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Comment by sanxiyn | Hacker News Reader

China and Taiwan use the same language so China is still very attractive for oversea expansion for Taiwanese companies.

Ukraine and Russia also mostly speak the same language. Doesn’t mean much if the great leader decides to make a move, actually it is another reason to make a move.

About 1/3 of Ukrainians know Russian.

Ukrainian and Russian are mutually intelligible languages.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutual_intelligibility#Slavic

Whereas different dialects of Mandarin may not be mutually intelligible

> Many varieties of Mandarin, such as those of the Southwest (including Sichuanese) and the Lower Yangtze, are not mutually intelligible with the standard language

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

The Mandarin used in Taiwan and the Mandarin used in China are both standard Chinese and mutually intelligible.

IIRC Cantonese and Mandarin are the two big language groups that are not mutually intelligible.

But Cantonese isn’t spoken in Taiwan except a handful of Hong Kong immigrants. What’s your point?

But they do speak Taiwanese in Taiwan which you wouldn’t understand if you only spoke mandarin.

> they do speak Taiwanese

Do you mean Hakka and/or Hokkien?

Hokkien which is primarily spoken across the strait in Fujian.

Hakka is primarily spoken in Guangdong, Fujian, and Jiangxi.

Xi himself was the Party head of Fujian for most of his career and Xi's father was the Party head of Guangdong when he was rehabilitated in the Deng Xiaoping era.

This is why most manufacturing in China ended up coastal Southern China - most Chinese Taiwanese trace their heritage to there barely 2-5 generations ago at most.

The younger generation (post-1989) in Taiwan speaks and understands Mandarin.

This whole thread has a bunch of answers which are confusing the topic.

The issue is why would Taiwanese businesses care about the China market? Aside from the fact that the China market is massive, there is a simple answer: Taiwan and China have the same business language, and that is Standard Chinese aka Mandarin.

Yes, lots of Taiwanese people also speak other Sinitic languages that are not Mandarin, and are not mutually intelligible with it. And lots of Chinese people also speak other Sinitic languages that are not Mandarin and are not mutually intelligible with it. And even some variants of Mandarin itself are not mutually intelligible. But - outside of Cantonese in HK and Macau - none of those languages are used as the primary business language anywhere in either China or Taiwan, so it's an interesting side note but doesn't change the point.

All that said, aside from the Chinese market being massive, and the common language being convenient, there is a much bigger elephant in the room that explains why Taiwanese companies might not have a fun time doing business in China: politics.

It doesn't matter how much money Taiwanese companies might want to make if the CCP can threaten to turn off the spigot any time they want to influence Taiwanese politics, which unfortunately nowadays appears to be all the time. Sure, it's leaving a lot of money on the table, but doing business with Japan or the US or other countries that aren't run as a single party dictatorship whose leadership has a stated platform of dismantling your own government might be a less risky option.

> none of those languages are used as the primary business language anywhere in either China or Taiwan

我同意。

I was just trying to dig into what OP meant by "Taiwanese" as a language.

It's always going to be Mandarin for anything commercial.

That said, you can't deny the benefit the Hakka and Hokkien diaspora provided to China's manufacturing capacity - it was diaspora Chinese from Thailand (CP Group was the first foreign private company to incorporate in China), Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, and Taiwan had on PRC's catchup.

In Taiwan it’s called Taiwanese. It’s similar to Hokkien which is why it’s often referred to as Taiwanese Hokkien. But it’s not 1:1. And people outside of Taipei will assume you speak it and understand it.

> Xi himself was the Party head of Fujian for most of his career and Xi's father was the Party head of Guangdong when he was rehabilitated in the Deng Xiaoping era.

This is because the CCP does not trust southerners (people from Fujian/guangdong especially) and will send northerners in to manage/rule those provinces. China is still afraid of Fujian revolting and joining Taiwan.

Yea no.

If that was the case, then Hakka wouldn't be so overrepresented within the CCP.

