Quote:
Originally Posted by Mekong Delta
Mandarin didn't become wide-spread until Ming dynasty, and was finally standardized as national dialect after 1949. Believe it or not, cantonese actually sounds closer to ancient Chinese pronounciation than Mandarin. But as long as they inherited the writen code, who cares how they say it.
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and mandarin is different enough that it should be viewed as a completely different language from a different ethnic group. Actually min is even closer to shang gu chinese than cantonese