I constantly see the scenes of Hong Kong people showing dislikes of non-Chinese speakers speaking to them in Mandarin (also known as Putonghua) rather than Cantonese. What Hong Kong people would do is to reply those foreigners in Cantonese, but never Mandarin. Because they think that:
1. “Hey, I can speak English, why the hell you talk to me in Mandarin?”
2. “This is Hong Kong, man. Speak what the locals speak!”
2. “Don’t think that I’m a Mainland Chinese, I’m a Hong Kong-ese!”
—
updated on Aug 15th, 2011:
For “non-Mandarin speakers” and “non-Cantonese speakers” mentioned here, I mainly refer to foreigners who are not native Chinese or Cantonese speakers. Those Chinese living or born overseas who speak Mandarin or Cantonese don’t count.
—
And the hatred comes from…
A big part of the reason can be attributed to Hong Kong people’s excessive emphasis on self identification as a Hong Kong citizen (who speak Cantonese) rather than a Chinese (who speaks Mandarin), even though Hong Kong has politically been a part of China since its sovereignty being returned to China from the British government in 1997.
In fact, Hong Kong people have always been proud of the higher economic prosperity of their city than in China which was still in the early stage of development back in a few decades ago. Hong Kong people always showed superiority over Mainland Chinese at that time. Hong Kong people were more white, more educated, earned more and they spoke Cantonese. As times go by, Hong Kong people linked their superiority over Chinese with the physical and cultural difference – including the language they speak. That’s why, Hong Kong people feel offensive if foreigners speak to them in Putonghua rather than Cantonese.
Why don’t non-Chinese speakers learn Cantonese then?
1. They simply just don’t need to
Almost all the Hong Kong people can speak or at least understand a bit of English, and Chinese language (the written one) wasn’t a compulsory subject in secondary schools in Hong Kong until in the late 1970s. All university students have to write in English for their works. Even for secondary schools, there are both Chinese-medium and English-medium ones. In the early days, many secondary schools were English-medium and students have to write all their academic essays in English for all subjects except Chinese Language, Chinese Literature and Chinese History. Therefore, it’s an ingrained historical force that has trained Hong Kong people to understand English.
2. They prefer learning Mandarin
Don’t blame them, China’s economy is developing in meteoric speed and everyone is learning Mandarin, not just foreigners who want to be more competitive, but also Hong Kong locals themselves. In fact, the best Mandarin-speakers in Hong Kong are those 9-year-old kids who are forced by their rich parent to have private Putonghua lessons every week. Those 30 to 40-year-olds in Hong Kong speak the worst Mandarin.
3. Cantonese is too hard to learn
Both Cantonese and Mandarin are a language with tones, meaning if you say words with the same pinyin (phonetic spelling) in different tones, they mean differently. Mandarin has 4 tones, Vietnamese has 6 tones and Cantonese has 9 tones! (Some system says that Cantonese has 6 tones but having 9 tones is the most common understanding) So how could the foreigners not be scared away?
Is Cantonese worthwhile to learn?
These are at least 66 million Cantonese-speaking population in the world. A lot of Singaporeans and Malaysians also speak Cantonese. Most of the Chinese citizens in US, Canada and Australia speak Cantonese, too. In fact, Cantonese is the second local language in Australia*. So being able to speak Cantonese means that you can communicate with a big part of the Chinese community in the world.
I mean, any language is worthwhile to learn if you want to actually live in the culture and interact with the locals; same as anything is worthwhile to learn if you want yourself to be a better person because you feel happy about it.
You can lean some interesting Cantonese at Canton168. If you want to see examples of a English speaker learning Cantonese, go to Lost in Mong Kok.
*Source: http://www.hudong.com/wiki/%E7%B2%A4%E8%AF%AD
Like this:
One blogger likes this post.
China Travel Blog
I don’t hate speaking Mandarin to anyone, actually I quite enjoy speaking Mandarin, but I’m upset that people learn Mandarin rather than Cantonese just because “Mandarin is useful while Cantonese is not” and “I can speak English in Hong Kong anyway.” It’s just like telling me Cantonese is useless and it hurts my feeling. But well, there’s a government commercial called “Faces of Hong Kong”, in which a foreigner says “Cantonese? Never needed to speak it”. How can I expect anyone to learn our language when our government is telling the world you don’t have to speak it? And I also hate the fact that when I go to China, I have to speak Mandarin; when I speak to people from Mainland in Hong Kong, I still have to speak Mandarin. When do I get to speak my own language?
For those people who think that Mandarin is more useful than Cantonese, they put their survival ahead of everything when learning a new language. They want to gain more competitiveness in the society where the more language they speak, the better living they can make. I don’t blame them nor see any problems about it, but just because Mandarin is more useful doesn’t mean that Cantonese so useful that they “never needed to speak it” while they live in Hong Kong.
The government puts too much emphasis on attracting foreign investment and tourism, and is obsessed with promoting Hong Kong as an “Asian international city” in which everyone can speak English. But we have to also know that learning Mandarin. Nowadays more and more Mainland Chinese people are learning English while more and more foreigners are learning Mandarin. I just don’t want to see Cantonese decline because of people’s shifting of attention to learning Mandarin and English.
Yes, let’s preserve the Cantonese language, speak more.
I totally understand people who learn Mandarin because it’s more useful than Cantonese, and I see nothing wrong in this. It upsets me not only because Cantonese is my native language, I just wish people learn languages because they are interested in the culture and/or the language itself and not only because the language help them with their competitiveness.
That’s my wishes too. The world has becoming so commercialized now, people learn new languages for their own survival but not for genuine interests. That’s why I really admire those non-Chinese speakers making effort tovlearn Cantonese here.
I’m a German born Hong Kong Cantonese speaker and you are right. Most people are only after money and business and forget the sense of dissemination of cultures. Different varities of languages mean different structures of thinking and that mean of course different ideas, which are very important for the future. But Chinese government think, if all people speak Mandarin they will understand each other better and are better to be controlled, which I can not really agree, because they had since ancient times differences, which is good for China not to lose it’s diversity of cultures and languages. All Chinese with another native Chinese language need to learn Mandarin, but when do Mandarin speaker need to learn any other languages? It’s unfair! Plus people in Hong Kong are used to Cantonese and English due British colonization, which allow HK people freedom of press, so Cantonese developed to a language to express freedom of speech. HK people are of course afraid to lose this oppunity to have freedom of press and speech, because in Mandarin bad speech about the government would cause you problems easily. The daily speech in HK is Cantonese and middle-aged people in work have no time and chance to learn Mandarin. How to if they are busy and need to care for their family? The difference of Cantonese and Mandarin is even greater than other Chinese languages, so there are difficulties to learn Mandarin, knowing this fact China never thinks of offer free courses to let HK people learn Mandarin. Also there are already enough HK people, who are willing to learn and speak Mandarin. But some Mandarin speakers in Mainland are still not satisfied and it seems they wish the death of Cantonese. China’s government is of course happy about these Chinese vs. Chinese problems, so they let them be and can throw the hatred of Mainland Chinese people to HK, otherwise they would find a chance to throw their hatred to Japan, Korea, Tibet etc. and makes Chinese people forget the real problems in China. Really sad to hear it, but it’s true.