Deng Xiaoping himself was Hakka, as were most of the the core CCP leadership until recently [0]

Hakka is the primary language spoken in TW after Mandarin btw.

If you're a fellow Bay Area native, maybe visit Fremont or Richmond District in SF sometime and actually learn about us Asian subcommunities.

[0] - https://www.jstor.org/stable/654189

Deng Xiaoping was born/raised in sichuan, only his ancestors were kejia. I’m sure if you look at anyone in china’s family tree long enough, you’ll find a lot of mixing, which is about as weird as a German having ancestry from Italy or France. It’s even weirder, as the paternal side was originally from Sichuan moving to GD during Ming and back to Sichuan during Qing.

> Deng Xiaoping himself was Hakka, as were most of the the core CCP leadership until recently [0]

I’m going to not believe your source given how much wrong you’ve gotten already. But even if true, Chinese identity politics are more attuned to region than ethnicity. Southerners also were trusted because the KMT was heavily southern biased while the communists were the opposite. This is why the capital is in BJ and not NJ.

> Hakka is the primary language spoken in TW after Mandarin btw.

No no no. It is definitely Hokkien, a dialect of Min, which is the base dialect for Fujian.

> If you're a fellow Bay Area native, maybe visit Fremont or Richmond District in SF sometime and actually learn about us Asian subcommunities

Is that some kind of Asian American thing? You can learn plenty about Chinese ethnicities in China, why bother doing it in the states? Southern ethnicities are also over represented in overseas Chinese communities given the propensity of people from GD or FJ to go abroad, and then cultures kind of diverge a bit (another reason the CCP doesn’t trust GD/FJ).

> Deng Xiaoping was born/raised in sichuan

Guang'an, the town he was born, was and is Hakka speaking, after the Hakka-Punti wars were lost by the Hakka.

> Chinese identity politics are more attuned to region than ethnicity

I can agree with that with the post 1970 generation. Deng Xiaoping and his ilk were from before that era, during the Long March.

> It is definitely Hokkien

Yes, Hokkien is prominent in TW but so is Hakka. Around 10% Hakka speaking based on the last census.

> Is that some kind of Asian American thing

Taiwanese (and HK) American specifically. Iykyk I guess. Hence why I equally smell shit from your response.

My perspective is primarily mainland where I lived for 9 years, and primarily interacting with mainlander coworkers (eg from Fujian, talking politics was ok).

you're correct. My taiwan colleagues visit HK, they request "no cantonese please"

Outside of Taipei, a lot of people speak Taiwanese. (While they also speak mandarin if you don’t know Taiwanese you can only understand a bit of what people say)

Nearly every Ukrainian understands Russian, but many Russians would only understand the gist of what Ukrainians are saying, because the languages only share about 60% of their vocabulary.

A lot of common, everyday words differ in Ukrainian and or arise from different roots (e.g Polish).

Oh no, only 60%? Surely that's plenty for a conversation, no?

Now I wonder if this number, provided it is a real one, went up or down during the last 30 years. I would bet on lower but it's only a gut feeling.

> Oh no, only 60%? Surely that's plenty for a conversation, no?

It's plenty for communication, not plenty for a conversation.

(It's also a mirror for colonialism, by the way, where the occupied speak the language of the occupier, but the occupiers can't be arsed to learn the language of the occupied.)

It's not even necessarily enough for communication. With the Pareto curve on word commonality it's really quick to get high percentages of vocabulary. But it's the words you don't know on a sentence that are usually the important ones.

You are right. 60% is nothing, especially given the political situation

can't even talk about chips and language without being attacked by the crew

• https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39295035

• https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39294267

• https://german.stackexchange.com/a/53783

It's a linguistic topic. Good luck trying to talk with Germans as an English speaker.

Ukrainian shares 84% of vocabulary with Belarusian, 70% with Polish, 66% with Slovak.

English and German share 60% of vocabulary.

