Are SE Asians Australoids?

Repost from the old site. We have already dealt with this issue previously on this blog, but there is need to continuously revisit old issues that do not seem to be sinking in very well after we do our revisionist and rectification work here. For instance, I do not really care about whether or not SE Asians are part-Australoid, but among amateur anthropologists, the notion is much in vogue. Furthermore, it is regarded as given by Chinese, which unfortunately includes Southern Chinese, who by this definition, would also be part-Australoid. This issue needs to be dealt with because it is such a widespread myth, particularly among some of our best young minds out there in popular culture. Among anthropologists, the only folks saying that SE Asians are part-Australoid are wonderful folks like Richard Lynn, who wants to “phase out” inferior races. So I’m not sure that NE Asian Supremacists should make alliance with these guys. The truth is clear. All of Asia, as far as we can tell, was Australoid up until 9,000 years ago or so. Further, some Caucasians were part-Australoid, and there is some evidence that all of them may have been at one point. Take a recent comment by an excellent mind in my comments section, who states that all SE Asians are Australoids based on their lineage. First of all, lineage doesn’t really mean crap. In the lineage of Caucasians is African, Asian and probably Australoid, going back 45,000 years or so, and maybe more so in between, since India seems to be continuously injecting itself into the Caucasian mix from 10,000-45,000 years ago, and India was Australoid until 8,000 years ago, when it finally transitioned to Caucasian. In fact, Caucasians may have been made up one part African from Masai and Tutsi-type Central African stock, and two parts NE Asian, which at 45,000 years ago was probably an Australoid that looked something like an Ainu. So Caucasians themselves are probably two parts Australoid in their mix going way, way back. There are different ways of doing race, in places where anti-racist nuts have not outlawed it or shamed it out altogether. We can look at facial structure, or we can look at genes. There are no other ways of doing it that make sense. Facial structure is a favorite among White racists, but otherwise it’s ok. White racists despise genes, because too many other “non-White” Caucasians end up being too close to their precious European White Glory. Lots of people hate genes because they give funny results. The exalted Hong Kong Chinese make up a taut subrace with the unknown Taiwanese Ami and the downtrodden and abused Filipinos. We can’t have that. Let’s do faces instead, or skin color, the craziest of them all. We do skin color and we miss tight genetic units like Algerians and Nubians, one White and one Black group that are so closely related they can easily be called a minor race and even a closely-knit genetic family. Faces are interesting, but genes are sort of where it’s at in a way. Negritos and Ainu go to the surrounding Asians on genes, but to Australoids on facial structure. So where do we toss em? Fuegian Amerindians go Australoid on facial structure but Amerindian on genes, so which bin? I’m inclined to toss Fuegians into Amerindians on mere sense grounds, since saying they are Australoids lost in America is just too weird.

A classic Ainu man. Note the uncanny resemblance to an Amerindian. Ainus look Australoid on facial structure and Asian on genes. They are not Caucasian as many have theorized. One theory about why we have some Caucasian looking types in Asia is that the breeding together of an Australoid type with an Asian type can produce as Caucasoid type. That’s just a shot in the dark, but it sounds appealing to me. Some Amerindians, such as the Fuegians of Patagonia and the Pericu of Baja California also look like Ainu, as did the Paleoindians of the Americas, who are thought to be the first to come the continent, even before the Asian Amerindians that we know today. The Amerindians we know today may have shown up only 6,000-9,000 years ago, but they must have bred in with earlier groups.

So, we look at faces of SE Asians for Australoid structure, and we don’t get much. Negritos, Melanesians, and sometimes Polynesians have Australoid faces. So do the Senoi, and possibly the Vedda (though not close to Aborigines), and we get the Tamils. But Polynesians are Oceanians genetically, Senoi are SE Asians, and Tamils are Caucasians. Oh, what a complicated web we weave. We don’t see Australoid facial structure in SE Asians. In some, maybe we do. There are people with woolly hair and dark skin among the Taiwan aborigines and among the Malay and the Filipinos at least. These people do have some Negrito in them. In most SE Asians, we just find that they have faces that look, well, SE Asian. It’s a particular look of a face, and it’s not Australoid or any such thing. I’m not sure what it resembles. It just resembles what it is – SE Asians have developed their own specific facial type, and it is what it is and you like it or you don’t, but it owns itself. If we go looking for Australoid genes in SE Asians, we pretty much come up empty handed. We find Papuan genes in some Southern Chinese, some coastal Vietnamese and some Malays and we find some sort of Australoid-looking genes in Indonesians, mostly to east. We don’t seem to find any at all in Taiwanese, Lao, Khmer, the rest of the Vietnamese, Thai or western Indonesians. Anyway, we only find a tiny amount in those groups, indicating that it’s nonsense to say that they are part Australoid. It’s just a tiny ancient remnant – that’s all. When we go looking at Polynesians and Micronesians, things get way more complicated. For a long time, analyses were finding that these people have up to 5 A paper has recently come out showing that Polynesians and Micronesians are almost all Austronesian from Taiwan, and the Papuan – Melanesian connection is minor or even nonexistent. Even this paper showed that Melanesians had a heavy Papuan element, with a small Austronesian element mostly limited to eastern Indonesia. Download a paper looking at the matter on my site here. Whatever the meaning of these studies, a close look at genetic charts tends to show Oceanians such as Micronesians, Melanesians and Polynesians lining up right alongside Papuans and Aborigines, who are themselves vastly far apart. Clearly there is an Australoid Race. Clearly Aborigines and Papuans are too extremely distantly related aspects of that race, or maybe even separate major races on their own. Including Melanesians is difficult. While some treatments now are finding an Oceanian Race separate from Australoids, others are finding a fairly close link between Melanesians and Australoids such as Papuans. It is probably best to say that Melanesians are Oceanians with a fairly close, but still distant, relationship to Papuans. Whatever relationship Micronesians and Polynesians have to Papuans, it is much more distant. When we line up Aborigines to SE Asians such as Khmer, Malay, Filipinos, Thai, and Southern Chinese, we do not get a thing. The relationship is very, very distant. In many charts, the closest relative will be Polynesians (the connection above again) and then we will find Japanese, Koreans and even NE Chinese. This is probably due to an Ainu-Gilyak Australoid element that was generalized all through NE Asia at this time.

In my opinion, the Ainu and the Gilyak are the remains of the proto-NE Asians. They probably go back to Lake Baikal around 35,000 years ago. At some point they may have gone to Thailand, then over to Japan, and at 20,000 years ago, they must have gone to Australia. At around 16,000 years ago, Ainu types left the Altai Mountains and traveled to the Americas, possibly via a coastal route on boats. Their ancestors today, other than Fuegians and the Pericu. Look at those really long fingers on that woman. That looks so strange. I have seen photos of modern day Gilyaks on Sakhalin Island and they look pretty Japanese. There are projects underway to record and possibly revive their very strange language, which is somehow still alive. These were very much a fishing people, living on the coast and heavily involved in salmon fishing, drying and consumption. They also eat a lot of seaweed. The Japanese diet resembles this in some ways.

Keep in mind at proto-NE Asians (Ainu types) colonized Australia 20,000 years ago and created one of the major inputs into the Aborigines.

A classic Aborigine, possibly from Coon in the early 20th Century. Coon made a number of good studies on Aborigines at that time. An Ainu type called Murrayians is thought to have colonized Australia 20,000 years ago. Around that time, Ainu types were in Thailand and Japan. They seem to have gone from Thailand to Japan around this time as the Jomonese, probably on boats. Surely they must have used these same boats to go to Australia. On the way down to Australia, they seem have made up the proto-Australoids, a strange and little-known group from the Philippines that is thought to be the second arrivals after the Negritos. The description of the proto-Australoids sounds like an Ainu type, and their ancient arrival on the islands fits in well with a very early arrival in Australia.

It is true that SE Asians were probably still transitioning from Australoid to SE Asian maybe as late as 5,000 years ago, but NE Asians were making that transition only 9,000 years ago. According the commenter, SE Asians are Australoids because that is sort of what they were 5,000 years ago. But why should we not include NE Asians, since they were Australoids only 9,000 years ago? Why not include East Indians, since they were Australoids until only 8,000 years ago? Hell with lineage. Humans were ape-men not too long ago. Maybe even 200,000 years ago, we were still pretty apelike. Hell, Amerindians were still pretty Australoid up until 9,000 ago, and in Colombia even up until 3,000 years ago. In the Fuegians and the Pericu of southern Baja California, there were physically Australoid types until contact and even afterward, even though the Pericu went extinct. Truth is, lineage doesn’t really matter. We look at things as they are today. Some things came from other things a long time, but the existing things of today are not the things that they transitioned from long ago, nor are they part of what they used to be. Instead, they are whole new things, moving from one existence and creation to a new creation all of their own. I am not my ancestors, nor am I even part of my ancestors. But they are part of the creation story that is me and my kin, and that is a wonderful trail of a tale all on its own. This research takes a lot of time, and I do not get paid anything for it. If you think this website is valuable to you, please consider a a contribution to support more of this valuable research.

The Origin of the Amerindians

Repost from the old site. As we noted in an earlier post , the view is converging that Amerindians can be traced back to the Altai Mountains in Southwest Siberia where China, Mongolia and Russia all come together. Yet another study found that of all Asians, the Turkic-speaking tribes of the Sayan Mountains (west of the Altai Mountains and north of northwestern Mongolia) are the closest to the Amerindians. This group includes the Shor , the Tofalar, the Altai, the Khakass, the Soyots and the Sayan Uplands. The Soyots and the Buryats are from the Eastern Sayan Mountains. The Shor and the Khakass are from the northwest slopes of the Sayans. The Tofalar are from the northern slopes of the Eastern Sayans. The Tuva are also from the Sayans.

This is an ensemble of Khakass singers called the Sume-r Ensemble. They sure look like Amerindians, don’t they. The Khakass, Turkic speakers of the Sayan Mountains, are related to Amerindians. The Khakass language is in good shape, with 60,000 speakers. The Khakass belong to the Central Asian Mongoloid group. They have wide faces and cheekbones are not very prominent. They are short, with dark skin, and are able to grow beards.This is a traditional shaman woman of the Altai-Kizhi group of the Altai. Of all of the groups listed above, the Altai are one of the closest of all to the Amerindians. As you can see, this woman looks very Amerindian, all the way down to the face paint. She’s even beating on a drum. I can’t believe that there is something like a tepee in the background. Another powerful connection is that all of these groups practiced Shamanism very prominently. And we know what the aboriginal religions of the Amerindians were – forget all that “Great Creator” crap – most of that was lobbed on recently after they became Christians. The aboriginal religions of the Amerindians were animism and shamanism, combined. Bama Kanda, a famous Buryat. I believe she is a singer. Although the Buryat look a lot more like typical Asians (note the resemblance to a Mongolian or a Korean here) several studies have now related them to the Amerindians. Strangely enough, the Buryats have an oral tradition that says that a group of them went to the Americas long ago. From a book called The Last of the Shor Shamans . He looks quite Amerindian. It showcases a few remaining Shor elders who still practice Shamanism and looks into their worldview. The Shor language is doing ok, but it is on the decline all right. Quite a few kids are still speaking it. The Shor are Uralics, but they have Mongoloid features. They are short, with broad, flat faces. They have light skin and light eyes and can grow a thick beard. The Shors have not done well, and alcoholism and VD are devastating them. Galina Innokentievna Adamova, a member of the Fast Reindeer folksinging group. She looks like an Amerindian, and her costume even looks Amerindian. The Tofalar language is not doing well. It’s not being spoken by kids. About 3 It’s being taught for 1 hour a week in some elementary schools, and the teacher is not even fluent in Tofalar. She conducts the class in Russian. Other villages do not even have schools, and the kids are shipped away to boarding schools. We have to conclude that once a language is no longer spoken in the home and is reduced to a subject in school, it’s probably on its way out. The Tofalar are also members of the Mongoloid Central Asian race. They are short, with high, flat faces, without prominent cheekbones. Nikolay Sergeevich Bakanaev, an expert in Tofalar fairy tales. I can’t believe how much this guy looks like an Amerindian.

The Ket and Selkup are also related to Amerindians, though they are now to the north of the Altai. However, a long time ago, the Ket and Selkup lived in the Altai, and they only moved north later on.

Katun River in the Altai Mountains, origin of the vast majority of the Amerindians. The ancestors of the Amerinds probably left this region to come to the Americas about 16-30,000 years ago.

Another paper has found that there were two waves to the Americas – the first wave, mentioned above, traced back to the Tuva of the Altai, occurred 20-30,000 years ago, not 16,000 years ago as suggested in the paper above. This group moved first to the Chukotka Peninsula, and then into the Americas. They constitute the Amerind speakers of North, Central and South America.

A Tuvan family, ancestors of the vast majority of Amerindians. Tuvans, who live in the Altai Mountains where Russia, China and Mongolia all come together, have one of highest rates of syphilis in the world, attributed to an old shamanistic tradition that encouraged promiscuity among females. The more sex partners a woman had before marriage, the more fertile she would be. It’s obviously not scientifically based. A Selkup woman. Galina Vladimirovna Kusamina (nee Tamelkina), age 47. Photographed at the Farkovo settlement. The Selkups are not doing well. There is high unemployment, an extremely high rate of alcoholism, and they are victims of racial discrimination. The Selkup are members of the Uralic Race. The origins of the Uralics are pretty obscure. Their language is Samoyedic. Samoyedic is very distantly related to Finnish, Estonian and Hungarian.Some say that this race is neither Mongoloid nor Caucasoid. Genetically, they do seem to fall in with the Asians. They are short and have short skulls. Asian traits are diminished, and their skin is fairer than in surrounding groups. These people, along with the Ket, are also ancestors of the Amerindians.

This paper also found evidence for a second wave of Siberians to the Americas. This wave came out of the Lower Amur River region near Sakhalin Island, where Russia, China and Korea all together. This wave gave rise to the Na-Dene speakers and the surrounding populations of Amerinds.

The Lower Amur River region, where the ancestors of the Na-Dene came from. The Amur is said to be one of the world’s 10 great rivers.

The Na-Dene migration occurred about 6-7,000 years ago. Some peoples who live in the Lower Amur region include the Negidal, the Ulchi , the Orok and the Udeghe. This paper found that the Negidal and the Ulchi were the progenitors of the Na-Dene.

Click to enlarge. The Lower Amur region of Russia can be seen to the left of Sakhalin Island. On this map, tribes residing in the Lower Amur region include the Negidal, the Ulchi, the Nivkhi, the Oroch, the Udeghe and the Nanai.D. I. Nadeina, a Negidal elder who has been working with linguists in Vladimirovka village, north of Japan near Sakhalin Island. The Negidal language was devastated by the post-Stalin USSR which sent the kids off to boarding schools.10-3 Kids speak only Russian. There are only 500 of them left. The language is not written and there is no instruction in it. You can see that she looks Japanese, but anthropologically, thees people are called Paleo-Siberians, members of a group called Baikals. These people are the ancestors of the Na-Dene and surrounding tribes of Amerindians. Ulchi children in native dress. They look pretty Japanese to me, but the picture does not have good resolution. The Ulchi are ancestors of the Na-Dene Amerindians. Ulchi women being baptized into Christianity. At first glance I thought that they looked Japanese, but now I am going to say Korean. Anthropologically, they are just said to be Mongoloids of no pure type. Part of them belong to a type called Sakhalin-Amur. These types are short, with a broad, flat face and relatively dark skin. The men may have thick beards. The Ulchi live, like the Negidal, in the Khabarovsk Krai District of Russia along the lower Amur River north of Japan and northeast of Manchuria, west of Sakhalin Island. The capital of the area is Bogorodskove, about 470 miles north of Japan. 30-4

Researching classic genetic markers reveals an interesting story. M130 goes out of Africa, to India and SE Asia (these are the Negritos), then up the coast to North America and the Na-Dene. Originally, M130 is obviously Australoid-Negrito but they go to NE Asian at some point (probably about 9,000 years ago). Theirs must have been a coastal migration. The remains are in Northwest Canada, Oregon and the Northern California coast, but most of them are probably underwater. They must have gone inland at some point to become the Navajo/Apache. This is the same Lower Amur line that went to the Na-Dene in the paper above. We know that the original lines in the Lower Amur region came from SE Asia. This mirrors the theories about the Ainu Jomon culture originating in Thailand 16,000 years ago. This correlation is based on a comparison of skulls from Thailand 16,000 years ago with the Jomonese who showed up in Japan shortly after and with the present day Ainu. All three seem to line up. The tribes of the Lower Amur seem to have a similar provenance to the Ainu.

Ainu men with full beards. As you can see, they do look somewhat Caucasian. However, analysis of their skulls shows that they are Australoid. Their genes are Asian, showing relations to the Andaman Islanders (!) and Tibetans. The Andaman Islanders are the remains of the very first men out of Africa.If the Ainu are related to them, this shows that the Ainu are very ancient indeed. The tribes of the lower Amur region probably derive from the Ainu. Genetics shows that this line came from SE Asia. A good theory is that the Jomon Culture, which showed up in Japan 16,000 years, is derived from a culture that existed in Thailand at the same time. The archaic Thai left Thailand and came up to Japan, possibly by boats. The skulls of the archaic Thai, the Jomonese and the Ainu all line up. So the ancestors of the Ainu lived in Thailand 16,000 years ago and earlier and left to come up to Japan to become the Jomonese. It seems that the Ainu were on the move at this time. The Ainu also seem to be connected to the Murrayans, who arrived in Australia, possibly from either Thailand or Japan between 15-20,000 years ago. There is also evidence that they stopped by the Philippines on their way to Australia from wherever. This is probably the same group as the proto-Australoids, the second group to come to the Philippines. So the Ainu are probably the ancient Thai from 16,000 years ago, the Jomonese from the same time, the Murrayans who arrived in Australia 15-20,000 years ago, the proto-Australoids who came to the Philippines around the same time and the proto-SE Siberians, who probably showed up there around 16,000 years ago. The earliest Amerindians from 9,000-12,5000 years ago also look like Ainu. It seems that from 9,000-16,000 years ago in Asia, the proto-Ainu were really on the move.

Traditional, older anthropology has held that when the Ainu came to Japan, possibly 16,000 years ago, Japan was already inhabited. It is thought that Japan was inhabited by Negrito types prior to 16,000 years ago. The Ainu replaced these Japanese Negritos, probably by killing them off. These people were called by the Ainu the pit-dwellers or koro-pok-guru (men with sunken places). These koro-pok-guru were said to be so small as to be considered dwarfs. The only logical interpretation is that these people were Negritos.

An Ainu man with full beard. The Ainu came to Japan from the Kuril Islands to the north, possibly 16,000 years ago. They were hunter-gatherers and liked to eat meat. They were deerskin leggings and salmon-skin boots. Their religion was animism. They were said to be very dirty people who seldom washed for some reason. A man who lived with them 100 years ago for six weeks said they never bathed in that time and never washed any utensils. They worshiped the bear. Every year they had a Bear Festival and their highest compliment was to compare a man to a bear. The Ainu are pretty unique in this regard, as worship of bears is not common. On the other hand, the Ainu hunted bears, wore their skins and ate their meet. They were said to be a peaceful, kind people and did not practice capital punishment – although someone guilty of murder was mutilated, they were allowed to live.

Along the same lines, another paper found that Amerindians trace back to Mongolia, Manchuria and far southeastern Siberia (the Lower Amur River). The Altai and Buryat populations (just north of Mongolia) were included in the founders. This paper said that Amerindians came 22-29,000 years ago. There are very early sites in Beringia dating back 30,000 years, but they are controversial.

Beringia is now inhabited by Eskimos or Inuit. They are quite close genetically to Asians and they are not really Amerindians. They came quite late. Notice the resemblance to, say, Japanese.

This study found a single 30,000 year old gene in Amerindians. Based on this gene and an earlier study of classic genetic markers that suggested a time of entry at 32,000 years, this study postulated that Amerindians arrived in the Americas 30,000 years ago. The Ona of Argentina are thought to be a remaining example of the Paleoindians whose skulls most resemble Australoids.

The skulls of the extinct tribe the Pericu also show similar affinities, as do very old skulls from the Americas about 12-13,000 years ago such as “Luiza” from Brazil and another from Mexico City. These skulls, and the Fuegians, line up with Melanesians, Negritos, Papuans and the Ainu. Probably around 9,000 years ago there is yet another transition, this time to a more Polynesian type, though affinities with the Ainu remain. The famous Kennewick Man is illustrative of this type. White nationalists love to claim Kennewick man in order to prove that Whites beat Indians to the Americas and therefore this is our land and the Indians are trespassers (I kid you not!). It is true that Kennewick does look somewhat Caucasian, but so do the Ainus. Kennewick man was not White or Caucasian. This paper definitively measures Kennewick Man’s skull and shows his nearest relations. One thing we should point out here is the Kennewick Man is a member of a race that no longer exists. He had 6 Kennewick Man is also somewhat close to Papua New Guinea (Australoids), the Marquesas Islands (Polynesians) and the Society Islands (Polynesians). He has no affinities to Caucasians at all, unless you consider Ainus White, which they are not. It is mysterious why the Ainus appear Caucasoid, but one theory is that when you mix an Australoid with a Mongoloid, you end up with a phenotype that can appear somewhat Caucasoid.

Kem Sokha, a Cambodian politician. If you look at him closely, you can see he looks almost Caucasian. This is probably due to a Mongoloid-Australoid mix, in my opinion.Another photo of Kem Sokha. Forgetting about his eyes for a moment, he looks even more Caucasian in this pic.

The more modern Amerindian types, who resemble Mongoloids and not Australoids, seem to appear about 6-7,000 years ago. This paper indicates that there were possibly many survivors of the Paleo-Indians into more modern times, and that they did not all transition over around 6,000 years ago. They found “Archaic Colombian” skulls until 3,000 years ago that line up with Australoids.

A Yanonami child from the Amazon. This type typically has a very Mongoloid or Asian appearance. They could easily pass for, say, Filipinos.

This is an Inca. This type is distributed up and down the western part of South America from Chile through Peru to Ecuador and Colombia. A different phenotype.

An Apache warrior, Chief Victorio or Apache Wolf. Though these are Na-Dene speakers, this phenotype is common in the West. Prognathism may be present, along with sharply defined, angular features. Can be quite tall.

A Mexican Indian. Short and often has fairly dark skin. This is the phenotype from which many of the Hispanics in the US of Mexican origin are derived.

Floyd Red Crow Westerman, a well-known Sioux Indian from the Plains. This is a typical Plains Indian phenotype. Strangely enough, they can have a Caucasian appearance. Skin can be quite light also. Can be quite large and well-built.

References

Lell, JT, Sukernik, RI, Starikovskaya, YB, Su, B, Jin, L, et al. 2002. The Dual Origin and Siberian Affinities of Native American Y Chromosomes. American Journal of Human Genetics, 70(1), 192-206. Neel, J.V., Biggar, R.J., Sukernik, R.I. 1994. Virologic and Genetic Studies Relate Amerind Origins to the Indigenous People of the Mongolia/Manchuria/Southeastern Siberia Region. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA (PNAC), Genetics, Vol 91: pp. 10737-10741. Underhill, Peter A., Jin, Li, Zemans, Rachel, Oefner, Peter J. and Cavalli-Sforza, L. Luca. 1996. A Pre-Columbian Y Chromosome-Specific Transition and Its Implications for Human Evolutionary History. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA (PNAC), Genetics, Vol 93, pp. 196-200. Powell, Joseph F. and Rose, Jerome C. 2004. Chapter 2, Report on the Osteological Assessment of the “Kennewick Man” Skeleton (CENWW.97.Kennewick), in McManamon, F.P. Kennewick Man. Washington, DC: US Department of the Interior, National Park Service, Archeology Program. Neves, Walter A., Hubbe, Mark, Correal, Gonzalo. 2007. Human Skeletal Remains from Sabana De Bogotá, Colombia: A Case of Paleoamerican Morphology Late Survival in South America? American Journal of Physical Anthropology, Vol 133:4:1080-1098. Zakharov, Ilia A. et al. 2004. Mitochondrial DNA Variation in the Aboriginal Populations of the Altai-Baikal Region: Implications for the Genetic History of North Asia and America. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 1011:21-35.