Thanks for your comment, Saiey.
Well, learning Mandarin is a personal interest / need, you either learn it as a hobby for as a professional qualification. Whether you really want to learn it depends on your interest in the language.
I don’t know about how Chinese government didn’t provide free courses or how Mandarin-speaking people refuse to learn Cantonese. I think that Hong Kong people should embrace their own culture, language and social norms. While Hong Kong people keep insisting that they are losing their own culture, they still refuse to speak Cantonese but English sometimes. Hong Kong people themselves should also learn to preserve their culture rather than just saying without getting it done.
I have no interest in learning Mandarin, and don’t want to be associated with China..it’s a simple as that.
Besides, Cantonese is a lot more older than Mandarin, plus Mandarin is the result of Manchu influence, it’s not even a real Chinese language.
Hi Jin, thanks for your comment, too.^^
That’s true, most Hong Kong people like to speak English to foreigners and they add too much English words in their Cantonese. Everytime I go to HK I notice friends, who speak English words in a Cantonese sentence. Just like: 我 feel 到. But I prefer to say: 我感覺到, which sounds much more fluent and nice. I often need to remind my HK friends to speak in full Cantonese sentences.
And I never mention Mandarin-speaker, who refuse to learn Cantonese. I mean Chinese people with another native Chinese language need to learn Mandarin to come further in China, but people who already born in families speaking Mandarin don’t need to learn any other languages to be accepted by China.
Actually I have no real interest in learning Mandarin, I prefer to learn Hokkien, Shanghainese, Taishanese or even Tibetian. I see it as a need to learn Mandarin, because our Guangdong area are getting more of Mandarin immigrants and most of them don’t learn Cantonese to speak with me. As a responsible person I learn it to show them, that we Cantonese people are nice, willing to learn everything and to promote Cantonese in my own natural ways.
Mandarin-speaker who learn Cantonese touched my heart very deeply, even if they learn a little, it is for me a great success. Also it gives me a little ease to speak in Mandarin.
An interesting article. Recently I’m hearing more and more about peoples concerns over the decline of Cantonese as a language within its native homeland.
It’s unfortunate that there is a general (usually mild) dislike toward mainland cousins. Maybe in time if they are allowed to be more open with the outside world they will change culturally in the same way as Hong Kong Chinese have… who knows.
Speaking no politically, diversity within society is a good thing, and the ability for people to speak 3 languages is a triumph in itself. People should be happy to practice their Mandarin, English and Cantonese at every opportunity.
I think that Mainland Chinese are becoming more open-minded to changes, especially in those big cities like Shanghai and Beijing, they are embracing new culture and are willing to interact with foreigners now. I agree that cultural diversity is conducive to a society, because it product more vibrancy and liveliness to a city, and more respects among all the different citizens.
Hong Kong people get used to a diverse environment, but somehow their traditional emphasis on superiority over Chinese is preventing them from embracing new things. I hope that as they learn more Mandarin, they can integrate themselves more to China.
I spent some time studying Cantonese at University in Hong Kong. Apart form taxi drivers, security guards and old ladies in the New Territories, no one wants to speak to gweilos in Cantonese unless they can’t speak any English or the gweilo can speak very well already. Trying to learn by talking to HK people is hard.
On the other hand, it is easy to speak Cantonese in SZ if you are a foreigner. All the below 20 kids who grew up in SZ use it as a way to demonstrate their status as locals. People assume that most foreigners can’t speak Mandarin but because they live in HK they must learn Cantonese so they make allowances for me.
It appears that being able to speak Cantonese in SZ is actually a badge of honour for “blow-ins” from the north.
Cantonese girls get excited when I speak a little Cantonese in Guangdong. It makes me instant boyfriend material. Hong Kong girls just think I am dangerous. “Oh, you must have a lot of girlfriends……bla bla”.
When I was studying Cantonese, I would meet other kids in the canteen and lunchtime and when they found out what I was studying they would always ask me why I picked Cantonese. They generally advised me to study Mandarin instead.
Anyway, Cantonese will never die out because Cantonese swear words are vastly superior for insulting people. All the extra tones make it really funny and shocking at the same time.
Also, every one will get tired of guys from Beijing thinking they are superior and trying to convince us that their ridiculous accent sounds better than everyone else’s. They sound like they have an erect penis in their mouth when they talk. This is an amazing skill, I admit, but one I don’t want to develop.
Taxi drivers never speak to you in Cantonese, they either just speak lousy English or not respond you. They will just drive the freaking taxi and get you paid.
ShenZhen people speaks Cantonese to appear superior because Hong Kong has traditionally been more wealthy than any part in China (10 years later who knows), so being able to speak Cantonese becomes a great honour to the SZ kids.
Since almost no foreigners learn Cantonese, if you can speak a few, it’s easy to impress girls in Guangdong because they admire your willingness to learn such a difficult language. And also Guangdong people speak both Cantonese and Mandarin, so they embrace diversity. But in Hong Kong, again people see no needs for foreigners to learn the local language, and they see learning new languages as a survival tool… so they think it’s very abnormal for you to learn Cantonese, and unlike Guangdong people, Hong Kong people mainly just speak Cantonese, hence if you speak Cantonese as a foreigner, it’s a thread that you would understand what they say while they’re unable to swift the language.
In fact, a lot of foreigners know quite a few swear words in Cantonese. But the Beijing accent… I would never get it. Everything has to sound like you’re swallowing a lemon with un-peeled skin.
I personally love Cantonese. Even though it is harder, its still interesting to learn and use. I love the reactions from Cantonese speakers when I use a little bit of it. Cantonese may not be as practical or useful as Mandarin, but Cantonese is still very much a good language to know.
The context of learning Cantonese can make and open so many doors. I find that it has a certain element of “awe-factor” and awesomeness, even among native speakers when they see a white person speak it. Generally, I think it may help locals to become a little more receptive over the long term.
This is true. I feel very impressed when I see non-Cantonese speakers speak good Cantonese. But it’s a common thing that they can speak (good) Cantonese swear words.
In fact, Cantonese is a much older language than Mandarin. A lot of Chinese traditional poems were written in Cantonese language, and they are more melodious to be spoken in Cantonese.
I hope locals will keep speaking Cantonese instead of just English (which is the case now) so that the fun side of the Hong Kong society can be sustained as the language itself is fun too.
Thats exactly true. I had read somewhere that Cantonese had older origins. Also I had read that it kept more of the original sounds from the Old Chinese and Middle Chinese as well.
I’m glad that you know
I try:P I am willing to admit I am a language dork and I am proud of that fact.
Learning language is never harmful.
Nope. Actually its quite beneficial and helps to open one’s horizons, thus gaining tolerance in the process of making new friends.
I can speak Shanghai dialect.
That is impressive. I only know how to say “hello”, “thank you” and “it’s cold”.
