相较于中国各地的汉语方言，为什么说英语的各国「方言」差别要小得多？ 第1页

下面有翻译：

I have seriously thought about this question and come up with two hypotheses:

1. England started as one country and then spread English to other countries through colonization in the recent centuries. In contrast, China started as many different regions with different languages that were eventually united.

2. The English writing system is phonetic, and the Chinese writing system is mainly ideographic. So in English, how a word is written is more closely related to its pronunciation than its meaning. Therefore, all English countries generally have the same spelling for words and thus, very similar pronunciation. On the other hand, a Chinese character contains less phonetic information, leaving more room for a variety of pronunciations.

This is just my personal opinion. I would like learn more about other ideas for this phenomenon. Thanks!

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栗子的知乎答案索引：栗子树

栗子的微信公众号：E-Speller 或者 栗子英文 （只有精彩的原创）

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谢谢 @Gastronaut 的翻译！

“我仔细地思考了这个问题之后，有两个设想：

1、英国自始即是单一的国家，在近几个世纪里通过建立殖民地将英语传播至其他国家。相反地，中国最初是许多不同的部族小国，这些小国合并的同时，语言也发生了融合（最终形成今天的汉语）。

2、英文是一个表音系统，而中文是一个表意系统。因此在英语中，一个单词的拼法更多地体现其发音而非含义。所有英语国家大体上使用一样的单词拼写，导致了各个国家单词的发音也很相似。对中文来说，汉字本身所带有表音信息不足，为多样化的发音留下了空间。

这只是我个人的见解，我很愿意就这个现象聆听不同的意见。”