Hongkonger here: Although Cantonese is pretty alive and well in Hong Kong, it’s pretty clear that the Government is being pressured by the mainland to promote Mandarin. It is commonly taught in schools and the Government promotes “trilingualism and biliteracy”. Cantonese and Mandarin are both written in the same script (Hanzi), and the third language/second script is English. It’s pretty clear that not all three languages get equal treatment though. English is not that heavily emphasized but most schoolchildren will learn it anyway because they want to watch American movies and enjoy American meme culture (this is not a joke). Parents also want their children to be trilingual and biliterate for economic reasons. Hong Kong is a city that revolves around money and it’s very common for business to be conducted internationally in English.
That doesn’t mean that Mandarin is doing well in HK though. Hongkongers have a very negative perception of mainlanders for being “uneducated” and Mandarin is associated with mainlanders. I can’t describe it as “racism” since everyone involved is the same race, but Hongkongers think mainlanders spit in the street, smoke in lavatories and don’t know how to sort recycling from rubbish. Doesn’t help that most of these stereotypes are to some extent, true.
Cantonese is also alive and well outside of China. Most Chinese immigrant communities in Europe and South East Asia speak Cantonese. The PRC will never be able to erase the Cantonese language.
Cool!
all of this, 100%
We’re still pretty early, a decade now, with their efforts to eliminate the Hong Kong culture here. Might not be looking like it’s taking a foothold but we’re not even a generation into this and it does seem they’re really focusing on the next generation.
I mean HK is still losing people emigration, heck half my family has moved since the take over, and it seems that people are still leaving at a pretty good click and that exidous will only make things easier for them to get the language.
I don’t know, I’m still an outsider looking in but all the things I see and hear doesn’t point to a great conclusion, though I hope I’m wrong since it’s like to visit again someday and hear and speak Cantonese.
They are focusing on the next generation, you can see in the museum they rewrote the history and they bring all the school children there
Cantonese is already difficult to learn without being immersed so they are just so happy about the loss of language
Many people have left HK, so far the only people I know who are left there are people who have to stay because they work in business, everyone else emigrated to the UK or North America
schoolchildren will learn it anyway because they want to watch American movies and enjoy American meme culture
This doesn’t surprise me but I had a lot of American friends who were into manga and Japanese culture enough to learn some of the language.
And then people wonder why everyone hates China. “Why do people complain when they claim territory that isn’t theirs?!?! US dID iT tOo!!!1!”
Dunno, tell me in last 30 years, when did US commit and kept commiting an active genocide? Do they suppress other language than american? Do they tell Canadians or Mexicans that they “belong” to them and feint invasion?
As a european, its good to have US by our side because I know that when a shit dictatorship shithole like China or Ruzzia attacks, they will be the first to bomb them to the stone ages.
Fuck China. Fuck Ruzzia. And fuck anyone who supports them.
to be fair, America also has 2 million people in jail & 100 million with arrest records. we are not too far from a police state
Well, the FBI has been treating the citizens of supposed “sovereign nations” pretty badly the entire time. We still are shitty to the Native Americans. That being said, just cause the US is shitty, doesn’t absolve the CCP of their shitty behavior.
I agree that US did and still does many shitty things. However, China and Ruzzia are so much worse that it’s almost incomparable.
Can we differentiate between the people and the state or government here? I don’t want the us to bomb anyone because there’s no way it doesn’t hurt innocent people.
I wish power to the people of both China, Russia, Hong Kong to be able to influence their political climate in a way that works best for their actual health and well-being.
It’s very difficult to not want Ruzzia bombed to dust when they killed my friends.
I hate ruzzia with every fibre of my being, and it’s no one fault but theirs.
(Let me preface this comment with the fact I oppose what the Chinese and Russian government are doing)
Is this a joke? The US tell people in Hawaii and Puerto Rico they belong to them and still do terrible shot to Indigenous people and try their best to erase their languages and cultures. They also invaded and killed how many innocent people in the middle east?
