What would you do if your own government call your mother tongue "useless"?

[greentea173]

The PRC Hong Kong government always tell people Cantonese is a useless language. 
Quite a lot of HK local people hate being Cantonese native speaker as 
it is very painful to learn Mandarin, which is an unintelligible language to Cantonese. 
Nowadays, some kindergartens in Hong Kong ban children from speaking in Cantonese even during recess time. 
What

Comments

[embryogirl]

What is the punishment for continuing to speak Cantonese?

This sort of thing has definitely happened before (I think people in the UK were threatened with death for speaking Gaelic at one point). I will never understand it.

[greentea173]

There is no reality punishment. It is more like a struggle between keeping your culture or give it up for jobs.
Schools in Mainland Cantonese area also ban children from speaking Cantonese and they will be fined if they speak Cantonese. Hong Kong schools are following the footstep of Guangdong province.

[greentea173]

i think the USA is less nasty. (in language aspect)
Because she is an immigration country. If everyone speaks their own languages, there will be misunderstanding between RACES.
It is more dirty for a government of your OWN race want to eradicate your mother tongue for the sake of "country unity".

[greentea173]

I can tolerate other race oppresses me. Really. I was born and educated under British colonial rule

[fpb]

Don't let it worry you overmuch. The British Empire tried the same with Welsh during the nineteenth and early twentieth century. The British Empire is gone, and Welsh remains.

[greentea173]

But how many people speak Welsh now?
I haven't heard of any popular songs/movies in Welsh.
Pardon me if there is any.

[fpb]

About one million, according to the 2001 census; one third of the population of Wales. They have their own TV networks with their own soap operas, and, yes, films and music. The comparison is not exact, because Wales was always a small mountain country, whereas Cantonese is the language of tens if not hundreds of millions of people.

[greentea173]

Do you know if the young Welsh generation is still willing to learn Welsh?
Do you think Welsh will extinct someday? Welsh is still inside of Britain.

[wottie]

From Wikipedia (sorry, haven't had time to look for a better source):

The majority of the population in Hong Kong speak Cantonese, a Chinese spoken variant originating from Guangdong province. It is the main variety used in education, broadcasting, government administration, legislature and judiciary as well as in daily social communication.

Perhaps it's changed in recent years, but when I was on holidays in Hong Kong in 2007 everyone was speaking Cantonese. I'm really interested to know if the banning of Cantonese is a new movement. If so, do you mind providing a few links to articles about it?

[greentea173]

The importance of Cantonese in HK is decreasing.
In the past, MTR (subway) boardcast was in Cantonese and in CANTONESE GRAMMAR.
Now, although the boardcast was in Cantonese, the grammar is no longer Cantonese.
As the economic importance of HK decreases,
the importance of Cantonese will be further relegated.

[wottie]

I did find this quote:

Under the current MOI policy, Chinese-medium schools may use either Cantonese or Putonghua to teach Chinese Language and other academic subjects.

from here. It's interesting because the article also mentions that they're moving towards encouraging the general public to use Mandarin over Cantonese, which does seem a bit unfair. (Though there are also a lot of political and economic reasons given for it). However, I still can't find anything about there being any sort of a ban so far, particularly in schools.

Re: change in grammar, would you say that was a conscious effort/conformity to a rule set down by the government, or simply the language evolving/taking influences from Mandarin?

edited to elaborate because it didn't make sense before, lol

[greentea173]

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2445/3989075572_626b788eb1_o.jpg

[greentea173]

This bugs me for a long time.
I hate this government for this reason, for many many other reasons. Many people including want to overthrow it but of course we (not including you) are
all cowards for fear that we would all be ran over by tanks.

[greentea173]

typo, many people iincluding me