Cantonese — the non-official language?
Fighting against Mandarin
Recently there is a heated debate on a piece of article posted on the Education Bureau’s official website. The article was widely circulated and criticized because it stated that ‘Cantonese is not an official language’. The incident ended up with an apology in the EDB (Education Bureau) website with the article removed. This as well triggered off wide discussions on the role of Cantonese in Hong Kong, given an increasing position of Mandarin along with the rise of mainland China.
Translation:
Support in language learning
Hong Kong as an international cosmopolitan has an urging need to promote bi-literacy and tri-lingualism because on one hand, it has to keep its pace with the rapid development in China; on the other hand, it faces fierce competition from neighboring countries. Although the Basic Law has stipulated Chinese and English as the statutory languages, 97% of our population actually speaks Cantonese (a Chinese dialect which is not a statutory language) in domestic and social domains, while English is adopted for commercial purposes. As for Mandarin, the statutory language in the PRC, with its growing usage, has revealed the close economic and cultural links between Hong Kong and mainland China.
The online social community was soon in an uproar with the wide circulation of the article. EDB quickly removed the article on 2 Feb and replaced with a new one saying something irrelevant. In the last paragraph of the new article, EDB apologizes for the “misunderstanding caused due to an inaccurate definition of Cantonese said earlier”.
Is Cantonese a statutory language?
So, is the language spoken by the majority of Hong Kongers not a statutory language and just a Chinese dialect? We have to go back and check. According to Article 9 in the Basic Law, both “Chinese language” and English are an “official language”:
“In addition to the Chinese language, English may also be used as an official language by the executive authorities, legislature and judiciary of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region.”
First, the Basic Law has no such a phrase “statutory language”. Second, it does not specify what means by “Chinese language”. It is a shame that a government organization was making such a big mistake. Not to mention how the paragraph was so badly written.
Some academics provided a reason why “Chinese language” is not well defined. An influx of immigrants during wartime has brought in several languages to Hong Kong. Plus some of the languages spoken by the walled villagers, there were a number of languages used in Hong Kong, including Hakka, Waidau Waa, Chiu Chow, Hokkien and Cantonese. By the time the British colonial government set up law on the use of official languages in 1974, it chose not to define the dialect but left it to be determined by pragmatical use. With a rising use of Cantonese among the people, especially after the establishment of Chinese radio, Chinese television and the offer of 6-year free education (in which Cantonese was adopted in most of the schools), Cantonese has been accepted as a mainstream language customarily (By 1971, 88.2% of the population was using Cantonese for daily communication).
“ In spite of extensive dialectal divergence within the Chinese language, the government chooses not to specify what constitutes the official variety of Chinese in Hong Kong. Instead, it leaves it to be determined pragmatically. Given the sociolinguistic situation in Hong Kong, Cantonese becomes the most often used verbal medium of official communication in practice… (Peter Dickson & Alister Cumming, 1996)”
It may to outsiders’ surprise that Hong Kong people had such a big reaction on EDB’s mistake. It very much due to the reason that a lot of the locals believe Cantonese is intentionally dwarfed to serve political purposes. They are particularly aware of China’s intention to kill Hong Kong’s local culture by abandoning its language for an easier ruling, like what Chinese communist party had done to Tibet. Lately, a sum of 5 billion HK dollars is allocated to the “Language Foundation”. It is believed that the money will go to the promotion of “Using Putonghua to teach Chinese” in primary and secondary schools. Whether using Putonghua instead of our mother tongue Cantonese to learn Chinese will do any good to students still remains to be discussed, no doubt that there is a strong political implication behind for closer China-HK alignment.
Fun Facts
In fact, Cantonese almost became official language in China. After the Revolution of 1911, national father Sun Yat-Sen and other founding members of new China vote to decide which language should be spoken. While Mandarin was a Northern dialect spoken by Qing officials, it was seen as a language of ‘invaders’. In the end, Cantonese lost out by one vote to Putonghua.
Historians believe that the Chinese language used in Tong and Sung Dynasty is similar to Cantonese. It can be proved by the rhymes in poems written at that time (many of them rhyme in Cantonese but not in Mandarin). This is because some of the big ancient wars had forced the knowledgeable Han families to move southwards. They brought their language to Southern China and so Cantonese has preserved a lot of the ancient Han language words and pronunciations. Meanwhile, Putonghua is highly influenced by Manchurian and Mongolian. Many sounds were lost during the mixing of languages. Generally speaking, Putonghua is easier to learn comparing to Cantonese; while Cantonese can convey message more precisely with wider scope of sounds and vocabulary.