Mandarin was influenced by the various invaders from the north and evolved as a result. Cantonese, being further away from the centre of power remained true to the original.
If a language is to be used by a large number of non-native speakers it tends to simplify. Hence the reason that Mandarin has lost a few tones but Cantonese is still at 6 or 9 depending on who you ask. Mandarin has also added several more sounds. Cantonese has only 19 initials (sounds to start a word) but Mandarin has 2 more which makes it more difficult for Cantonese speakers to pronounce Mandarin (or English with 26 initial sounds).
I used to think that Cantonese sounded harsh until I started learning it. Now I think it is a very rich language due to the extra tones.
In fact, because there are less tones in Mandarin, many words with different literal meanings can have exactly the same phonetic spelling but different tones. It makes it harder for people to recognize the lyrics in Mandarin songs than in Cantonese songs.
Cantonese is a very rich language indeed, a lot of the slangs are very interesting and rude. A lots of Mandarin words are now Cantonese-lized. There are so many different Mandarin accents from all over China because of the use of both Mandarin and their local dialect. Hong Kong people only speak Cantonese here and it allows more evolution of the Cantonese language, there are new words coming up every day from the people, the press and the TV.
I hated the sound of Cantonese when I lived in HK but now I like it better than Shanghai dialect. I like the ‘sing song’ sound of it.
We always like things that we don’t have at the moment.
But yes, Cantonese is a very funny and interesting language.
I’ve lived down in southern China and didn’t really pay attention to Cantonese. Now living near Shanghai and having to deal with the local dialect, I feel like cutting off my ears. It sounds like a mix of Mandarin, Japanese, stuttering, and baby googoo gaga talk. I do miss the south sometimes.
Maybe someday I’ll try to take up Cantonese, but for now unfortunately I have no real use for it.
Thanks for your comment Pudding. Usually when you live in a city you miss those things in other cities.
All the local dialects in China are very weird and unique, people have been moving around and they’re a mix of many things.
If you want to learn it, you should. It’s fun.
Do Shanghai natives also view people who can not speak Shanghai dialect the same way Hong Kong natives view people who can’t speak Cantonese? It sounds like it.
Here in Shaoxing I get the feeling that the native people feel a more than average sense of pride that they speak their language and that they are from here. It could have nothing to do with language but they seem to hold their head higher than other parts of China I’ve been too. It’s only a stones throw from Shanghai and is famous for the writer Luxun. I wonder if this has anything to do with it.
Anyway, I’ve experienced this prejudice in China more than I have in Hong Kong. More than likely because you can get away with speaking English in Hong Kong and the amount of foreigners is greater.
But there are defiantly times when I try to talk to the locals here and get shunned. Is it because I can’t speak the local language, maybe. Is it because of my glistening white skin, maybe. But who really knows.
The real local Shanghai-ese peolele are proud of them being a native because most of the people living in Shanghai are originally from other parts of Hong Kong, so if you can speak the local dialect, it’s proved that you’re a native Shanghai-ese.
In Hong Kong, people have this attitude only to the fact that they can show their superiority to Mainland Chinese because they think that they’re of higher status. So when a foreigner speaks Mandarin, they feel insulted; when a foreigner speaks Cantonese, they feel extraordinarily impressed.
The thing I found ironic. I speak Korean and Spanish in addition to my native tongue of English, I find that there are a few similarities between Korean and Cantonese with some of the sounds that they produce(or I could have really bad pronunciation of Cantonese, which I readily admit).
A lot of Asian languages sound alike. But not just Asian languages, many languages around the world have been instilled a lot of different elements because of the integration of the world, for example a lots of Cantonese words sound exactly the same from English because of its colonial status before 1997, same as Japanese. The development of a language can be caused by a lot of factors, and historical factor plays an important role.
Exactly. It depends on how one language develops due to external factors, but sometimes due to internal movements.
yes,there are a lot of vietnamese are the same with cantoness in sound and meaning.for example:when you say :”gong hy fat choi” in cantoness,we vietnamese understand easyly.and there are a lot like that.also,the korean and japanese, have a lot of word are the same with Cantonese.vietnam,korea,japan had been using chinese as a officiall langauge for than 1000 years ,that why there are a lot influenced.
Hong Kong island, and the adncaejt part of the mainland, Kowloon, became British territory after the Opium Wars in 1842. In 1898 a much larger piece of land, the New Territories, was leased from China on a 99-year lease. The New Territories were due to be handed back to China in 1997, and since the rest of Hong Kong couldn’t exist on its own (there’s not enough water, for one thing), all of Hong Kong was handed over to China on July 1st 1997.
Coming from Toronto, I always wanted to learn Cantonese.
Alas, I’m having a hard enough time with Korean.
I think most Chinese people in Toronto (no matter from Hong Kong or Mainland China) speak Cantonese. When I traveled around and met those Chinese living in Toronto, they all spoke Cantonese. A friend of mine said there is like a Hong Kong colony.
You should learn it, Korean would be fun too, but speaking Korean sound like having an argument hahaa.
Funny. I was going to say the same thing about Cantonese, …
Some people love mandarin speakers far more than Cantonese and English…
I’m sure if you speak mandarin in high-end shopping centres, the service will be 10x better!
Thanks for your comment Justin. Pragmatically, Hong Kong’s retail industry is back strongly by those Mainland Chinese travelers’ substantial consumption power, the more high-end the shopping malls, the more polite the sales people to the Mandarin-speakers. But the sales people are only nice to them when they see the potential of the Mandarin-speakers actually pay them the cash in the end. If not, their attitude to Mainland Chinese is still the same – snobby. They are polite because of the benefits derived from their temporary politeness. That’s very sad.
It seems that there is an element of a regional competition between the dialects of Chinese. Perhaps that is a result of the development of the various little groups that China has seen develop over time.
Just like Beijing people saying that their accent is the most standard one because Beijing is the capital, while personally, I like the north-eastern Chinese accent, it’s more smooth and sweet.
It’s a competition not just in dialects, different provinces are competing each other in terms of economic development.
Economic development and regional competition happens just about anywhere. It just depends on how things progress from said development. It will be good to see where China goes the next few months.
True. But regional competitions in China is very unprecedentedly fierce. I would like to see how things go in China too.
Pingback: Confusion about Cantonese, Mandarin, Traditional and Simplified Chinese | HK Girl Talk
Overheard something similar in Chinatown today.
Caucasian: Ni hui bu hui jiang guo yu?
Local person: Siiik! Ngo kanghai sikkong kokyu, nei gu ngo sohhhhge ma?!?
Thanks for your comment.
LOL. This is everywhere in the world.
So I’m actually here in Hong Kong for a few days. While I am here I wanted to keep in mind the discussing that was happening here.
As far as mandarin goes, I’ve actually heard a good amount. Mostly in the metro and a few mainlanders from what I can deduce.
But on a different note, Hong Kong comes off as cold. I don’t thing I’ve seen a single person smile yet. If you don’t wear a suit I feel like your nothing. At least that is what is seems. I’m not disrespecting HK. I actually like it. It has culture, art, fashion, etc. But I think it is a little pretentious. If you don’t know anyone, if your not in the ‘in’ crowd, you don’t get noticed nor any respect.
