Se habla......
When I last spoke to my mom on the phone, she asked me what was the major language spoken here, and I told her Putonghua (Mandarin). She then asked why it wasn't Cantonese or was that suppressed here. I told her that Guandonghua is still primarily spoken in Hong Kong, but somewhere like Shenzhen, where millions of people are from everywhere else, Putonghua has practially replaced Guandonghua as the common language here. And as for supressed, I told her, there has been a bit in the state news about fostering cultural sensitivity to the minority languages spoken here, with some Big Statements about assuring continued instruction in schools of these other languages because of the rich cultural legacy blah blah blah.
There was an aricle in the South China Morning Post last week about the continued dominance of Guandonghua in business and education in Hong Kong. Someone with the Education Ministry in Beijing issued some sort of report or statement that Hong Kong will suffer if they don't start emphasizing Putonghua (which is spoken as a primnary tongue by less than 5% of Hong Kong-ers), Hong Kong could be left behind in further economic development. There were nods in the statement about the cultural and artisitic legacy of the language, but from a practical standpoint Hong Kong has to get on board with the rest of China.
I found this interesting in that the "minority" languages are becoming more like cultural artifacts than tools for communication. It isn't just China where this is happening. In the U.S. we have seen this, too. Fifty years before he attended there, Randy's elementary school was taught in German. Children who weren't German-speakers had to learn it to attend school there. This was because not only were most of the residents of the area German, but their techers were from one of the early waves of Benedictine nuns from Eichstatt. More recently, when we were in Mississippi, Randy had a 40-year-old-ish Cajun working for him. He was bilingual, and his father never spoke English until he attended public school. His grandmother still doesn't speak English.
But in fifty years, what will we speak?
There was an aricle in the South China Morning Post last week about the continued dominance of Guandonghua in business and education in Hong Kong. Someone with the Education Ministry in Beijing issued some sort of report or statement that Hong Kong will suffer if they don't start emphasizing Putonghua (which is spoken as a primnary tongue by less than 5% of Hong Kong-ers), Hong Kong could be left behind in further economic development. There were nods in the statement about the cultural and artisitic legacy of the language, but from a practical standpoint Hong Kong has to get on board with the rest of China.
I found this interesting in that the "minority" languages are becoming more like cultural artifacts than tools for communication. It isn't just China where this is happening. In the U.S. we have seen this, too. Fifty years before he attended there, Randy's elementary school was taught in German. Children who weren't German-speakers had to learn it to attend school there. This was because not only were most of the residents of the area German, but their techers were from one of the early waves of Benedictine nuns from Eichstatt. More recently, when we were in Mississippi, Randy had a 40-year-old-ish Cajun working for him. He was bilingual, and his father never spoke English until he attended public school. His grandmother still doesn't speak English.
But in fifty years, what will we speak?
Comments