They continue to support Saudi Arabia with weapons and billions of dollars, they support the genocide and apartheid of Palestinians, they continue trying to starve Cubans with their sanctions and blockade…
The Chinese government is doing fucked up shit but its absurd to think the US government hasn’t been committing atrocities for decades. Also, the Uyghur people being forced to work are making also making products like Nike. Nestle privatizes water and spreads propaganda so women stop breastfeeding to sell their powdered milk and Chiquita Banana committed massacres in Columbia in the 2000s…
Now the US is contemplating invading Mexico to “stop” the drugs from the cartels the US funds and arms by buying their products and selling guns they know will go to shady people. Also the US was flooding crack into Black communities to fund illegal wars and bombed a house in a Black community and assassinated almost all the civil rights leaders…
And “as a European” maybe you should read about all the fucked up stuff France has done and continues to do and why so many countries in Africa are ousting leaders and hate France. Or read about why Haiti is in the position they’re in. Or read about all the racist and fascist shit going on in Italy, or what Spain is doing to Catalonia and trying to do to the Catalonian language. Or read about the racist remarks the foreign policy chief of the EU said about how europe is a “garden” and the rest of the world is a “jungle” that could invade… The rest of the world is mostly in the positions they are in because of what Europeans have done in history.
It is really easy as an American to forget what our country is doing. Our news is geniously tuned to distract us and mislead us. So thanks for the reminder. Last time I tried to explain the US genocide situation I ended up just posting a pepe instead of jogging my memory for all the details you were able to share.
Yeah, it’s hard to be a database of this shit.
At some point, we should just have a public repository of all the information necessary and update it accordingly.
And what’s crazy is this isn’t even close to a full list, huge things like the pollution in the Niger Delta caused by European and American oil companies, destruction of natural habitats and poisoning of water tables, funding terrorist groups and despots to get access to oil and mineral reserves…
It’s not even as if we’re working towards a noble goal, it’s all just a shit fight so rich people can get richer.
racist and fascist shit going on in Italy
This, frankly, is a consequence of the illegal immigration/migration (whatever you want to call it) from the last decade into europe and the impact its had on society
Major yikes… blaming fascism and racism on the victims instead of the white supremacists who fucked up the world by contributing so much to climate change, destabilizing countries, and propping up dictators causing the people to become refugees.
are you aware that a lot of the world wasn’t stable even without western countries intervening? have you read any history book from any part of the world outside of the EU and North America?
the fact that there’s so much illegal migration to the west is partly the responsibility of our own countries and policies
Your argumentation is similar to that of tankies. The US undeniably did shady shit to maintain hegemony over the last century and the whole past 911 thing was an unreasonable fiasco that cost the lives of over a million people.
It’s just that autocracy is no alternative in any form and it’s the biggest enemy of a free world.deleted by creator
Never said US is good, just good to have at our side.
US is bad, but China and Ruzzia is infinitely worse. Like uncomparably worse. If you are under the wing of US and you diasagree, 99.99% chance fuckall happens. If you do the same under the other two, you are jailed or you die.
I don’t blindly defend my state or ally states. Tankies like you do.
Not sure why you got downvoted. I don’t know what a tankie is, but the rest is spot on.
Tankie is a pejorative term for authoritarian communists, specifically people who think the systems of the USSR/China are something to aspire to. It is a term used since the 1960s to describe people who supported the USSR in using tanks to squash the Hungarian and Czechoslovak revolutions that aimed to create democratic communist systems.
In practice however, tankies just tend to be anti US / anti West, and will support anything that is opposing them, such as the theocratic regime in Iran which is as far from communistic ideals as humanly possible. For further information, look at the Wikipedia article. If you wish to enter the zoo where we keep them, go to hexbear.net or lemmygrad.ml .
Your last sentence got an actual chuckle out of me.
Oh wow, now I understand why I disagree with them so much. Being communist is one thing, but being antidemocratic is a whole other thing. Thanks for the explanation!
I can’t even see downvotes as I’m on kbin. I think I see the difference between up- and downvotes which should be at +9 at the moment.