It’s just an observation. I don’t live here so I can’t really say concretely what is going on.
It can be true. Hong Kong is a crazy and weird society, it’s made up of a lot of sub-gorups because of the social-political-economic changes.
It’s true that Hong Kong people are quite materialistic because it’s a consumption-based society with retail and finance being the key to feed the people.
It’s just that there are so many people walking on the streets in such a small place with high density, so that people hardly notice every each other until you have some attributes to stand out from the crowd, and wearing a suit is one of them. That’s why you see why Hong Kong people love going shopping all the time.
Have a great time in Hong Kong !
There are many factors that influence whether someone chooses to learn Cantonese or Mandarin, if they know neither to begin with. I totally understand the “Mandarin is more useful” rationale. You can speak to more people, and for some people, it helps them make more money if they learn Mandarin rather than Cantonese. These are the same reasons why people learn English. It’s the same reason why when I tell people I’m learning French, they ask me why I’m not learning Spanish, which some see as “a language of the future” like Mandarin.
The way I see it, the gov’t commercial where the foreigner says he (or she? I don’t remember) didn’t need Cantonese is just an attempt to make HK less intimidating. Sure, you don’t need Canto in HK. But you’d miss out on so much, and you’d be confined to the so-called “foreign parts” of HK.
When a foreigner speaks to me in Mandarin, a few things come to my mind. I think it’s impressive that they’re learning some form of Chinese, although it’s becoming less impressive the more times I go to SZ. I’ll go along if they want practice, because I need practice too. But if they think they’re doing me a favour by speaking Mandarin, then they’re sadly mistaken.
As for all the Mainlanders asking me for directions in Mandarin, there’s no point in me getting offended. What else can they do? As long as I can tell them which way to go in Mandarin, it’s good enough.
Indeed, Mandarin is useful, it’s useful in the sense of China is developing and it’s the most spoken language in the world. A lot of foreigners in Hong Kong do speak Mandarin and some of them speak even better Mandarin than Hong Kong locals.
But meanwhile, apart from the functional reason of learning a new language, it can also be that you want to explore the culture under which the language you want to learn is used. That’s why I really admire those non-Cantonese speakers who are determined to learn such a hard language like Cantonese because they want to live in the culture and don’t want to confine themselves in the foreign community.
When a Mandarin speaker asked me directions, I also reply them in Mandarin the best I can, just like you. It’s just a little favor that costs you nothing but one that you can help people a lot.
Oh, you mean people like her?
The first time I found this, I just wanted to hear the song, so I didn’t look until near the end of the song. I saw a Chinese girl’s name, and just thought she’s Chinese until I looked at the clip. I think it’s amazing, and I wish it would happen more.
One thing I don’t understand is why in Cantonese songs, the lyrics’ tone have to match the melody of the song, whereas it’s not required in Mandarin songs. It makes it a lot easier to remember how a Canto song goes than a Mandarin song, since you’re almost singing just by saying the lyrics. I also love it when a song is translated from another language into Canto, and not only is the meaning kept the same, but the lyrics’ tones also follow the melody. Trying to get both is a real challenge.
The video is very impressive, I was stunned by her Cantonese singing. It’s not that people try to match the melody of the song, it’s just that the 9-tone nature of Cantonese makes it harder to match the melody to made the song sound better. But this is also the reason why it’s easier to catch the lyrics of a Cantonese song than a Mandarin song, since Mandarin’s 4-tone makes it easier to match the melody but harder to guess the lyrics.
It’s extremely hard to translate a foreign-language song into Cantonese song while matching the melody and lyrical meaning at the same time. I heard a song like this once when I was small.
We should appreciate the 9-tone nature of Cantonese because it makes a song more unique (with less words in exactly the same phonetic spelling) and that the song can depicts the meanings better and more clearly.
Pingback: Hao Hao Report
Honestly, the people of Hong Kong and Macau, if not all of them, are known for speaking standard Mandarin with unusual pronunciation and tones and sometimes adding incomprehensible vocabularies from Yue dialect (Cantonese dialect, as most people say) into Mandarin sentences, which can be mind-boggling and confusing to tourists, especially those from northern part of mainland China. As soon as they open their mouth in speaking standard Mandarin, that’s where most tourists become somewhat frustrated, if not completely clueless. You see, the people of Hong Kong and Macau are not accustomed to pronouncing such rough consonants and unusual vowels in standard Mandarin, such as “sh”, “ch”, “zh”, and “r” in Pinyin. Also, some people of Hong Kong and Macau uses the tones of Yue dialect instead of standard Mandarin tones when speaking standard Mandarin, which give mainland Chinese tourists a rather different meaning in each sentence. Right now many people in Hong Kong and Macau, particularly the younger generation, are learning standard Mandarin, but they do have plenty of room for improvement in their standard Mandarin. Time will tell whether they can speak standard Mandarin flawlessly.
Thanks for your comment Chun Yin.
I agree. The reason why Hong Kong people speak poor Mandarin is that they put some Cantonese dialects into Mandarin which makes the whole sentence comes out as awkward. Hong Kong and Macau people find it hard to pronounce “sh”, “ch”, “zh”, and “r” because they don’t get used to pronouncing the “r” sound. I think what makes them improve their Mandarin is to think in Mandarin and speak in Mandarin and not putting Cantonese dialects into Mandarin. Now, more young people and children are learning standard Mandarin so the situation is getting a bit better. Yet, lots of middle-age and senior citizens in HK and Macau still speak very poor Mandarin (or don’t speak Mandarin at all).
Interestingly, a lot of Mandarin words have also been Cantonese-nized because of the close cultural exchange between Hong Kong and Mainland China. So how the two language will evolve will be an interesting thing to keep an eye on.
That is interesting article, and I understood why Hong Kong people feels like that above, even though I reckon there are some hasty generalisations against Mainland Chinese.
However, on the article and the responses above, no one points that Mandarin is also spoken not just in Mainland China, but also in Taiwan, and some countries in South East Asia, such as Malaysia, and Singapore, and so on. Plus, on the title “Why Hong Kong People Hate Speaking Mandarin to Non-Chinese Speakers?”, does “Non-Chinese Speakers” also include overseas Chinese like Singaporeans (新加坡華人)?
Individually, I am Chinese-Korean (韓國華人) and I have lived in Taipei, Taiwan for one year as an exchange student. When I went in Hong Kong last year, I spoke Mandarin to local people during shopping and socialising ,even though I started the conversation with basic Cantonese or English first, and I had no problem with it. However, after I’ve read the article I feel a little confused..
So, based on the facts in the articles above, do Hong Kong people show dislike to Mandarin speaker who is not from Mainland China as well??
Thanks for your comment Ronald.