Except English, German, and Dutch are not mutually intelligible.

Although as an English-speaking native who has studied German, Dutch often maddeningly looks like it should make sense, but it doesn't.

> Whereas different dialects of Mandarin may not be mutually intelligible

Except for some slang words which nobody would use in business anyway, Sichuanese is largely intelligible to native Mandarin Chinese speakers if spoken slowly and repeated a couple times. People from Sichuan can also speak standard Mandarin. The written language is identical.

As for Taiwan and China it is even less an issue. The very few words that are different may be the source for some humor sometimes but that's it. It's kind of like how British people say "lift" and Americans say "elevator". If you're not brain-dead you'll figure it out pretty quickly and maybe crack a joke or two about it. When you see a sign that says "lift" you don't panic and say that it's not intelligible, you can make some sense of the word.

It's a non-issue in practical terms.

I was born in Kiev and spoke Russian at home. Can barely understand Ukrainian unless it's spoken slowly by a native Russian speaker. I can get the gist of what Zelensky is saying in an interview but can pretty much never understand native Ukrainian speakers. I think there's also a gradient of dialects and accents West to East, so I'm sure you can find some Ukrainian villager I would understand better but in general they're not mutually intelligible (to me).

Wow. Did you attend Russian language-only schools when growing up? Is this common in your generation?

Moved to the US as a kid (by way of Estonia and then Italy), went to a year of Russian language "transitional" school here. So don't have any insight on the Ukrainian school experience.

How close is mandarin to Cantonese?

About as close as English and Swedish.

I have warm memories as a kid going with my Mom to the daily market, and watching people communicating by furiously writing words in their hands, in addition to the simplified tradespeak between the language groups. It's an interesting thing, having both a shared writing system and mutually unintelligible spoken language!

Maybe it should be more recognized that what the quote "a language is a dialect with an army" means is that borders of nations don't coincide with borders for languages, or put more simply, it has such two meanings that, there are languages that are realistically just weird accents on one another, and one "language" that are realistically two or more.

I have some confidence with dialects of my primary language(not Chinese) within ~150mi of where I am; beyond that, mutual intelligibility with local dialects isn't guaranteed. Yet, those dialects are rarely considered(including by speakers) to be separate from the standard. They're just local accents. That aren't even intelligible to city dwellers.

To me, cantonese may as well be a separate language from Beijing Mandarin.

I mean it is?

"Cantonese (traditional Chinese: 廣東話; simplified Chinese: 广东话; Jyutping: Gwong2 dung1 waa2; Cantonese Yale: Gwóngdùng wá) is a language within the Chinese (Sinitic) branch of the Sino-Tibetan languages"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cantonese

I simply left room for error.

Around 1/3 are native speakers but the number of know Russian is significantly higher as it’s the formal business language the way English is in a lot of the world. Hard to find exact numbers, but according to Wikipedia a 2008 gallop poll had 80% of Ukrainians claim to prefer Russian as the language of business.

Ahh TIL! Thanks.

Well, this is pretty much dated. You would be surprised to learn how the tables started to turn starting from 2014 and finished turning today.

Is this an anecdote of your experience or?

11 years does not seem like long enough time for a language to first start declining and then end as being the primary formal language.

It’s not “declining” but rather being actively replaced and rejected by the population. When your nation suffers brutal aggression perpetrated by the neighbor - it makes it no longer fashionable to speak the language of the aggressor. The fact that Russia also denies that Ukraine and Ukrainians are even a real nation and culture distinct from Russia fuels the sentiment too.

Organically, no, 11 years is not long enough.

But you may recall that in 2014, a few political directives regarding culture and language use have been made by the Rada, and then a few political decisions were made in the Kremlin, and then everything turned to shit (To put it simply).

It's easy to do a lot in 11 years when you start banning foreign-language media, stop using a language for government services, stop teaching it, etc, etc.