This research takes a lot of time, and I do not get paid anything for it. If you think this website is valuable to you, please consider a a contribution to support more of this valuable research.

Are Amerindians Related to Polynesians?

Repost from the old site. Regarding the post on the Moriori, a commenter asks if any of the Amerindians, in particular the South American Amerindians, are related to Polynesians. They are not. All of the Amerindians go back to the area where Mongolia, Russia and China all come together – the Altai Mountains east to Lake Baikal. Another smaller group comes from the area around the mouth of the Amur River where China, Russia and North Korea meet.

Click to enlarge. The Lower Amur region of Russia can be seen to the left of Sakhalin Island. On this map, tribes residing in the Lower Amur region include the Negidal, the Ulchi, the Nivkhi, the Oroch, the Udeghe and the Nanai.
Click to enlarge. There is no evidence that South American Amerindians, or any Amerindians, are primarily Polynesian. As you can see in this chart, Pacific Islanders and Amerindians are on completely different ends of the evolutionary spectrum. Amerindians are closer to NE Asians (Japanese, Koreans and Northern Chinese) and Caucasians than they are to Polynesians. Polynesians are closer to Aborigines and Papuans than they are to Amerindians or NE Asians.

However, a Polynesian gene has been found in some tribes on the Pacific Coast of Peru and Chile. It’s theorized that Polynesians must have landed there at some point, but it wasn’t a big settlement. Going back 7-9,000 years ago, all Amerindians looked like Polynesians. The closest match to the Kennewick Man’s (Who is not Caucasian!) skull is nothing other than the Moriori whom we just discussed. However, that does not mean that Polynesians were in the New World then. 9000 yrs ago, there were no Polynesians. We are talking about races that no longer exist. It’s probable that some of the ancestors of the Polynesians (= Ainu) resembled the ancestors of these ancient Amerindians (=Ainu). In the chart above, the Ainu are one of the links between the SE Asians, the NE Asians, the Australians and the Amerindians. The Ainu types are really the clue to this whole puzzle. Ainu types or Ainu types transitioning to pure Mongoloids were generalized over much of Asia back in those days.

References

Powell, Joseph F. and Rose, Jerome C. 2004. Chapter 2, Report on the Osteological Assessment of the “Kennewick Man” Skeleton (CENWW.97.Kennewick), in McManamon, F.P. Kennewick Man. Washington, DC: US Department of the Interior, National Park Service, Archeology Program.

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Another Look At Mao

I don’t agree that Mao deliberately murdered 10’s of millions of people, or, as the latest crazy book by Jung Chiang, Mao – The Untold Story says, 80 million. If you add the good figures up, it looks like the figure is a lot less than that. The Fun Gong site is a good source for accurate information. Adding up their figures, I get 10,151,652 killed by Mao from 1949-1976. The number may well be higher than that, but we just do not know. That’s definitely a Hell of a lot of people! The famine in the Great Leap Forward was terrible, and probably 15 million died at least, but it was not intentional. The Maoists in general were not intentionally killing people, certainly not by starving them to death. No one really knew what was going on. It’s not like in these other places, these capitalist places, where there is potentially plenty of food to go around, but the state just refuses to distribute it properly, you know? Or refuses to come up with the funds to buy the food in order to feed the people properly? The GLF was more manslaughter and criminal stupidity than anything else. The notion that Communism, and I guess socialism too, always starves the people, everywhere it is tried, is a peculiar rightwing conceit. There was a horrible famine in the USSR in the early 1930’s (but no Holodomor or deliberate famine) and another one in China around 1960. There was mass resistance, sabotage in the countryside, and a food shortage, but no famine, in Cuba in the early 1960’s. If you notice, the real Commie famines happen around the time when Commies first try to collectivize agriculture. There is some sort of mass resistance or mass screwup, and a famine results. I would argue that if collectivization is going to be done at all, it must be done slowly. At this point, the record as far as collectivized ag goes is dubious, and maybe collectives or cooperatives are the way to go after all. After 1933, there was scarcely a famine in the USSR. After 1960 or so, there was scarcely one in China. I have a lot of beefs with the present CCP in China, but I do think that they are dedicated to the greatest good for the greatest number. If you have been paying attention, the whole idea of “the greatest good for the greatest number” is mud in our present capitalist political era. It’s been thrown out the window. India’s economy has been exploding for 15 years or so, yet the rate of malnutrition has been flat at 5 Let us write it now! The death rate under Mao was reduced by about 7 They sure were not doing a good job of it before Liberation. Life expectancy under the Nationalists had been flat at 35 for 20 years or so before Liberation, and yes, it was a Liberation. So however many Mao was killing, the Nationalists were killing three times more year in and year out. Put that in your Greatest Mass Murderer Of All Time pipe and smoke it. A comparison with India and China is instructive. India and China were at the same developmental levels in 1949. Since then, life expectancy has so increased in China over India that we can calculate that there are 4 million excess deaths occurring in India every year as opposed to if they had gone the Chinese route. Adding it altogether, there have been 100 million excess deaths in India from 1949 to 1980 (and God knows how many ever since) over and above the deaths that the Maoists caused in China. This is what makes me so mad about the rightwing anti-Maoists. Mao gets elected Greatest Murderer Of All Time, but Indian capitalists, who killed probably 150 million (and verifiably more than 100 million) more than Mao ever did, are off the hook and getting written up in Time Magazine for their bourgeois bullshit glitter society. Oh, and winning BS feel-good Academy Awards for movies about their evil society too, gold statues awarded to their very own wicked bourgeois that’s causing the nightmare in the first place. Mao set a world record for doubling life expectancy in the shortest period of time. Let us repeat. The death rate was lowered by about 7 Mao was definitely a killer all right, but if you accept the Biggest Murderer That Ever Lived thing, then you also have to accept that he was the Greatest Humanitarian That Ever Lived. No one man saved more lives in a shorter period of time than Mao did. What? You capitalists can’t even come close to that achievement? Why don’t you try then? You guys can do anything, right? Ready for that cognitive disconnect? I knew you were too chicken. Tell you what, capitalists. Let’s make a deal. You stop killing people by starving and sickening them, and then we’ll listen to you when you scream about how Commies killed way less with (More humane?) bullets. Deal? Didn’t think so. Fine, game on, then.

New Neo-Nazi Group Menaces India

Of all places. It seems nowhere is safe from the Nazi threat. In the Aryan homeland by the Indian Sea, where there is scarcely a Jew to be seen for miles, the Fuhrer’s swan song echoes in the minds of the original Indo-Europeans. They dream of a 3,000 year rule. H-1 B job-thieving fake guest worker “engineers”, Bollywood movies, the smell of curry wafting into the night air, and politically correct Academy Awards are among their subversive plots as they seek to undermine America from within.

Jews, Gypsies and queers cower the world over as the Nazi ideology even spreads to the land of curry and sutee
Jews, Gypsies and queers cower the world over as the Nazi ideology even spreads to the land of curry and sutee.

A Brief Look at the History of Art in the West, 300 BC – 1350 AD

Updated February 24. I added a few more things here. I’m just getting into the history of art, and most people don’t know the slightest thing about it either, so let’s take a little jaunt into art history and you’re welcome to come along on my journey. This will focus mostly on the history of art in the West. This post isn’t complete at all, but at least it gives you an overview of the subject. What it does in brief is gives a list of the finest art produced in the West from 300 BC until about 1400 or so, with a brief jaunt into the 1800’s. I only link to one of these works of art, but if you are interested in some of the greatest works of art ever produced by men, just copy paste the names of the works below into Google images and you should be able to get a look at what I’m talking about. I’m too lazy to track down links to all of these works, sorry. First of all, a previous post that suggested that there was little art in the Dark Ages was completely mistaken. What is true is that there was a decline in the great art and architecture produced by the Romans. Roman art came from the Greeks, and I think the Greeks were better sculptors. Great Greek buildings and statues include The Treasury of the Siphnians and Battle Between the Greeks and Giants (Delphi), Achilles or Spear Bearer, the Parthenon and the Temple of the Olympian Zeus (Athens), Temple of the Athena Nike (Acropolis), Aphrodite of Knidos, Hermes and the Infant Dionysus, the Mausoleum at Halikarnassos (out of this world), Warrior A, The Scraper, Venus de Milo, Gallic Chieftain Killing His Wife and Himself, Athena Attacking the Giants and Dying Gallic Trumpeter (Pergamon), Laocoon and His Sons, Nike of Samothrace and Hellenistic Ruler. Statues such as the Venus de Milo are some of the finest statues, albeit classical statues, ever made. They are very realistic; one could even say that they are hyper-realistic. It is better to say that Greek art was idealized realism. That is, it is more real than real. If you look at Greek statues of humans, they are more perfect than humans actually are. Anatomists have studied these statues and concluded that these statues are in fact more perfect than actual humans could be, down to the last detail. It’s an idealized and perfectionist vision of man and what he could be. Greek art, and the Roman art that followed, is very secular. This sets it apart from the art that followed in 1000 years following the Fall of Rome, in which art become focused solely on religion. So in this way, the Greeks and Romans were extremely advanced for their time. In contrast to the wildly religious-obsessed art of the Middle Ages, Greek and Roman art nearly avoids religion, as if it was not important. What was important, instead, was the secular, quotidian lives we live on Earth and all of the hopes, dreams, tragedies, comedies, joys, etc etc. of the human journey. In this crucial way, the Greeks and Romans were as modern as we were. If we could go back in time and air-drop cars and planes into their cities, I’m pretty sure they could go to town with them pretty fast. Quit thinking of these ancients as primitives. They were just like us! Some Greek art such as Gallic Chieftain Killing His Wife and Himself and Dying Gallic Trumpeter, while secular, is also histrionic is a staged sense. These are the exaggerated emotions of our films and plays, the timeless saga of man, his travails, conflicts and emotions. The point here is that the emotional content is wildly exaggerated in the way that it often is on stage in plays. Plays, like opera, since they lack the fancy sets of cinema, rely on exaggeration of emotion, to convey what they lack via fancy sets and multimillion dollar crews. The Greeks made some great tile art too, like Alexander the Great Confronts Darius III at the Battle of Isos and Stag Hunt. In a previous post I asked why the very early civilizations all built pyramids. The truth is not so surprising. A pyramid is the most basic and rational architectural structure to build. It’s a natural. If you empty salt onto a table, it ends up in a pyramid shape. A pile of about anything often ends up pyramidal. A pyramid is going to stay upright. Building large things other than pyramids that are going to stay upright is a lot more difficult. This is why the Roman invention of the arch was so essential. In architecture, the arch is an essential ingredient to any advanced building. If you see some of the reconstructed Roman structures in the context of the time, it’s as if they were built by aliens. That’s how far advanced they were beyond anything else of the time. I have seen interiors of large Roman structures that look like modern airport terminals (see the Central Hall of the Basilica Ulpia in Rome). Roman cities were laid out very rationally on perfect grids. They also made atriums, pillars, coliseums, on and on. Buildings had elaborate carvings made in them, often of men in combat. Roman paintings do exist, but due to the fact that they used wood and paints that decayed, little has remained. Most remaining Roman “paintings” were done with tiles. I have seen Roman paintings that achieve a look that was not achieved again until the 20th Century (see The Unswept Floor by Herakleitos). Pompeii has many of these. As with just about everything else, Roman art and architecture was out of this world. Some of the great statues, tilework, carved artwork on buildings, buildings and cities are Head of a Man, Aulus Metellus, Imperial Procession, Commodus As Hercules, Augustus of Primaporta, Gemma Augustea, the House of the Silver Wedding and the House of the Vetii (Pompeii), Equestrian Statue of Marcus Aurelius, Battle Between the Romans and the Barbarians, Still Life (Herculaneum), the Colosseum, Hadrian’s Villa in Tivoli and The Battle of Centaurs and Wild Beasts (at Hadrian’s Villa), Timgad in Algeria, the apartment blocks of Ostia, and the Arch of Titus, the Arch of Constantine and the Column of Trajan (all in Rome). The Pantheon in Rome may be one of the greatest buildings ever made, though the competition is tight. The Dome of the Pantheon is out of this world. It’s commonly said that Romans fell to barbarians, Germanic tribes. It’s true that they sacked the place, but it’s not true that the Dark Ages lacked art, as I noted above. What happened in the Dark Ages was a decline in the quality of art over that produced by the Romans and Greeks. Furthermore, art became very restricted. Paintings, usually done with tiles, have a dark, depressing and Hellish theme, overridden with a harsh moralism. The world was a cruel and nasty place, and if you didn’t watch it and pray all the time, you were going to Hell. Almost all paintings were of religious figures of one type or another. People often have a strange, otherworldly look. This is because as I noted in an earlier post on the Dark Ages, the Church had the only money at this time. If you wanted to get funded, you had to go to the Church and the Church would only fund Church-related stuff. Plus probably most art was being done in monasteries, as with most other productive activity beyond mere survival. The people looked strange because the Church frowned on realistic looking people. That looked like real life, and the Church did not want to portray real life. They only wanted to portray the otherworldly realms of religion. In this attitude we can see the common religious attitude that the worldly life is permanently tainted with sin and must be avoided as much as possible. Although this was a dark time for art and society, the focus on religion was reasonable. Truth was, life was so dark and dismal that the Church was where it was all going on. All art was about the Church because there was nothing else happening and life was really bad. All science, education, learning, reading, writing, wealth creation, art, architecture – it was all coming out of the Church. The money factor was crucial. Nowadays, if you want money, you go into business. Back then, you got into religion. The reason that things fell apart so much in the Dark Ages was the collapse of urbanization. Country folks and back to the landers may not like city life too much, but when cities collapse, most everything tends to go to Hell. By contrast, the greatness of Greece and Rome was actually related to their high level of urbanization. City life seems necessary for advanced civilization to occur. With urbanization, some crucial factors probably jell together that start to mandate civilizational advances. Characteristic of the time is large halos around everyone in the painting. It is accurate to say that art did not progress during the Dark Ages, that it actually went backwards. Nevertheless, much fine material was produced. Some of the excellent paintings, sculptures and buildings produced during the Dark Ages include the Church of Santa Sabina (Rome), the Church of Santa Costanza, the Mausoleum of the Galla Placidia, the Dome of the Baptistry of the Orthodox and the Church of San Vitale, the Transfiguration of Christ with Saint Apollinaris, First Bishop of Ravenna – a painting in the Church of Saint Apollinaire of Classe (all in Ravenna, Italy), the Hagia Sofia (Istanbul) – one of the finest buildings ever built, the first written Bibles such as the Rabbula Gospels from Syria, the Paris Psalter, the Ebbo Gospels and the great Crucifixion with Angels and Mourning Figures cover of the Lindau Gospels (all from France) and the Book of Kells from Scotland (Out of this world!), the Cathedral of Saint Mark (Venice), the Palace Chapel of Charlemagne (Aachen, Germany), ornaments from the Sutton Hoo burial ship (Suffolk, England), the Gummersmark brooch (Denmark), the Labro Saint Hammers (Gotland, Sweden) the burial ship from Oseberg (Oseberg, Norway), the Gero Crucifix from the Cologne Cathedral (Cologne, Germany) and the Church of Saint Cyriakus (Gernrode, Germany). Note that fine art was even produced up in Scandinavia. These people were not primitive by any means. The problem up there is that most art was created out of wood. There was plenty of that, but it doesn’t make very good art, and most important, it doesn’t last. For really great art, it helps to have some big rocks, and I think there are a lot more trees than rocks in Scandinavia. Greece looks like while God was creating the world, he took a break to throw rocks at Greece. The place is littered with stones. Hence all of the fine stone sculptures, buildings and cities of Greece. Great art continues in the High Middle Ages, such as the Church of the Monastery of Christ in Chora (Constantinople) and the painting Anastasis on its apse, the Doors of Bishop Benward at the Abbey of the Church of Saint Michael (Hildesheim, Germany), Doubting Thomas in the Abbey of Santo Domingo de Silos (Castile, Spain), Christ in Majesty in the Church of San Clemente (Tahuil, Catalonia, Spain), the Borgund Stave Church (Sogn, Norway), the Durham Cathedral (Scotland), the Church of Saint Etienne (Caen, France), the Speyer Cathedral (Speyer, Germany), the Church of Saint Ambrogio (Milan, Italy), the Cathedral Complex (Pisa, Tuscany, Italy), the Church of San Clemente (Rome), printed works such as the Worcester Chronicle (Worcester, England) and the Winchester Psalter (Winchester, England), the woven Bayeux Tapestry (Bayeux, Normandy,  France) and the Portable altar of Saints Kilian and Liborius from the Helmarshausen abbey (Helmarshausen, Saxony, Germany). The Leaning Tower of Pisa is also in the Pisa Complex. The tower is leaning not because it was top heavy, though it is, but because it was built on sand. It would have fallen over long ago without our efforts to shore it up. These efforts are vast and ongoing. We are tunneling under the building and shoring it up in various ways to keep it from falling. Right now things are so bad that it is so dangerous to be around the tower that visitors are forbidden from walking within toppling distance of the thing. One reason that the art above is so great, even those famous Bibles, is that monks would spend 20 years, 40 years, or a lifetime making say one Bible, one treasure box, painting one church. Not only that, but a whole team might work for many years on an object or interior church design. These monasteries were like miniature factories. They weren’t producing a lot, but no one else was either. They were very inefficient, but there was no competition. Gothic is in the High Middle Ages, and this is starting to head into the Renaissance, although everything is still about religion. Gothic had some superb works, and now we are looking at some of the finest churches of all, including the Cathedral of Notre-Dame (Chartres, France), another of the greatest buildings ever built, the Amiens Cathedral (Amiens, France), an incredible building, another Cathedral of Notre-Dame (Paris), a competitor with the Notre-Dame in Chartres and possibly better, another Cathedral of Notre-Dame (Reims, France), possibly the best one of them all, the Saint-Chapelle (Paris), yet another awesome building, and the Salisbury Cathedral (Wiltshire, England) – too much! Gothic architecture clearly produced some of the finest buildings that have ever been built. It’s characterized by tall, thin cathedrals with vast spires jabbing away at the sky. The purpose of those spires was to point towards heaven. The idea of the tall buildings was to make them closer to Heaven, and also the various monasteries and bishops were in competition with each other to see who could build higher buildings. The tall, thin shape that gets more pointed towards the top is the best way to build a tall building for the same reason that a pyramid is a natural form. A building that gets more pointed near the top is less likely to topple over than a top-heavy building that has as much weight at the top as at the bottom. One of those Gothic cathedrals actually had a building that did not get more pointed as it rose and that part of the building toppled over. How did they build those cathedrals? They used scaffolds. Often families of men, fathers, sons, grandfathers, multiple generations, would work on the buildings.  They usually worked for free or room and board. The Church told them, “Hey, if you guys work on this church your whole life, you will go straight to Heaven.” Yeah right. One purpose of the cathedrals was conversion. Life was pretty dismal in those days, and the life of a serf was bad. So you took a humble person and should him this wild cathedral, so beyond anything else he had ever seen that it may as well have been built by aliens, and you pretty much had a convert on your hands, so awe-struck was he. These cathedrals show us just how much money the Church had at this time. For all intents and purposes, the Church had all the money and no one else had a dime. It’s a truism that while the Roman Empire did formally fall, really it just morphed into the Roman Catholic Church. The fundamentalist crowd wonders why we care so much about separation of church and state. We care because back in those days, the Church was the state. English kings pondered for lifetimes ways to get the Church out of the business of running the damn country. No wonder Henry VIII threw the Church out and set up the Anglican Church. It was the only way to get free of this octopus and its tentacles. In the Late Middle Ages, great works continue, including the Exeter Cathedral (Exeter, Devon, England), a mind-boggling structure, the Ely Cathedral (Ely, Cambridgeshire, England), the dome of which makes you wonder how they even built it, the Cathedral of Palma (Mallorca, Spain), up there with the greatest and the Church of the Holy Cross (Schwabisch Gmund, Germany), the Virgin and Saint George, the altarpiece of the Church of San Francisco, Villafranco del Panades (Barcelona), the Shrine of the Three Kings (Germany), the Florence Cathedral (Florence), an incredible building, the Siena Cathedral (Siena, Italy), another awesome structure, the Life of John the Baptist on the doors of the Baptistry of San Giovanni (Florence), Giotto di Bondone’s Last Judgment on the west wall and Life of Christ and the Virgin on the north and south walls of the Arena Chapel and Duccio di Buoninsegna’s Maesta Altarpiece for the Siena Cathedral. Around 1340, one of the first works including landscapes and regular people with no religious significance was done, Ambrogio Lorenzetti’s Allegory of Good Government in the City and Allegory of Good Government in the Country, two frescoes in the Sala della Pace in the Pallazo Pubbico in Siena. The moving away from religion and focus on our real world shows how the Late Middle Ages were leading into the Renaissance. The periods of the Late Middle Ages and the Renaissance seem to blend together. The Renaissance ran from around 1350-1600. The Late Middle Ages are thought to be from 1300-1450, so there is definitely overlap. The truth is that the Late Middle Ages shade into and lead into the Renaissance. In the Renaissance, we get the first non-religious art since the fall of Rome. I don’t have much to say about the art of China and Japan except that it is good. It’s difficult to compare this art with the art produced in Europe. They all had their own styles  and it’s hard to say if any one of them is better than the other, but I don’t think that Japanese art is any better than what was being done in Europe at the time. Islamic art is actually very good, especially the tilework on the interior of mosques up on the domes. This is excellent art, and as good as what was being done in Europe. The only thing you can say about Islamic art is that their ridiculous religion bans them from drawing humans. I have seen some early Jewish art, but I wasn’t much impressed by it. Jews are very smart and many modern artists are Jews, so Jews can clearly make great art. The problem here is that like in Islam, Jews were forbidden to make graven images, and the forbidding of idol worship means you can’t draw people, and that tends to really limit your artwork. The fact that Islam has the same prohibition means to me that Islam has borrowed from Judaism. The art of Central America is interesting, and some of it is not bad. I don’t think it’s superior to European art, but I’m not sure if it’s inferior either. Some of the gold ornamentation is really great. I really hate to bag on Blacks here, but I should say something about African art. I was not very impressed with it. The best building was the Great Friday Mosque in Djenne, Mali, built in the 1200’s. It’s made of mud and wood. It’s ok, but compared to what was being built in Europe and the Arab World at the time, it’s not much at all. Afrocentrists like to go on about the Great Zimbabwe built around 1300. Yes, it’s a long wall made of stones with some conical structures here and there. If this is Africa’s greatest architecture, I don’t know what to say. It’s not much. However, I was very impressed by statue heads and masks out of Benin from 1400-1650 and continuing on to 1900. Some of that is excellent. It is usually made of brass. However, I am told that they were already coming under the influence of Europeans, especially Portuguese, and this spurred this nice art. I don’t care what influenced them. There is some cool art coming out of Benin around the time of European Renaissance. I’m not so impressed with the earlier stuff out of Yoruba or the very early stuff out of Nok in Nigeria. However, we must acknowledge that Nok was one the flashpoints for early African civilization and more was accomplished here sooner than anywhere else in Africa. At any rate, today Africans produce some superb art, especially African masks. Travelers to Africa with some cash often pick them up and it’s a great investment. I’d love to have one on my wall. In the 1800’s, all art and music was in the classical traditions. If you wanted to be an artist of a musician, you had to go to school and study the classics. That was really the only way to paint or make music. Hence, art and music had stagnated. The classical art and music had been taken to the limits and the best had already been done. Michelangelo and Beethoven were not going to be surpassed. There was nothing to innovate anymore. One of the first impressionist was Édouard Manet. His first impressionist painting, Le déjeuner sur l’herbe (The Luncheon on the Grass) (1863) was a strange painting of a two clothed men eating a meal with a naked woman in a park. It caused a scandal because the people pictured were real people, not religious, historical, mythological, political or monarchic figures (the five permitted types). It was not really possible to paint a real person. All art had to be of one of the five types of persons above. The idea of painting a real person was ridiculous. Manet’s painting caused a scandal not because the woman was nude. It was ok to paint nudes if they were of the five types of persons allowed. The idea that someone would paint a nude of a real life person was outrageous. It was made even worse because people knew the names of those who were painted – the men were his brother, Eugene Manet, and his girlfriend’s brother and future brother in law, Ferdinand Leenhoff and the woman was Victorine Meurent, Manet’s favorite model and later an artist in her own right. Further, the subject matter was seen as shocking, nearly pornographic. What were the clothed men doing eating with the naked woman? It was as if they were both going to have sex with her at the same time in a menage a trois . What Manet did with that painting was like saying, “Screw you,” to the Art Establishment of the time. It was like punk rock, an act of artistic defiance. It was anti-art, anti-classical art, and anti-Art Establishment. Manet many and his supporters got banned from a major art exhibition in 1863, the Salon de Paris. The jury of the contribution to support more of this valuable research.

