It seems that the vast majority on the poll list their study as Northern Mandarin vs. Southern. By the standards that led to that distinction, what is the difference between the two? Are we talking something like 普通话 versus 上海话, or is there some other standard being compared here? Either way, living in Wuhan and learning a largely Wuhan-inflected idea of 普通话, I feel a bit dishonest answering either, though I went with Northern because of the 普通话 thing. Perhaps it would have been better if it had been distinguished as Putonghua vs. non-standard Mandarin or somesuch thing, unless I'm missing a key distinction between Southern and Northern Mandarin...

Well, 上海话 isn't mandarin.

I just presumed it meant Northern = 儿化, Southern ＝ 没有儿化.

There's also the dropping of certain initials in southern mandarin. Eg. zh pronounced as z, sh as s... But not everyone in the south does that, so I didn't count that when voting.

No doubt our resident scholars will be along in a bit to correct me...

I've heard 上海话 considered a highly variant dialect of Mandarin most of the time - most people I know in Shanghai say it should be considered a different major dialect of Chinese (ala Cantonese or Mandarin as dialects of Chinese), but I feel like a lot of them have gone out of their way to make it clear that their opinion deviates from the official position on the matter.

If it's just a pronunciation thing, I'd say that's all the more reason to label it Standard Mandarin (普通话) vs. Non-Standard Mandarin. After all, not all wonky dialects are located in the South, nor are all Southern dialects and accents wonky as compared to 普通话, heck even 北京话 is fairly wonky when you compare it to 普通话 - at its best it's like a cartoon variant, when it doesn't deviate from the "standard" as much as any other local dialect...

Not that it's a big deal, just my opinion on the matter.

Well 上海话 is from a different family of Chinese, Wu Chinese. Regardless, if you've heard it, it's quite obviously very different, with basically no relation to mandarin. It's different in exactly the same way Cantonese and Hakka are different.

As for Northern Mandarin being "普通话“ and southern mandarin being a wonky dialect, I don't think you can say that at all. Check the other thread out. In short, in northern places like Beijing they add extra 儿化 and in the south they take some away. Neither would be official 普通话 (which I've heard counts as a constructed language, but I don't know how much truth there is there).

It's not really an area of much concern for me personally.

Trying to decide whether it's dialect or a language is not a useful distinction. (As the saying goes, a language is a dialect with an army and a navy.) What's useful is knowing whether people who speak only 上海话 can understand 普通话 and vice versa.

For example, Jamaican English is supposedly English. However, I can understand approximately zero percent of it when Jamaicans are not making an effort to communicate with non-Jamaicans.

According to Wikipedia, 吴语 has been a distinct language family for over 2,000 years, and, quote,

The present variations of the Chinese language developed out of the different ways in which dialects of Old Chinese and Middle Chinese evolved. Traditionally seven major groups of dialects have been recognized. Aside from Mandarin, the other six are Wu Chinese, Hakka Chinese, Min Chinese, Xiang Chinese, Yue Chinese and Gan Chinese. In 1985 Li Rong suggested that the Jin dialects should be considered a separate branch.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandarin_Chinese

also

Chinese (hànyǔ 汉语/漢語 or zhōngguóhuà 中国话/中國話) comprises many regional varieties, the primary ones being Mandarin, Wu, Cantonese, and Min. These are not mutually intelligible, but for sociological and political reasons are generally considered a single Chinese language.
Although the English word dialect is often used for these varieties, translating the Chinese terms huà 话, yǔ 語, and fāngyán 方言, the lack of mutual intelligibility between the major and many minor varieties is at odds with the normal English use of the word dialect. The neologism topolect has been coined as a more literal translation of fangyan, but the generic term "variety" will be used in this article.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varieties_of_Chinese

James

"I just presumed it meant Northern = 儿化, Southern ＝ 没有儿化." That's what I thought as well. As long as we are talking about Mandarin and not separate dialects, this is the main difference (other differences being choice of words, similar to the way the British say trousers but Americans say pants. We both know what the other means, but normally just wouldn't say it that way. For example in the north I think they say 大夫, but in the south 医生).

I assumed it's

Ta shi shenme renr/yin? (former Beijing, latter Dongbei) or
Ta shi sha yin?

vs

Ta si senme ren/szen/szeng/len/leng?



Ta chi miantiaor, he niunai
vs
Ta ci fan, he liulai (ok, only n-->l only in some regions)

I'd like to mention that despite the difference, most of schools around China and Taiwan as well are teaching a quite "standard" Mandarin, the real difference can be heard in streets (for example, in my Taiwan edited book, 兒化 is widely used).

Linguists are in no doubt that the major Chinese 'dialects' are actually languages. As jww points out, the distinction is often made by non-experts and often carries a political tinge to it. I'd say the Chinese more often describe the major grounds of languages as dialects because they often like to stress a commonality, and of course the government likes to minimize the importance of 'regional dialects' in favour of Mandarin.

Enthnocentrism plays a role too. I remember being loudly told by an Italian in a bar that all the Chinese languages were dialects because they shared a common writing system.

Which is quite amusing because of course most European languages share the same writing system too. The romance languages in particular are borderline failures of the linguistic language differentiation test because they're often somewhat mutually intelligible, something that can't be said for the 'dialects' of Chinese.

Oh about the North vs South debate. It's a bit of an odd poll phrasing. I suspect most of us are aiming at this thing called Standard Mandarin. Which you could say is essentially the Beijing dialect but without the more modern shifts of the 儿ization.

In my experience southern mandarin is fractured and heavily accented by the regional dialect so I'm not really sure it exists as a single thing although there are a bunch of speech patterns which tend to differ between north and south. Either will be understood, it's just a preference.

I live in the South, and i don't know why in this poll they've tried to differentiate N & S Mandarin. The main difference, like people have said above, is 没有儿化. But in the schools they still teach with a "standard" accent of 儿化 on the end of some words.