Still, that 80% hasn’t died off so those people still know the language

February 2014 Moscow occupied Crimea. 12.04.2014 Moscow occupied Slovyansk.

Name "few political directives" in 2014 before Moscow invasion. Ukraine actions are direct response to Moscow aggression. People don't want to be occupied by Moscow like Donetsk, Luhansk. Life is awful there, million fled from occupation. That's why changes were supported by majority of Ukrainians.

Still occupants language was learned in schools, media could use it though eventually quotas set to use Ukrainian too. And officials continued using it.

Ukraine policies fought discrimination of Ukrainian in Ukraine. Discrimination that stems from centuries of occupation by Moscow. In 2016 state stated at least 60% TV should be on Ukrainian. Only in 2017 education in schools was switched from occupants language to Ukrainian. Since 2019 Ukrainian should be used in services unless requested otherwise by customer. People switch to Ukrainian voluntarily, state provides means.

Ukraine is a democratic state, check out Euromaidan. Stop pretending like changes is anything but result of Moscow agression.

There was a bit of a coup against one of the branches of government on Feb 2014, it's odd that it's missing from your timeline, given that it kind of precipitated everything else that followed.

But perhaps that's how you think democracies work - when you don't like the government, you bring your friends to wear funny hats and storm the capitol, and get a new one... Should Americans do that the next time an unpopular politician ends up heading the executive? It certainly speeds up the transfer of power, even if it drops the 'peaceful' aspect of it...

Euromaidan was response to violent dispersal of protesters. Government escalated, eventually killed hundred of citizens. Do you claim Americans would do nothing if killed in hundreds? No persecution, approved by "unpopular politician", passed laws on dictatorship (16.01.2014).

Moscow invaded Ukraine (Crimea) 20.02.2014. Yanukovych fled 21.02.2014. Occupation does not just "happen", it was staged. Ukrainians felt that as betrayal, seen as occupants population cheared in support. That hurts, breaks cultural ties. In a few months Moscow invaded east of Ukraine while spreading lies. Lies obvious for Ukraine citizens, believed by occupants population.

> Do you claim Americans would do nothing if killed in hundreds?

They'd blame the people who died. At least, that's how Kent State went down (And the students there weren't even trying to overthrow the government).

There's a process for peaceful transfer of power. Some countries have good processes for this, some have bad ones, some are in between. As far as I'm aware, though, no country has a process of 'Enough people storm the capitol' for determining when that happens.

When you don't follow the permitted process, this compromises a democracy's legitimacy. Now, obviously the coup was only carried out against the executive, not the legislature, so the resulting government was partially legitimate - at least, the legislature remained representative of the public (And the issue was resolved in the subsequent election).

But that aside, just because the coup only finished on the 21st, and the invasion happened on the 20th, doesn't mean that the weeks of the revolution leading up to it weren't intimately related to the start of the war.

Laws on dictatorship passed 16.01.2014, copied from Belarus, Russian Federation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-protest_laws_in_Ukraine

Peaceful transfer of power is not possible in Belarus or Russian Federation. Ukrainians have no guns, democracy is not stable, judiciary and special forces are not independent, media influenced by state and oligarchs. Euromaidan saved Ukraine from Belarus fate.

Moscow invasion staged not in preceding weeks but in years. Putin revealed intentions in 2007, occupied Georgia in 2008.

"Name "few political directives" in 2014 before Moscow invasion."

"On February 23, 2014, the second day after the flight of Viktor Yanukovich, while in a parliamentary session, a deputy from the Batkivshchyna party, Vyacheslav Kyrylenko, moved to include in the agenda a bill to repeal the 2012 law "On the principles of the state language policy". <...> The bill would have made Ukrainian the sole state language at all levels. <...> However, the move to repeal the 2012 law "On the principles of the state language policy" provoked negative reactions in Crimea and in some regions of Southern and Eastern Ukraine. It became one of the topics of the protests against the new government approved by the parliament after the flight of Viktor Yanukovich." [0]

And more generally: Ukrainization Post-1991: Independent Ukraine. [1]

"check out Euromaidan."