The Five Hearths of Urbanization

I never really knew much about this, but a friend of mine was taking a course in Human Geography (WTH?) and this was one of the things that they dealt with in the class. What this really means is that these five areas were the first parts of the world to experience urbanization. Urbanization is very important. You cannot even make cities until you develop surplus agriculture. Moving agriculture from subsistence to surplus usually involves a move to some sort of large farms, orchards or plantations. These large agricultural outposts can then produce enough to not only feed the rural population, but to provide food for the urban population. The urban population must be fed by the rural because as a good rule, people in cities just do not grow food, or, if they do, they do not grow enough to sustain the city. As long as the urban folks don’t need to worry about starving and don’t have to grow food, they can do other stuff besides growing food. This is the beginnings of civilization. The five Hearths are the Nile River Valley in Egypt, Mesopotamia in Iraq, the Indus River Valley in Pakistan, the Mayan in Central America and the Yellow River Valley in China. No one has any idea of what the IQ’s of the dwellers of these regions were at the time, but right now they are Guatemala 79, Egypt 82, Pakistan 82.5, Iraq 87 and China 105 (I don’t accept Richard Lynn’s phony 100 figure for China). All but China are in what is the lower half of the human IQ range. Since White nationalists are adamant that IQ has remained unchanged in all of these places, and everywhere else for that matter, in the past few thousand years, it behooves to ask how is it that these dummies showed up Homo Superiorus in Europe anyway? Of the five, Egypt was far and away the most advanced. The latest thinking is that the pyramids were not built by slaves, but instead were built by relatively well-paid, middle-class workers. Whole cities that housed these workers have been uncovered near the pyramids. Egyptian cities are the oldest of all. I am not sure of dates, but it looks like Egyptian cities go back 6,000 years or more (YBP = years before present). It’s odd that the earliest cities were the best of them all. The majestic pyramids were unsurpassed in the other Hearths. Although Mesopotamia had stone obelisks as tall as a man, Egypt had incredible obelisks of solid stone up to an unbelievable 100 feet tall. People to this day still wonder how the Egyptians did it, and no one quite knows. King Tut appointed what seems to be the first, or one of the first, queens of a large society, so this was a feminist breakthrough too, not that you would know it if you went to Islamic and misogynistic Egypt today. The next one along was Mesopotamia at 5,500 years ago. This is very, very early. They had art, aqueducts and organized religion, but no pyramids or major architectural accomplishments. There was a Great Wall of Babylon, a beautiful structure fashioned of blue bricks. They had obelisks and statues such as the Style of Hammurabi, but that was only as tall as a man. Compare to the 100 foot obelisks of the Egyptians – no contest. The Mesopotamians were already smelting metal – this was the Bronze Age. Smelting metal is a serious advance in civilization, and it’s amazing that anyone was smelting anything 4,900 years ago, when Mesopotamian smelting began. It appears that Mesopotamia was influenced by the earlier civilization of the Egyptians. The next is the great civilization of the Indus. This was in Pakistan, not in India as idiot Indian nationalists claim. Not quite as impressive as the first two, it did have very large cities with aqueducts for irrigation. However, they had no pyramids or other great architecture, no art and no writing. They had big cities and little else. The Indus Civilization vanished without a trace for unknown reasons. The Indus was very old, 4,200 YBP. The fourth Hearth was the Maya Civilization in Central America. This actually goes back a long ways, all the way to 3,100 YBP at least and possibly earlier. It was characterized by a writing system, mathematics, pyramids, art and advanced astronomy. The Mayan pyramids were excellent structures. I am not sure how they compare to the Egyptian pyramids, but it is fascinating that early peoples in two completely different parts of the world both decided to build pyramids (Why?). The Mayans also smelted metal and had a very early irrigation system. What is odd is that neither the Mayans nor the Aztecs who came much later never managed to invent the wheel or to put it to good use. The wheel is absolutely essential for advanced civilization, and discovering it is considered a profound breakthrough for any culture. What is even more strange is that the early Central Americans did invent the wheel, but they did not put it to good use. We have found children’s toys with wheels on them from these cultures. On the other hand, there were no pack animals to be domesticated in Central America, so it’s dubious what use you could put the wheel to, although I guess you could make a rickshaw, a bicycle or a wheelbarrow. The early Central Americans are derided, especially by White Nationalists, for being horribly, even evilly cruel, especially in their mad, seemingly insane addiction to human sacrifice. It’s true that the Central Americans did take human sacrifice to frightfully vicious extremes, at times making it nearly an assembly line operation. However, many early cultures engaged in human sacrifice, including Homo Superiorus over in Europe. Why, we ask? Well, these were pre-scientific folks. They did have their Gods, but as cruel and meaningless as fate often is, the Gods must have been crazy, to paraphrase a movie title. For instance, these nutty and semi-wicked Gods would kill the hottest babe in the village along with the handsomest, smartest guy to boot, for no darn reason at all, while leaving alive the village dirtbag, who barely even deserved to be kept alive one more minute. None of it made sense. Human life is a caprice, so cruel a caprice that it can almost seem like folly or the blackest of jokes. These Gods were clearly nuts, but they ruled our lives nevertheless. What to do? Appease the crazy bastards. This was the meaning of human sacrifice and the more humane later animal sacrifice, taken to insane lengths of folly by the Jews of the Temple Period, where an assembly line of animals stretched for up to a mile or so, and animals were killed all day in a 9-5 operation, such that blood flowed from the Temple like a river. This is the mad period that the most fanatical Zionists wish to recreate. Anyway, the way to appease a powerful, crazy person is to humor him, be nice to him or even bring him gifts. This was the idea behind the human sacrifices, to try to semi-rationalize the ferocious whimsy of the Gods. The fifth Hearth is the Yellow River Valley of China. Actually, yo can’t say that anymore, as the PC-idiots take offense. Guess why? Yellow River sounds like yellow skin. Chinese are said to have yellow skins, but that’s racist and you can’t say that. So forget the Yellow River. Instead, it’s the Huang He River, which I think means yellow in Chinese, but since mostly only Chinese know Chinese, there’s nothing to get offended about, since Chinese equating Chinese = yellow is not offensive, but if Caucasians do it, it’s mean and evil and racist. Whatever. Anyway, the Yellow River civilization was about 2,200 YBP. I don’t know much about it except that they did have large cities and irrigation. They also had writing. One might reasonably ask what these five Hearths had in common. We can say that they were near the Equator, but not too near. That seems crucial. They were all in the Northern Hemisphere, but I doubt if that is meaningful, except that there  seem to be more humans and more land mass in the north. And, with the exception of the Mayas, they were all in lush river valleys. The Mayas are odd man out in the jungle. The question of YBP comes up. I don’t mind the term. Originally we had B.C. (Before Christ), and as a Christian, that’s just fine for me. Well, some folks got rid of that a while back and replaced it with BCE, (Before Christian Era), which always struck me as a cheap anti-Christian shot. I figure Jews probably had a hand in this, since Jesus isn’t exactly their favorite guy, nor is Christianity exactly their favorite religion. The atheists and scientist types must have had a hand in it too. It surely so infuriated these poor atheist souls to have to say and write that horrible word “Christ” over and over. Non-Christians all over the world probably nodded in approval or chimed in. YBP seems a good compromise. Neither Christocentric nor a slap in the face of Christianity, it just avoids the whole issue of Jesus and religion altogether and goes by a nice secular calendar. If you think this website is valuable to you, please consider a contribution to support the continuation of the site.

Appuntamento Con la Morte: La Decapitazione di Daniel Pearl

The video has been removed following discussions with WordPress staff. Try here instead. Note: Repost from the old blog. I am looking for translators to translate this post into Spanish, Korean and Turkish. Email me if you are interested. This is an Italian translation of a previous post, Appointment With Death: The Beheading of Daniel Pearl, done by my super-translator “Paolo From Trieste.” This post is pretty popular so I decided to have it translated. French translation here (en Frances). He added a lot of stuff relating to Italy such as the extremely strange Aldo Moro killing, supposedly done by the Red Brigades but probably done by the SISMI, the Italian intelligence service, and the CIA. Nota: La visione è adatta solamente ad un pubblico maturo e decliniamo ogni responsabilità per eventuali conseguenze psico/fisiche. Ovviamente, tenete alla larga i minori!!! Potrei riempire questo Blog di ogni sorta di video-shock, anche rarissimi. Ne trarrei vantaggio in termini di visibilità, ma non è questa la mia intenzione. Ne ho presentati solo alcuni, molto popolari, come la…Dua Khalil, l’impiccagione di Saddam Hussein, la decapitazione di ‘neri’ effettuata dai neo-nazisti russi ed il presente video. Come da mia abitudine, i video sono accompagnati dal mio commento ed analisi storica. Questo video, già diffuso in rete negli anni scorsi, è intitolato: la decapitazione di un giornalista/spia, l’ebreo Daniel Pearl (scarica il video in questo sito). I titoli di testa sono in lingua Urdu (praticamente sconosciuta alla massa). Contrariamente alle ‘leggende metropolitane’ ci viene risparmiata la visione del momento dell’esecuzione. Non si vede D.Pearl pronunciare le sue ultime parole ‘Mia madre era ebrea, io sono un ebreo’ e poi il boia Khalid Sheikh Mohammad (KSM) avventarsi e tagliargli la gola. Sono visibili invece le immagini successive che ci mostrano l’efferato scempio (la decapitazione e l’esibizione della testa mozza) fatto al cadavere dal boia KSM. Al video è stato dato un taglio (e mi si perdoni la parola…) giornalistico, curando preminentemente il messaggio propagandistico ed i dettagli politici. In effetti, nella prima parte Pearl elenca brevemente le domande alle quali dovrà rispondere, evidentemente ‘sotto dettatura’. Le frasi hanno un significato dispregiativo: sono chiare le parole di Pearl quando si definisce ebreo, la sua tradizione religiosa e famigliare, il suo Sionismo accentuato dal fatto che ad un suo avo sia stata intitolata una strada in una città d’Israele etc. Quando Pearl parla trascorrono le immagini di truppe israeliane in azioni contro i palestinesi, morti… Ma per il popolo islamico non basta un ‘mea culpa’…ci vuole il sangue…ed allora la scena cambia ed il corpo esanime di Pearl, la gola squarciata, viene decollato da un esperto incappucciato (KSM), la testa viene esibità trionfalmente. Quest’orrenda immagine farà da sfondo alla parte finale del video. In sovraimpressione compare la sigla del NMFPS e l’abituale elenco di richieste.. Liberazione di tutti i prigionieri da Guantanamo (Pakistani in testa), la consegna dei bombardieri F-16 acquistati e pagati dal Pakistan e mai forniti dagli Usa (questa sì che è uno Scam…) e la fine della presenza militare Usa in Pakistan. Ecco la minaccia finale: americani…non sarete mai al sicuro nel sacro suolo islamico del Pakistan, se non acconsentirete alle nostre richieste, questa scena si ripeterà ancora, ed ancora…per sempre! Se volete una cronaca dettagliata del video. Da parte mia, mi sembra che all’inizio Pearl sia composto e tranquillo, direi anche orgoglioso e fiero delle sue origini ed idee Sioniste. Ma poi si vede la paura…la paura di essere in ostaggio e non conoscere il proprio futuro. Quando deve ‘recitare’ la propaganda anti-Usa, la sua voce si spezza, è nervoso, impaurito, il suo volto non è più lo stesso: è evidente che il video è stato girato in tempi differenti. Sì, in quel istante mi faceva molta pena: era un uomo impaurito ed io sapevo già qual’era la sua fine, ma poi, un attimo prima della sua fine, ecco che si trasforma in un’altro uomo ed inizia a parlare come un laureando…un altro uomo ad alcuni secondi dalla morte…interessante. Ma chi era Pearl? Reporter o Spia o forse entrambi? Ufficialmente lavorava per il WSJ e stava preparando un reportage sull’intreccio tra i servizi segreti Pakistani (ISI) e le cellule terroristiche di Al Qaeda in quel paese. Ma, provate ad immaginare un giornalista (Pearl) ebreo ed americano, andare in giro per il Pakistan a fare domande di quel tipo, beh, non vi sembra una situazione inverosimile? Il giorno della sua scomparsa, il 23 gennaio 2002, Pearl doveva incontrare un emissario di Al Qaeda. Il gruppo NMFPS ha rivendicato il suo rapimento; millantando l’ammissione di Pearl di essere un agente CIA ha presentato le proprie richieste. Ad ulteriore conferma di avere in mano Pearl, è stata inviata alla stampa una foto del prigioniero: mitra puntato alla testa e quotidiano con la data in evidenza. Il 1° febbraio 2002, Pearl è stato ucciso e decapitato. Il suo corpo è stato ritrovato il 16 maggio successivo (mmm che brutto giorno…vi ricordate Moro?) in un cimitero di Karachi (probabile luogo della sua uccisione). Smembrato in 10 pezzi…orribile! Della sua barbara uccisione sono stati incrimanti Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh …ed altre 3 complici. Ahmed è stato condannato a morte ma la sentenza non è stata ancora eseguita. E’ qualcuno che gode di una certa protezione, evidentemente CHI E’ AHMED OMAR SAEED SHEIKH? E’ un Anglo/Pakistano da un passato a dir poco equivoco o sconcertante. Si vocifera che fosse un agente o un infiltrato del MI-6 (tipo James Bond, per intenderci) dal 1994, ma anche un agente dell’ISI nel 2001. Insomma una personalità talmente discussa che perfino il Presidente Pakistano Musharaff ha detto la sua: era un agente che faceva il doppio gioco! Già, sembra che nell’attacco alle Torri Gemelle l’Isi fosse ben coinvolto e che Sheik ha avuto un ruolo chiave in tutta la vicenda. Ovviamente l’allenza Usa-Pakistan non ha permesso il diffondersi di voci relative ad un possibile coinvolgimento dei servizi segreti Pakistani all’attacco dell’ 11 settembre. La mia ipotesi è questa: l’ISI ha messo a tacere Daniel Pearl che stava indagando sul loro collegamento con Al Qaeda. Gli esecutori del piano erano KSM e Sheik. Gli USA, per calmare l’opinione pubblica interna, hanno fatto formidabili pressioni sul Governo Pakistano per avere un colpevole, et voilà, trovato il colpevole! Povero Sheik…fottuto, ma non ancora giustiziato. Sicuramente deve avere qualche ‘Padrino’ Politico (oppure ha qualche documento top-secret ben nascosto…). Se Daniel Pearl era solo un bravo reporter americano di origine ebrea, beh, scusatemi, era un candidato al suicidio! Dopo l’11 settembre, nessuna persona di buon senso sarebbe andata in un posto come il Pakistan, indagare sui servizi segreti Pakistani, indagare sui loro rapporti con Al Qaeda, organizzare un incontro con un terrorista mussulmano.. Ufficialmente Pearl aveva anche una famiglia!! Ecchecazzo! (ndt: scusate, la parolaccia è mia). Badate bene, non difendo i merdosi bastardi che lo hanno ucciso, dico solo che qualcosa non quadra!! Da allora la comunità ebraica mondiale ha creato il mito dell’impavido, leggendario giornalista. Robert LindsayPosted on Categories Anti-Semitism, Beheadings, Crime, Evil, Italian, Pakistan, Racism, Regional, Reposts From The Old Site, Sick and Evil, South Asia, Translations, Zionism2 Comments on Appuntamento Con la Morte: La Decapitazione di Daniel Pearl

Appointment With Death: The Beheading of Daniel Pearl

The video has been removed following discussions with WordPress staff. Try here instead. Note: Repost from the old blog. I am looking for translators to translate this post into Korean and Turkish. Email me if you are interested. Italian version (traduzione in italiano). French translation (en Frances). Note: This is intended for a mature viewing audience. It contains graphic footage and should not be viewed by minors. By viewing this video, you hereby agree that you are doing so of your own free will. This is the actual Daniel Pearl beheading video. It’s titled The Slaughter of the Spy-Journalist, the Jew Daniel Pearl (download the video on this site here), but I think the title is in Urdu at the beginning, so most won’t be able to read that. This video is easier to take than you might think. The actual beheading is thankfully not shown, but we do see the severed head afterward. It is said that in this video, Pearl says, “My mother was a Jew. I am a Jew,” and just then Khalid Sheik Mohammad (KSM) comes up behind him, pulls out a knife, and slits his throat. That never happens. What really happens in this video is, Pearl gives a little pre-prepared speech listing some of the demands of his captors. Pearl also makes some impromptu remarks about his Jewish ethnicity, that of his family, his family’s Jewish religion, the fact that his family are Zionists, and a town in Israel that is named after his great-grandfather, a famous Zionist. While Pearl is making all these remarks about Israel, Zionism, Judaism, etc., there are interspersed photos of Israeli troops hassling and arresting Palestinians, of dead Palestinians, etc. Then it shows Pearl on the ground, already dead thank God, apparently with his throat slit, while an unknown man, possibly KSM, easily saws off the head and then holds it up. The severed head stays up for the rest of the video while the group names itself – the National Movement for Pakistan Sovereignty, and lists a number of nationalist demands – the return of all Pakistani prisoners from Guantanamo, the release of all prisoners from Guantanamo, the release of F-16’s that Pakistan bought from the US and never received, and an end to all US presence in Pakistan. Then it says, “We assure Americans that they will never be safe on the Muslim land of Pakistan.” This is followed by, “And if our demands are not met, this scene shall be repeated again and again and again…” A good play-by-play of the video is here. The first part of the video is not that hard to take. Pearl is unusually composed and assured while he talks about Judaism, Zionism, Jewishness and Israel. It’s almost as if he is proud. But then he talks about how hard it is to be kidnapped – “The most difficult part is not knowing where you are or what is going to happen to you” – then he recites what is apparently a scripted propaganda anti-US screed about US foreign policy. His voice breaks, he seems nervous, stressed and frightened. He also looks a lot more haggard. It’s as if the two separate speeches were shot at different times. At that time, I felt sorry for the guy because he seemed so scared, and I knew what was going to happen to him. But right before he gets killed, when he’s talking about the Jewish stuff, he’s a whole new man, and he may as well be speaking at his college graduation. And this is seconds before his demise. Interesting. Pearl was a reporter for the Wall Street Journal investigating, of all things, the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI – this is the Pakistani FBI-CIA combined) and their possible links with Muslim terrorism and in particular Al Qaeda. I can’t believe this guy was running around Pakistan, a Jew and an American, openly asking questions like that. On January 23, 2002, he made an appointment to meet some Al Qaeda guy, and then he went missing for a while. The group announced his kidnapping, said he was a CIA agent (dubious) and made a list of demands. They also released a photo of Pearl with a gun to his head holding up a newspaper with the date on it. Pearl was killed on February 1, 2002 by beheading. On May 16, his body was found cut up in ten pieces in a shallow grave in Karachi. He was most probably murdered in Karachi. Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, a British Pakistani with a most interesting history, was eventually charged along with three others with the killing; Sheikh was sentenced to death. The death sentence has yet to be carried out. Sheikh is a most interesting fellow. He was apparently an agent or asset with the British MI-6 (the British equivalent of the CIA), beginning in 1994, and possibly up until his arrest. He also appears to have been an ISI agent at some time, at least in 2001, and possibly until his arrest or even afterward. Pakistani President Pervez Musharaff says he was a double agent. It seems that Sheikh, and apparently also elements of the ISI, played a key role in Al Qaeda’s 9-11 attacks on the US. This has never been adequately followed up by the US due to the US-Pakistani alliance. My personal opinion is that the ISI, using KSM and Sheikh, kidnapped and killed Pearl for looking into the ISI-Al Qaeda link. I think that then, under pressure from the US, they gave up Sheikh and sentenced him to death, but the sentence has not yet been carried out. I think that for Daniel Pearl, a Jewish reporter, to go to Pakistan soon after 9-11 and the US invasion of Afghanistan and wander around Pakistan openly investigating ISI-Al Qaeda links to the point of meeting with Al Qaeda guys was pretty much suicidal. I’m not defending these scumbags who killed him. I’m just saying it wasn’t a very smart thing for Pearl to do. Pearl has since been lionized, in particular by the World Jewish community.was killed in part for being a Jew, and his killers were surely virulent anti-Semites, but there’s more to it than that. I bet if he were a Jewish butterfly collector wandering around Pakistan netting butterflies, nothing would have ever happened to him. Other Jewish reporters have since gone to Pakistan and even openly interviewed heads of madrassas with no problems at all. Pearl was on a virtual suicide mission. At the very least, he was living very, very dangerously. People who choose to do that in our world sometimes end up injured or even dead. Happens all the time. The Daniel Pearl story is sad, but there is less here than the popular myth that is developing around the man. Pearl was an excellent student, graduated from a top university and was a superb journalist, breaking some of the biggest stories of the late 1980’s and 1990’s. He was not a bad person, and he had many exemplary traits. May he rest in peace. If you think this website is valuable to you, please consider a contribution to support the continuation of the site.

Mao Messed Up

I think an assessment of Mao ought to be made on a scientific basis, beyond politics. Anti-Communists and rightwingers have an extremely poor record as far documenting this sort of thing, so I almost want to dismiss everything they say.

Probably the best sources would be leftwingers or even Communists who also happen to be some sort of China scholars. To the detriment of Mao, a number of Leftists, socialists and Communists who are also China scholars are starting to contribute some very negative things about Mao.

The good side is quite clear. Life expectancy doubled under Mao, from 35 to 70, from 1949 to 1976, in only 27 years. Supporters of fascism and Hitler are challenged to provide evidence that Hitler’s rule benefited anyone. Nazism was at core a death cult. Life expectancy collapsed in Germany under Hitler and in all of the regions that were occupied by Nazis. Nazism wasn’t about improving life for the common man at all; it was about war and endless war and endless extermination of the less fit.

Communism, with the exception of Pol Pot’s rule, where life expectancy collapsed in Cambodia and 1.7 million died, has been quite a bit different. Most Communist regimes have killed people, but at the same time seem to have saved many lives, often millions of lives. So it gets hard to tally things up.

I suppose pro-Communists would say that the many deaths were necessary in order to save so many lives. That’s an interesting argument and ought to be taken up. Was there a way to save so many lives without killing millions of people? I hope there would be, but I’m not sure.

Pre-China Mao was vastly deadlier than China under Mao. The life expectancy figures make this clear. Czarist Russia was 3 times deadlier than the USSR under Lenin and Stalin. This is where this “greatest killers of all time” crap runs into the mud. If the death rate was 3 times higher per year under the Czar than under Stalin, just how was Stalin the worst killer of all time?

Same with Mao. I don’t have good figures, but once again, it looks like Nationalist China in the 1920’s, 30’s and 40’s was 3 times deadlier per year, or maybe more, than Maoist China. If the death rate collapsed under Mao, how was he the worst killer ever? The truth is there are plenty of ways to kill a man. You can kill him with a bullet or by sending him to a camp, or you can kill him by disease and lack of food, the silent and uncounted method that the capitalists prefer.

