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The Politics of Language | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| shk00design Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 4241 days ago 747 posts - 1123 votes  Speaks: Cantonese*, English, Mandarin Studies: French | Message 1 of 27 03 September 2014 at 3:23am | IP Logged | ||
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Yesterday there was an article in the South China Morning Post in Hong Kong entitled: "No Happy
Medium". As debate rages over which language of instruction is best for learning, many Hongkongers feel they are struggling to hold onto their dialect and culture, write Elaine Yau and Vanessa Yung. The debate is over the introduction of Mandarin instructions into the classroom. We are not talking about 1 lesson in Mandarin per school day but the core subjects such as Mathematics and Science. In the school playground, supervisors would speak to the students in Mandarin as well. The local people speak Cantonese (which is considered a dialect in Chinese). When the British was running the city, the Chinese schools used Cantonese as the main language of instruction with 1 English class per school day. The switch to Mandarin and Simplified Chinese characters alarmed many parents who think that Cantonese is their mother tongue and the increase use of Mandarin would erode the distinct culture and identity of Hong Kong. This would transform Hong Kong into another city like Shanghai or Beijing on the Mainland. In the West, it is common for people to acquire other languages to make new friends or open up new job and business opportunities. If you are in Hong Kong, learning Mandarin on top of Cantonese isn't a simple matter. When you are living next door to the People's Republic of China, people are feeling the pressure local language and customs would disappear like Tibet and Xinjiang where the locals are losing their culture when the Han Chinese started moving in large numbers. After all, China has more than 1B population as compared to Hong Kong with just over 7M. There are millions of Chinese tourists going to Hong Kong every year so learning Mandarin is invaluable but not at the cost of losing Cantonese entirely. In a country like Singapore, the Chinese dominate but at the same time the different dialects the Chinese brought with them several generations ago (Hokkien, Hakka, Cantonese, etc.) are disappearing and mostly spoken at home by the older generation. Students are learning Chinese in Mandarin. Cantonese is 1 thing the people in Hong Kong is not going to give up. The city of Guangzhou on the Mainland also put up a fight when local authorities wanted to broadcast local news in Mandarin instead of Cantonese. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 6953 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 2 of 27 03 September 2014 at 4:10am | IP Logged | ||
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Politics. Language. Politics. Language. Politics. Language... TAKE COVER!
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| Medulin Tetraglot Senior Member Croatia Joined 4465 days ago 1199 posts - 2192 votes Speaks: Croatian*, English, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Norwegian, Hindi, Nepali | Message 3 of 27 03 September 2014 at 4:48am | IP Logged | ||
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Maybe China should use English as a link language, like in India or Sri Lanka.
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| shk00design Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 4241 days ago 747 posts - 1123 votes Speaks: Cantonese*, English, Mandarin Studies: French | Message 4 of 27 03 September 2014 at 5:14am | IP Logged | ||
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Quebec in Canada where the French fought many years to preserve their language and culture. In the
1960s they had a Quiet Revolution and got to the point when the Labour Minister in the Canadian government and a Br. diplomat got kidnapped. Over the years local laws changed to require store signs in French larger than those of other languages. And education & immigration being controlled by the provincial government they get to decide the immigrants who are allowed in and that they must be fluent in French to a certain extent. There are claims that Cantonese is an older Chinese speech originated from the Han Dynasty around the time of Christ while Mandarin is the speech passed down from the Tang Dynasty after 618 AD. Because of the long tradition, it is argued that Cantonese needs to be preserved. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Henkkles Triglot Senior Member Finland Joined 4050 days ago 544 posts - 1141 votes Speaks: Finnish*, English, Swedish Studies: Russian | Message 5 of 27 03 September 2014 at 1:23pm | IP Logged | ||
Languages don't have ages; what we often think of as 'language' is just a cross-section of a continuum at a specific time, all continuums going back to the one same root (according to one hypothesis) that is the proto-human (debatable) which emerged before the great culture-boom (and eventually causing it) of homo sapiens. Of course all forms of language need and deserve to be preserved, but this 'this language is so old!' thing is a faulty argument and a great pet peeve of linguists worldwide. To further elaborate my point; If we compare the 'ages' of say, Latin and French because people know one 'preceded' the other, it always comes down to tautology by definition: Latin and French are parts of the same continuum Latin is a standardized cross-section of the continuum at year 0 French is a standardized cross-section of the continuum at year 2000 of CE Latin precedes French because it is 2000 years before French in the continuum Latin is older because it precedes French on the continuum thus Latin is older because Latin is older (sic) Edited by Henkkles on 03 September 2014 at 1:25pm 7 persons have voted this message useful | |||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6500 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 6 of 27 04 September 2014 at 6:55pm | IP Logged | ||
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It may be nonsense to say that a language is old and another is new if you see all languages as one amorphous mass with roots back to early Homo sapiens or even earlier. But it is not nonsense to say that some languages are more conservative than others, or that some elements in certain languages are 'old' if they looked more or less the same as they did at an earlier stage 2000 years ago. Icelandic is definitely closer to Old Norse than Danish is, and the German case system is definitely closer to the system in Old High German than the system in modern English is to the system in Anglosaxon. And it takes some imagination to say that Creoles and artificial languages which were created fairly recently are 'old' - though they contain things that go back in time to time immemorial. Likewise it is a simple fact that the thing called French occurs later than the thing called Latin, but that doesn't in itself mean that Latin ought to disappear and leave the battle field to French.
I have no idea whether Cantonese is more conservative than Mandarin, and conservatism can't in itself justify that a language should be preserved. But languages with populations who like their language and try to retain it have 'more' reason to survive than languages whose speakers couldn't care less. And such languages shouldn't be pressured out of existence just to accomodate groups with other languages - but nevertheless that is what has happened again and again. The long and complicated history of languages on this planet isn't built on fairness and justice - it's a jungle out there... Edited by Iversen on 04 September 2014 at 7:07pm 8 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Henkkles Triglot Senior Member Finland Joined 4050 days ago 544 posts - 1141 votes Speaks: Finnish*, English, Swedish Studies: Russian | Message 7 of 27 04 September 2014 at 11:18pm | IP Logged | ||
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My problem is entirely that of false terminology and pseudoscience; consider this thing I saw a few weeks ago:
"Welsh is the oldest language in Europe." Everything about that is so wrong that I want to put out mine own eyes for fear of ever having to see such drivel being written again. Of course some languages are more conservative than others, but being conservative doesn't constitute age. We might say that "Icelandic is closer to the common ancestor of itself and Danish" but we must still remember that Icelandic is not older; Icelandic is not Old Norse, since Old Norse is, yeah you guessed it, a cross section of the continuum taken at a certain point in time! 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Cthulhu Tetraglot Senior Member Canada Joined 7020 days ago 139 posts - 235 votes Speaks: French*, English, Mandarin, Russian | Message 8 of 27 06 September 2014 at 6:27pm | IP Logged | ||
Actually, before the British started changing their policies in 1994, 88% of all schools in Hong Kong used English as the main medium of education. If Cantonese managed to survive a century of British imperialism, it'll survive a few Mandarin lessons. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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