“The mob, whatever it is, has no legitimacy before the sovereign people expressing themselves through its elected representatives.” [2]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_policy_in_Ukraine#Att...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukrainization#Post-1991:_indep...

[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/22/world/europe/macron-pensi...

Something about having your country invaded and missiles fired at your cities tends to change perceptions of the culture initiating said aggression.

But they do not make you forget a language is the point.

I thought we were talking about the 80% who "preferred" it as a language of business. Surely that... has dropped like a stone.

That and the way people respond to polls now is gonna change.

In any case I think going forward you'll see English's fortunes rise in Ukraine, and probably Polish as well.

The parent comment of this thread by @Waterluvian is whether they understand the Russian language.

not anecdotal, I speak both languages. The trend now is to reject everything russian even though you do understand it, no way around this. And yes, the “kitchen language” for many ukrainians, especially east part, remained russian. However, on public or outside ppl try their best to speak Ukrainian. The younger generation will be more like the one in the baltic counties or Georgia. Understand russian but rather speak their native language.

anecdotal means your personal experience.

Based on the recent (September 2023) social study:

Which is your native language? 2012: 57% Ukrainian, 42% Russian; 2023: 82% Ukrainian, 16% Russian

Which language do you speak at home? 2023: 63% Ukrainian, 27% mixed, 7% Russian

Coincides with my andecotal experience. Source: https://ratinggroup.ua/en/research/ukraine/soc_olog_chne_dos...

I’m sure it is, but terrible relations doesn’t make people forget a language and we’re only speaking to the number who know the language. I’ve no doubt a generation from now that number will be a lot lower if things continue on this path.

In reality it’s certainly over 90% (probably closer to 99%)

The only Ukrainians I've that that didn't speak Russian are 2nd gen immigrants outside of Ukraine. Often hilarious because their parents often barely speak Ukrainian themselves.

"83% of Ukrainians responding to a 2008 Gallup poll preferred to use Russian instead of Ukrainian to take the survey." [0]

[0] https://web.archive.org/web/20100518073110/http://www.gallup...

Most of their construction material comes from China and most of Taiwanese exports go to China. Taiwan will never compete on the global market for most of its products. This current policy is economic suicide, and anyone not blinded by ideology knows it.

Not a single US president pushed for a FTA with Taiwan. So far every single one has opposed it, while on the back bullying Taiwan to open their markets to dump cheap American pork into it, completely against the will of the Taiwanese people by the way.

The current result is that Taiwanese wages have stagnated for decades and as a result save for a select few that go to Japan and the US, a lot of other people look for opportunities in Mainland China.

What made Taiwan so successful in the past is what makes Dubai and Singapore so successful now. Open trade with everyone, and easy business opportunities. Both things that it no longer engages in.

BTW the big joke nobody really seems to know is that the pro independence party has never submitted a bid for independence, while the pro China party has.

Why people keep believing that "open trade" solves everything and makes "easy business opportunities"?

You can have open trade but also subsidy a portion of your economy to make that "open trade" not so open anymore. I'm not against it, just saying that a single specific decision makes Dubai and Singapore success is a reductionism that helps in nothing the discussion. Let take OPEC in matters, would you say they follow a "free trade" ideology?

Many wrong things with comments. Your pro-china KMT bias is showing

> Taiwan will never compete on the global market for most of its products.

the aggregate brand value of Taiwan's 25 largest brands totaled US$13.84 billion in 2023, a 5 percent rise from 2022 and marking the fourth consecutive year of the value surpassing the US$10 billion mark. https://focustaiwan.tw/business/202312020012

> The current result is that Taiwanese wages have stagnated for decades

The average annual salary for full-time employees in Taiwan reached an eight-year high of NT$694,000 (US$22,242) this year (2023). https://focustaiwan.tw/business/202311290017

Taiwan to surpass Japan in GDP per capita this year (2023): JCER https://asia.nikkei.com/Economy/Taiwan-to-surpass-Japan-in-G...