Nevertheless, an accounting of deaths under Mao needs to be done. Just glancing at the data here, it’s already looking like Mao was way worse than Stalin. Way worse.

The initial consolidation of power in China was brutal. Whether the landlords were killed by the party or by the peasants is not that relevant. Mao said that 700,000 landlords were killed, and even he thought that was too many. China scholars think it is higher, from 1-4 million. I would dismiss the 4 million figure, but anywhere from 700,000-3 million is possible. Further research is needed here.

The Anti-Counterrevolutionary Drive of 1950 followed, an attempt to uncover supporters of the Nationalists and counterrevolutionaries. Tens of thousands were killed, or possibly up to a million, let’s call it 20,000-1 million. Further research is needed.

Anti-Christian Campaigns of the 1950’s. These were launched against mostly Christians, but also other religions. “Many thousands” are said to have died. Definitely some further work is necessary here.

Anti-Counterrevolutionary Campaign of 1953. Mao said, “9

The Great Leap Forward Famine happened between 1959-1961. Unlike the fake Holodomor of 1932-33, it’s looking more and more like most of the blame for this horrible catastrophe can be laid at the feet of Mao himself. The man was a fanatic. He was told that there was a famine, and in early 1959, he backtracked on some of his crazy ideas, while he blamed subordinates for the famine.

Then there was the Lushan Conference in May 1959. Mao accused Peng Dehuai, a critic of the Great Leap, of conspiring against him. Peng was purged, and the Great Leap went was ordered to go ahead full speed. If there had been no Lushan Conference, there would have been no famine. There followed two years of catastrophe, in which there was overprovisioning of grain from the peasants which was then stored in warehouses in cities, where it rotted or was exported for scarce foreign currency.

Much of the problem was that local officials were wildly exaggerating harvests, hence the overprovisioning at the state level. They thought that with bumper harvests, they could take grain from the countryside to the cities without problems. But there were no bumper harvests. Harvests had collapsed. Finally in 1961, the state figured out that it had screwed up royally and started mass importing grain. Caravans of grain trucks flowed to the countryside, and the famine was over. But many were too weak to even walk to the trucks to get the food.

Mao is blamed for an atmosphere of terror that led underlings to fake bumper crops where none had occurred. With no democracy in the party, no one wanted to contradict Mao. Mao himself had some utterly idiotic ideas, which he was allowed to implement due to lack of party democracy. After the Great Leap, the party realized it had screwed up bad. Even Mao knew that. The Cultural Revolution was in a lot of ways Mao’s attempt to regain face after getting egg on his face in the Great Leap.

As far as deaths during the Great Leap, this is still up in the air. Even Maoists admit that there were 15 million excess deaths in the period. Some of the higher figures use preposterous accounting techniques whereby people who had never even been born were counted as “deaths.” Tell me how that works. Nevertheless, the figure may be higher than 15 million. At any rate, it’s the worst famine in modern world history, and it’s a permanent blot on Mao’s record.

The Cultural Revolution was sheer insanity. Many received poor educations as schools were shut down. Many cultural relics and buildings were destroyed, and a good part of China’s cultural heritage was smashed up.

People were killed and hounded all over China for little or no reason. Red Guards rampaged all over China, torturing, humiliating, imprisoning and murdering all sorts of people, including local party officials, teachers and even university professors. When someone was hounded, the humiliation went on every day and there was no escape. No one would dare to come to your side, not even your spouse. Deng Xiaoping’s son was tossed out of a window and paralyzed from the waist down.

Red Guard factions battled each other in cities across China with weapons looted from local Army depots. Sometimes Army units joined in. Red Guards in one city would attack Red Guards in another city. Women and children were murdered and kids were even buried alive. Enemies were cannibalized in one area. Ridiculous, insane and anarchic, right? Sure.

In some parts of China, victims of the Red Guards are still angry. The Red Guards are still around, older now, but still living in the villages alongside their victims. Their former victims hate them. Lawsuits have been brought against former Red Guards, but the courts have thrown them out.

From a Communist POV, one of the most tragic things about all of these persecutions and killings, when one reads the details of the individual cases, is that many of the victims were not even counterrevolutionaries. Many were dedicated, hard-working Communists and revolutionaries, often devoted Maoists. Lord knows why they were purged and victimized.

The insanity and anarchy of the Cultural Revolution is one reason why the Party wants to keep a tight reign on power. China descends pretty quickly into wild and deadly anarchy.

Lately, I’ve been reading a lot of Chinese Communist Party publications and the theses and dissertations by students at Chinese universities, which tend to toe the party line. As a rule, the Cultural Revolution is regarded as a big mistake by ultra-Left forces, and the Party definitely wants to avoid such messes in the future. I’ve even some some Party critiques of the Great Leap, though not much is said about that. It’s clear that the high ranks of the Party regard the Great Leap as a disaster.

There continue to be some very serious human rights abuses in China, as this 89 page report from Human Rights Watch reports. Even from the POV of a Communist, some of the abuses of these petitioners seem just flat out wrong. There doesn’t seem to be any legitimate Communist reason to be attacking a lot of these poor petitioners.

Surely in a Communist system, petitioners should have the right to protest uranium pollution of rivers, corrupt officials abusing their posts and stealing land, etc. In what way are these folks counterrevolutionaries?

But it’s not true that everyone who protests in China goes to jail. There are around 100 public protests every single day in China, often involving large groups. Only a few of them get arrested, harassed, beaten, tortured or jailed. But I guess you never know when your card will come up.

The fact that some of the harshest critiques of Mao’s crimes, excesses and stupidities are coming out of the Chinese Communist Party itself shows that slamming Mao can be done within a socialist, Leftist or Communist framework.

Can it be done in a Maoist framework? This I’m not so sure of. The Party will not come out and make public its findings on Mao as the USSR did with Stalin because the party continues to wave the banner of Mao and practically rules under his name and visage. It’s possible that slamming Mao would so delegitimize the party that it might be fatal for the CCP. It’s a tough call. For the anti-Semites, I have a homework assignment for you. Since Mao was a Communist and Communism is Jewish, obviously Mao was a Jew. Please uncover the secret Jewish connections of Mao and his closest supporters in the CCP.

Commies Killed More Than Hitler Redux

We went over this quite a few times on the old blog, but since this crap keeps recrudescing on the Right, we may as well continue to hammer away at it. From an interesting, but disgusting, article by Steve Sailer, effectively ruined, as are most of his posts, by his inability to turn off the rightwing talking points no matter what he is writing about. Sailer is like the Christian kooks, who, no matter what the conversation is about, always manage to return the conversation to their evangelical bullshit within 10 minutes. Steve just can’t shut the rightwing trap. Here is the poop:

Lenin, Stalin, and Mao slaughtered even more tens of millions in the name of equality than Hitler murdered in the name of inequality. And, as Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn has pointed out, the doctrine of “class origins” transformed “egalitarian” mass murder into ethnic genocide since there is no sharp line between family and race.

Boy, rightwingers just can’t shut up about this, can they? Never mind that he’s quoting the fascist Solzhenitsyn (and he spelled his name wrong), but this whole line has a particularly nasty genesis. After the war, in trying to prove that Hitler was no big deal and Stalin was way worse, Ukrainian Nazis (Excuse me! Ukrainian nationalists! Wait. Is there a difference?) developed a lie called The Holodomor, a lie that was originally started by the Nazi Randolf Hearst and his Nazi buddies in Germany in the early 1930’s. The lie stated that Stalin deliberately killed 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, no wait, 7, 8, oh forget it, God knows how many Ukrainians by deliberate starvation. It’s not true. Nobody was deliberately starved to death. There was indeed a famine in all of the USSR, especially the Ukraine, in 1932 and 1933. The number of dead is not known. The state made many errors, including initially denying that it was happening, to a chaotic response to the tragedy. The Ukrainians were rebelling against the state. They destroyed 5 The USSR did seize the grain crop, because the country needed to eat and the Ukrainians were destroying everything in sight. Ukrainians were mass deported to Siberia, and 390,000 died. It was a bad time. The people were weakened by hunger and there were disease epidemics due to primitive sanitation and lack of effective drugs. This is what killed most of the people, not starvation. Most of the pictures of “starving Ukrainians” were faked, and those photos were actually from a famine in 1921. Mark Tauger has also presented good forensic evidence of a wheat rust epidemic. There was also a terrible famine in China during the Great Leap Forward that may have killed 15 million people, mostly due to disease once again. Once again, this was not intentional, unless idiocy is intentionality. The primary cause of the famine was overprocurement by the state. Capitalism kills 14 million people ever year by direct starvation and attendant illnesses all over the globe. Shall we tally up these body piles and compare them to Hitler, Stain, Mao and whatnot? The chips are down, capitalist punks. That means you, Sailer. Leaving aside famines, we really need to look at direct killings.

Leader         Deaths     Period      Years
Hitler          52M*      1933-1945   12
Lenin/Stalin    2.5M**    1921-1953   32
Mao             2.4M?***  1949-1976   27

*Figure from here. Hitler also started a war for no reason that ended up killing ~45 million people. Whether you want to count that or not is up to you. I count 12 million dead in camps and 40 million dead in a war that he started. **See Getty 1993 for the most accurate estimate to date of deaths under Stalin. In 1990, the USSR archives were opened up. The Soviets had kept track of everyone who died due to executions, population transfers and in the camps, year by year. The deaths in the camps include 900,000 common criminals, but I guess the anti-Communists want to throw those in too. There is no academic consensus whatsoever for 20, 30, 40, 43, or 110 million deaths under Stalin. Furthermore, these figures usually include “10 million” for the fake “Ukraine intentional famine” that never happened. As noted below, capitalism starves 14 million people to death every year. If we can’t tally these against the capitalists, we can’t tally them against Stalin. The Sovietologists are currently fighting it out in the academic journals. Those arguing for a higher figure are basically saying, “Commies lie.” There never was any rational basis for the figures of tens of millions killed under Stalin. Those figures were produced by Nazis and Nazi sympathizers, the CIA and the MI6. They were just pulling figures out of thin air. By the way, that wonderful 110 million figure comes from the fascist Solzhenitsyn, a man lionized by the West. Peacetime figures for political deaths in the USSR 1921-1953 are:

Executions:                 900,000
Deaths in the gulag:        1.2M
Dekulakization Ukraine:     390,000
Totals:                     2.5M

***2.4 million is my estimate for Mao, and those are just known deaths. The Chinese have not yet opened up their archives, and unfortunately it is possible that deaths under Mao were a lot higher. Mao himself admitted that 700,000 landlords were killed in the early years. The Party allowed the local peasants to put them on trial and the people sentenced many of them to death. Many were horrible criminals who had been abusing the peasants for many years, but one can argue whether they needed to die. There were 1 million excess deaths in the Cultural Revolution. We have no accurate figures for deaths under Mao from 1953-1966, although 700,000 is a good minimum. We also have no accurate figures for deaths in the Chinese gulags. We will have to wait until the Chinese open their books in order to find out the real number who died under Mao. The 77 million figure tossed around lately, the product of a lunatic new book, has absolutely no basis in reality whatsoever. Furthermore, it includes famine deaths in the Great Leap Forward, listed as an incredible 39 million. As I note below, capitalism starves 14 million people to death every year. Shall we count these deaths against the capitalists? Ok, as you can see, the evil Commies absolutely did not kill tens of millions of people. Who did? No one, unless you count the European War that Hitler started that killed ~45 million or so. Hitler killed 42 million in 12 years or 3.5 million/year. Mao, Lenin and Stalin combined killed 4.9 million over 59 years, or 83,000/yr. Ok, now who is the worse killer? Who killed more? Hitler. Mao, Stalin and Lenin combined were not able to exceed Hitler’s totals, and they had 10 times more years to do it again. Hitler was 42 times worse of a killer than Mao, Stalin and Lenin combined. The crap like Steve’s above is usually followed by some jibe about “more being killed in the name of equality than were killed in the name of inequality.” Of course, rightwingers, lovable and cuddly folks that they are, just can’t get enough inequality. They consume inequality for breakfast, lunch and dinner and they’re still hungry. What they hate more than anything else is anyone trying to even the score just a tiny bit. Making the world a little more fair than the cruel hand of fate fetishized by the Right supposedly “goes against human nature.” That’s dubious right there, and Adam Smith himself disagreed. In his book, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, Smith noted that capitalism was incapable of providing for essential aspects of human society, such as compassion towards one’s fellow man, sympathy, mutual sympathy , and any type of fairness or justice in society. Since the market could not provide these things, their provision was left up to politics, or the state. Politics is only unnatural; it’s deadly, genocidally deadly. Any attempts to create a little justice or fairness in the human jungle are apparently doomed to end up in mass murder. So don’t you dare mess with that invisible hand of the market. If it’s market versus politics, the market wins hands down. The same market that starves 14 million people every year. The same market that kills 10 million kids a year. The same market that blew up the US economy and is threatening to take the world economy down with it. The blind faith of the Right boggles the mind.

References

Coplon, Jeff. January 12, 1988. In Search of a Soviet Holocaust. The Village Voice. Grover Furr’s website. Coplon, Jeff. March 1988. Rewriting History – How Ukrainian Nationalists Imposed Their Doctored History on High School Students CAPITAL Region. Douglas Furr’s website. Davies, R. W. and Wheatcroft, Steven G. 2004. The Years of Hunger: Soviet Agriculture, 1931-1933. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Getty, J. Arch, Ritterspoon, Gabor T. and Zemskov, Viktor N. 1993. Victims of the Soviet Penal System in the Pre-war Years: A First Approach on the Basis of Archival Evidence American Historical Review 98:4, 1048-49. Souza, Mario. Lies Concerning the History of the Soviet Union. North Star Compass website. Tauger, Mark B. 1991. The 1932 Harvest and the Famine of 1933. Slavic Review 50:1, pp. 70-89. Tottle, Douglas. 1987. Fraud, Famine, and Fascism: the Ukrainian Genocide Myth from Hitler to Harvard. Toronto: Progress Books.

Go Maoists Go

Well-armed Maoist rebels are rapidly expanding their insurgency in India. It has to be stopped now, or in two years, it will get out of hand, says the state. 22,000 fighters under arms. They mostly operate in the East, especially Chattisargh and Jharkand, but they are expanding all over. They are even starting to form cells in big cities. Good for them. Indian capitalism has failed. Time to try something new. The Indian Maoists have deep links to the Nepalese Maoists, a very forward-looking group of Leftists who are now pretty much running the Nepalese government. Would be great to see a similar-looking group running India. The Indian Left makes sense on Kashmir and even supports separatism in India’s Northeast. I think they could make peace with Pakistan too.

Mandarin and Putonghua or Standard Languages and Their Dialects

I recently received a comment, which I deleted due to tone, which asked how I could possibly state that Putonghua (Official Mandarin) is incomprehensible with “Mandarin”. Truth is, there are 1,500 dialects of Mandarin. Putonghua is only an official form of Mandarin based on some of these dialects and instituted after 1949.  In time, Putonghua itself has changed so much that it is no longer intelligible with the pure form of the very dialect that it was based on! Furthermore, new forms of Putonghua have already developed that are incomprehensible to other Putonghua speakers! The truth is that forms of a language may not be intelligible with each other. That is why I (with the assistance of some of the world’s top Sinologists) am working to redo the classification of Sinitic and carve new languages out of it based on intelligibility. As it stands, there are 14 Sinitic languages. Based on intelligibility, there are far more than that. The Chinese style of promiscuous use of the word “dialect” for both languages and dialects has been very destructive in terms of our understanding of what is really going on there. Similar things occur in many large languages. Within Macro-Dutch, we probably have 14 different languages, Dutch, 10 forms of Dutch Low Saxon, Zeews and Flemish, and that’s just getting started. For one thing, Flemish is looking like more than one language. None of these lects are mutually intelligible. So there is “Dutch” and then 13 other languages under the “Dutch” rubric. Within Macro-French, there are 4 languages, Standard French and three others – Cajun French, Walloon and Picard. None of these lects are mutually intelligible. Actually, there are quite a few more, but those are the only ones accepted at this time. There are 20 different forms of Macro-German – Standard German, Eastern and Western Yiddish, Lower Silesian, Upper Saxon, Bavarian, Cimbrian, Mocheno, Hutterite German, Walser, Swabian, Colonia Tovar German, Schwyzerdütsch, Pennsylvania German, Kölsch, Limburgisch, Pfaelzisch, Mainfränkisch and Luxembourgeois. None of these lects are really mutually intelligible. Actually, there are more than that, but those are the only ones that are recognized. So we have “German” and 19 different languages inside of “German.” Within Macro-Italian, we have Standard Italian and 13 other languages – Dalmation, Istriot, Neapolitan-Calabrese, Sicilian, Emiliano-Romagnolo, Lombard, Ligurian, Piedmontese, Venetian and four different kinds of Sardinian – Sassarese, Gallurese, Logudurese and Campidanese. None of these lects are really mutually intelligible. So we have “Italian” and 13 different languages inside of “Italian.” These stuff drives laypeople and Internet cranks completely insane, but linguists look at all it and shrug our shoulders. National chauvinists are particularly irked by this stuff. Italian nationalists say there is “Italian” and the other 13 languages are Italian dialects. Dutch nationalists insist there is one Dutch and the other 13 languages are Dutch dialects. German nationalists say there is German and the other 19 languages are German dialects. There’s a tendency among these types to not accept that languages closely related to theirs are actually separate languages and not dialects. This is due to the consolidating, assimilationist, anti-liberationist agenda of the nationalist. You can go around the Internet and see the wild debates ranging over whether Scots is a separate language or a dialect of English. What’s interesting is that inside the field and especially in academia, all this stuff causes is just yawns and shoulder shrugs. But outside of the field, ordinary folks are driven mad by this. This is one reason why people want you to get a degree in a field before you call yourself some kind of an expert. People who call themselves linguists, anthropologists and economists who lack degrees in Linguistics, Anthropology and Economics have a strong tendency to not know what the Hell they are talking about. Many are hacks, cranks and fringe nuts. Within the fields themselves, especially in academia, there tend to be consensuses about a variety of things, a deep familiarity with the basics of the field and most importantly, a spirit of collegiality and professionalism. I have nothing against autodidacts in principle, but they often lack all of these things. Go to sci.lang on Usenet and look at all the autodidacts calling themselves linguists. They are passing themselves off as the world’s leading experts while having raging debates that you won’t hear one peep about in academia. None of these guys would last 10 minutes at a university. It always pissed me off when people said, “You can’t be a [whatever] unless you have a degree.” But I’m starting to understand what they are talking about. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.

Response To Mike Campbell on Chinese Language Classification

An autodidact named Mike Campbell has issued a long critique of my Chinese language classification. There are problems with his analysis. First of all, Campbell says we need to defer to the Chinese on what is a dialect and what is a language. But top Sinologists in the West are saying that the Chinese are falling down on the job and not working according to the modern scientific definition of what is a language and what is a dialect. The Chinese linguists operate, like Chinese medicine, according to a completely different format that is pretty much at odds with the one used in the West and in much of the rest of the world. One element of this format is the fangyan. A fangyan has many meanings, but in Chinese it tends to mean “dialect,” or better yet, “topolect.” It also tends to mean the speech form of a given county. But the Chinese definition of the word “dialect” differs radically from the definition used by linguists elsewhere in the world. For one thing, questions of intelligibility with other lects are left out of the definition of fangyan. Chinese linguists also use hua, which means something like “speech.” This tends to be more expansive than fangyan, but at the same time it can occur down to the level of dialect. Examples include Putonghua, Shanghaihua, Beijinghua, etc, but also Pinghua and Tuhua. It tends to be geographically based – the speech of a particular geographical location, however that geographical location can be expansive or very restricted. But this is not the case in Putonghua, which is just “average speech”, and is spoken all over China. The third category is yu. Yu is probably the category that Western linguists would most commonly associate with “language” or even “language family.” Yu only refers to separate languages within Chinese. Outside Chinese, the word wen tends to be used. Examples are Wuyu, Minyu, Huiyu, etc. No one seems to quite know exactly what the Chinese classification is at any given time. According to Campbell, we must not do anything until the Chinese act first, but they only make a new language maybe once every few years, and they are failing even at that. Campbell states that Scots and Bavarian are dialects, not languages. He says that Scots is a dialect of English and Bavarian is a dialect of German. However, Ethnologue says that Scots is a separate language and so is Bavarian. The intelligibility of Bavarian and German is only 4 Ethnologue is run by SIL. SIL has been granted the task of assigning all of the new ISO numbers. An ISO number means that a lect has been officially recognized by the world linguistic community as a separate language. So SIL are the linguistic scientists who world community has given the task of deciding what is a language and what is not. Campbell is saying that SIL does not know what they are talking about. Campbell states that mutual intelligibility cannot be determined by talking to speakers and simply asking them whether or not they can understand “those people over there.” According to Campbell, this is inaccurate. He says the only way to determine intelligibility is through scientific testing methods looking for On Ethnologue’s Mexico page, extensive tests have been done on various lects spoken in small villages determining intelligibility between one lect and another. Intelligibility testing is commonly done by simply sitting a speaker of Lect A down in front of a recorded corpus of Lect B and see how much they can understand. Campbell says that intelligibility testing on human informants is inherently erroneous because as speakers of Close Lect A hear more and more of Close Lect B, they can understand it over a period of time (the exposure factor). This is the problem of interdialectal learning. Interdialectal learning (the tendency of closely related lects to hear each others’ lects and quickly learn to speak them and hence muddy the waters of intelligibility), trumpeted by Campbell as a reason that intelligibility testing cannot be done on human informants, is regarded by SIL as different from inherent intelligibility. Inherent intelligibility is best regarded as a test of the ability to use the mother tongue. In other words, when two lects are said to be “inherently unintelligible” this appears to be referring to “virgin” speakers who have not yet had the opportunity to learn each other’s dialects. Similarly, members of Lect A may simply be bilingual in Lect B, which also invalidates intelligibility testing. However, measures have already been developed to determine bilingualism and the degree of it. A favorite one is SLOPE. SRT is also used in bilingualism testing. Like other intelligibility testing instruments, they have been subjected to tests for reliability and validity over the years. Further, testing has evolved to the point where we can begin to ferret out bilingualism from inherent intelligibility. In Casad 1974 the author describes testing done on speakers of Mazatec, a Mexican Indian language. Intelligibility testing was done to see how well they understood Huautla, a related language. Three female speakers had scores in the 50-6 At any rate, in the survey, the figures were averaged together so that Mazatec speakers had 7 Campbell also throws out a red herring in the notion that certain members of a group may simply refuse to hear the language of another group and insist that they do not understand it. Although existent, this problem has little relevance in intelligibility testing. SIL does testing with cross sections of communities. Furthermore, SIL notes that intelligibility is typically distributed evenly across a community with regard to sex, class and age. The SD’s for inherent intelligibility in a community are narrow, less than 1 This should throw out the notion that females, the aged, the young or the old, the wealthy or the poor, will automatically give us false data on intelligibility. Campbell hints that intelligibility is poorly defined. However, SIL has listed a hierarchy of intelligibility. SIL says that intelligibility below 7 Campbell recommends throwing out all intelligibility testing with informants as inherently inaccurate and focusing instead of measures of language similarity. However, SIL notes that linguistic similarity is not an adequate single predictor of intelligibility. For instance, testing in the Philippines revealed pairs of lects with vocabulary similarity of 52, 66, 72 and 7 In testing of Polynesian, Siouan and Buang, it was found that the higher the level of lexical similarity up to a certain point, the lower the intelligibility scores were. This is counterintuitive, but it shows once again that lexical similarity is poor measure. Morris Swadesh was the founder of lexicostatistics, the study of lexical similarity. Lexicostatistics has its uses, but determining between closely related languages and dialects is apparently not one of them. This myth seems to be dying a hard death. Robert Longacre and Sarah Gudschinsky were involved in long debates with Swadesh about the validity of lexical similarity measures, and they seem to have been proven right. The latest findings calculate that any study that uses lexical similarity alone to determine intelligibility of lects has a 4.5-1 chance of failing to do so with any reliability. Word lists still have their uses. Where word lists show similarities between lects below 6 Vocabulary similarity below 6 Intelligibility is usually asymmetrical. In other words, Lect A can understand 8 Campbell also points out that it is not uncommon that people speaking the same language cannot always understand each other. He asks how often we have heard a fellow English speaker of the same dialect say something and we did not catch what they were saying for some reason or other. The implication is that we need to throw out all testing with informants due to this. SIL has actually examined this, and they often include a test called “home-town” in which people are presented with narratives within their own dialect and an intelligibility score is given for that. It is true that sometimes this is lower than 10 One thing to do is to throw out all sentences or questions that score less than 10 Campbell suggests that there are no tests available to use on human informants that pass the smell test of empiricism. This is not the case. One test, the Sentence Repetition Test (SRT), has been used for decades, subjected to many papers and studies, and criticized and modified in many ways. In this case of SRT, testing of group members individually has been shown to be superior to testing them in groups. The reason for this is because when you do intelligibility testing in a group of say eight people, you can run into a strong personality or high-ranking male in that group who might say he understands much more than he really does for some reason or another,  possibly to show off. The other less dominant group members then follow his lead and give false high readings on the intelligibility test. Many linguists, led by SIL, have been leading the way in intelligibility testing for decades now. Some of the top figures in in this subfield are the couple Joseph and Barbara Grimes of SIL. Joseph Grimes is a retired linguistics professor from Cornell. In addition, a number of computer programs have been created that help the researcher to test intelligibility. Another charge, that intelligibility testing lacks adequate controls, has been shown to be false. Bias in both experimenter and subject has been shown to be a problem, as is the case in most or all science, and measures have been undertaken to deal with it. The notion that this subfield of Linguistics, intelligibility testing, is unscientific should be laid to rest. Ethnologue seems to place tremendous importance on mutual intelligibility, however defined. Mutually unintelligible lects are assumed to be separate languages by Ethnologue. Their criteria for splitting off a dialects into languages seems to be 9 In conclusion, Mr. Campbell’s principal contentions in his critique are all incorrect. First, he suggests that the very concept of mutual intelligibility between lects is impossible to define or prove. SIL has shown that the concept can be defined and tested by reliable instruments. Second, he says that the use of human informants in mutual intelligibility testing is so prone to error that it cannot guarantee satisfactory results. This is not the case. SIL has proven, through decades of testing, that mutual intelligibility is best done, or possibly can only be reliably done, through intelligibility tests with human informants. Third, he throws up a number of red herrings that supposedly prove the inherent unreliability of human informants in intelligibility testing. All of these are shown to be the very red herrings that I claim they are, although it is true that unrecognized bilingualism is a problem, but it can often be ferreted out. Fourth, he says that the only way to reliably test for intelligibility is to compare lects via tones, phonology, morphology, syntax and lexicon. This is an extremely complicated process utilizing math and computer programs and can only be undertaken by practiced linguists. In truth, such elaborate testing, while interesting, is entirely unnecessary. Fifth, he suggests that any Western reformulations of Chinese language classification need to first defer to the Chinese. The problem here is that the Chinese have completely fallen down on the job. We cannot defer to the Chinese without upsetting our entire system of language classification. The Chinese are entitled to their system, but it is at odds with that used by the rest of the world.