Sorry for the confusion. When I say “Non-Chinese speakers” or “Non-Cantonese speakers”, I lean those people whose native languages are not Cantonese. Some of the Singaporean Chinese living in Singapore or Korean Chinese living in Korea speak Mandarin or Cantonese so they don’t count in the non-Chinese speaker categories. I usually refer “Non-Chinese speakers” to those foreigners whose native language is not Chinese or Cantonese.
For you, because you are a Chinese in nature, so even if you don’t speak Cantonese very well, Hong Kong people still find it fine to speak Mandarin to you. But if foreigners or white people speak Mandarin, Hong Kong people dislike it.
Of course, Mandarin is spoken all over the world (after all, there are a lot of Chinese people around the world). I guess the prejudice of Hong Kong people to foreigners speaking Mandarin is mainly from Hong Kong people’s wanting to show off their ability to speak English. They think that they can speak English to foreigners so there is no need for foreigners to speak Mandarin to them.
Plus, I guess it might be off the topic, but how does Hong Kong people think Guangzhou Cantonese(廣州廣東話)??
(Actually, basic Cantonese I’ve learnt is Guangzhou Cantonese, not Hong Kong Cantonese..Sorry.)
No worries about it being off-topic. I like discussing random topics.
Hong Kong people don’t have particular thoughts on Guangzhou Cantonese (廣州廣東話). For me, Guangzhou Cantonese is a bit more old-fashion and formal than Hong Kong Cantonese (香港廣東話). It’s because a lot of people in Guangzhou are from other provinces in China. Even among people coming from the Guangdong province, they also speak their own local dialects like (潮州話 and 客家話 etc.). Plus Guangzhou people also speak Mandarin. Because Guangzhou people speak relatively less Cantonese than Hong Kong people, Guangzhou Cantonese is with less diversity and development.
That’s why Hong Kong Cantonese is very versatile with many different slang and “hyped words” (潮語). The media and press in Hong Kong also help developed the variety of Hong Kong Cantonese.
Hope that helps answer your question.
Yeah, you’re right, However, recently, I have found that Guangzhou is trying to revive Cantonese as the motherland of Cantonese language (白話), and I hope it might help to add Cantonese more diversity as a whole.
Thanks for your kind answers! （多謝你!)
No problems. I also want to see Cantonese getting more widely used by Guangdong people.
I feel completely, blissfully lucky to have found this website. Having stayed in HK for 3 months as a teen I fell absolutely in love with the city; I dream of it. Now, a decade later, at the age of 28 and residing in the U.S I have serious intent on returning.
So, I turn on my computer today, questions churning through my head primarily regarding the topic at hand. You see, having intended on minoring in Cantonese at my local university, I found out they only offered Mandarin. What to do? Exactly how different are they? Are they mutually intelligible? How do local Hong Kong-ese regard Mandarin? Ahhhhhhh!
Your article and the subsequent, very enlightening conversation has answered most of my questions; it was the very thing I was looking for (and didn’t think I’d find). I’m going to continue to with Mandarin for now seeing as I have no choice, but also to get myself in the basic rhythm of
learning a related tone language (I already know a bit). However, thanks in part to this article, I’ll endeavor to learn Cantonese at the soonest available opportunity. Oh, and I don’t think I’ll ever learn to pronounce the “r” in Mandarin, so I’ll at least have that in common with the Cantonese!
I’m glad that you love the piece, Johnny. It’s always your interest in a certain country that creates the intention to learn the language. To be able to master a foreign language, you need to at least be curious about the culture and the people. We won’t do things good if we don’t like what we’re doing.
Good luck for your Mandarin learning.
I was born in Macau and grew up in HK in the 80′s so it was so easy for me to learn cantonese. i keep on seeing more and more people speaking mandarin so it just shows me that i must at least learn mandarin as well. i tried it in chinese school, waste of time and money. if you learn cantonese, try to learn a good amount of mandarin, it will help as i will do in near future. but now living in california, all these people in chinatown speak cantonese. learn both if you can.
In the future, Mandarin is more important, that’s something no one can deny. Cantonese is a language for pleasure I guess. You learn it because you think that it’s fun and you want to know the Cantonese culture.
Interesting blog…
I was surprised by the statements made in this article. I am white as milk, Mandarin speaking (I read traditional Chinese better than simplified) and I go to HK once or twice a year. The only time I use English in HK is with minorities (Indians, Filipinos etc.). Everywhere I go it’s all in putonghua, people are usually quite nice, I have never been told “speak English” or “speak Cantonese”. I have an accent when speaking Mandarin, so do most HK people, nobody ever said my Mandarin is bad and I’ve never told anybody their Mandarin is bad. On very few occasion I’ve switched to English with people who couldn’t speak guoyu at all.
Anyway, HK is an absolutely amazing city and I would surely learn Cantonese if I were to live there (How hard can it be for someone who can already read Chinese) but for everything else I think Mandarin is the way to go. You can’t be wrong by learning a language spoken by a billion people!
Thanks for your comment Frenchies. I don’t know when was the last time you spoke Mandarin in Hong Kong, but I have always been told by my foreign friends that they got responded by English every time they tried to speak Mandarin. I guess now more and more Hong Kong people are prone to speak English to show that “I don’t just speak Cantonese, I can also speak English and handle you”.
Of course it also depends on who you speak Mandarin to. Youngsters and staff in shopping malls would like to speak English to you back to show their capability of speaking two languages. Maybe that’s just my observations which can be biased.
Jin您好！
I was in HK last month and I did speak to people of all ages but it was all in Putonghua. I hang out in a lot around tourist spots so that might explain why I seldom meet people who can’t speak Guoyu. I am wondering, do you think someone who only speaks Mandarin could live in HK and be able to appreciate the local culture, make friends with the locals etc? I got the feeling that a lot more HK people speak Mandarin than English… is that correct?
True. People in yourist spots are willing to speak whatever language they can help with tourists.
As for Madarin speakers living in Hong Kong, I guess whether they can interact with licals depends on what kind of jobs they do. If they are bankers, accountants or lawyers etc., even Hong Kong licals would try to speak Mandarin with them in day-to-day conversatins ( considering that so many Chinese companies going IPO in HK, so Mainland Chinese who are well-educated have lots of respect from HK locals). for those Mandarin speakers who have an aveage job or can’t find a job at all, they mostly find it hard to interact with locals, at least for the beginning part of their living in Hong Kong.
Hope I have answered your questions.
Mandarin is lower class language in most HK people mind. We just learn for business. At the end of the day, British HKese is more superior than Chinese.
That’s a very simplistic statement. But thanks for your comment. We’ll see.
I’m was born and raised in Toronto and in my experiences is in the more older parts of Toronto such as downtown and Chinatown especially have are more Cantonese speakers. I guess it was a by-product of the immigration boom of the 1990′s. I myself is a Cantonese speaker having my mom be from Guangzhou and my dad from Malaysia. Since the boom a lot less people are coming from Hong Kong unless they are coming for university and people from Guangzhou alike. Most families come from the mainland now and live in the suburbs within Toronto. Most Cantonese people that have been in Toronto for a while or wildly successful move out to the suburbs outside of Toronto such as Markham or Richmond Hill where all the Asian Malls are such as Pacific Mall. But if you want a population filled with Cantonese speakers along, look no further than Vancouver. There are actually a lot of Hong Kong-esque places around Toronto and it is like “little asia” due to the multiculturalism of Toronto. I find the feuds between Mandarin and Cantonese speaks here are at a minimal because we accept so many cultures but some certain people don’t let go from their ideas. The more “fobby” Chinese people still hold on to “Don’t call me Chinese” or “Hong Kongers are snobs” ideals. How unfortunate.