> The average annual salary for full-time employees in Taiwan reached an eight-year high of NT$694,000 (US$22,242) this year (2023).

I am the complete opposite of a CCP shill, but that is by definition stagnation.

The 2015-16 recession was brutal in Taiwan [0]. It basically was a lost decade.

South Korea and Japan ate Taiwan's market in the upper bracket, and China ate Taiwan's market in the lower bracket.

[0] - https://www.cnbc.com/2015/10/30/taiwan-gdp-falls-for-first-t...

Not really seeing a "stagnation" using a graph, in the last 6 years

https://www.ceicdata.com/en/indicator/taiwan/annual-househol...

13k in 2017, 17k in 2022, 30% increase. and 22k in 2023, 30% increase.

the stagnation from 2011 to 2017 is due to the pro-China president from 2008 to 2016, which fueled market and investment losses going to China. That reversed in 2016 with the Pro-Taiwan president.

When you actually show the rate of change from e.g. 2014-2022, it's about 3.5%. Inflation being about let's say 2% over those years. Although the fact that it's reported in USD probably matters as well to really understand the economy. Anyways, the average salary in Taiwan across the entire workforce was just under NT$41,000 per month (median being surprisingly close to that figure), which is comparable to many cities in China. Also you can't compare 2008-2016, the US caused GFC caused a lot of issues. 2015-2022 household income also corresponds with how China was doing in terms of exports, since China was rapidly expanding exports around that time showing probably there's a pretty strong tie/correlation between the two regions.

The fact that Taiwan GDP per capita is close to surpassing Japan's, shows how poorly Japan has been doing despite its stock market.

I tend not to trust CEIC - they have had issues converting data over time periods, which is critical for the NTW as it has been extremely volatile over the past decade.

For now, let's use Monthly Household Income sourced from the Taiwanese DGBAS and in NTW [0]

In 2016 it was NTW 84000 but by 2022 it was NTW 99000, which isn't a significant change, especially factoring the craziness the NTW has had since 2016.

> stagnation from 2011 to 2017 is due to the pro-China president ... That reversed in 2016 with the Pro-Taiwan president

It wasn't a DPP vs KMT issue. China had a stock market crash in 2015-16 [1], and Taiwanese companies were heavily exposed, as China is Taiwan's largest trading partner by a longshot. On top of that Taiwanese companies were already facing the brunt of the collapse of the CSSTA [2].

[0] - https://tradingeconomics.com/taiwan/disposable-personal-inco...

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015%E2%80%932016_Chinese_stoc...

[2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross-Strait_Service_Trade_Agr...

Taiwanese companies run most of the major hightech manufacturing in China. For example, Foxconn is a taiwanese company. Most of my dealings with these types of manufactures has been in discussions of how to circumvent tariffs, not in really exiting manufacturing in the mainland.

When I look at what occurring, I think it has more to do with their cheapest labor force is in China. So the scale and profit is hard to leave.

The Chinese labor force has been reaching parity recently. Hence pushes into Vietnam & India for manufacturing.

> Hence pushes into Vietnam & India for manufacturing.

Doesn't help Taiwanese companies long term.

They had an advantage in Mainland China being Chinese speaking. Already in India, Tata is becoming the Indian version of Foxconn for most manufacturers and VinGroup or Korean Chaebols like Lotte (SK has a FTA with Vietnam) the Vietnamese version of Foxconn in Vietnam.

While South Korean and Japanese companies were actively de-risking in China by returning to ASEAN+India in the early-mid 2010s, Taiwanese companies only began doing this in the late 2010s after the 2015-16 recession.

It’s more than that: most of the Taiwanese companies are owned/controlled by mainlanders who still have a lot more economic power than native Taiwanese, even if the latter has more political power these days.

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