Edward Cherlin wrote:
> Um, Han doesn't mean Chinese. It means the Han dynasty and its
> cultural and ethnic successors. These are *Han* characters in all
> three languages.
There are many words to say "Chinese" in Chinese. "Han" is one of these,
although it also has the more restrict meanings that you mention.
When referred to spoken language, "Han" has quite a strong ethnical
connotation denoting Northern Chinese. But when referred to the written
language or other cultural aspects, this Northern connotation is much
weaker, the term being applicable to all China and Chinese things.
> "Chinese" would be
>
> zhongguohua zhongguoren zhongwen
> jungkgukmal jungkuksalam
> chukokugo chukokujin
>
> or perhaps baihua, putonghua, or some other variation of
> Beijing/"Mandarin" Chinese. Or, of course, the names for the
> Cantonese, Hokkien, etc. dialects/languages as spoken or written in
> each or any.
Or "Hanyu", in fact, which is the normal name for "Mandarin" in Mandarin.
If I remember correctly (Thomas Chan can help us here), the normal Cantonese
word for "hanzi" is spelled with the same two characters as in all other
"CJK" languages, but I don't think they think they write their language in
"Mandarin characters".
_ Marco
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.2 : Fri Jul 06 2001 - 00:17:18 EDT