Thanks for sharing, Ryan!
I also heard from other Canadian friends that some big cities like Toronto and Vancouver sound like a “Hong Kong colony” because many people speak Cantonese there (no matter they’re from Hong Kong originally or not). But what’s good there is that people don’t give up their own culture while accepting other people’s culture. This is very precious and I think you’re so lucky to be in it. I wish Hong Kong people had the same attitudes towards people from other cultural background. We will see.
Pingback: A Summary of HK Girl Talk in 2011 « HK Girl Talk
“Hong Kong people’s excessive emphasis on self identification”
excessive? Fuck you. Just cause we are politically part of a shithole does not mean we are them.
It’s the same as saying Nazi-occupied French are Nazi Germans as well.
This lack of understanding and respect to the people of Hong Kong is disgusting.
Thanks for your comment. I’m sorry if I’m being too judgmental in this article. I just want to point out Hong Kong people don’t regard themselves as “Chinese” people in general. This is a part of the reason why HK people don’t like speaking Mandarin.
Politically, HK is a part of China. But when it comes to self identification, it’s always the opposite, at least for now.
If you could share more about your own understanding of Hong Kong people, that would be cool.
You will find that learning materials for Mandarin vastly outnumber the extremely limited amount of content for Cantonese learners. They haven’t even come up with a properly standardised romanization system! What do we use? Jyutping, Yale, Cantonese Pinyin?! Textbooks…choose one and stop
Lest we forget the overabudance of Mandarin teachers, and considering how many Cantonese immigrants there are in the world, a shockingly low number of teachers giving Cantonese lessons. Considering most ‘popular’ culture that has been exported out of China has been Cantonese or Cantonese-inspired…I am a little agast.
British/American Chinese Cuisine….heavily cantonese based, exported Kung Fu films – Hong Kong made. Them cheap crappy cutlery sets that you find in Chinatown from the 1960s, exported from Hong Kong! You find thousands of things ‘Made in China’ over here in Britain but ironically, none of them are actually Chinese
I have never ever frequent a Chinese restaurant in Britain that advertises itself as ‘Northern Chinese Style’ or anything north of Guangdong province for that matter.
Thanks for your comment, Leigh. You provide some very insightful comments.
The learning materials of Mandarin indeed outnumber those of Cantonese because of the growing demand of Mandarin learning in mid of China’s booming economy. Plus Mandarin is the most-spoken language in the world (by no. of people), so practically and absolutely, this is true.
Mandarin teachers are abundant because of the vast number of population of Mandarin speakers and the high demand of Mandarin learning around the world. Also, lots of Mainland Chinese find it a good way to earn extra money by offering foreigners Mandarin teaching. It’s not hard to find Chinese people posting ads on various expat forums in China.
Chinese cuisine in UK, from what I heard, is terrible (sorry but I think it’s true). My friends from UK or those who visited UK also said you can find other Asian food in a “Chinese restaurant”, not to mention they don’t have the “Northern Chinese Style” cuisine.
To iterate an additional point; I found that people in Hong Kong despise speaking any form of Chinese to a person of non-Chinese ethnicity. Mandarin is looked down upon because of the whole “stupid mainlander” mentality that HK people seem to apply to the language. If you try and speak Cantonese, they will reply in English anyway. They are accusative and frequently pull the “I’m not stupid, I can speak English you know?” That has been my experience when I have visited Hong Kong myself.
I think it is a pride thing. People from Hong Kong seem to love the exclusivity. It’s probably a tendency to be isolationist from other ethnicities during the age of British colonialism. They’re desire to be recognised as their own independent cultural subgroup. You find it in Chinese communities in the UK, some even seem to get pretty irate that there are ‘white’ people in the vicinity when they perform cultural celebrations like Chinese New Year, in an ‘English city’ within “England”.
I completely agree with everything written in this article, whenever I’ve been in hong kong and spoken mandarin to locals you do get that ‘don’t speak to me in mandarin attitude’. The older population taxi drivers etc seem to be a bit different however I find its generally the younger people who are like this. The guangdong putonghua also sounds quite funny with lots of extra tones finding their way in their, similar to a lot of the mandarin ive heard in malaysia. Fair enough I guess but i definitely get the feeling HK’s think they are better than mainlanders.
On another note, Shanghai isn’t much better, the amount of times that conversation I speak mandarin to you and you speak english to me..happens all the time…. I had a fight with a few girls in my office recently about this when they refuse to speak chinese to me. When a lot of our (lao wai’s) putonghua is better than a chinese persons english why should we have to put up with hearing bad english all day. Ok if im back home in australia or new zealand yeah I understand but we’re in China therefore it should be the chinese putting up with our bad china… just my thoughts.
I hear beijing is a bit different..
Thanks for sharing, Matthew. I guess being able to speak good English is a sign of prestige for Chinese. The better English you speak, the more rich you appear to be. Before, Chinese people only used brandname logos and luxury apparel to show their status, now, speaking English has become the new symbol of being rich.
Unfortunately, not a lot of Chinese can speak good English, the fact that they’re not good at English while keeping speaking English among a group of people where there are only Chinese is just for showing off. Unless, the group consists of English speakers and those English speakers do not speak Chinese, otherwise, it’s better to embrace the local language – Mandarin if you’re in China and you’re a Chinese. If you studied abroad and speak better English than Chinese, I could understand. Otherwise, that would be the biggest joke in the world.
dear friends, pls tell me, does hk cantonese differ greatly from gz cantonese? will it be possible to learn cantonese in gz and after that go to hk and use the same languange there? what do you think?
Guangzhou Cantonese is a bit different from Hong Kong Cantonese. But you can communicate well with Hong Kong people if you speak Guangzhou Cantonese. Just like Mandarin, people in different provinces speak Mandarin in different accents and have different wordings to the same meanings.
Hi Jin. Thanks for writing this very interesting article and discussion. I’m from Malaysia and was just back from Macao, Hong Kong, Shenzhen and GuangZhou. This trip was 7 days and I’ve stayed in Hong Kong for 3 days.
Well I’m Chinese and speak Mandarin well but not good in Cantonese. So during my time in Hong Kong and all of these Cantonese speaking places, I mostly approached people in Mandarin although I would prefer to talk to them in Cantonese, but I always have this fear that if I speak to them in Cantonese and they would reply saying something I do not understand, then we would have a problem XD. Then I would need to tell them that I don’t know what they are saying and that would be quite awkward. You know, it’s like you come here and speak to me in Cantonese but when i reply u in Cantonese, u don’t know what I’m saying? LOL.
