political and/or Scientific reasons. Is a Political issue/essay or a Scientific paper written in X Chinese dialect mutually intelligible with every other (Y) Chinese dialect? Now for Politics and Science everyone uses Standardized Chinese but did they do so 2000 years ago? Isn’t the use of Standardized Chinese reletively recent? How many native Chinese speakers know Standardized Chinese?
不同的汉语方言只是发音不同吗？每种汉语方言的词汇、语法、句法等是否相同？
每一种汉语方言的书写形式都能相互理解吗？我指的不仅仅是简单的日常语言，还有政治和/或科学方面的。用X汉语方言写的政治问题/论文或科学论文是否能与其他（Y）汉语方言相互理解？现在对于政治和科学，每个人都在使用标准化的汉语，但2000年前他们是这样做的吗？标准化汉语的使用不是最近才开始的吗？有多少母语为汉语的人知道标准化汉语？
原创翻译：龙腾网 http://www.ltaaa.cn 转载请注明出处
We generally don't write our day to day conversation. When we write down on paper, it's formal language. Before 1919, it's all classical Chinese 之乎者也.
我们通常不会把日常对话写下来。当我们把它们写在纸上时，用的是正式的语言。在1919年以前，我们用的是文言文。
This is what makes China different form European nations（and most of others）. Chinese politicians realized thousands of years ago that it is difficult to unify the pronunciation of language in such a large country. So they made a compromise. The pronunciation can be different, but the writing must be the same. The impact of this practice is so far-reaching that many countries that do not speak Chinese once used Chinese characters, such as North Korea (and South Korea), Vietnam and Japan.
这就是中国与欧洲国家（以及大多数其他国家）的不同。几千年前，中国的政治家们就意识到，在这样一个大国里，统一语言的发音是很困难的，所以他们做出了妥协，即发音可以不同，但文字必须相同。这种做法的影响是如此深远，以至于许多不说中文的国家曾经也使用汉字，如朝鲜（和韩国）、越南和日本。
Contrary to your imagination, a unified written language is better when describing problems such as science and politics. On the contrary, there may be some differences in daily language. But now that the Internet is so developed, Chinese people in different dialects can understand the unique written expressions of most dialects.
与你的想象相反，在描述科学和政治等问题时，统一的书面语言更好。相反，日常语言可能会存在一些差异，但现在互联网如此发达，使用不同方言的中国人可以理解大多数方言的独特书面表达形式。
Michael Ciao
, Business Owner Investor (1977-present)，Lives in San Francisco Bay Area
What is central to the Chinese culture and heritage is the Chinese language, the written language, the art, literature, histories, philosophy, religion, ancestry, names, families are all in written language, which is basically the same for 2000–3000 years, regardless what original home dialects they b me at use. That written language is the core and glue which hold China together.
All empires worldwide collapsed and never came back, and none will come back; except one, China always came came. The essence and core is the language.
中国文化和遗产的核心是汉语的书面语。中国的艺术，文学，历史，哲学，宗教，祖先，姓名，家谱都是用书面语书写的，这在2000-3000年里基本上都是一样的，不管他们使用的是什么原始方言。书面语言是维系中国的核心和粘合剂。
全世界所有的帝国都崩溃了，而且再也不会复兴，除了中国。其本质和核心的原因就是书面语言。
If you cannot speak Mandarin, you have no future. How do you communicate with people outside your village? County, provincial or central government offices? Businesses or buyers or suppliers from a city outside your tiny home farm area? You are locked on your farm in your village.
口语没有那么重要，但现在有一种统一的口语，即普通话是需要学习的。
如果你不会说普通话，你就没有未来。如果你不会说普通话，你如何与村外的人沟通？如何与县、省或中央政府办公室的人沟通？如何与来自您的小型家庭农场区域之外的城市的企业或买家或供应商沟通？如果你不会说普通话，你就被隔离在你的小村庄里了。
Huijian Wu
, CTO (2005-present)，Lives in Hong Kong2001–present
Chinese, although pronounced differently from place to place, is written with the same Chinese characters.
This makes the Chinese people speak many dialects, many of which are incomprehensible to each other, but written so that they can understand each other.
In fact if it were not for the recent decline of China, North Korea, Korea and Vietnam, too, would be using Chinese characters. The Japanese kanji, although somewhat different, is still largely intelligible.
汉语的发音虽然因地而异，但都是用同样的汉字书写的。
这使得虽然中国人讲许多方言，而且其中许多方言彼此难以理解，但书写起来彼此都能看懂。
事实上，如果不是因为最近中国的衰落，朝鲜、韩国和越南也将使用汉字。日本汉字虽然与中国有些不同，但在很大程度上还是很易懂的。
This was a period of time that lasted 2,000 years.
