Timeline for Sociolinguistics of pre-handover Hong Kong cinema and dialogue in non-Cantonese Chinese “dialects”
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
13 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Mar 14, 2023 at 17:35 | comment | added | user21126 | There are only two questions here, both of which have firm answers, not mere opinion. The main one is whether mutual (un)intelligibility between Sinitic meant that HK audiences would have needed subtitles for cinema with non-Cantonese Sinitic dialogue. The secondary question is whether, inversely, visiting Taiwanese could understand Cantonese as depicted in films, or whether this is dramatic license. FWIW, Michaelyus’s answer, is a good (though not 100% complete) reply to both questions. | |
| Mar 14, 2023 at 16:31 | comment | added | Lambie | I don't think one can easily understand this question as it contains multiple questions., most of which are a matter of opinion and personal knowledge. I speak mainland French but understand many other varieties of French. So, it's about experience and knowledge. Not a hard-and-fast rule. | |
| Mar 14, 2023 at 16:24 | comment | added | Tristan | @Lambie sociolinguistics is linguistics. Or at least a field within linguistics. Sociolinguistic questions are on topic here. The question of whether it may be better answered on the history site would be reasonable, but I don't see how asking about mutual intelligibility in a given historical era can really be called off-topic | |
| Mar 14, 2023 at 16:14 | comment | added | user21126 | To judge from the tagging available, this StackExchange is for questions on both "sociolinguistics" and "mutual intelligibility". There have already been several questions here on mutual intelligibility of Sinitic, so this question (which explores a particular subset of those mutual-intelligibility contexts) is not out of place. | |
| Mar 14, 2023 at 15:25 | comment | added | Lambie | How is this about linguistics? At best, this is sociolinguistics. | |
| S Mar 14, 2023 at 13:52 | history | suggested | blues |
added a relevant tag
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| Mar 14, 2023 at 12:07 | review | Suggested edits | |||
| S Mar 14, 2023 at 13:52 | |||||
| Mar 14, 2023 at 8:23 | history | became hot network question | |||
| Mar 13, 2023 at 17:52 | answer | added | Michaelyus | timeline score: 8 | |
| Mar 13, 2023 at 16:54 | comment | added | jogloran | While this is anecdata, my parents (born in the 50s in HK) have little practical understanding of Mandarin, and would likely need the subtitles to follow 100%. I think there are two separate questions here — 1) Was it just artistic license for HK characters to be portrayed as understanding Mandarin or Shanghainese? 2) To what extent would audiences have understood without subtitles? For the case of Shanghainese, I think the answer to both is clearly not; for the other, it doesn't stretch the imagination so much. | |
| Mar 13, 2023 at 13:31 | comment | added | Janus Bahs Jacquet | Even before the handover, I’d say there was enough Mainland influence in Hong Kong media that it wouldn’t be unexpected for Hong Kong natives to be able to understand Mandarin to some extent, even if they didn’t necessarily speak it. I don’t have any actual data or personal experience, but I wouldn’t expect the same to be the case with Wu (Shanghainese), or indeed that a Taiwanese Mandarin-speaker visiting Hong Kong would be able to understand Cantonese. | |
| S Mar 13, 2023 at 9:06 | review | First questions | |||
| Mar 13, 2023 at 22:32 | |||||
| S Mar 13, 2023 at 9:06 | history | asked | user21126 | CC BY-SA 4.0 |