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Interestingly, in Guangdong province a few years ago the central government tried to push more Mandarin (Putonghua) TV programming to displace some of the Cantonese programming and there was a big public outcry - so that was quickly scrapped.
And rightly so. Cantonese is the vernacular, the people's language. Elitist bureaucrats in Beijing want to replace the dialects with Mandarin only. How would a Texan feel if the UK replaced all American TV with British TV, and forced all Texas schools to teach only British English?
People don't understand. There are too many dialects spoken in China. Even in Guangdong province, Cantonese is just one of the main dozen dialects spoken there. People from one region traveling to others can't communicate to each other even less than couple miles away because of difference in dialects, intonations and accents.
China needs one dialect to be taught in school officially and understood by all across China and media.
It was actually the Republic of China headed by Sun Yat-Sen and others voted Mandarin to be the official dialect of China. Sun Yat-Sen and majority others were from southern China. A lot of them spoke Cantonese.
I never said the Chinese don't need a single dialect, like Mandarin, to bridge regional language barriers. Hong Kongers are already learning Mandarin. But keep Mandarin as a second language, and keep Cantonese as a first language.
I could say, "look, the entire world is made of thousands of different ethnic groups. We need a single unifying language--the language of the internet--English. OK, from now on, everyone around the world is going to HAVE to learn English as their first language." After saying that, 80% of the world would probably be mad as hell, even though they likely agree to learning English as a SECOND language.
Only in the mainland.
HK and Macau are under One Country Two Systems, with own language policies.
Quote:
Originally Posted by MrJester
And rightly so. Cantonese is the vernacular, the people's language. Elitist bureaucrats in Beijing want to replace the dialects with Mandarin only. How would a Texan feel if the UK replaced all American TV with British TV, and forced all Texas schools to teach only British English?
I never said the Chinese don't need a single dialect, like Mandarin, to bridge regional language barriers. Hong Kongers are already learning Mandarin. But keep Mandarin as a second language, and keep Cantonese as a first language.
I could say, "look, the entire world is made of thousands of different ethnic groups. We need a single unifying language--the language of the internet--English. OK, from now on, everyone around the world is going to HAVE to learn English as their first language." After saying that, 80% of the world would probably be mad as hell, even though they likely agree to learning English as a SECOND language.
In Switzerland, German TV programs are generally in standard German, which is not a native language in Switzerland at all.
Also Swiss German does not have a widely accepted written form. They write standard German.
The difference between Swiss German and Standard German is like the difference between Cantonese and Mandarin.
If schools in the Cantonese region do not enforce Mandarin, children there will have poorer reading and writing skills. This is probably already true. When students in Guangdong took the PISA test, their scores were much lower than those from Beijing, Shanghai and Jiangsu.
The status quo in Hong Kong is fine. What we need is to preserve Cantonese and other dialects. It's the language of the people. How would you feel if you were forced to speak Cantonese instead of Mandarin or whatever native dialect you speak?
In some places of China, each town has a "dialect" not fully understood by others. It is not uncommon to see people from neighboring villages cannot communicate with their own dialect.
If you want to preserve Cantonese, you have to somehow standardize it, but then some less known variants of Cantonese are killed.
If schools in the Cantonese region do not enforce Mandarin, children there will have poorer reading and writing skills. This is probably already true. When students in Guangdong took the PISA test, their scores were much lower than those from Beijing, Shanghai and Jiangsu.
Even in Hong Kong everyone learns Mandarin as a second language, how much more so in Guangdong. Guangdong reading scores may be lower than the other provinces but this is due to other reasons other than using Cantonese. Also, don't forget that Shenzhen is now dominated by native Mandarin speakers. Don't confuse correlation with causation.
The non native Chinese speaking minority kids in HK with South Asians being the largest, place Mandarin as the least important among English, Cantonese and Mandarin. They are not required to learn Mandarin because reading Chinese in Cantonese is already hard for most of them.
Mandarin is still less important than English in HK. Universities in HK teach and communicate in mostly English, not Cantonese and Mandarin. Universities in mainland China and Taiwan mainly use mandarin. Experts such as doctors , nurses and engineers in HK plan and record in English.
Learning Mandarin without proper training is easy for a Cantonese speaker. The young people working in McDonald's, KFC and HK fast food restaurants can take orders in Cantonese, English and Mandarin. The staff in hotels and airports can too. Most other restaurants do not always have people understanding non basic English or mandarin.
Shenzhen residents who moved from other parts of China speak their own dialects since childhood and are not native but fluent mandarin speakers. The kids growing up in Shenzhen may not speak dialects.
The standard mandarin spoken by northern Chinese sound obviously different, easy to tell a Chinese is Northern or not by mandarin spoken. The mandarin of different southwestern and southern Chinese are hard to tell the exact province.
Even in Hong Kong everyone learns Mandarin as a second language, how much more so in Guangdong. Guangdong reading scores may be lower than the other provinces but this is due to other reasons other than using Cantonese. Also, don't forget that Shenzhen is now dominated by native Mandarin speakers. Don't confuse correlation with causation.
The reason needs more studies, but obviously not being able to speak Mandarin fluently (different accents are OK) has a negative effect, especially on children.
Cantonese is the lingua franca of Chinese in HK and Macau from.....
You are lucky that Wu is not the official dialect of China now. The National Assembly members of modern China, aka Republic of China, also voted Wu dialect to be the official dialect of China, but it came out slightly lower than Mandarin in term of vote counts. Mandarin won the vote. Cantonese came out at the third place.
Wu is rather a difficult obscured dialect. Wu has many variety of dialects in itself. They are not mutually intelligible. When the natives of Shanghai speak to the natives of Suzhou in their own unique Wu dialects, they don't understand each others.
Actually most people in Hong Kong at least spoke or understood another China dialects in addition to Cantonese, but probable forget it now. Their ancestors came from China all over the place. Somehow they adopted Cantonese to be their official dialect, since they all had to find a common ground to understand each other to communicate. Cantonese is actually a regional dialect originated from Guangzhou region, just a part of Guangdong province. As matter of fact, Guangdong province has many dialects. Cantonese is just one of the dialects.
Just like Hong Kong, people in Chengdu at least speak or understand one or two more another dialects in addition to Mandarin since most of them come from Sichuan province. They have their own special native Sichuan unique regional dialects. They are not mutual intelligible.
You are lucky that Wu is not the official dialect of China now. The National Assembly members of modern China, aka Republic of China, also voted Wu dialect to be the official dialect of China, but it came out slightly lower than Mandarin in term of vote counts. Mandarin won the vote. Cantonese came out at the third place.
That's a myth similar to the Muhlenberg legend. This is entirely made up.
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