It was only in modern times that the French invaded Vietnam and introduced a set of Latin spellings called "Vietnamese" because of the weakening of China, and on the Korean peninsula the Koreans used Japanese for a while after the Japanese invasion, and then both Korea and Korea became independent and restricted the use of Chinese characters. In Japan, the use of Chinese characters began to decline after the Second World War.
换句话说，从秦汉到18世纪，中国人不仅在读写方面没有问题，甚至连越南人、朝鲜人和日本人在一起的时候也可以互相交流，虽然他们彼此不理解对方的语言，但他们可以把它写出来，让每个人都能理解。
这是一段持续了2000年的时期。
直到近代，由于中国的衰弱，法国才入侵越南，并引入了一套拉丁拼法，称为“越南语”。日本入侵后，朝鲜半岛上的韩国人在一段时间内使用日语，随后朝鲜和韩国都独立并限制了汉字的使用。在日本，汉字的使用在第二次世界大战后也开始下降。
（Hanseong Lent）
Japanese correspondence during World War II
（Kanji written by former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe）
Chinese characters written by former South Korean President Park Geun-hye
Chinese characters for Ho Chi Minh
In fact if it had been these leaders together they would have been completely untranslated. By writing directly in Chinese characters, they would be able to communicate.
If this is true of foreign leaders, what about China?
Here I Quora's editorial staff, the pictures used here, are historical pictures, although not in English, but to illustrate this issue, please do not think I am using other languages.
让我们看看韩国、越南和日本近代的报纸
（汉城旬报）
二战期间的日本通信
原创翻译：龙腾网 http://www.ltaaa.cn 转载请注明出处
（日本前首相安倍晋三写的汉字）
韩国前总统朴槿惠写的汉字
原创翻译：龙腾网 http://www.ltaaa.cn 转载请注明出处
胡志明写的汉字
事实上，如果这些领导人在一起，他们完全不需要翻译，他们可以通过直接用汉字书写来交流。
如果外国领导人都能如此，那么中国呢？
Do the different Chinese Dialects only have a different pronouciation? Is the Vocabulary, Grammar, Syntax, etc the same in every Chinese Dialect?
Are the writen forms of every Chinese dialect mutually intelligible? And I don’t mean only the simple day to day language but also the use of it for Political and/or Scientific reasons. Is a Political issue/essay or a Scientific paper written in X Chinese dialect mutually intelligible with every other (Y) Chinese dialect? Now for Politics and Science everyone uses Standardized Chinese but did they do so 2000 years ago? Isn’t the use of Standardized Chinese reletively recent? How many native Chinese speakers know Standardized Chinese?
不同的汉语方言只是发音不同吗？每种汉语方言的词汇、语法、句法等是否相同？
每一种汉语方言的书写形式都能相互理解吗？我指的不仅仅是简单的日常语言，还有政治和/或科学方面的。用X汉语方言写的政治问题/论文或科学论文是否能与其他（Y）汉语方言相互理解？现在对于政治和科学，每个人都在使用标准化的汉语，但2000年前他们是这样做的吗？标准化汉语的使用不是最近才开始的吗？有多少母语为汉语的人知道标准化汉语？
In the case of the spoken language, there are some differences in pronunciation and grammar. Especially in southern dialects. But if written out in written language, it is the basic consistency.
This is why many people consider Vietnamese to be a dialect of Chinese as well. This is because Vietnamese and Guangxi Chinese dialects are close in spoken language and can be written in Chinese in ancient times.
就口语而言，不同的方言在发音和语法上存在一些差异，尤其是南方方言。但如果用书面语言写出来，它们基本上是一致的。
这就是为什么很多人认为越南语也是汉语方言的原因，因为越南语和广西汉语方言在口语上很接近，在古代可以直接用汉语书写。
«The dialects can have slightly different grammars depending on the dialect family.» That. There are regional writings based on verbal sounds, such as Cantonese or Taiwanese and they are totally unintelligible to people who don’t speak that dialect. Which means they don’t have a common language. Unless of course all Han Chinese speak the same dialect.
«就口语而言，不同的方言在发音和语法上存在一些差异»这一点。有一些地方性的文字是基于口头发音的，比如广东话或台湾话，不说那种方言的人完全理解不了，这意味着他们没有共同的语言。当然，除非所有的汉族人都说同一种方言。
True but people can still communicate with each other by leaving those regional specifics out, and in history, there is the “official” dialect / vocabs that doesn’t have those regional particularities and is what all official documents are written in.
没错，但人们仍然可以通过忽略这些地区的具体情况来相互交流，而且在历史上，存在一些忽视了地区的特殊性的“官方”方言/词汇，所有官方文件都是用这些“官话”来书写的。