> (and the “speaking Russian” part is kind of difficult to transfer to China and Taiwan).
Isn't the main language in Taiwan the same as in south-east mainland China? (What used to be called Cantonese, but maybe it goes by another name nowadays?)
Isn't the main language in Taiwan the same as in south-east mainland China? (What used to be called Cantonese, but maybe it goes by another name nowadays?)
Cantonese is mainly spoken in Guangdong (historically known as Canton), and Hokkien mainly Fujian. They are two very different languages.
There are a lot of people in Taiwan speaking Hokkien.
Yeah, I thought I'd got that right: The region has been renamed (or, arguably, just had the spelling revised to be more in line with the native pronunciation?).
So why isn't the language now called Guangdongese? This modern PC-induced language revisionism can get pretty darn confusing in its inconsistency.
> There are a lot of people in Taiwan speaking Hokkien.
Which still seems to imply that even more people, i.e. a majority, speak Cantonese, right? I just meant that, since language is often a (sometimes minor, sometimes major) part of how "ethnicity" is defined, China could use an analogous "They even speak the same language!" argument. Not that I'm saying it's a valid argument -- just not logically impossible, as I think was argued or at least implied in some comment(s) above.