[BLOG-LIKE POSTING] On Sinic language conflicts
Open Democracy's N. Jayaram recently wrote an article describing how the people of Guangdong province successfully resisted the displacement of Cantonese by Putonghua on local television.
It all started with a proposal aired by Ji Keguang, an official of a municipal-level advisory body, the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, to use Putonghua (Mandarin) in place of Cantonese as the prime time television language in Guangzhou, capital of the southern Chinese province of Guangdong. The reasoning was that as Guangzhou would be hosting the 16th Asian Games from 12 November to 27 November, its television station could reach out to visitors through Putonghua broadcasts.
Knowing that in China a leading cadre’s mere proposal can more often than not translate into an ineluctable command, the public raised their voice in protest. As demonstrations are almost never permitted (except on a few occasions such as when the government needs to send anti-Japanese or anti-US messages) and as organizers can expect swift punishment, many people took to flash-mob style tactics or got onto the internet.
People in Hong Kong, the former British-ruled territory, have fewer restrictions to contend with, however. They have taken to the streets more than once in solidarity with their Cantonese-speaking kin. The press in the Special Administrative Region, as Hong Kong is called since it returned to Chinese sovereignty in 1997, has been regularly reporting reactions over the contretemps in Guangzhou, 140 kilometres (90 miles) up north.
Although Ji Keguang, the official who started it all, stuck to his guns, claiming that a few people with unspecified “ulterior motives” were behind the adverse reaction, the provincial authorities sought to reassure the public that there was no move to sideline Cantonese.
All too often the Chinese authorities react by clamping down hard on protest activity, however justified or well-founded. In this case, they took care over dousing the fire. A few people were threatened, and reporting within China was muzzled, but by about early to mid-August it was clear that the wishes of the people of Guangdong had prevailed over Ji.
Jayaram suggests that the policy change has much to do with the economic heft (and potentially destabilizing factor) of Guangdong province andthe proximity of wealthy and Cantonese-speaking Hong Kong, which has developed a written Cantonese that admittedly hasn't caught on outside of Hong Kong in other Cantonese-speaking areas and communities.
Notwithstanding this success, the fate of Cantonese may be limited. Last year I suggested that the vast urbanization of Chinese peasants, by bringing very large numbers of people speaking various dialects into wealthier areas where other Chinese regional languages like Cantonese and Shanghainese have traditionally predominated, may encourage a shift towards Putonghua away from these regional languages. Even Cantonese, with its extensive influence in the realm of popular culture--Cantopop music, for instance--seems threatened.
Like most of China's dialects, Cantonese is indecipherable to the majority of Chinese speakers born in other linguistic areas. However, young people in urban China have a tenuous grasp of it thanks to wildly popular "Canto-pop" musicians and their preference for watching entertaining Hong Kong soaps and dramas on the Internet instead of the fare of period and patriotic dramas offered up on Mainland television.
Putonghua, which is the language of education across China, is broadly based on the Beijing dialect and is spoken by an estimated 900 million people.
Experts say it is slowly, but surely, replacing local dialects as the "mother tongue" in many regions, particularly in the big cities and industrial areas where the influx of migrant workers from all over China often makes it the only "common" tongue people share.
The relative indifference of Cantonese speakers to the preservation of their language also is a factor. Why go to great efforts to protect it when it's assumed that the language of the community will persist indefinitely, while learning other languages--chief among them Putonghua--is a necessary skill? Surely the language of home will persist. Right?
Chen blames the current crisis over Cantonese on government indifference, but also on the attitude of parents.
"Locals should maintain passing on our language and culture. Nowadays, some young parents are proud if their children can speak fluent Mandarin or English. However, they don't take importance to passing on the Cantonese dialect. They consider fluent Mandarin or English as special skills, which they can show off. While Cantonese as a daily language, they don't pay much attention," Chen said.
Similar attitudes contributed to the eclipse of the regional languages of France over the 19th and 20th centuries, with younger generations of speakers of Breton and Provençal and Flemish and Italian learning the high-status language, the language of upwards mobility, and left--if not their communities--their low-status language behind. In China, the matter may be complicated by the definition of Cantonese and Shanghainese as "dialects," i.e. as variations on a common language, as opposed to being full-fledged languages in themselves. (If that's actually how these languages are identified in China as in the West, mind. Are they?)
It's a bit odd to realize that the Cantonese language, a language that's supposed to be the primary language of 70 million people within and without Guangdong province, heir to a vast historic and current array of cultural artifacts, the language of the first Chinese that many Westerners encountered, even, might be replaced so thorroughly that it may disappear even in the Chinatowns founded by Cantonese-speaking migrants.