Anyway it was fun to learn about people’s culture. Only thing I dislike is the cold whether! In Malaysia it’s always summer 365 days so I’m definitely not used to it! LOL. Got a cold since the first day I arrived there for the 7 days spent there. Only recovered today since I’m back here in Malaysia LOL.
Thanks for your comment.
When it comes to travelling, you should speak the language you’re comfortable at and one people generally understand. Hong Kong people understand Mandarin (although they don’t speak well) so it’s okay to use that, especially for places like retail shops and restaurants, those staff speak at least a little Mandarin.
Hong Kong is hot in general, but because it’s near the sea, so when it’s raining, it’s super cold. Also, we don’t use heater… so, the temperature indoor is always colder than other western countries. Sometimes, you need to put on coat inside a house.
ye.first,i am not chinese like you,i am vietnamese.and i understand what the forum is talking about.
i support o keep the hongkongers keeping speaking cantonese,no need to speak Mandarin when talking to a chinese comes from mainland.i am vietnamese but i love cantonese and love hong kong city thru the movie.
i am living in danang city now and i am looking for a centre where i can learn cantonese but i can not,because the peking gov push too much pressure on our gov not to teach cantonese here.the peking gov want the putonghua to be spoken everywhere.
in saigon,there are lot of chinese living there,and most of them are guandong peoples,they use Cantonese like in Hongkong,.
i will try to learn cantonese and i will visit hong kong 1 day soon.
hi jin.nice to talk to you if you agree.i love hong kong.i want to have a trip to hong kong but i wonder if there is expensive or not?
Depends on how you want to visit HK. It’s not that expensive except for the accommodation.
thanks for advice jin.i like your blog.have you ever been to vietnam?
I’m 15 and I’ve lived in Singapore for more than half of my life. I came from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, which means I learnt KL Cantonese since I was very young. A few years back my family started subscribing to Hong Kong TV cable channels, and slowly I learnt Hong Kong Cantonese too – there are slight differences between HK and KL Cantonese, as I’ve found. Somehow, I’ve always found Cantonese easier to speak than Mandarin, although it’s compulsory for me to learn Mandarin in school!
Stephanie, you’re probably the only one to say that Cantonese is easier to learn than Mandarin. Yeah, even the Guangdong Contanese is different from HK Contanese, not to mention there are different between HK Cantonese and KL Cantonese.
Here’s a question, why is it that most of the job ads I see online that are in Hong Kong, require Mandarin and not Cantonese.
Don’t get me wrong, a lot require Cantonese but for the most part, more than most require Mandarin.
Just curious.
Hi Pudding, thanks for your comment. It’s because the jobs you see online might be targeting Cantonese people who speak native Cantonese. Therefore they don’t need to included the ability to speak Cantonese as a requirement. They use being able to Mandarin as a requirement because there are not all the people in Hong Kong can speak Mandarin.
So, the thing is, being able to speak foreign languages make you more competitive. It’s true for everywhere.
I am an ABC, and I grew up understanding a fair amount of Cantonese and even passively Taishanese. However, I am a bit sadden that people as in most Americans have recognized “Chinese” simply as Mandarin. I always wonder when I would speak “Chinese” then…Anyhow, did you know recently in Guangdong They have passes a policy effective March 1, 2012 to limit the use of Cantonese and other dialects in the media, and also to promote more use and broadcast in Mandarin? Right now, I am trying to self-study both Cantonese and Mandarin to preserve Cantonese, but if the attitudes do not change soon, a serious language shift will happen in China, and not one thet can be easily reversed.
Thanks for your comment, Dana.
I guess people are confused about the different between Mandarin, Cantonese and other Chinese local dialects because of the abundance of all these different language in one single country, and the country is very big.
It’s good to know what you want to learn Cantonese and prevent the language from disappearing! I didn’t know the new policy about limiting the use of Cantonese and other dialects in the media in Guangdong. Thanks for letting me and my readers know. Your attitude of learning Cantonese sound like a blogger friend of mine, the owner of Canton168.com. He is trying to keep the language from going away in this blog.
I hope for the best for your Cantonese learning.
“My joke is that Beijingers sound like they are talking with marbles in their mouths, and Cantonese sound like they are talking with a clothing pin on their noses and an egg stuck in their throat!” — i like this description
i will look at the difference between cantonese and mandarin from the perspective of evolution.
language is a tool for communication. the development of a tool is for it to become more user-friendly and more effecient. the more effecient tool has more aesthetic appeal. aesthetic appeal is like the lighting house to guide the development of a tool. the aesthetic appeal of a language is its pleasantness of pronouciation to our ears. the more pleasant one is a more evolved (therefore more user-friendly and more effecient) communicating tool whereas the less pleasant one is a backward tool.
cantonese is mainly spoken in the southern tip of china (guangdong and guangxi) where the weather is warmer and of less changes than the rest of china. the pronouciation of cantonese is said to be closer to the official language spoken in central china about 1000 years ago, which is why poems from the tang and song dynasties(1000years ago) sound more in ryhm if read in cantonese than in mandarin. in other words, the aesthetic appeal of modern cantonese is about the same as that prevalent in central china 1000 years ago. some cantonese speaking people(and scholars) in hong kong and guangdong are very pround of this fact, claiming cantonese is therefore more “elegant” and “graceful” than mandarin since china in the tang dynasty era is generally considered a more advanced nation in the world’s history of civilization. whether the logic behind such a claim is laughable or not is up to viewers’ own judgement.
if someone who has never been exposed to cantonse and mandarin before is asked to listen to these two languages and then differentiate which sounds less abrasive and less coarse (ie more pleasant) to ear, its more likely he will pick mandarin by intuition. similarly, if we are to distinguish a language near the equator and another near the north pole, we are more likely to prefer the one near the north pole. the very reason behind such preference is to do with weather’s effect on the languages’ evolution. cold and harsh weather increases the selective pressure on the language to become more energy efficient whereas complacency due to warm weather slows down evolution.
a question from a 3 year old: why black africans tend to have much thick lips than white people?
hk’s economic take off happened in 1960-70s, which is > 100 years after british’s rule. the take-off has a lot to do with the influx of immigrants from the mainland in 1940-50s. the immigrants brought with them capital and skills and techno know-how. most of these affluent immigrants are not of cantonese origin. google IQ score across china, guangdong ranks at the bottom. most of infrastructure in guangdong have been masterminded by non-cantonese people. 2 out of 3 chief executives in hong kong are non-cantonese native. surely these are just coincidence.
cantonese merchants have the reputation of petty merchants among overseas chinese. a big part of pearl delta industry is of low skill set-ups like garment and toys factories. surely they make cantonese proud
Hong Kong is ranked as one of the highest IQ average in the world with 107, mainland China is only 100. Who told you Cantonese people had low IQ? Cantonese has been spoken by Chinese in the northern China way before Mandarin even existed, it was the war that forced many of the Cantonese Chinese to immigrate to the south. So you were wrong to think Cantonese evolved from people living in the south. You were brainwashed by the government to believe Cantonese is inferior so they have an excuse to stop people from learning Cantonese.
