南方的语言 Nánfāng de yǔyán — The Languages of the South

What Block C was for

Thirteen lessons in Guangdong, Hong Kong and the diaspora, and the whole block was built to produce one realisation, which Alex states in the fourth line: 中文 and 普通话 are not the same word. Everything else served it. The sequence was deliberate. Lesson 79 got Cantonese vocabulary in through a menu, which is harmless. Lesson 80 then said plainly that Cantonese is not a dialect of Mandarin in any useful sense and explained why it has kept its ground. Lesson 81 separated the script from the language, which is the distinction that makes the rest possible: one written standard, two character sets. Lesson 84 showed a place using the same grammar with a different lexicon; 85 showed the lexicon coming from English through Cantonese. Lessons 87 and 88 gave two more standards with two more names. Lesson 89 broke Guangdong itself into three languages. And 90 followed all of it overseas and watched the language break at the third generation while the belonging survived. The grammatical business of the block was narrower and mostly about register: 关于, 对于, 方面 and 进行 for commercial Chinese in 83; 无法 and the 无 compounds in 80; 以来, 之内 and 化 in 82; the stacked 的 clauses of 90, which are how written Chinese packs information in front of a noun. Plus the character lesson in 81, which is the only place in this course where you were asked to look at a character as an object rather than read through it. On your Chinese at the end of HSK 4 and the start of HSK 5. You have the complement system, the degree and concession apparatus, 把 and the passives, the written register in outline, and something over two thousand words. What you do not have is speed at native pace, the vocabulary to read a newspaper unaided, or 成语 you can produce safely. Block D is aimed at exactly those three, and it goes north — Xi'an, Lanzhou, the Silk Road, the northeast — and then off the road and onto the page: newspapers, internet Chinese, formal letters, argument, and 成语 properly. One last thing, because it is the honest conclusion of a block about varieties. The Chinese you have been learning is one standard among several, written in one of two scripts, romanised in one of two systems, and spoken over a substrate of a dozen languages that are not it. That is not a complication to be sorry about. It is what a language with a billion and a half speakers looks like, and knowing it is the difference between a learner who is surprised every time somebody opens their mouth and one who is not.