References

Casad, Eugene H. 1974. Dialect Intelligibility Testing. Summer Institute of Linguistics Publications in Linguistics and Related Fields, 38. Norman, OK: Summer Institute of Linguistics of the University of Oklahoma. Casad, Eugene H. 1992. “State of the Art: Dialect Survey Fifteen Years Later.”‭ In Eugene H. Casad (ed.), Windows on Bilingualism, 147-58. Summer Institute of Linguistics and the University of Texas at Arlington Publications in Linguistics, 110. Dallas, TX: Summer Institute of Linguistics and the University of Texas at Arlington. Grimes, Barbara F. 1992. “Notes on Oral Proficiency Testing (SLOPE).”‭ In Eugene H. Casad (ed.), Windows on Bilingualism, 53-60. Summer Institute of Linguistics and the University of Texas at Arlington Publications in Linguistics, 110. Dallas, TX: Summer Institute of Linguistics and the University of Texas at Arlington. Grimes, Joseph E. 1992. “Calibrating Sentence Repetition Tests.”‭ In Eugene H. Casad (ed.), Windows on Bilingualism, 73-85. Summer Institute of Linguistics and the University of Texas at Arlington Publications in Linguistics, 110. Dallas, TX: Summer Institute of Linguistics and the University of Texas at Arlington. Grimes, Joseph E. 1992. “Correlations Between Vocabulary Similarity and Intelligibility.”‭ In Eugene H. Casad (ed.), Windows on Bilingualism, 17-32. Summer Institute of Linguistics and the University of Texas at Arlington Publications in Linguistics, 110. Dallas, TX: Summer Institute of Linguistics and the University of Texas at Arlington.

This Map Make Sense to Anyone?

PNAC's Plan For South Asia
PNAC's Plan For South Asia
What do you think? Is there anything to it? I shouldn’t really need to explain it too much, and it’s late. If you read all the captions, you should be able to figure out what’s going on. Part of the project here is the dismemberment of Pakistan. Pakistan’s territory will be divided up between Afghanistan, India and an independent Balochistan. Although this map was drawn by an American, it’s safe to say that this represents the paranoid world view of the Pakistani elite, and certainly that of the Pakistani military. This is why they oppose an independent Balochistan, all of Kashmir going to India, and Pashtun nationalism in Pashtunistan on the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan. Islamists like the various Talibans are not nationalists, and they don’t give a damn about Pashtunistan. All that matters is to live under Islamic rule, borders are nothing. This is why Pakistan has promoted the Talibans at the expense of secular nationalists like the Awami Party in the Northwest Frontier Province and the Territories. The Great Game didn’t end in the 1800’s. You kidding? You think we planted all those bases (lily-pads in imperialist-speak) in Central Asia for no reason?

Been Working on the Chinese Language Reclassification

That’s what I’ve been doing lately. It’s a gigantic job. It’s come under some withering criticism lately, but I have some top Sinologists supporting me on this, and the critics are just nobodies with big mouths. Ahem. One of the criticisms was that since I don’t speak, read or write Chinese, I can’t possibly do this. But top Sinologists have told me that this is a fallacy. You don’t really need to be literate in Chinese to study Chinese language, art, history, culture, etc. Sure it helps, but it’s not necessary. Further, this runs up against the thing that I noted earlier. Linguists do not necessarily speak lots of languages, or even more than one. We just study languages. A lot of us are at least bilingual, but I’ve known some major linguists who were not fluent in much more than English. As far as classification goes, you don’t need to be literate in any more than one language. Let us look at one of the greatest classificationists of all time (in my opinion), the recently deceased Joseph Greenberg. Now  Greenberg tried to classify most of the languages on the face of the Earth. In order to do this, he had to study over 5,000 languages, just about every language that is spoken. I’m certain that Greenberg did not speak 5,000 languages, or even 500, or for that matter, even 50. How many he spoke is not known, but I doubt if it was a very high number.

Chinese Teahouse Scam

Chinese tea scam, Chinese tea ceremony scam, etc etc. Many variations on a simple theme. You are walking along in big Chinese city and you are approached by young students,  male or female, speaking good English. Chinese people have a reputation for being very friendly, so you go along. They want to practice their English. You walk along for a bit and they suggest you go for some tea. They direct you to some Chinese tea shop. The menu comes, you order rounds of tea. Prices seem a bit on the high side, but not unusual. Some pastries come later. Then the bill comes, and it’s totally outrageous. You’re out $200-750, and you better pay up or else. The nice friendly young “students” act baffled by the whole thing. This scam is spreading all over China and it is nailing Americans and now Brits left and right. It’s epidemic. You go to the cops and they refuse to do anything about it. Stupid Americans! Haha! My God, scams are everywhere, aren’t they? Watch out!

The Classification of the Vietnamese Language

One of the reasons that I am doing this post is that one of my commenters asked me a while back to do a post on the theories of long-range comparison like Joseph Greenberg’s and how well they hold up. That will have to wait for another day, but for now, I can  at least show you how some principles of Historical Linguistics, a subfield that I know a thing or two about. I will keep this post pretty non-technical, so most of you ought to be able to figure out what is going on. Let us begin by looking at some proposals about the classification of Vietnamese. The Vietnamese language has been subject to a great deal of speculation regarding its classification. At the moment, it is in the Mon-Khmer or Austroasiatic family with Khmer, Mon, Muong, Wa, Palaung, Nicobarese, Khmu, Munda, Santali, Pnar, Khasi, Temiar, and some others. The family ranges through Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, Malaysia, Burma, China, and over into Northeastern India. It is traditionally divided into Mon-Khmer and Munda branches. Here is Ethnologue’s split, and here are some other ways of dividing up the family. The homeland of the Austroasiatics was probably in China, in Yunnan, Southwest China. They moved down from China probably around 5,000 years ago. Some of the most ancient Austroasiatics are probably the Senoi people, who came down from China into Malaysia about 4,000 years ago. Others put the time frame at about 4-8,000 YBP (years before present). A major fraud has been perpetrated lately based on Senoi Dream Therapy. I discussed it on the old blog, and you can Google it if you are interested. In Anthropology classes we learned all about these fascinating Senoi people, who based their lives around their dreams. Turns out most of the fieldwork was poor to fraudulent like Margaret Mead’s unfortunate sojourn in the South Pacific. The Senoi resemble Veddas of India, so it is probably true that they are ancient people.  Also, their skulls have Australoid features. In hair, they mostly have wavy hair (like Veddoids), a few have straight hair (like Mongoloids) and a scattering have woolly hair (like Negritos). Bottom line is that ancient Austroasiatics were probably Australoid types who resembled what the Senoi look like today. There has long been a line arguing that the Vietnamese language is related to Sino-Tibetan (the family that Chinese is a part of). Even those who deny this acknowledge that there is a tremendous amount of borrowing from Chinese (especially Cantonese) to Vietnamese. This level of borrowing so long ago makes historical linguistics a difficult field. Here is an excellent piece by a man who has done a tremendous amount of work detailing his case for Vietnamese as a Sino-Tibetan language. It’s not for the amateur, but if you want to dip into it, go ahead. I spent some time there, and after a while, I was convinced that Vietnamese was indeed a Sino-Tibetan language. One of the things that convinced me is that if borrowing was involved, seldom have I seen such a case for such a huge amount of borrowing, in particular of basic vocabulary. I figured the  case was sealed. Not so fast now. Looking again, and reading some of Joseph Greenberg’s work on the subject, I am now convinced otherwise. There is a serious problem with the cognates between Vietnamese and Chinese, of which there are a tremendous number. This problem is somewhat complex, but I will try to simplify it. Briefly, if Vietnamese is indeed related to Sino-Tibetan, its cognates should be not only with Chinese, but with other members of Sino-Tibetan also. In other words, we should find cognates with Tibetan, Naga, Naxi, Tujia, Karen, Lolo, Kuki, Nung, Jingpho, Chin, Lepcha, etc. We should also find cognates with those languages, where we do not find them in Chinese. That’s a little complicated, so I will let you think about it a bit. Further, the comparisons between Chinese and Vietnamese should be variable. Some should look quite close, while others should look much more distant. So there’s a problem with the Vietnamese as ST theory. The cognates look like Chinese. Problem is, they look too much like Chinese. They look more like Chinese than they should in a genetic relationship. Further, they look like Chinese and only Chinese. Looking for relationships in S-T outside of Chinese, and we find few if any. That’s a dead ringer for borrowing from Chinese to Vietnamese. If it’s not clear to you how that is, think about it a bit. Looking at Mon-Khmer, the case is not so open and shut. There seem to be more cognates with Chinese than with Mon-Khmer. So many more that the case for Vietnamese as AA looks almost silly, and you wonder how anyone came up with it. But let us look again. The cognates with AA and Vietnamese are not just with its immediate neighbors like Cambodian and Khmu but with languages far off in far Eastern India like Munda and Santali. There are words that are found only in the Munda branch in one or two obscure languages that somehow show up again as cognates in Vietnamese. Now tell me how Vietnamese borrowed ancient basic vocabulary from some obscure Munda tongue way over in Northeast India? It did not. How did those words end up in some unheard of NE Indian tongue and also in Vietnamese? Simple. They both descended long ago from a common ancestor. This is Historical Linguistics. The concepts I have dealt with here are not easy for the non-specialist to figure out, but most smart people can probably get a grasp on them. A different subject is the deep relationships of AA. Is AA related to any other languages? I leave that as an open question now,  though there does appear to be a good case for AA being related to Austronesian. One good piece of evidence is the obscure AA languages found in the Nicobar Islands off the coast of Thailand. Somehow, we see quite a few cognates in Nicobarese with Austronesian. We do not see them in any other branches of AA, only in Nicobarese. This seems odd,  and it’s hard to make a case for borrowing. On the other hand, why cognates in Nicobarese and only in Nicobarese? Truth is there are some cognates outside of Nicobarese but not a whole lot. In historical linguistics, one thing we look at is morphology. Those are parts of words, like the -s plural ending in English. In both AA and Austronesian, we have funny particles called infixes. Those are what in English we might call prefixes or suffixes, except they are stuck in the middle of the word instead of at the end or the beginning. So, in English, we have pre- as a prefix meaning “before” and -er meaning “object that does X verb”. So pre-destination means that our lives are figured out before we are even born.  Comput-er and print-er are two objects, one that computes and the other that prints. If we had infixes instead, pre-destination would look something like destin-pre-ation and comput-er and print-er would look something like com-er-pute and prin-er-t. Anyway, there are some fairly obscure infixes that show up not only in some isolated languages in AA but also in far-flung Austronesian languages in, say, the Philippines. Ever heard of the borrowing of an infix? Neither have I? So were those infixes borrowed,  and what are they doing in languages as far away as Thailand and the Philippines, and none in between? Because they  got borrowed? When? How? Forget it. Bottom line is that said borrowing did not happen. So what are those infix cognates doing there? Probably ancient particles left over from a common language that derived both Austronesian and AA, probably spoken somewhere in SW China maybe 9,000 years ago or more. Why is this sort of long-range comparison so hard? For one thing, because after 9,000 years or more, there are hardly any cognates left anymore, due to the fact of language change. Languages change and tend to change at a certain rate. After 1000X years, so much change has taken place that even if two languages were once “sprung from a common source,” in the famous words of Sir William Jones in his epochal lecture to the Asiatic Society in Calcutta on February 2, 1786, there is almost nothing, or actually nothing, left to show of that relationship. Any common words have become so mangled by time that they don’t look much or anything alike anymore. So are AA and Austronesian related? I think so, but I suppose it’s best to say that it has not been proven yet. This thesis is part of a larger long-range concept known as “Austric.” Paul Benedict, a great scholar, was one of the champions of this. Austric is normally made up of AA, Austronesian, Tai-Kadai (the Thai language and its relatives) and Hmong-Mien (the Hmong and Mien languages). Based on genetics, the depth of Austric may be What Makes Vietnamese So Chinese? An Introduction to Sinitic-Vietnamese Studies.

The Reason For Footbinding

I always thought foot-binding was just men being cruel and stupid to the women they lord it over, but it turns out that it was all about sex all along, and the men would have probably bound their feet too except for what foot-binding was all about. Turns that like so many things in life, foot-binding was all about sex. And like so many things in sex, foot-binding was all about the pussy. Well, of course. According to Pioneers of Modern China (p.92):

In a man, big feet indicated a big penis. In a woman, small feet indicated a tight vagina.

Then again, men were keenly aware that a woman with bound feet could barely walk very well, much less run, so she was unlikely to run away from the household. The patriarchy rears its head again. Like so many shitty things, foot-binding was closely tied in with “conservatism.” The more conservative the area of China, the more they subjected their women to this shit; the less conservative, the more they thought it horrid. One more reason for humanists to reject conservatism.

References

Lee, Khoon Choy. 2005. Pioneers of Modern China: Understanding the Inscrutable Chinese. Singapore: World Scientific Publishing.

Englishes, Portugueses, and Chineses

In the comments to a previous post, Goyta made several comments. First of all he noted that the differences between Brazilian and European Portuguese are considerable, especially when a Brazilian hears a less educated, working class or rural Portuguese.

He also said that when European Portuguese are interviewed on Brazilian TV, Brazilians wish they had subtitles. Wanting to have subtitles when you see a video of someone speaking is actually a symptom that you are dealing with another language. He said the differences are particularly severe when it comes to IT. He said he cannot understand 9

It does appear that the differences between European Portuguese and Brazilian Portuguese are pretty significant, more significant than the differences between US and British English.

On other hand, I find Hibernian English spoken in Ireland to be nearly incomprehensible, though it is said to be just a dialect of English. It’s clearly been influenced extensively by the Irish language. Scots, the regional English spoken in Scotland and exemplified by the movie Trainspotting , is actually a completely separate language from English. That movie actually needed subtitles. On the other hand, there is a Scottish English dialect that is not Scots that is pretty intelligible.

We can always understand British English no matter who is writing it. Same with understanding spoken Australian and New Zealand (Kiwi) English. British English is often written a bit differently in slang expressions, but we pick them up. The formal writing is totally understandable.

There have been huge fights on Wikipedia between British English and US English speakers with complaints from the Brits of bullying by the Americans. There was an attempt to fork the English Wiki into Br and US versions but it failed. Wikipedia demands that you have an ISO code in order to get a Wikipedia and ISO codes only come from SIL, who publishes Ethnologue. I petitioned for a few new languages a couple of years ago and they all got shot down.

There is an ongoing war between European Portuguese and Brazilian Portuguese on the Portuguese Wikipedia with complaints from the European Portuguese of bullying on the part of the Brazilians. Gotya noted that he, a Brazilian, could not read Portuguese IT materials. This is unfortunate. All written British is intelligible to us. We can read anything written in the UK, though most of our reading material here is from the US. I can read The Economist and The New Standard and The Spectator with no problems at all.

As a Californian, I speak completely normally, of course, and have no accent whatsoever! Haha. We can understand the Midwest accent perfectly, though it can be different. It sounds “flat”. They also insert rhotic consonants before some consonants at the end of a word and the raising of the preceding vowel – “wash” becomes “worsh”.

The Oklahoma accent is different and sometimes it can be hard to understand. I heard some people speaking Oklahoman in the doctor’s office the other day for a minute or so I thought they were speaking a foreign language! Of course they were mumbling too. Then I asked them where they were from and they said Oklahoma. At that point, I had caught onto their accent and could understand them perfectly.

I do not know why the Texan accent is said to be hard to understand. We understand it perfectly, but it sounds funny. We make a lot of jokes about it. George Bush has a strong Texan accent. There is also an Arkansas accent (Arkies) that is different but understandable. This is also the source of jokes. In this part of California there are many Whites who still speak Arkie and Okie. They are the descendants of those who came out here from the Dust Bowl in the 1930’s. Steinbeck wrote a book about this called The Grapes of Wrath.

Other than that, there are no accents in the West.

There is some sort of a Kentucky-Tennessee accent, but I am not sure if they differ. This is also a source of jokes. It’s sort of a general Appalachian accent, and it’s the source of jokes about inbred hillbillies and whatnot.

The Southern accent is well-known but usually understandable. My brother went to live in Alabama though and he said that the workers in the factory he worked at were often completely unintelligible. The Blacks were worse than the Whites, and they had separate accents. He has imitated their incomprehensible accent to me and it’s pretty hilarious.

I have heard poor Blacks from Memphis on the Cops show who were completely unintelligible to me. People with more money and status tended to be more comprehensible. I sometimes have a hard time understanding a Mississippi or Alabama accent, but it’s no problem. Our Southern politicians all have thick Southern accents.

Cajun English from Louisiana is often unintelligible to us, but the people with more money and status are quite intelligible.

There is also a Black accent from the coast of South Carolina called Gullah that is hard to understand. The Blacks from around there speak something like it and you can pick it out if you are sharp. It has a pretty, lilting sound to it. It’s different from the standard Southern accent and is sort of charming. Moving up the coast, there is a Virginia accent that is softer, pleasant and charming.

There is the famous New York accent, which to us laid back Californians sounds horribly rude, obnoxious, loud and belligerent. Some forms of it also sound ignorant – these tend to be associated with working class Whites in Brooklyn and the Bronx.

One thing they do is to glide and lengthen rhotic consonants – “New York” becomes New Yawwk” “Brooklyn” becomes “Bwwoklyn”.

A similar accent seems to be spoken in New Jersey, but it may be different. One again, it involves lenition of rhotic consonants, in this case turning them into dipthongs with long vowels. “New Jersey” becomes “New Joiisey”. This is also a source of jokes. There is a Boston accent which is completely understandable. Ted Kennedy speaks that. It involves the lenition of hard consonants into glides and the end of a word – “car” becomes “caw”.

I believe there is a sort of a slow drawl from Vermont and New Hampshire too. Those people, especially the older men, are known for not talking much. Men of few words.

Some Blacks around here still talk with thick Black accents that sound Southern even though they were born in the Central Valley. There is also an “Ebonics” English (for lack of a better word) that is spoken here by sort of ghettoish or semi-ghettoish Blacks. It is frankly, almost completely unintelligible. They seem like they are talking with their mouths full, mumbling and speaking extremely fast, running all of the sounds together.

Everyone who talks like this can also speak Standard English thank God, and they can quickly move in and out of that Ebonics talk when you talk to them. It’s sort of a language for them to talk so that we can’t understand them, I think. To us, it sounds sloppy, low class and ghetto, but it reportedly a full-fledged language. The Blacks in the Caribbean do not speak English! That makes me feel good because I can hardly understand a word they say. Each island has its own form of Creole English which is a completely separate language.

I think that Indian English (Chichi derogatorily) and West African English need to be split into separate languages because they are often incomprehensible to us. This is a case of regional Englishes evolving on their own. Further, West African English often differs a lot in its written form.

Indian English is often so mangled in its written form that it is incomprehensible, but more educated writers are comprehensible. The tendency to drop articles is very annoying and makes written Indian English sound ignorant to us. Don’t mess with our damned useless articles!

Reading about the Chinese languages, there are efforts underway to get speakers to speak proper Putonghua, whatever that means. Speakers from different parts of China still speak Putonghua with an accent that can be heavy at times.

Here in the US, we do not have this problem. Even our politicians still speak in heavy regional accents, and no one cares. We can always understand them. There is no national effort to get everyone to speak proper English that involves wiping out regional accents, though I understand that in the corporate world, they are offering classes to help people get rid of Southern accents, which are stereotyped as sounding backwards, ignorant and racist. I think this is sad. Our regional accents are what makes this country great.

Goyta also notes that Brazilians are starting to speak Spanish and the neighboring Spanish speaking countries are starting to speak Portuguese. When I was dealing with them 5-10 years ago, most Brazilians did not speak much Spanish (They acted like it was extremely low on their list of priorities) and Spanish speakers had zero interest in learning Portuguese (In fact, they regarded the suggestion as offensive and preposterous!)

Goyta notes that with regional integration, more Portuguese are speaking Spanish and more Spanish speakers from nearby countries are learning Portuguese. Spanish is becoming a prerequisite to getting a good job in Brazil. This is good as it’s good to see Latin Americans getting together.

It is also true that in China there has been a big fight over Chinese language classification. The unificationist – fascist types, associated with the Communist government (and actually with the Nationalist government before also – this is really a Chinese elite project) insist that there is only one Chinese language. This goes along with racism of Northern Chinese against Southern Chinese and to some extent vice versa. This racism is most evident in the Cantonese vs Mandarin war in China.