It all started with a proposal aired by Ji Keguang, an official of a municipal-level advisory body, the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, to use Putonghua (Mandarin) in place of Cantonese as the prime time television language in Guangzhou, capital of the southern Chinese province of Guangdong. The reasoning was that as Guangzhou would be hosting the 16th Asian Games from 12 November to 27 November, its television station could reach out to visitors through Putonghua broadcasts.
Knowing that in China a leading cadre’s mere proposal can more often than not translate into an ineluctable command, the public raised their voice in protest. As demonstrations are almost never permitted (except on a few occasions such as when the government needs to send anti-Japanese or anti-US messages) and as organizers can expect swift punishment, many people took to flash-mob style tactics or got onto the internet.
People in Hong Kong, the former British-ruled territory, have fewer restrictions to contend with, however. They have taken to the streets more than once in solidarity with their Cantonese-speaking kin. The press in the Special Administrative Region, as Hong Kong is called since it returned to Chinese sovereignty in 1997, has been regularly reporting reactions over the contretemps in Guangzhou, 140 kilometres (90 miles) up north.
Although Ji Keguang, the official who started it all, stuck to his guns, claiming that a few people with unspecified “ulterior motives” were behind the adverse reaction, the provincial authorities sought to reassure the public that there was no move to sideline Cantonese.
All too often the Chinese authorities react by clamping down hard on protest activity, however justified or well-founded. In this case, they took care over dousing the fire. A few people were threatened, and reporting within China was muzzled, but by about early to mid-August it was clear that the wishes of the people of Guangdong had prevailed over Ji.
Jayaram suggests that the policy change has much to do with the economic heft (and potentially destabilizing factor) of Guangdong province andthe proximity of wealthy and Cantonese-speaking Hong Kong, which has developed a written Cantonese that admittedly hasn't caught on outside of Hong Kong in other Cantonese-speaking areas and communities.
Notwithstanding this success, the fate of Cantonese may be limited. Last year I suggested that the vast urbanization of Chinese peasants, by bringing very large numbers of people speaking various dialects into wealthier areas where other Chinese regional languages like Cantonese and Shanghainese have traditionally predominated, may encourage a shift towards Putonghua away from these regional languages. Even Cantonese, with its extensive influence in the realm of popular culture--Cantopop music, for instance--seems threatened.
Like most of China's dialects, Cantonese is indecipherable to the majority of Chinese speakers born in other linguistic areas. However, young people in urban China have a tenuous grasp of it thanks to wildly popular "Canto-pop" musicians and their preference for watching entertaining Hong Kong soaps and dramas on the Internet instead of the fare of period and patriotic dramas offered up on Mainland television.
Putonghua, which is the language of education across China, is broadly based on the Beijing dialect and is spoken by an estimated 900 million people.
Experts say it is slowly, but surely, replacing local dialects as the "mother tongue" in many regions, particularly in the big cities and industrial areas where the influx of migrant workers from all over China often makes it the only "common" tongue people share.
The relative indifference of Cantonese speakers to the preservation of their language also is a factor. Why go to great efforts to protect it when it's assumed that the language of the community will persist indefinitely, while learning other languages--chief among them Putonghua--is a necessary skill? Surely the language of home will persist. Right?
Chen blames the current crisis over Cantonese on government indifference, but also on the attitude of parents.
"Locals should maintain passing on our language and culture. Nowadays, some young parents are proud if their children can speak fluent Mandarin or English. However, they don't take importance to passing on the Cantonese dialect. They consider fluent Mandarin or English as special skills, which they can show off. While Cantonese as a daily language, they don't pay much attention," Chen said.
Similar attitudes contributed to the eclipse of the regional languages of France over the 19th and 20th centuries, with younger generations of speakers of Breton and Provençal and Flemish and Italian learning the high-status language, the language of upwards mobility, and left--if not their communities--their low-status language behind. In China, the matter may be complicated by the definition of Cantonese and Shanghainese as "dialects," i.e. as variations on a common language, as opposed to being full-fledged languages in themselves. (If that's actually how these languages are identified in China as in the West, mind. Are they?)
It's a bit odd to realize that the Cantonese language, a language that's supposed to be the primary language of 70 million people within and without Guangdong province, heir to a vast historic and current array of cultural artifacts, the language of the first Chinese that many Westerners encountered, even, might be replaced so thorroughly that it may disappear even in the Chinatowns founded by Cantonese-speaking migrants.