Tankies are basically communists that are mainly anti west to the point that they support autocratic countries like china and north Korea.
Waiting for lemmygrad to try to convince us how this is a good thing.
Hexbear is the one I’ve seen acting out most recently to the point I just block any community I see from them
hexbear is a disease
Lol was just thinking the same thing.
Are the tankies in the room with you right now?
Oh hey lemmygrad user, funny you should mention that…
As a Hongkonger… Fucking heartbreaking.
Yeah, once again for the boot lickers in the back, fuck the CCP.
I’m out of the loop here. I thought Cantonese is popularly spoken in China (and other parts of the world with Chinese immigrants/descendants). So even in China (like Guangdong), is Cantonese used very limitedly?
Most of mainland China speaks Mandarin. More than 70% of Chinese speakers in mainland China speak Mandarin.
Cantonese is regional and only widely spoken around Guangdong, but very culturally tied to Hong Kong, Macau, and Guangxi which are all autonomous regions that the CCP has heavily wanted to completely pull into control. Eliminating their language is important to that aspect. Only around 6% of Chinese speakers in China speak the Yue family of dialects as a whole, of which Cantonese is an even more regional dialect of.
The difference in Cantonese usage couldn’t be more stark. I’m currently in Hong Kong. Everyone speaks Cantonese, and if you speak Mandarin, that says to people “This person is a Mainland tourist, let’s overcharge them.”, and if you speak English, that says “This person is a rich foreigner/white person, let’s overcharge them.”. This is despite English and “Chinese” (both variants) being official language in Hong Kong. All Government services are provided in all three languages but if you use anything but Cantonese, you’re going to see significantly more friction and encounter many more difficulties that Cantonese speakers don’t.
In mainland China, even in the eponymous Guangdong province (AKA Canton province), only old people speak Cantonese. When you’re at a restaurant or trying to buy something at a store, it’s 50/50 whether the other person speaks Cantonese and even then it’s likely they’ll greet you in Mandarin
The difference in Cantonese usage couldn’t be more stark. I’m currently in Hong Kong. Everyone speaks Cantonese, and if you speak Mandarin, that says to people “This person is a Mainland tourist, let’s overcharge them.”, and if you speak English, that says “This person is a rich foreigner/white person, let’s overcharge them.”. This is despite English and “Chinese” (both variants) being official language in Hong Kong. All Government services are provided in all three languages but if you use anything but Cantonese, you’re going to see significantly more friction and encounter many more difficulties that Cantonese speakers don’t.
to be fair it’s like this in almost all regions where the locals speak a minority language and they try to preserve it. In Canada they have english and french as an official language but if you try to speak english in quebec they will not be happy because of their history with the language/anglophones. you are seen as a form of colonizer if you speak a non-native language (both in quebec and in hk)
Quebecers can be real dicks about it. Practically everybody there speaks English, but there’s no guarantee they’ll want to speak it to anyone.
When I was there last before the pandemic I had no problems. If it’s any consolation what I’ve noticed is that in the mainland radio I’ve heard them use words like
Argue (idk the word for it Cantonese because it is an English loanword that originated in HK)
Cut 線 for hang up which is another english loanword
Keep住 for continue etc.
This was unheard of even ten years ago and the younger generation when I was there have softer accents (merging slowly to HK accent). What’s more profound is that they use it in broadcasts, which means more people will use these terms.
I’m happy that the vocabulary has changed on the mainland somewhat, these terms are popular in HK. Having English loanwords is good because it makes it vastly different to Mandarin so that people don’t get confused between the words.
Mixing in a bit of English sounds normal in Cantonese even on the mainland is becoming more and more normal (people won’t bat an eye) whereas if you do it in Mandarin people go wtf.
Having said that the accent vocab change on the mainland only affects the younger generation, the older ones use the traditional or even Mandarin terms as some of them get confused between the two. I have yet to hear anyone on the mainland older than 30 use the English loanwords.