Cantonese speakers say that they speak the real Chinese and that Northern Chinese speak a bastardized tongue derived from the old Manchu language. Cantonese speakers also resent that a Northern Chinese was turned into the national tongue and imposed on them against their will. They also say that Northern Chinese are really from the South and that the real NE Asians are the Mongolians, Koreans, Manchu, Japanese, etc. Genetic studies show that this is not the case.

Northern Chinese say that Southern Chinese are not real Chinese and their blood is “contaminated” with Tai types like the Tai, Zhuang, Vietnamese, etc. There is probably something to this. Although Putonghua is the only official language in China and there is a war going on against the regional Chineses, enforcement has been held off against Cantonese. And Cantonese  areas are still where you will hear the least Putonghua and the most regional Chinese in all spheres of life. Cantonese is also allowed on the radio and TV, whereas regional Chineses had previously banned from the media.

The Putonghua-only campaign has been too successful and regional Chineses are being wiped out. There is now a regionalism movement arising in China to promote and retain regional Chineses.

I think that the Putonghua campaign has been good, but that China should promote bilingualism. The Putonghua campaign has not yet been successful. As of 2001, only 5

China clearly needs a language that they can all speak. For its entire history, many Chinese have not been able to speak to each other, including folks from one village to the next if you go to the southeast and the central coast. Provinces like Fujian, Jiangxi, Jiangsu, Henan and Hunan are notoriously multilingual.

Most of these places have a lot of very high mountains, and transportation was typically very poor. Even today, you can scarcely get around by vehicle and you sometimes have to walk from one place to the next, sometimes for dozens of miles! Bottom line is they were very isolated from each other.

These places also retained a tradition of being hideouts for “hillbilly” types where there was a lot of unemployment and many folks turned to crime. Also criminals fled to the mountains where they could hide. Upshot was that due to all of this, and people seen as backwards, lazy, stupid and thieving, people from the rest of China had no interest in going to these places anyway. When people left these parts of China to go to big cities, they were stereotyped in a way similar to how ghetto Blacks and Browns are in the US. This made them want to stay in their mountains.

Chinese Fascism – An Example

I noted in a previous post that readers seemed confused about what fascism was and where the line is drawn between fascism and nationalism. In particular, readers wondered whether White nationalism was automatically a form of fascism or whether it was something else. This post is intended to clear the waters somewhat. As the definition of fascism and the borders of fascism, nationalism and racism are ill-defined and continually digressed by intellectual con men and ignoramuses, and as I am still learning about these boundaries myself, we will continue with our lessons. Reader Uncle Milton seems to have an inkling of what I am getting at. Shout out to Uncle Milton. In a previous post describing fanatical fascist ultranationalism rampant among upper class and upper middle class high caste Indian Hindus, Unc got the point but disagreed with the inroads this mental poison had made with Indian tech workers, presumably H-1B parasites, in the US. He then directed me to an article by the interesting John Derbyshire about Chinese neo-fascism. If you read the article carefully, you will see what I am describing as ultranationalist, nation-building, national consolidationist, unificationist fascism. In this case, it is Chinese who are afflicted. The article also made clear to me that many young Chinese, like many Indian Hindus, will not make good immigrants to the US. Both groups are heavily poisoned by America-hatred and their respective ultranationalisms. Hence they will make parasitical at best and predatory at worst immigrants to our land. I don’t advocate these groups be banned, but only that they be well-screened. It’s no accident we are seeing all of these Chinese “Americans” spying for the motherland. Chinese nationalism is one bloody beast. Tragically, as the Chinese Communist Party has moved away from Marxism and embraced capitalism, it has decided to promote a sickening brand of fascist ultranationalism in lieu of Marxism and to promote its project. Hence, the young generation of Chinese, in particular the intellectuals, has had their minds thoroughly poisoned by Chinese neo-fascism inculcated into their minds, outrageously, by a Communist Party. I would like to extend a bit of sympathy to those caught up in the throes of ultranationalist fascism. Fascism is a drug and produces an excellent high like many drugs do. The roots of fascist ultranationalism are found right inside of the very ego and soul of mankind. This is the reason for fascism’s extraordinary success and continuing popularity. It appeals to, as early Leftist researchers of fascism in the 1930’s, the “average man.” Fascism appeals to our very basest and most intense emotions and connects to us passionately on a profound emotional level. It plugs right into the raging Id inside all of us and shuts down our more cultivated and rational Superego emotional policemen. It makes a riot in the brain that burns down the police station. The fascist is a one man riot waiting to happen. The appeal of fascism is within all of us, me included, hence all decent and progressive people need to be on guard against it to keep from heading down that muddy road.

The Place of Mandarin in Sinitic

In the comments, James Schipper suggests that Mandarin is to Sinitic what German and Russian are to Germanic and Slavic. He also offers that most Sinitic speakers also speak Mandarin and makes a comparison with Welsh and English and Frisian and Dutch, where every Welsh speaker speaks English and every Frisian speaker speaks Dutch, and each one would rather write in English or Dutch than in Welsh or Frisian. My comments: English and German have 6 It’s not uncommon for Chinese lects to have 5-3 So yes, your analogy with Russian and German as super-languages on top of their families is correct, but it is important to note the vast differences in the lects. It was said that no one could understand Chairman Mao’s dialect, Xiang Nan (Mandarin dialect). Apparently his secretary could understand him, but few others could. I’m not sure how he got his points across. Further, at this point probably most speakers of the Sinitic languages for sure speak Putonghua, which is the Standard Mandarin. It’s a standard the same way that High German is Standard German and Standard Italian is the standard for that language. However, overseas, many do not speak Putonghua, and in the Cantonese area, I believe many still do not speak Putonghua. English is a Germanic language. Look at the vocabulary – closest language is Frisian with 6 Besides Putonghua, you are correct that the vast majority of Sinitic speakers are native speakers of some kind of Mandarin. I believe that a lot of the older folks do not have very good Mandarin and may be monolinguals of their Sinitic tongue, but I’m not sure. The government has been pushing Putonghua very hard for the past decade or so, almost too hard. It’s been killing the smaller tongues. So it’s not quite the same way with Frisian and Welsh yet. I believe it’s pretty common in the South to find Cantonese speakers who don’t speak Mandarin, and it’s for sure the case overseas. As far as writing, I don’t believe it’s a problem. An ideographic system was perfect for Chinese as it was the one way that all of the speakers of the various Chinese lects could communicate. My father was in China in 1946 and he said that the rickshaw drivers often could not understand each other, but they could all write Chinese, so they would communicate by writing notes. All Chinese can write to each other, no matter what language they speak, assuming they are literate. A decade ago in a college in Henan, a professor said that the students would come to the college from all over the province and for the first month would communicate by writing notes to each other, so they all wrote a common language. In that province, every county has its own language, and there are even separate languages within counties. It took them about a month or so before they could start working out each other’s languages. Some comment that the Chinese languages are like a Cockney accent of English. On a website, a commenter said that that’s not true. He said he can understand Cockney, but they had a speaker of an Anhui Mandarin lect as a professor at the university and no one could understand what he was talking about. So it’s quite common for the various Chinese lects to be pretty much incomprehensible to each other. There are other comments around the Net that say that the Chinese lects are close enough to pick them up if you spend a bit of time there. That’s not really true. The differences between the Chinese lects are often as different as English and German. Now suppose you are an English speaker and you go to Germany. Are you going to “just pick up” German really vast? Forget it. I mean, if you stay there 3 years, maybe. Maybe! Someone else compared the differences between Chinese lects to the gulf between English and Irish. That may be too distant, but it may also be correct. Differences between the lects ecompass tones, grammar and lexicon. All of them boil down to intelligibility. The major Chinese lects regularly score around 50-6 This is especially true in the center and south of the country. In Anhui, Fujian , Henan, Hunan , Jiangsu and Zhejiang there is an incredible diversity of tongues. It is said in Fujian that every 3 miles the culture changes and every 6 miles the language changes. In these parts of China, there are lots of mountains and it is very rural. Many people never left their home village to go over the mountain to talk to the people over there, so a multitude of tongues arose. I understand that in this part of China there are even incomprehensible tongues inside major cities where the downtowners can’t understand the suburbs.

What's So Bad About Indian – Hindu Nationalism?

Let me count the ways. A commenter from India, an Indian and a Hindu, asked me to define Indian Hindu nationalism and what exactly I found deplorable about it. First of all, it is clearly possible to be an Indian and not be an Indian Hindu nationalist. The Indian Left has clearly rejected this ideology. I know some Indian Christians, one a convert from Hinduism, who also rejects it. The one I am thinking of is a Tamil who supports the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka. I have spoken to many upper middle class to upper class Indians, and almost 10 The symptoms are: Contempt for the West, its medicine, its language and its perceived superiority. In particular, rage towards the US as being the source of much of India’s problems, a notion that is absurd. Strong feelings of rage over perceived inferiority masked by compensatory feelings of superiority, typically for the most backwards and fucked-up aspects of Indian culture and the Hindu religion, in particular caste. In particular, fury that India is referred to as a 3rd world country and anger that Westerners consider themselves civilized and consider India backwards, etc. A notion that India is one of the great countries of the world, but India’s enemies have held it back from its greatness and kept it from being the great country it could be. This goes along with some weird notion that India was the wealthiest country on Earth in 1500, but then it declined to one of the poorest. This project was apparently done by outsiders, mostly Westerners. A lot of anger towards Muslims. In particular, a notion that moderate Muslims simply do not exist. There is also continuing anger over abuses done by Muslims towards Hindus in the region from 500-1000 years ago. There is also the notion that many Muslims in the area are not really Muslims, since their ancestors were Hindus who were “forced to convert.” Extreme denial about the worst aspects of Indian culture and the Hindu religion, in particular caste. Extreme defense of the most outrageous differentials in wealth and poverty. A notion that something called “Bharat India” existed and that much of the land east and west of India is “really India” in some weird way, because they were Indianized or especially Hinduized at some point. These people lay some sort of claims to Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Burma, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, Indonesia, Southern Philippines, Afghanistan, Iran, Azerbaijan and the general region of the Caucasus. Supposedly at some point these countries were all Hindu or Hinduized of some sort. A denial that there was ever any religion than Hinduism in India, along with the notion that other religions such as Zoroastrianism are just branches of Hinduism. There is also a complete rejection of the Aryan invasion theory along with a lot of contempt for the lower castes, in particular, a curious notion the Dalits now run India and the Brahmins have become the new “niggers.” Rage towards Christianity for converting low caste Hindus. I would say that contempt for Christianity is typical amongst this type, over and above feelings towards any other religion. Anger towards the “White man” and a refusal to be lumped in with him in any way. This is apparently all because Whites from England colonized India for some time. At the same time, while they often defend Hindutvas,  they themselves usually get angry if you call them a Hindutva or point out that their Indian-Hindu nationalism does not differ much from the Hindutvas. Extreme rage and irrationality over the Kashmir issue, on which India is effectively an outlaw state, defying a security council resolution. On the contrary, most Pakistanis seem to be fairly calm about Kashmir. I think Indians are filled with so much rage and fury about Kashmir because deep down inside they must know they are wrong. In particular, regarding Kashmir, there is a denial that even one native Kashmiri Indian is protesting against or has taken up arms against India. 10 The Kashmiris are completely happy in India and all of the problems are caused by Kashmir. In particular, they deny that any Kashmiris want independence. They also deny that there is such a thing as a Kashmiri Indian. They claim the war started when “Pakistan invaded Kashmir and the King appealed to India for help.” Also, all of these people feel that what occurred after India’s independence was 10 India has attacked or threatened to attack most or all of its neighbors since independence. Upon independence, India immediately placed claims on its neighbors’ lands. At the moment, India claims parts of both China and Pakistan. If you go on Rediff or other forums where many Indian H-1B workers in the US post or if you talk to people working with Indian H-1B workers in the US, you will find that these attitudes are absolutely rife. Almost all of these folks come from higher castes. I would like to point out that this general picture is creepily reminiscent of ultranationalisms around the world and in the past. In particular, the Indian Hindu nationalism I describe above has many similarities with German, Italian and Japanese ultranationalism of the 1930’s and 1940’s that caused so many problems. The fact that Indian Hindu nationalism, which seems omnipresent in India, is backed up by a state armed with nuclear weapons is something I find very frightening.

