Cantonese or Mandarin? A debate in Hong Kong education since 2008

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[RayMak]

Do not let Cantonese fade away. Just teach and learn both. I speak 6 languages no issue. Why the headache? The more we learn, the more culture we can embrace.

[csong]

Mandarin was my first language. Let them continue to teach in Cantonese. It's their first language.

[theevilhuman]

I am a Malaysian who grew up speaking English, despite my parents and grandparents being native cantonese speakers. They percieved cantonese as being "useless", and they expected me to learn naturally once I grew older. However, what actually happened was that almost every Chinese person in my cohort was speaking either Mandarin or English as their mother tongue, despite their parents conversing in cantonese fluently. This has led to the loss of Cantonese usage amongst people in my generation. I remember growing up, everyone older than me was speaking cantonese, other than people who are similar aged with me. Right now, the cut off age of cantonese speakers is around 35 to 40 in Kuala Lumpur, and we naturally speak mandarin with people below this age, and cantonese with people above.

I had some circumstance in which I was inspired to learn cantonese as it was my ancestral language. I went from only being able to listen to super basic cantonese, to being somewhat fluent, and now am married to a girl from Guangdong province in the mainland. Due to my passion to learn my own native language, I am extremely distraught when I see kids in Guangzhou all speaking Mandarin, and even in some third or fourth tier city in Guangdong, many kids are starting to speak mandarin instead of Cantonese. It truly pains me to see what happened in Malaysia is happening even in the place of origin of Cantonese.

Malaysia's situation is beyond saving. I hope that at least in Hong Kong, Macau and perhaps Guangdong, cantonese can still be preserved, as it is a wonderful language which also unlocks within me a deep understanding of the culture of where my ancestors originated.

Thank you for the short read!

[MsArmy]

I am Malaysian, a malay guy. Since kids, I growing watching cantonese drama from Hong Kong. Most of popular chinese movie that time was cantonese because popular chinese actor were from Hong Kong like Jacky Chan and Steven Chow.

During ealy 90's my whole family will watch cantonese drama in evening because Hong Kong drama was popular that time.

I even can understand cantonese without really reading the subtitle, that how staple my life with cantonese. And I hope cantonese will never die. And I just quite surprise actually not so many Malaysian chinese know cantonese, because they are more to mandarin dialect.

[JamesZ]

I mean Hong Kong has always been speaking Cantonese, it's natural for them to have it as their mother tongue. Instead if forcing Mandarin upon them, they should ease it and encourage them to learn it.

[TheLookingsunset]

While each country should have a central language for obvious reasons, Cantonese represents the legacy and culture there, so it would be sad to see it go

[Gryfder]

I woild greatly appreciate if SCMP would cover the other major Southern Chinese languages (/language groups) other than Yue (Cantonese), such as: Min, Ping, Xiang, Gan, Hakka, Hui, and Wu.

As a fellow Southern Chinese who resides in Singapore, I support the dual lingual education pathway whereby both ethnic (Mandarin) and sub-ethnic (othe Chinese languages) languages are preserved/taught.

[TheIlustrado]

As a non-HKer who's interested in learning Cantonese, sometimes I want to give it a shot alongside my Mandarin studies. But I soon realized, as mentioned in this video that written and spoken Cantonese are vastly different. I mean there are people who say that it's comparatively similar to how English speakers in the West say "gonna" instead of "going to" but it's quite miniscule compared to the unwritten rules of spoken Cantonese that I find it difficult to wrap my head around.

Most languages have an almost 1-to-1 similarity in their written and spoken language, with some minor differences between them but this was the first time that I encountered that this was not the case in Cantonese. Sometimes I feel like the 五四運動 didn't go far enough to promote 白話 and 我手寫我口 to other Chinese languages and instead focus too much on basing it to Mandarin, but just my two cents on the issue.

[liongkienfai]

For added context, before the 1960s, most schools in Hong Kong were using Hakka as the medium of instruction. Hakka, along with Waitau, Hoklo, and Tanka were the dominant tongues in Hong Kong prior to mass migration of mainlanders from the mid 20th century onwards. Around the 50s-70s, the colonial govt forced Standard Cantonese from Guangzhou as the new language of education and overall society. 50 years later, the original languages of Hong Kong are very close to gone.

[louisth]

Meanwhile we Malaysians find it not difficult to switch between Cantonese and Mandarin (both written and spoken). We didn’t receive the proper Cantonese curricular education. All Cantonese learnt are from TVB and 80/90s HK movies 😅

[rioze]

Using mother tounge for learning is by far the most effective method. The ability in foreign languages is important too, but we should change the way teachers teach. My idea is instead of using textbooks to teach vocabulary, grammar, etc., it would be more interesting if the teacher and students actively do something together like reading stories, discussing, playing, or even learn other subjects BUT all activities are conducted in the language that's being taught. This way the language learning will be much more effective without disrupting other subjects and cultural preservation.

[andreastano]

As Indonesian, we study Bahasa Indonesia but we also study local language in each region. Besides, we study English and Mandarin too. No problemo. So we have subjects: Bahasa Indonesia, Local Language, English and Mandarin.

[fhs]

It's pretty shocking to see how few people preferred to use Cantonese in Guangzhou now.

[patriciang]

In my era, my alma maters still used Cantonese Chinese to teach Chinese language & Chinese history classes. Although the 2 schools I had attended also offered mandatory Mandarin speaking classes, I learnt Mandarin speaking mainly from watching the Mandarin movies played on TV, i.e. TVB, RTV which later became ATV.

[jessssture]

WIth nearly 90% of Hong Kongers speaking Cantonese, Cantonese IS the dialect of Hong Kong. Let's keep Cantonese and canto culture alive.

[kimloonyong]

For non-Hker, usually we speak whatever comfortable to each other. During meeting we would use English mostly... sometimes mixed with Malay, Mandarin, Cantonese. Written email for government mostly Malay but private sector usually English. Among friends sometimes would use Hakka, or Hokkien (Cant understand) aside from stated above.

On the side note, Mandarin, Cantonese, Hakka, Hokkien is a Language and not a dialect as branded by foreigner who does not understand the language and long history itself.

[kchan]

It's not just Cantonese... I don't want to see any of the Chinese languages fade away. It's part of China's rich history and culture.
Beijing doesn't make the best decisions. Look at China's one-child policy before it was lifted and the results of that...

[guroluke]

Cantonese is a very interesting language. I'm learning spoken and written.

[ngvkhtnw]

In Vietnam before 1975, Vietnamese citizens of Chinese ancestry went to Chinese run schools taught in Mandarin (Mandarin was the medium of instruction in math, science, etc., using Taiwan's grade school curricula), but students interacted with one another outside class time, at home, and in the community, in Cantonese and Chiu Chew, and they of course also learned the country's official language which is Vietnamese, plus one foreign language subject in either English or French. Students and parents all took it as a matter of course and viewed it as something positive and nobody made a fuss about it. But the new Vietnamese government destroyed this efficient and effective practice after 1975 and most Vietnamese citizens of Chinese ancestry now learn only Vietnamese for the most part. Children can adapt to learning two or three languages, I don't understand why Cantonese became an issue in Hong Kong, I smell politics!

[jerryvang]

Why not both languages? I heard my kind we have had to speak and talk in another way in Hmong to other races so I vote both to just keep and learn and let every races know there's some cultures who might and might not have the same languages but in another way to speak communication and talk to others right