I’m from the mainland originally but I’ve been overseas for a long time so my English is better than my canto. When I’m in the mainland Cantonese is easier because if I don’t know a term I just put the English word in it’s place, noone cares but always feel nervous in Mandarin because it’s not normal to code switch.
In written language at least I believe the CCP forced the development and adoption of Simplified Chinese, so it’s not particularly out of character for them to force a one language system on all their territories. They will continue their authoritarianism until everyone looks, sounds, and thinks the same in their country.
Tb0n3 English 4 • 29 minutes ago In written language at least I believe the CCP forced the development and adoption of Simplified Chinese in writing,
it’s bad enough we don’t have written cantonese, they also simplified the traditional characters for our writing? damn
There is written Cantonese that is slightly different from written Mandarin, but the vocabulary is similar enough that it is mutually intelligible. It’s about as different as American English and Indian English.
Most of the time when writing Cantonese, you will write it in “formal” terms which are technically pronounced differently. So instead of a casual word, you will write the formal equivalent, but when reading it back you can transcribe it on the fly to the informal equivalent again. If you know Cantonese, you can watch TVB news reports with the subtitles on and you’ll see this being done when they interview people.
For example, the word “without” in Cantonese is 冇 (mou), and in Mandarin it is 没. But a Cantonese speaker will still write “mou” as 没, or 無, even though those characters are supposed to be pronounced “mut” and “wu” in Cantonese and are considered formal. When reading it back, you can either say “mou” or “mut”/“wu” and both are considered fine, it just depends on how formal you want to be.
Another thing is that Mandarin is written exactly as it is said, and if you then read the writing back in Cantonese, it is completely intelligible, it just sounds overly formal and terse. So a Mandarin speaker can write something down and a Cantonese speaker will understand it. A Cantonese speaker can write something down using very formal terms and the Mandarin speaker will also be able to read it.
You can write Cantonese using the actual characters for the informal terms but then only Cantonese people will be able to read it since the characters used aren’t commonly used in Mandarin. Even then many Cantonese speakers only know how to read/write the formal version and will have to guess at the “informal” version.
Another interesting thing is that there is actually a lot of shared vocabulary between Cantonese and Mandarin. In fact, most of the “formal” vocabulary is shared and exactly the same, since the both derive from Classical Chinese. Classical Chinese is really just “peak formality” of regular Chinese (all dialects). Thus if you write in Classical Chinese most educated Chinese speakers will be able to read it! This is why Chinese is described as “the oldest language in the world”. An example is a no-smoking sign. In informal Cantonese, it’s 唔好食烟, which is nonsense to a Mandarin speaker. It would literally mean “?? good eat smoke” in Mandarin (the first character is almost never seen in Mandarin). But you can write the formal term, which is 禁止吸烟, which is exactly the same and 100% readable in both Cantonese and Mandarin. It means “smoking is prohibited” in both languages.
I kind of lost track of my sentence there and double referenced the fact that I was talking about written language. There’s a theory that it was to keep the people from being able to read older Chinese manuscripts and books which might make people question the communist party. Taiwan as far as I’m aware didn’t adopt Simplified Chinese and the literacy rate is high, so at least the goals of the CCP (literacy) were achieved through better education instead of changing the language.
I’m out of the loop here. I thought Cantonese is popularly spoken in China (and other parts of the world with Chinese immigrants/descendants). So even in China (like Guangdong), is Cantonese used very limitedly?
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in the last few years the CCP has been trying to erase HK culture and language and replace it with theirs, it’s all to create “cohesiveness”
Monoculture wars…
This has been a wildly educational thread. I would like to learn more about China and Southeast Asia from non-American sources and people. America’s perspective is always around who we should and shouldn’t do business with and how (as if I have a say in the matter, anyway).
You can read about china and the belt road initiative and its influence around the world, you can read about China and what it’s doing around the South China Sea (tangentially the impacts on south east asia)
You can read about Chinese business principles such as guanxi and something called the bamboo network which is the term for overseas Chinese network
You can also read about china and their investment in mexico to surpass us tariffs