A Reworking of Chinese Language Classification

Updated December 3, 2014. This post runs to 112 pages so far. On March 6, 2011, Sinologist Victor Mair took on the question of Mutual Intelligibility of Sinitic Languages. The Chinese languages have undergone a lot of reclassification lately (Mair 1991), from one Chinese language a couple of decades ago up to 14 Chinese languages today according to the latest Ethnologue. However, Jerry Norman, one of the world’s top experts on Chinese, says that based on mutual intelligibility, there are 350-400 separate languages within Chinese (Mair 1991). According to Gong Xun, a Sichuan Mandarin speaker in Deyang, China, by my criteria of distinguishing between language and dialect, there would be 300-400 separate languages in Fujian alone. So far, 2,500 dialects of the Chinese language have been identified, and a number of them are separate languages. I have been doing research on this issue recently. Based on the criteria of mutual intelligibility, I have expanded the 14 Chinese languages into 365 separate languages. There are different ways of doing mutual intelligibility. I decided to put it at 9 In the cases below where I had intelligibility data available, a number of Chinese languages had no more than 6 Intelligibility is hard to determine. I am not interested in typological studies of lects involving either lexicon, phonology or tones, unless this can be quantified in terms of intelligibility in a scientific way (see Cheng 1991). For the most part, what I am interested in is, “Can they understand each other?” Reasonable, fair-minded and professional comments, additions, criticisms, elaborations, presentations of evidence, etc. are highly encouraged, as long as politics and emotions are left out of it. The purpose of the classification below is more to stimulate academic interest and sprout new thinking and theory. It is not intended to be an end-all or be-all statement on the subject, in fact, it is quite the opposite. Interested scholars, observers or speakers of Chinese languages are encouraged to contribute any knowledge that they may have to add to or criticize this data below. So far as I know, this is the first real attempt to split Chinese beyond the 14 languages elucidated by Ethnologue. There are lapses in the data below. I mean to present this data in outline form to make it more readable. There are also problems with the data below. In many cases, “separate language” just means that the lect is not intelligible with Putonghua. Unfortunately, I currently lack intelligibility data within the major language groups such as Gan, Xiang, Wu and the branches of Mandarin. There is probably quite a bit of lumping still to be done below. Where lects are mutually intelligible below, I have tried to lump them into one language with various dialects. It is reasonable to ask what background and expertise I have to write such a post. I have a Masters Degree in Linguistics and have been employed as a salaried linguist for a US Indian tribe. I also sit on a peer review board for a linguistics journal and will soon publish my first work in book form via a book chapter in a book on Turkic languages that will come out soon. I assume it will be controversial. Keep in mind that this work is extremely tentative and should not be taken as the last word on the subject by a long shot. There are claims that this study claims to be “accurate and precise.” In truth, it claims nothing of the sort. Initial studies, which is what this is, are de facto never “accurate and precise,” and you can take an extreme argument from scientific philosophy that no science is really “accurate and precise” but is simply “correct for now” or “correct until proven otherwise.” Gan is a separate language, already identified as such. Nanchang and Anyi are apparently Jiangyu, spoken in Hubei, is very strange and Wanzai must surely be a separate language, as must Yichun, Ji’an, Wanan, Fuzhou, Yingtan, Leiyang, Huaining and Dongkou. Nanchang and Anyi are within the Changjing Group of Gan, which has 15 different lects. Yingtan and Leping are members of the Yingyi Group has 12 lects. Jiangyu and Huarong are members of the Datong Group of Gan, which has 13 lects. Yichun is a member of the Yiliu Group of Gan, which has 11 lects. Wanzai is a member of the Yiping Group of Gan, of which it is the only member. Leiyang is a member of the Leizi Group of Gan, which has 5 lects. Wanan is a member of the Jilian Group of Gan, of which it is the only member. Ji’an is a member of the Jicha Group of Gan, which has 15 lects. Huaining is a member of the Huaiyue Group of Gan, which has 9 lects. Fuzhou is a member of the Fuguang Group of Gan, which has 15 lects. Dongkou is a member of the Dongsui Group of Gan, which has 5 lects. Gan has 102 separate lects in it. There are 30 million speakers of the Gan languages. Within the Min group, Northern Min (Min Bei) and Central Min (Sanminghua) have already been identified as separate languages. There are 50 million speakers of all of the Min languages (Olson 1998). Northern Min has only 0-2 Central Min has three lects, Shaxian, Sanming and Yongan, but we don’t know if there are languages among them. Central Min has 3.5 million speakers. Northern Min is said to be a single language, although it has 9 separate lects. Most dialects are said to be mutually intelligible, but Jianyang and Jian’ou have only about 7 The standard dialect of Min Dong or Eastern Min is Fuzhou. Eastern Min has only 0-2 Chengguan, Yangzhong and Zhongxian are separate languages, all spoken in Youxi County (Zheng 2008). Beyond that, Eastern Min is reported to have several other mutually unintelligible languages. One of them is Fuqing, located near Fuzhou but not intelligible with it, according to Wikipedia, but others say the two are mutually intelligible, although speakers are divided on the question. It appears that possibly Fuzhou speakers can understand Fuqing speakers better than the other way around. Fuzhou and Fuqing are about 6 Ningde, Fuding and Nanping are probably other languages in this family (evidence). Of these three, Ningde is definitely a separate language. According to George Ngù, a passionate proponent of Fuzhou, “Fuzhou is not intelligible even within its many varieties.” It’s not clear if that applies to all of Eastern Min, but it appears that it does. Therefore, Changle, Gutian, Lianjiang, Luoyuan, Minhou, Minqing, Pingnan, Pingtan, Yongtai, Fuan, Fuding, Shouning, Xiapu, Zherong and Zhouning are all separate languages. There are two other lects lumped in with Eastern Min. Manjiang is spoken in the central part of Taishun County, and Manhua spoken in the eastern part of Cangnan County. Both of these names mean “barbarian speech.” Both are probably mixtures of Southern Wu (Wenzhou etc.), Eastern Min, Northern Min, and maybe even pre-Sinitic languages. Manhua and Manjiang are not intelligible with Fuzhou. However, Manjiang has affinity with Shouning in phonology, vocabulary and grammar. Whether or not it is intelligible with Shouning is not known. Min Nan speakers who have looked at Manjiang data say that it doesn’t even look like a Sinitic language. Manhua is best dealt with as a form of Wu. I discuss it further below under Wu. Fuding, Fuan, Shouning, Xiapu, Zherong and Zhouning are in the Funing Group of Eastern Min, which has 6 lects. Fuzhou, Fuqing, Chengguan, Yangzhong, Zhongxian, Ningde, Changle, Gutian, Lianjiang, Luoyuan, Minhou, Minqing, Pingnan, Pingtan, Yongtai and Nanping are in the Houguan Group of Eastern Min, which has 16 lects. Eastern Min contains 23 separate lects. Within Min Nan, Xiamen and Teochew are separate languages (evidence). There is even a proposal to split Xiamen, Qiongwen and Teochew into three separate languages before SIL. Amoy, Jinmen is apparently a separate language, as it has poor intelligibility with Taiwanese. A much better name for Xiamen according to the Chinese literature is Quanzhang (Campbell January 2009). Quanzhang is a combination of Quanzhou and Zhangzhou, two of the most important dialects in the language. Xiamen has only can no longer understand Taiwanese or Xiamen well, though they have partial understanding of them. They have only 30-4 The Yilan dialect on Taiwan is so different that it alone has posed serious problems for the task of standardizing Taiwanese Min Nan, yet it is intelligible with the rest of Taiwanese (Campbell January 2009). Lugang is also very different but is also intelligible with Taiwanese (Campbell 2009). There are some communication problems for Tainan speakers hearing Taipei, but it appears that they are still intelligible with each other (Campbell January 2009). JieyangRaoping, Chaoyang, Shantou (Swatow) and Hailok’hong (Haklau) are lects in the Teochew Group (evidence) of Teochew. Teochew (Chaozhou) is the prestige version of Teochew. Chaoyang speakers can understand Jieyang, Raoping (evidence) and Shantou, but intelligibility is difficult with Haifeng and Lufeng. Shantou, Raoping, and Jieyang are then dialects of Chaoyang. Zhangzhou and Quanzhou have marginal intelligibility with Teochew varieties. They are both spoken in Taipei, Taiwan. After all, Taiwanese itself is just a mixture between Zhangzhou and Quanzhou. The situation in Taipei was interesting. The dialects of the city were a mix of Zhangzhou and Quanzhou. The dialect of the center of the city was mixed between the two, with a slight Quanzhou lean to it. In Sulim (Shilin), people spoke with a dialect that heavily favored Zhangzhou. Other districts spoke a Tang’oann-type dialect, which is just Quanzhou mixed with a bit of Zhangzhou. All these conditions are more common with the older generation because the new generation either does not speak Teochew at all or they favor the mixed Zhangzhou-leaning “Southern” style favored in the media, or they just do not speak the language at all. Hailok’hong (Haklau) is spoken down the coast between the Teochew zone and the Hong Kong area. It has marginal intelligibility with other Teochew lects. Nevertheless, Taiwanese speakers can no longer understand the pure Quanzhou spoken in the Chinese city of that name. On the other hand, Chaoyang itself is unintelligible to some other Teochew lects. Shantou speakers cannot understand some of the other Teochew lects, and speakers of other lects often find Shantou hard to understand. intelligible with Zhangzhou and Quanzhou, but these claims appear to be incorrect (see above). That might make some sense, as Teochew are a group of Min speakers who broke off from Zhangzhou Min about 600-1,100 years ago. They moved down to northeast Guangdong, after hundreds of years, a heavy dose of Cantonese went in, producing modern Teochew. chinese language map Teochew has only over 9 The Teochew spoken in Indochina – in particular, in Vietnam and Cambodia (many highly variant lects. Whether or not they are mutually intelligible with each other is not known. The variety spoken in Medan, Indonesia is particularly interesting. It has heavy Malay and Cantonese influence and cannot be understood by other Teochew speakers. Teochew has 10 million speakers. Zhangping, though close to Xiamen, is a separate language . Datian, in Fujian, is also a separate language. A version of Hokkien called Malay Hokkien is spoken in Malaysia and in Indonesia in Sumatra and Kalimantan. In Indonesia, it is spoken in the city of Medan, the state of Riau, the city of Bagansiapiapi on Sumatra and in a few places on Kalimantan, such as Kuching and especially in Brunei. Malay Hokkien is heavily laced with Teochew. Northern Malay Hokkien is spoken from Taiping along the coast formerly all the way to Phuket but now only to Pedang in Malaysia and in Indonesia in the city of Medan, the state of Riau, the city of Bagansiapiapi on Sumatra and in a few places on Kalimantan, such as Kuching and especially in Brunei. Speakers of Northern Malay Hokkien have a hard time understanding the Southern Malay Hokkien (see Singapore Hokkien below) spoken in Kelang, Malacca and Singapore. Northern Malay Hokkien is creolized, with Malay and Thai embedded deeply in the language. Southern Malay Hokkien is less creolized, if at all. Singapore Hokkien lies between Northern Malay Hokkien and Taiwanese on the continuum. A very pure variety of Hokkien is spoken in the Indonesian city of Bagansiapiapi. It has avoided the Mandarinization of Hokkien that is occurring elsewhere. They speak like the Hokkien speakers of Tang’oann (Tong’an), China. Kelantan Hokkien is spoken in the Malay state of Kelantan. It is wildly creolized with Malay and is probably not intelligible with any other form of Hokkien. The version of Hokkien spoken in the Philippines is often called Binamhue, Banlamhue or Minanhua (Philippines Hokkien) by speakers, derives from a dialect on the outskirts of Quanzhou, and it may have drifted into a separate language. At present, it is sometimes not intelligible with Quanzhou or Xiamen. That is, some Philippines Hokkien speakers claim that they can only understand about 7 The version of Min Nan, Singapore Hokkien (Southern Malay Hokkien), spoken in Singapore, Kelang and Malacca is similar to that spoken in Taiwan, but many Singapore Hokkien speakers have a hard time understanding Taiwanese Hokkien, while others can understand it just fine. Older Singapore Hokkien speakers can understand Taiwanese Hokkien better than younger ones. This is due to bilingual learning more than anything else because younger Singapore Hokkien speakers are no longer good at understanding other Min Nan dialects due to lack of exposure to them. The reason that Taiwanese speakers can seem to speak communicate well with Singapore Hokkien speakers is because they are using a simpler vocabulary. A Singapore Hokkien speaker, if immersed in Taiwan, could pick up Taiwanese fairly quickly, within say 3 months. An umbrella term covering Malay Hokkien, Singapore Hokkien and Philippines Hokkien may be Nusantaran Hokkien. Another language in the same group is best called Wan’an, comprising a number of dialects and possibly languages in Wan’an County of Fujian (Branner 2008). Zhaoan, Pinghe and Yunxiao, also of Fujian, are separate languages. Wan’an and Longyan are not mutually intelligible (Branner 2008). Longyan seems to have about 50 lects. Teochew, Shantou, Lufeng, Haifeng, Chaoyang, Jieyang, SE Asian Teochew and Malaysian Teochew are members of the Chaoshan Group of Min Nan, which has 12 lects. Datian is in its own group in Min Nan. Min Nan consists of 68 separate lects. Clearly, the dialectal relationships of Min Nan are confusing, as many of the lects are very closely related, if not fully intelligible. Intelligibility testing may be needed to sort out some of these issues. There are 30 million speakers of Southern Min. Zhenan Min, spoken in Zhejiang Province around Pingnang and Cangnan and in the Zhoushan Islands, is a separate language. Zhenan Min contains 4 lects, Pingyang, Cangnan, Dongtou and Yuhuan, which may or may not be languages. Zhenan Min has 574,000 speakers. Zhenan Min is influenced by Eastern and Northern Min. Qiongwen (Hainanese) is a separate language with 8 million speakers. It has the lowest intelligibility with the rest of Southern Min as any other Min Nan lect. Qiongwen itself has 14 separate lects, all spoken on Hainan. Whether or not any of them are separate languages is not known. Longyan (Branner 2008) is a separate language, apart from Southern Min. It is spoken in Longyan City’s Xinluo District and Zhangping City and has 740,000 speakers. It has heavy Hakka influence due to the large number of Hakka speakers in the surrounding areas. Another split in Min is Leizhou. Leizhou Min is a separate language and is now recognized by some as a separate branch of Min altogether, along the lines of Southern and Northern Min. Leizhou consists of 7 different lects. Haikang appears to be a dialect of Leizhou. However, at least some of the other 6 Leizhou lects are very different in phonology and lexicon. Intelligibility data is not known, but they may be mutually intelligible. Leizhou Min, with 4 million speakers, has low intelligibility with Min Nan lects and has only 5 Shaojiang Min, or Min Gan, is said to be a completely separate high-level division of the Min language like Leizhou Min. It has four lects – Shaowu, Guangze, Jiangle and Shunchang – that are said to be mutually intelligible. There are subdialects within these larger lects. The substratum of Shaojiang is not Min, Gan or Hakka – instead, Puxian Min has already been identified as a separate language. Puxian has 3 separate lects. There are minor differences between these lects. However, there is a form of Puxian Min spoken in Singapore, Hinghwa, and presently it lacks full intelligibility with Puxian Min proper. Puxian speakers are a minority in Singapore, and their language has mixed a lot with Singapore Hokkien, Malay, English and other languages spoken in Singapore, resulting in a separate language. A Min language called Longdu, located in Guangdong, is not only a separate language (evidence here and here) but seems to be in another Min category from Southern Min. It is spoken in the southwest corner of Zhongshan City in Shaxi and Dayong. In Guangdong Province, there are other divergent lects of Min Nan. Two of these, Nanlang (also spoken in Zhongshan) and Sanxiang, are also separate languages. Nanlang is spoken 10 miles southeast of Zhongshan in Cuiheng. It is also spoken in Sources give Longdu and Nanlang 100,000 speakers and Sanxiang 30,000 speakers. 1 All of these seem to be in the same group, Zhongshan Min, and all are spoken in the Pearl River Delta near Hong Kong. Zhongshan Min has 150,000 speakers. This group is possibly a Northern or Eastern Min group stranded way down in Guangdong. They are sometimes referred to in old literature as “Northeastern Min”. That’s not really a category. It often means Northern Min, but sometimes it means Eastern Min. These languages have all borrowed extensively from the type of Cantonese spoken in the Pearl River Delta. Looking at the whole picture, it appears that various immigrants speaking Puxian Min, Northern Min and Southern Min all settled around Zhongshan. These various Min elements, along with a hefty dose of Cantonese, have gone into the creation of Zhongshan Min. Sanxiang, Nanlang and Longdu are apparently Hakka Proper (Meixia), Tingzhou is a separate language (evidence). Wuhua Hakka is intelligible with Meixian. Fangcheng and Dabu are close to Meixian, but intelligibility data is lacking. Fangcheng has five different lects within it, but intelligibility data is not known. Hong Kong Hakka is not intelligible with the Hakka spoken on Taiwan, nor with Dabu. Dongguan, spoken near Hong Kong, can understand Meixian, but Meixian cannot understand Dongguan. Taipu or Taipo is spoken in the village of the same name in Hong Kong and is not intelligible with Meixian, nor is Wakia, also spoken in Hong Kong. A variety of Hakka spoken in a part of Hong Kong called Shataukok is called variously Satdiugok, Sathewkok, Shataukok, Satdiukok or Satdiugok. It is said to be different from other Hakka, and evidence indicates that Shataukok may indeed be a separate language. Shataukok has dialects within it and they are different, but they are generally mutually intelligible. All three of these are dialects of a more or less intelligible language called Hong Kong Hakka. Located near Hong Kong, Shenzhen/Bao’an is a separate language. Haifeng and Lufeng, located near each other in Guangdong, appear to be dialects of a separate language called Hailufeng. Longchuan in northeastern Guangdong is a separate language (evidence), with poor intelligibility with other Hakka lects. Longchuan has Boluo and Heyuan are separate languages, not mutually intelligible. Longchuan, Boluo and Heyuan are quite distant from other Hakka. Heyuan is spoken in central Guangdong. Huizhou is mutually intelligible with Longchuan and also with Meixia and Dabu. Sanxiang, spoken in Zhongshan prefecture, is different from all other Hakka, but intelligibility data is lacking. It is possible that in northern Guangdong, there may be many different Hakka languages, since dialects tend to differ from village to village, and in many cases, communication is difficult. The Hakka spoken in Kunming, Sarawak, in Malaysia, known as Ho Po Hak, is a separate language. It is very different from the Hakka spoken in Sabah, Malaysia, and it is similar to Hopo, spoken in Hopo, near Meizhou. Hopo is not intelligible with Dabu, Hailu or Meixian. Hopo appears to be a dialect of Jiaoling. Hopo has deep influence from Teochew Min, because it is located right next to the Teochew area. The Gannan Group (or Ninglong Group) from Southern Jiangxi, Mingxi from Western Fujian, and the Yuemin Group from Southern Fujian and Southeastern Guangdong are separate languages. In the Gannan Group are multiple lects. One of them is Xingguo, spoken in Xingguo County in Ganzhuo Prefecture (evidence). The Gannan Group is extremely diverse compared to the Hakka of Guangdong and Fujian. Gannan lects differ even from village to village. With Gannan Hakka, we may be dealing with a situation of many different languages, as with Wu, Hui, Tuhua and Xiang. In fact, it quite possible that with Jiangxi Hakka, we may be dealing with every Hakka lect being a separate language, but that remains to be proven. In Fujian Province, there is the wildly diverse Tingzhou Hakka Group mentioned above. Even within this group, there are separate languages, including Yongding, Liancheng, Changting, Xinquan, Qingliu, Mingxi, Ninghua and Shanghang (evidence). Gucheng is probably also a member of Tingzhou. Sources say that each Hakka village in Fujian speaks its own lect, and that the lects are far enough apart to make communication from village to village very difficult. Therefore, we conclude that in addition to the above, we will add Wuping, Longyan, Zhaoan, Yunxiao, Miaoli (Four Counties), Dongshi (Dapu) and Xinzhu (Hailu) lects are Bangka Island Indonesian Hakka, spoken on Bangka Island in Indonesia, has diverged so radically with its tones that it is now a separate language. That is, speakers of other Indonesian Hakka lects say that they cannot understand Bangka Island speakers. It’s actually said to be a Hakka creole more than anything else. In Indonesia, two other Hakka languages are spoken, Kun Dian Indonesian Hakka, spoken in Borneo, and Belitung (Ngion Voi) Indonesian Hakka. Kun Dian Hakka is the largest Hakka group in Indonesia. Most live at Pontianak and Singkawang, where they speak two different mutually intelligible lects, but they have spread all over Indonesia. Kun Dian Hakka is a dialect of Meixian. Belitung Hakka is spoken mostly on Sumatra and Borneo, and is characterized by a soft way of speaking. Belitung Hakka and Bangka Hakka say they cannot understand Kun Dian Hakka, but Kun Dian speakers say they can understand the other two for the most part. East Timor Hakka is a dialect of Meixian. Jiexi is spoken in southeast Guangdong. Dayu is spoken in southern Guangxi. Liannan is spoken northwest Guangdong. Dongguan Qingxi is spoken in south-central Guangdong. Wengyuan is spoken in northern Guangdong. Ningdu is spoken in Jiangxi. Mengshan Xihe is spoken in eastern Guangxi. Hong Kong Hakka is spoken in Hong Kong. Zhaoan Xiuzhuan is spoken in southern Fujian. Shanghang Pengxin, Basel Mission and Shanghang Guanzhuang Shangzhuo are spoken in West Fujian (Branner 2000). Dayu, spoken in Jiangxi, is a separate language, not intelligible at least to Central, or Meixian, Hakka speakers. Meixian, Wuhua and Bao’an are members of the Yuetai Group of Hakka, which has 23 lects. Within Yuetai, Wuhua and Dabu are members of the Xinghua subgroup, which has 5 lects. Xinghua has 3.4 million speakers. Bao’an and Lufeng are in the Xinhui subgroup of Yuetai, which has 9 lects. Xinhui has 2.4 million speakers. Gaoxiong, Xinzhu, Dongshi and Miaoli are members of the Jiaying Group of Hakka, which has 7 lects. Tingzhou, Yongding, Liancheng, Changting, Xinquan, Shanghang, Basel Mission, Shanghang Pengxin, Wuping, Ninghua, Qingliu and Mingxi are all part of the diverse Tingzhou Group of Hakka. All told, Tingzhou has 12 lects, all of which are separate languages. Longchuan, Boluo and Heyuan are members of the Yuezhong Group of Hakka, which has 5 lects. Huizhou is in its own subgroup of Hakka. Xingguo and Ningdu are in the Ninglong Group of Hakka, which has 13 lects. This group is said to be very diverse, with lects differing from village to village. Liannan and Wengyuan are members of the Yuebei Group of Hakka, which has 11 lects and must surely be a separate language. Dayu is a member of the Yugui Group of Hakka, which has 43 lects. Ho Po Hak, Bangka Island, Nanjing Qujiang, Jiexi, Dayu, Hong Kong, Mengshan Xihe, Zhaoan Xiuzhuan, Nanjing Qujiang, Fuan, Fuding and Haifeng are unclassified. There are Putonghua, the main branch, Jinan (New Jinan), Beijing and Tianjin (evidence and here) are not intelligible with Putonghua; however, Tianjin may be intelligible with Beijing, on the other hand, Tianjin is looking more and more like a separate language. For one thing, Tianjin’s tones are quite different from Putonghua’s, and its tone sandhi is much more complicated and it is more closely related to lects 150-500 miles away, since originally Tianjin speakers came from Anhui (Lee 2002). Some reports say that Tianjin is intelligible with Putonghua, so intelligibility testing may be needed. Jinan is not intelligible with Putonghua, but may be learned over a period of weeks to possibly months, as it is close enough. Jinan is only not inherently intelligible with Putonghua. Complaints about unintelligible taxi drivers in Beijing are legendary. At the very least, competing views of the intelligibility of Beijinghua and Putonghua deserve investigation. On the other hand, Beijinghua may be intelligible with Hebei and Nanjing City. I think that Hebei is clearly a dialect of Beijing. The lect of Beijing’s hutongs and taxi drivers is legendary for being hard to understand. It would be interesting to see whether Tianjin and Hebei speakers can understand it. Tianjin may be a separate language, since it is not intelligible with Beijinghua. What probably happened was that Beijinghua and Putonghua have taken separate trajectories. This has also occurred in Italian, where, though Standard Italian was based on Tuscan, Standard Italian and Tuscan have taken separate trajectories since. It is said that if you see old Tuscan men on TV in Italy, a speaker of Standard Italian from southern Italy would need subtitles to understand them, but one from northern Italy would not. Others say that Putonghua was based on the language of the Beijing suburbs, not the city itself. For whatever reason, Beijinghua often seems to have less than 9 I would describe the real, pure, Putonghua as “CCTV speech”, the lect you hear on Chinese state television. Evidence that Beijinghua lacks full intelligibility with Putonghua is here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here. The question of whether or not Beijinghua is a separate language from Putonghua is sure to be highly controversial. Perhaps intelligibility testing could settle the question. Beijing is in a group all of its own called the Beijing Group. It contains 43 separate lects, and may contain more than one language. We should also note here that even Putonghua, the language that was meant to tie the nation together, seems to be evolving into regional languages. Guangdong Putonghua is not fully intelligible to speakers of the Putonghuas of Northern China and hence is probably a separate language. There are also varieties of Putonghua that are spoken in Singapore and Taiwan. Taiwanese Mandarin is about 80-8 Shanghai Putonghua is often not intelligible with Putonghua from other regions. It has heavy interference from Shanghaihua, which seriously effects the Putonghua accent. Even after four years of exposure to it, Standard Putonghua speakers often have problems with it. In addition, Jianghuai Mandarin Putonghua and Zhengcao Mandarin Putonghua Putonghua are not intelligible with Putonghua from other areas (Campbell April 2009). These varieties of Mandarin cause a particular interference with Putonghua Mandarin that results in a severe dialectal disturbance in their Putonghua. These Putonghuas are spoken in the regions native to the Jianghuai and Zhengcao dialects of Mandarin. Jianghuai is spoken in Anhui, Jiangsu, Hubei and to a much lesser extent Zhejiang Provinces. Zhengcao is spoken in Anhui, Henan, Shandong, Jiangsu, with one dialect is spoken in Hebei. Although it is different, Singapore Putonghua is still intelligible with Putonghua. Malay Mandarin is said to be quite different but nevertheless intelligible. Nevertheless Malay Mandarin speakers say they have to make speech adjustments with Chinese speakers otherwise their speech is poorly intelligible. This implies that Malay Mandarin is indeed a separate language. Yunnan Putonghua is intelligible with Putonghua from other regions (Campbell January 2009). Cangzhou, spoken in southeastern Hebei, is a separate language. It is only partly intelligible with Putonghua. Renqiu, Huanghua, Hejian, Cangxian, Qingxian, Xianxian, Dongguang, Haixing, Yanshan, Suning, Nanpi, Wuqiao and Mengcun, all spoken in Cangzhou prefecture, are all dialects of Cangzhou. Cangzhou shares some similarities with Tianjin, but it is only partly intelligible with it. Jinan is a member of the Liaotai Group of the larger Jilu Group, which has 37 lects. The Baotang Group of Jilu has 52 lects. Tianjin forms its own subgroup within Baotang. Cangzhou, Renqiu, Huanghua, Hejian, Cangxian, Qingxian, Xianxian, Dongguang, Haixing, Yanshan, Suning, Nanpi, Wuqiao, and Mengcun are members of the Huangle subgroup of Baotang, which has 25 lects. Jilu itself consists of 170 lects. Taiwanese Mandarin, while different from Putonghua, is intelligible with it. Singapore Mandarin has fewer differences then Taiwanese. Both are dialects of Putonghua. Luoyang, Kiafeng, Changyuan and Zhengzhou, all in Henan Province, are not intelligible with Putonghua. However, all four are mutually intelligible with each other, so they are dialects of a single language, Henan Mandarin. Xinyang, also spoken in Henan, is a separate language and cannot be understood by Luoyang speakers. Nanyang has high but not complete intelligibility with Luoyang. After a few weeks of close contact, Luoyang speakers can understand Nanyang, but initially, comprehension is poor due to different tones. Nanyang has 15 million speakers. Luoyang and Gushi are unintelligible with Putonghua. In addition, Gushi is different from Nanyang and may not be intelligible with it. Intelligibility between Xinyang, Gushi and Nanyang is not known. In general, intelligibility between many lects in Henan is not good, but after a week or two of close contact, they can start to understand each other. In Shaanxi, Xining, spoken in Xinghai, seems to be very different from other Shaanxi lects, and is probably a separate language altogether (evidence here and here) . In Gansu Province, Tongwei is not intelligible with Putonghua, and Gansu Mandarin seems to be very different from other forms of Mandarin. Gansu Mandarin appears to be a separate language. However, within Gansu, there are divergent lects, such as Sale, which are unintelligible with other Gansu lects. Bozhou (evidence), Yingshang (evidence), and Fuyang (evidence), spoken in Anhui, are at least unintelligible with Putonghua. Fuyang is poor intelligibility with Standard Putonghua due to its phonology. Therefore, it is a separate language. Xian, Huxian and Zhouzhi are members of the Guanzhong Group of Zhongyuan, which has 45 lects. Yanan, Hanzhong and Xining are members of the Qinlong Group of Zhongyuan, which has 67 lects. Luoyang is a member of the Luoxu Group of Zhongyuan, which has 28 lects. Kiafeng, Nanyang, Zengzhou, Changyuan, and Bozhou are members of the Zhengcao Group of Zhongyuan. The Zhengcao Group has 93 lects. Xinyang and Gushi are in the Xinbeng subgroup of Zhongyuan, which has 20 lects. Tongwei and Sale are part of the Longzhong Group of Zhongyuan, which has 25 lects. Yingshang is a member of the Cailu Group of Zhongyuan, which has 30 lects. The Mandarin spoken in Qinghai is very different from that spoken in Gansu, but it’s not known if it is a separate language. They are both usually two types of Zhongyuan Mandarin. Zhongyuan has a shocking 388 lects. Zhongyuan Mandarin is not fully intelligible with Putonghua. Zhongyuan Mandarin has 130 million speakers (Olson 1998). Yichang (evidence), Longchang (evidence), Chengdu, Chongqing (evidence), Guilin and Nanping (spoken near Mt. Wuyi evidence), Longcheng (evidence), Luocheng (evidence), Luzhou (evidence here and here), Lingui (evidence), Jiuzhaigou (evidence) Xindu, Wenshan (not intelligible with general Southwest Mandarin speech. Wenshan at least is not intelligible with other Southwestern varieties (Johnson 2010). Chengdu is part of a Sichuan Mandarin koine that is spoken in many of the larger cities in Yunnan. It includes Kunming, Bazhong, Dazhou, Neijiang, Zigong, Yibin, Luzhou, Chengdu, Mianyang, Deyang and Guiyang and is broadly intelligible (Xun 2009). Ziyang is intelligible with the koine but has a heavy accent (Xun 2009). Leshan is unintelligible with the koine, but it can be learned in a few weeks of exposure (Xun 2009). Dali is also not intelligible with Putonghua, but that is because Tibetan Mandarin has heavy Tibetan admixture. Chongqing speakers cannot understand Chengdu or Luzhou speakers. The many small lects around Mt. Emei are not intelligible with Chengdu, appear to be be very different, and may one or more separate languages. Wuhan is not intelligible to speakers of Southwest Mandarin from other provinces, for instance, it is only separate language . Lanping, may be a separate language. Kunming not intelligible with Tuoyuan., so Tuoyuan may be a separate language also. The language spoken in Kunming is part of the Sichuan Mandarin koine that includes Kunming, Bazhong, Dazhou, Neijiang, Zigong, Yibin, Luzhou, Chengdu, Mianyang, Deyang and Guiyang. Yingshan is a separate language based on a Menghai (evidence) may well be a completely separate language. The mutual intelligibility of Menghai, Guiyang and Kunming is not known. Guiyang is at least not intelligible with Putonghua. Guiyang is evolving into the Sichuan Mandarin koine, which is broadly intelligible with Kunming, Bazhong, Dazhou, Neijiang, Zigong, Yibin, Luzhou, Chengdu, Mianyang and Deyang. Shaoshan, apparently Mao Zedong’s lect, spoken in Hunan Province, is a separate language. It was said although Mao had a secretary who could understand him well, not many others could. Another language spoken in Hunan, in Zhangjiajie County, is called Zhangjiajie Maoxi. The Maoxi are a tribal group there that speak a strange variety of Mandarin. Tuoyuan in Hunan is not fully intelligible with other Southwest Mandarin lects, or at least not with Kunming. Junhua, or military language, is a language spoken by an ethnic group on Hainan in the city of Zonghe. It is said to be “Old Mandarin” and is probably not intelligible with other lects. It is a form of Southwest Mandarin known as the Junhua Group, which contains 4 lects . Guilin, Luocheng, Yangshuo, Liuzhou and Lingui are members of the Guiliu Group of Southwest Mandarin, which has 57 lects. Guiliu Southwest Mandarin is at least not comprehensible with Putonghua or Chengyu Southwest Mandarin. Leshan and Longchang are members of the Guanchi Group of Southwest Mandarin, which has 85 lects. Within Guanchi, Longchang is a member of the Renfu Group , which has 13 lects. Yichang, Chengdu, Chongqing and Yingshan are members of the Chengyu Group of Southwest Mandarin, which has 113 lects. Chengyu Southwest Mandarin is not comprehensible with Putonghua or Guiliu Southwest Mandarin. Menghai, Kunming, Wenshan and Guiyang are members of the Kungui Group of Southwest Mandarin. The Kungui Group itself has an incredible 95 lects. Lanping is in the Dianxi Group of Southwest Mandarin, which has 36 lects. Within Dianxi, it is a member of the Baolu subgroup, which has 21 lects. Taoyuan is in the Changhe Group of Southwest Mandarin, which has 14 lects. Wuhan is a member of Wutian Group of Southwest Mandarin, which has 9 lects. Dali is a member of the Dianxi Group of Mandarin, which has 36 members. Within Dianxi, Dali is a member of the Yaoli Group, which has 15 members. Nanping, Chuanlan, Shaoshan, Jiuzhaigou, Zhangjiajie Maoxi and Dahua are unclassified. Southwest Mandarin itself has a stunning 519 lects and is not fully intelligible with Putonghua. There are 240 million speakers of Southwest Mandarin (Olson 1998). Jianghuai Mandarin is a separate language. Yangzhou is considered to be a separate language by a evidence and here) is also a separate language – now mostly spoken in the suburbs, as city speech is not a separate language anymore. The city language is said to be intelligible with the general northeastern China lect spoken in Beijing and Hebei. So I will call Nanjing Suburbs a separate language. Lianyungang is a separate language, as is Yancheng and Huaian (Nantong, a very strange variety of Mandarin on the border of Wu and Mandarin that shares many features with Wu languages, is a separate language, as is its sister language, Tongdong. Jinsha is a dialect of Nantong. Rugao, next to Nantong, is also a separate language. Also within Jianghuai, Hefei is considered to be a separate language not intelligible with Putonghua. Anqing, in Anhui Province, is also not intelligible with Putonghua. In 1933, there were three different languages spoken in Tongcheng, Anhui – East Tongcheng, West Tongcheng and Tongcheng Wenli. Tongcheng Wenli was the classical-based language spoken by the educated elite of the city. Whether these three languages still exist is not known, but surely some of the speakers in 1933 are still alive. Chuzhou, spoken in Anhui, is not intelligible with Putonghua, although it is said to be close to Nanjing. Dangtu, also spoken in Anhui, is not intelligible with Putonghua. Dongtai is a separate language (evidence). The lects spoken in Dafeng, Taizhou, Xingua and Haian are said to be similar to Dongtai, so for the time being, we will list them as dialects of Dongtai. Jiujiang, spoken in Jiangxi Province, is a separate language, as is Xingzi, located close by. Intelligibility between Rudong, Anqing, Chuzhou, Dafeng, Taizhou, Xingua, Haian and Dangtu is not known. Yangzhou, Lianyungang, Yancheng, Huaian, Nanjing, Hefei, Anqing, the Tongchengs, Chuzhou, and Dangtu are in the Hongchao Group of Jianghuai, which has 82 lects. Dongtai, Dafeng, Taizhou, Haian, Xinghua, Jinsha, Nantong, Tongdong, Rudong, and Rugao are in the Tairu Group of Jianghuai. Tairu has 11 different lects. Jiujiang and probably Xingzi are members of the Huangxiao Group of Jianghuai, which has 20 lects. Jianghuai is composed of an incredible 120 lects and is not fully intelligible with Putonghua. Some suggest that Northeastern (Dongbei) Mandarin is a separate language. Within Northeast, Shenyang is a separate language Shenyang is a member of the Jishen Group of Northeastern Mandarin, which has 44 dialects. Within Jishen, Shenyang is a member of the Tongxi Group, which has 24 dialects. Harbin is a member of the Hafu Group of Northeastern Mandarin, which has 64 lects. Within Hafu, it is a member of the Zhaofu Group, which has 18 lects. Lanyin Mandarin in the far northwest is also a separate language (Campbell 2004). Though Lanyin is said to be intelligible with Putonghua, that does not appear to be the case. Minqin (evidence) and Lanzhou (evidence) in Gansu are not fully intelligible with Putonghua, nor is Yinchuan (evidence) in Ningxia. Intelligibility within Lanyin is not known, but Jiuquan at least appears to be a completely separate language inside Lanyin. Jiuquan is a member of the Hexi Group of Lanyin, which has 18 lects. Yinchuan is a member of the Yinwu Group of Lanyin, which has 12 lects. Lanzhou is a member of the Jincheng Group of Lanyin, which has 4 lects. Lanyin is composed of 57 separate lects. Lanyin Mandarin has 9 million speakers (Olson 1998). The Jiaoliao Mandarin spoken in Shandong contains lects such as Qingdao (evidence here and here) and Wehai (evidence) which are not fully intelligible with Putonghua. Dalian is quite different from Putonghua. Intelligibility between Qingdao, Wehai and Dalian is not known. Wehai and Dalian are members of the Denglian Group of Jiaoliao, which has 23 lects. Qingdao is a member of the Qingzhou Group of Jiaoliao, which has 16 lects. Jiaoliao is composed of 45 lects. Jiaoliao is not fully intelligible with Putonghua. Intelligibility inside of Jiaoliao is not known, but there may be multiple languages inside of it, because some Shandong Peninsula lects sound very strange even to speakers used to hearing Shandong Mandarin. Karamay is an unclassified Mandarin language spoken in Xinjaing. The Mandarin spoken around Tiantai in Zhejiang is not intelligible with Putonghua and may be a separate language. It is also unclassified. Mandarin has 873 million speakers. There are an incredible 1,526 lects of Mandarin. Although it is related to Mandarin, Jin is a completely separate language. Besides the Main Jin branch Baotou are apparently separate languages (evidence). As is possibly Taiyuan (evidence). Within Hohhot Jin, there are two separate languages. One is Hohhot Xincheng Jin, a combination of Hebei Jin, Northeastern Mandarin and the Manchu language. The other is Jiucheng Hohhot Jin, spoken by the Muslim Hui minority in the city. It is related to other forms of Jin in Shanxi Province. Yuci is a separate language from Taiyuan on a Fenyang, the language used in Chinese director Jia Zhanke’s movie Xiao Shan Going Home is not intelligible with Putonghua. Jingbian, in Shanxi, is a separate language. Yulin is also a separate language. Hohhot is a member of the Zhanghu Group of Jin, which has 29 lects. Baotou and Yulin are members of the Dabao Group of Jin, which has 29 lects. Taiyuan and Yuci are members of the Bingzhou Group of Jin, which has 16 lects. Fenyang is a member of the Luliang Group of Jin, which has 17 lects. Jingbian is a member of the Wutai Group of Jin, which has 30 lects. Jin is composed of 171 lects, and some of them are separate languages. Jin has 48 million speakers (Olson 1998). Besides Xiang Proper, assuming there even is such a thing, Shuangfeng and Changsha are separate languages, having only in the city itself. We do not know how many there are, but we know that they exist. For the moment, we shall just add one lect to Changsha, and divide it into Changsha A and Changsha B, but there may be more. Furthermore, there are changes every 10 miles or so. Intelligibility data is lacking. Mao Zedong spoke Xiangtan, a notoriously difficult Xiang language in Hunan, about which it is said, “No one can understand it.” Xiangtan itself is internally diverse, with differences between the dialect of the city and rural areas, but intelligibility data is lacking. Hengyang is apparently a Liuyang is a separate language, actually a macrolanguage, spoken in Liuyang county-level city in Changsha prefecture in Hunan. Liuyang is split into 5 divisions – Liuyang North, Liuyang South, Liuyang West, Liuyang East and Liuyang City. Liuyang South and Liuyang East are separate languages, mutually unintelligible with the others. Liuyang City has recently arisen as a sort of a Liuyang “Putonghua” that is understandable to speakers of all Liuyang lects. So within Liuyang, we have three dialects – Liuyang City, Liuyang North and Liuyang West. Outside of Liuyang Proper, there are also two separate languages – Liuyang South and Liuyang East. None of the three Liuyang languages is intelligible with Changsha. Even within this classification, each of the 5 Liuyang lects has multiple dialects. Each village is said to have its own lect in Liuyang. Hengshan (evidence) is a separate language with vast dialectal divergence divided by Mount Hengshan. There are two Xiang Hengshan lects on either side of the mountain – Yiyang Changyi and Yiyang Luoshao. Baojing at least is not intelligible with Putonghua, yet it is said to be intelligible with Chengdu Southwest Mandarin. Lingshuijiang, also spoken in Hunan by Ningxiang is said to be good sources, there is a tremendous amount of lect diversity in Western Hunan, and most of it probably involves Xiang lects, while most or all of these lects are not mutually intelligible. But until we get more data, we cannot carve any languages out of this mess yet. Shuangfeng and Lingshuijiang are a members of the Luoshao Group of Xiang, which has 21 lects. The Changshas, Hengyang, Xiangtan, Hengshan, Ningxiang and the Liuyangs are members of the Changyi Group of Xiang, which has 32 lects. Baojing, Jishou and Huayuan are members of the Jixu Group of Xiang, which has 8 lects. Xiang is composed of 74 lects. Many, or possibly all of them are separate languages. The various languages of Xiang have 50 million speakers. Wu is a major group of diverse Chinese languages that is often divided into Northern Wu and Southern Wu. Northern Wu and Southern Wu are definitely mutually unintelligible languages. Southern Wu has 4-5 unintelligible dialects across a 12 mile area. In Zhejiang, the mountains go all the way down to the sea, so there are few flat areas where language can spread out and become comprehensible. Suzhou, Shanghaiese, Wuxi (evidence), Huzhou (evidence), Changzhou (evidence), Xiaoshan (evidence), Songjiang (evidence), Jiaxing, Hangzhou (evidence), Kunshan (evidence), Ningbo and Yixing (evidence) are separate languages. Tongxiang also appears to be a separate language, as does Yuyao (evidence) and Zhoushan. Qidong, spoken in the city of Qidong, is a separate language. Lvsi, Qisi or Tongdong, spoken in the nearby town of Qisi, is a separate language from Qidong. Qidong is said to be very close to Chongming, so for the time being, we will list Chongming as a dialect of Qidong. Haimen also appears to be a dialect of Qidong. However, there are Zhangjiagang, Changsha and Kunshan may be intelligible with Suzhou, but data is lacking. Suzhou is only good intelligibility with Shanghaiese, but not vice versa. Reports vary on the intelligibility of Shanghaiese and Suzhou. Some say they understand each well, but that is probably not the case at first due to serious differences in tones. Intelligibility testing is needed. Pudong, the older form of the Shanghai language, is still spoken in the Pudong District of the city, but it is dying out. There is a question of whether or not it is mutually intelligible with Shanghaiese, but Shanghaiese speakers seem to feel it is not mutually intelligible (Gilliland 2006). Several lects are spoken in the suburbs of Shanghai. Reports vary, but Shanghai residents generally report that these lects are not mutually intelligible with Shanghaiese (Gilliland 2006). They are Baoshan, Fengxian, Nanhui, Jiading, Jinshan, Pudong (or Chuansha) and Qingpu. Hangzhou is reportedly much different from the lects of Shanghaiese, Ningbo, etc. to the northeast, and is not intelligible with Shanghaiese, nor with Suzhou. Hangzhou has 1.2 million speakers. Changzhou and Wuxi are not intelligible with Shanghaiese or Suzhou. Changzhou and Wuxi have high, but not full, intelligibility. Changzhou and Wuxi are part of a dialect chain in which eastern Changzhou speakers can communicate with western Wuxi speakers, but as one moves further west into Wuxi or east into Changzhou, intelligibility drops off. Like Czech and Slovak, it is best then to split Wuxi and Changzhou into separate languages. Changzhou itself has considerable dialectal divergence, though apparently all dialects are intelligible. Changzhou has 3 million speakers. Yixing, near Changzhou, is not intelligible with Shanghaiese. Jiangyin is spoken in Jiangyin city. It is related to Changzhou and has high intelligibility with Changzhou and Wuxi. All of the above are in the Taihu Group. Taizhou, centered around the city of Tuzhou in Eastern Zhejiang, is composed of 11 separate lects, all of which are separate languages, Huangyan (evidence), Jiaojiang, Linhai, Sanmen, Tiantai (evidence), Wenling (evidence), Ninghai (evidence), Xianju, Leqing (evidence), Yubei and Yuhuan (evidence). (Evidence for all). A single subgroup of Wuzhou, Yiwu – contains 18 separate languages, all mutually unintelligible. We will call them Yiwu A, Yiwu B, Yiwu C, Yiwu D, Yiwu E, Yiwu F, Yiwu G, Yiwu H, Yiwu I, Yiwu J, Yiwu K, Yiwu L, Yiwu M, Yiwu N, Yiwu O, Yiwu P, Yiwu Q and Yiwu R for the time being. Pucheng is a Wenzhou (evidence) is a separate language. Ouhai, Yongjia and Ruian appear to be dialects of Wenzhou, but all of them are probably separate languages, since if you go 5 miles in any direction in Wenzhou, there’s a new dialect, and it’s hard to understand people. Wenzhou is Wencheng (evidence) appears to be a separate language. Wenxi is a separate language within Oujiang, not intelligible with Wenzhou. It is spoken in one town in Qingtian County. Jinxiang also has its own Wu lect, with Mandarin influences. This is a Taihu (Northern Wu) outlier. In addition, in Taishun County, there is also an aberrant Wu lect spoken in the town of Luoyang, influenced by both Manjiang and Oujiang Wu. There is another Wu lect similar to Manjiang Eastern Min spoken in the town of Hedi in Qingyuan County in Lishui. Manhua is quite different. There is a controversy over whether or not Manhua is Macro-Min or Macro-Wu. It is probably Macro-Wu based on phonology and it also shares some similar Min-like traits with other Wu lects such as those in the Chuqu group. Within Manhua, there is a northern group spoken in the town of Yishan and a southern group spoken in the towns of Qianku and Jinxiang. Qianku is the standard for Manhua. The northern/southern divide may impede intelligibility, but we have no information yet. Wuhu is a separate language, unintelligible with Shanghaihua. Nanjing Wu is a separate language Jiaxing, Shanghaiese, Suzhou, Wuxi, Songjiang, Tongxiang, Qidong, Lvsi, Yunhe and Kunshan are all in the Hujia Group of Taihu. The Hujia Group contains 32 lects. Changzhou, Yixing, Jiangyin and Haimen are in the Piling Group of Taihu. Piling has 12 lects. Piling has 8 million speakers. Wenzhou, Ouhai, Yongjia, Ruian and Wencheng are in the Oujiang Group of Taihu, which also contains 12 lects. Hangzhou has its own group, the Hangzhou Group of Taihu. Shaoxing, Fuyang, Xiaoshan, Linan, Yuyao and Zhuji are in the Linshao Group of Taihu which also contains 12 lects. Fenghua and Zhoushan are in the Yongjiang Group of Taihu. The Yongjiang Group contains 11 lects and has 4 million speakers. Changxing is in the Taioxi Group of Taihu, which has 5 lects. The Taihu Group is composed of 75 separate lects, many or all of which are separate languages. Taihu has 47 million speakers. Lishui, Qingyuan, Jingning, Jinyun and Taishun are in the Chuzhou group of Chuqu, which contains 9 lects. Chuzhou has 1.5 million speakers. Chuqu itself contains 35 separate lects. Pucheng, Shangrao County, Shangrao City, Jiangshan, Songyang, Guangfeng, Longquan, Kaihua, Changshan, Suichang, Longyou, Yushan and Quzhou are members of the Longqu Group of Chuqu, which has 14 lects and 5 million speakers (Olson 1998). The Yiwu languages, Dongyang, Jinhua, Jinhua Xiaohuang, Lanxi, Tangxi, Wuyi, Pan’an, Pujiang and Yongkang are all members of the Wuzhou Group, which contains 27 separate languages. Wuzhou has 4 million speakers. Nanjing Wu is unclassified. The various Wu languages have 85 million speakers. Within Hui, there are at least six separate languages (Hirata 1998). Actually, there are many more. Xidi, spoken in a village at the foot of Huangshan Mountain, is a separate language. Xidi is unintelligible even to villages a few miles away. Tunxi, Wuyuan and Xiuning are separate languages. The first two are spoken in Anhui, but Xiuning is spoken in Jiangxi Province. Within the Jingzhan Group of Hui, JingdeNingguo, Qimen, Chilingkou, (spoken in Chiling, Qimen County), Meixi Xiang, and Shitai are separate languages. Within Qimen County itself, Jixi, Dexing and Dongzhi are separate languages, the first spoken in Jiangxi and the second spoken in Anhui. In the Yanzhou Group of Hui, Jiande and which has 6 lects. Meixi, the Qimens, Chilingkou, Shitai, Ningguo and Jingde are members of the Jingzhan Group of Hui. Jingzhan has 12 lects, all of which are separate languages. Jixi, Hongmen and the Shexians are members of the Jishe Group of Hui. The Jishe Group has 6 lects . Dexing and Dongzhi are members of the Qide Group of Hui. The Qide Group has 5 lects. Xidi is unclassified. The various Hui languages have 3.2 million speakers . There are 34 different Hui lects, at least 24 of which are separate languages. There is a possibility that all Hui lects are separate languages, but that remains to be proven. Cantonese is a major language spoken in the south of China. They are said to be a mix between the Yue people and the Han. They have great pride in their speech which appears to be closer to ancient Chinese than Mandarin is. When Sun Yat-Sen was President of Republican China, a vote was held on which language to base Standard Chinese on. Cantonese only lost by one vote in favor of Mandarin. Some Cantonese activists denounce Mandarin as a pidgin language spoken Manchu and Mongol invaders glommed onto the Chinese of the people they conquered. Attempts to determine intelligibility through the use of complex lexical, tonal, grammatical and phonological formulae produce results that are excessively high in terms of percentage of intelligibility. A better method is presented in Szeto 2000, in which sentences in other lects are played to speakers of Lect A, and speakers of Lect A are asked to give the basic meaning of the sentences played to them. A sentence is recorded as correct if the basic meaning was ascertained. By this better method, Standard Cantonese has only 31. In contrast, the more complex method not relying on actual informants gives false positives. By this method, Cantonese has 54. Cantonese is traditionally said to have nine tones, but phonemically, there are only six tones, since the last three are just three of the first six with a voiceless stop consonant on the end. These are often called entering tones in traditional Chinese scholarship. Entering tones have disappeared from most Mandarin lects, probably about 800 years ago due to the influence of invading Mongols speaking Turkic languages, but are still present in Cantonese, Hakka and Min. The original entering tones of Middle Chinese have merged into one or the other or Mandarin’s four tones. Traditional Chinese tones or contour tones end in a vowel or a nasal. However, in Cantonese, the entering tone has retained its original short and sharp character from Middle Chinese, so in a sense, it has a different sound quality. Besides Standard Cantonese (the Guangzhou lect in the Yuehai Group), there is Siyi, or Sze Yup, a separate language. Siyi has 8 dialects, however, there are reports that there are intelligibility problems within the Siyi lects. In particular, Enping speakers cannot understand some other dialects. Therefore, Enping is a separate language. Kaiping, or Chikan, is not fully intelligible with Enping until they get used to each others’ sounds. Kaiping is so different from Taishan that it is hard to imagine how they can communicate well, though there is partial intelligibility. In Xinhui, there is a dialect called Hetang that is very divergent and has many strange features not found in other dialects. Doubtless it is less than fully intelligible with other Siyi lects. Actually, there seems to be many more than 8 dialects of Siyi. In Taishan County alone, there are 20 townships there may be a different lect in each one. For certain, there are at least three distinct dialects of Taishan, Taishan A, Taishan B and Taishan C. Even the lects in Taishan County can be quite different. However, all lects in Taishan County appear to be mutually intelligible. Xinhui is somewhat different from Taishan, but appears to be intelligible. Heshan is said to be intelligible with Xinhui and Taishan. Nevertheless, there are calls from Taishan speakers to split their lect off from the rest of Siyi. If Taishanese is unintelligible with the rest of Siyi, this would make sense, but that does not appear to be the case. 150 years ago, there was less, but still significant, difference between Siyi and Sanyi (Standard Cantonese), but Siyi was disparaged as a “hill dialect” of poor farmers, while Sanyi was elevated as the prestige lect of the cultured and cosmopolitan. This is why Sanyi became the Standard Cantonese lect. The Siyi incorporated this negative view into their self-image even to the point where they held overseas meetings meeting in Sanyi speech. There are 3.6 million speakers of Siyi. Vietnamese Cantonese is quite different from Standard Cantonese, but it is nevertheless intelligible with it. Malay Cantonese is also quite different from Standard Cantonese. Intelligibility data between Malay Cantonese and Standard Cantonese is not known. Both are dialects of Cantonese. Hong Kong is a dialect of Guangzhou. Foshan and Nanhai are Shunde and Zhongshan are intelligible with Standard Cantonese, but others disagree. This requires further study, as they are obviously close. However, both are said to at the same time be quite different from Standard Cantonese. Even within Yuehai, Panyu is said to be a separate language (Chan 1981). Namlong, a poorly understood lect from the Pearl River area, is also a separate language, or at least it was one in 1949. Whether it still exists is not certain, but speakers must still be alive. Yuehai itself has 31 separate lects. Danija, the Cantonese lect of the Tanka fisherpeople who live on boats off the coast of Guangdong, Guangxi and Hainan, may well be a Gashiau, is spoken by a group of fisherpeople related to the Danija. This language is related to Danija but apparently not intelligible with it. Maihua, a Cantonese lect spoken on Hainan, may well be a Nanning is a dialect of Cantonese, easily understandable by a Standard Cantonese speaker. However, Lizhou is a separate language, with difficult intelligibility with Standard Cantonese. Dongguan and Zhanjiang (evidence), are separate languages. Shiqi, spoken in Guangxi, is a separate language. Speakers of Standard Cantonese Huazhou is a very divergent Cantonese lect that is very hard even for other Cantonese speakers to understand. It is surely a separate language (evidence here and here). Maoming is an extremely diverse Cantonese lect that must also be a separate language. Beihai and Hepu are reported to be very different, but intelligibility data is not known, nor is it known to what extent these two lects differ from other Cantonese. But the Quinlian Group of which they are members must surely be a separate language. One division holds that the Standard Cantonese (Guangzhou), Siyi, Zhongshan, Gaoyang and Guangfu groups are mutually unintelligible groups. The Goulou Group of Cantonese appears to be a Taishanese (includes Taishan A, Taishan B and Taishan C), along with Heshan, Jiangmen, Siqian, Doumen, Xinhui, Enping and Kaiping. Nanning is in the Yongxun Group of Cantonese, which has 12 lects. Zhanjiang and Maoming are members of the Gaoyang Group of Cantonese, which has 10 lects. Gaoyang has 5.4 million speakers. Dongguan, Shunde, Foshan, Zhongshan, Nanhai, Panyu and Hong Kong are members of the Guangfu Group of Cantonese, which has 31 lects. Guangfu has 13 million speakers. Shiqi is a member of the Zhongshan Group of Cantonese , which contains at least 3 lects. Huazhou is a member of the Wuhua Group of Cantonese, which has 2 lects. Beihai and Hepu are members of the Quinlian Group of Cantonese, which has 6 lects. Namlong is unclassified. There are 100 lects of Cantonese, and Cantonese has 64 million speakers. Pinghua, now recognized as a major split off from Cantonese, is composed of Guinan and Guibei, which are separate languages. The Guibei lects are 22 lects, and Guibei has 8 lects . There is one Pinghua lect that is unclassified. Pinghua has 31 separate lects. Ping has 26 separate lects. In addition to Tuhua Proper, the best known of the Tuhua lects is Shaozhou, referred to here as Shaozhou Proper. Shaozhou is said to be very different from other Chinese lects. Shaozhou itself consists of many different lects which are often strikingly different from the others. Some say that Shaozhou is a branch of Min Nan, while others say it is related to Hakka. In Lechang prefecture, there are five separate languages, Lechang Tuhua 1, Lechang Tuhua 2, Lechang Tuhua 3, Lechang Tuhua 4 and Lechang Tuhua 5, which are not fully intelligible with each other. Additionally, many Tuhua lects are starting to splinter recently as influences from Hakka, Cantonese and Southwest Mandarin begin to affect the younger speakers such that the language of the youngest speakers is quite a bit different from the language of the older speakers. One of the Shaozhou Tuhua lects, Xianghua, said to be an unclassified Chinese lect, is actually a branch of Tuhua that contains 6 lects of its own. Xianghua is a Jiahe Tuhua is a completely separate language, Jiangyong Tuhua is divided into two mutually unintelligible languagesNorth Jiangyong Tuhua and South Jiangyong Tuhua (Leming 2004). It is spoken in the basis for the famous nishu, “women’s script”, a secret language of women, originating from the Shangjiangxu (Xiao River) region of northeastern Jiangyong County in Hunan Province, of which much has been written lately. Also in Hunan, in Guiyang County, another Tuhua language is spoken – Guiyang Tuhua. This is apparently a separate language, and the northern and southern variants are so Danzou is a separate language. Danzou is spoken in the northwest of Hainan, and Hainanese speakers cannot understand it. It is either related to the language spoken by the Lingao or is the same language. Yet the Danzou people speak 9 different lects, including lects described as Hakka, others described as Cantonese and others described as Mandarin. Maojiahua is a form of Chinese spoken by 20,000 Hmong in southwest of Hunan, in the northeast of Guangxi and in some areas of Hubei. It is a separate language already recognized by Ethnologue, but is incorrectly lumped in with the Hmong languages by them. Linghua is an unclassified Chinese lect spoken in Yongzhou in Hunan. Linghua is a separate language. It is apparently the same as the Yongzhou Tuhua dialect. However, the Yongzhou Tuhua language has Kim Mun, incorrectly classed as an unclassified Chinese lect, is actually one of the Mien languages. It is not a Sinitic language. Wutun, or Wutunhua, is a Chinese-Mongolian-Tibetan mixed language spoken by 2,000 Tu in Qinghai Province. Whether it is a form of Chinese is controversial. Until it is proven to be Sinitic, we will not list it here.

References

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