Thanks for your comment.
Did I mention Cantonese is inferior to Mandarin? I learned from school that Cantonese has a much longer history than Mandarin and I’m trying to preserve Cantonese too.
The point I’m trying to make is that Hong Kong people hate speaking Mandarin (not Cantonese) when they’re dealing with non-Cantonese-speaking people, either Mainland Chinese or foreigners. I hope you understand my points.
If you wish to express your opinion as a guest writer, send your article to jin@hkgirltalk.com. Thank you.
Wow…
I did not know that this topic has still been a hot potato! So interesting!
By the way, even though I’ve left some comments long ago, I came back here to share some other facts about speaking Mandarin in non-Mandarin speaking region.
As in the article, many local Hong Kong people do not really like speaking Mandarin Chinese, but I sensed that it happens not just in Hong Kong, but also in major cities in the top tier cities in non-Mandarin speaking Southern China, including Shanghai, and so on.
Specifically, in Shanghai, based on what I’ve heard and researched, it seems like local Shanghai people (I mean, native Shanghainese who has been in Shanghai for more then three generations) also hate speaking Mandarin due to their regional superiority. In some extreme cases, they also expected non-Chinese speaking foreigner to speak Shanghainese dialect. I feel like they just speak Mandarin for economical reason even though they don’t like it.
Moving to Guangzhou, Mainland Cantonese speaking region, I kinda sensed that local Guangzhou people does not really like speaking Mandarin (I am not sure whether they hate speaking Mandarin or not, though) as well like Hong Kong people, in favour of their regional pride as the motherland of Cantonese.
In my opinion, the only difference compared to the Cantonese speakers in Hong Kong would be that they don’t usually show up (maybe because there are too many Non-Cantonese speaking residents in Guangzhou to speak up their thought..?), except during Saving Cantonese rally before 2010 Guangzhou Asian game starts, as Mainland Chinese government considered reducing Cantonese-spoken TV or radio programme for the game.
(Plus, I didn’t write this article to generalise certain groups with negative images, so please feel free to correct me if there were any biased point)
Shanghai is not like that at all. Many Shanghainese dislike Chinese who are not local and can’t speak Shanghainese, but they never expect a foreigner to speak Shanghainese. In fact, the younger generation of locals can’t speak it either. The Shanghainese have no negative opinion of Mandarin, just of 江北 people and other non-locals. Sadly the Shanghainese dialect is already in a really bad state, not even comparable with Cantonese. It’s a beautiful language but it’s already pretty much moribund.
汉语文化，不管是古汉语还是普通话，毕竟是从根到顶的主干；方言，包括粤语，毕竟是枝条。唐朝时汉语斜生出的一根细小枝条，生长缓慢，1000年只长出20公分，说我现在比已经生长到10几米高的树梢，距离主干更近，我才是最能代表这棵树的。不亦贻笑大方乎。
枝条总是枝条，主干总是主干。粤语，从古代到现代，一直只是一种方言，从未成为主流。只是这个枝条从唐朝从主干上分离出来后，生长缓慢而已。
普通话，不是少数人闭门鼓捣出来强制推行的，也是通过比较研究，充分继承了古汉语、结合了新时代、考虑了大多数汉语语族人员的现状，才产生的，即使是普通话，也是一个不断在产生变化的语言。古汉语-普通话-未来的汉语，一脉相承、血脉相通，其他方言，都是枝条、甚至是筋脉已断已经从主干上脱落的枝条。
cantonese is the least evolved major regional dialect due to the following reasons(quote):
- 相对普通话来说，广东由于岭南阻隔，历朝历代受到外来语影响比较少，保留古汉语应该比较多;
- 长期以来经济 文化发展相对落后，中原先进文化对其影响的速度较慢，自身的语言文化进化演变的速度也较北方中原大地为慢，天长日久下来就较多古汉语的残留
- warm weather
that might help explain why some old poems rhyme better in cantonese/ hokkien/ hakka (all backward dialects due to segregation/isolation and warm weather).
mandarin has been influenced by more dialects and languages than cantonese and has evolved much faster.
english’s history probably only dates back 1000 years but it has been influenced by many other languages in its evolution and such various influences must have helped english to communicate ideas more precisely and more efficiently. it is now the most spoken language(1st and 2nd language together; if only to count 1st langauge, its probably mandarin). does such a fact speaks for the value “of being influenced”?
arent we all become who we are becoz of influences around us? to be uninfluenced u need to stay isolated in the first place. who would prefer to be isolated? will u likely get improved by isolation? does an open-mind denote isolation?
latin is very old(>2000yrs) but its a dead language already.
does it make sense to compare a city(hk) with a nation(china) where the >50% of the population are still in rural area and many still struggle to get basic education? education helps boost IQ. btw,beijing and shanghai scores 109 and 108. guangdong(100) and hainan(95). if bj and sh also had the western exposure as hk, they would score even higher. hk gets the best of both east and west. in biology there is a term called hybrid vigor. it applies to culture mix too.
cantonese is not inferior. its just a more backward dialect than mandarin. btw, southerners being diluted and outdone by northerners is the ever repeating episode of history. guangdong area used to belong to vietnam some 2000yrs ago. chinese from the north conquered the southerners and took their homeland and started to settle there. many cantonese are decendents of chinese soldiers and prisoners from central china and the local southern women. genetically cantonese is more related to vietnamese. so is cantonese accent.
throughout history, ppl living in the guangdong area have often been referred to as monkeys by those living in central china(e.g.苏东坡去岭南说粤人面似猿，声似鸟). even though the pearl delta area has become more economically affluent in the last few decades, the cantonese clan are still being looked down becoz of their less attractive look and accent (often being mocked meanspiritedly). being discriminatory against the less attractive is in our gene becoz its vital for survival.
广东人保持粤语无可厚非，我支持全国各地方言都得到保留。but the reality is language comes and goes. like it or not, cantonese is a backwawrd and dying dialect.
贴一段wiki上的资料：
古代南迁到岭南地区的华夏族与南越族土著原住民长期杂居，彼此间语言、文化、习俗等各方面不自觉地相互渗透。粤语本身是由古华夏语和“古南越语”的混合语发展而来，因此它同时具有古华夏语和“古南越语”的特征。现代粤语中仍然含有南越语的底层成分，多表现在词汇方面，在语法上也有一些遗存。现代粤语跟现代壮语在日常用语上接近或相同的常用词有不少，这些词明显不是汉语来源，可能为“古百越”底层遗存。目前粤语中非汉语成份词语约有20％，比重不大但几乎都是核心词汇，使用频率特别高，在日常口语里面几乎在每句话中都会出现，但也有部分字被误会认为是南越语底层成份。
例如，如表示“这”的意思的粤音（/ni/）常被写成“呢”字，该词在壮侗语族、苗瑶语族等诸语中广泛存在，语法功能完全相同。有人认为该字可考的源头为“尔”，中古汉语唐音读作/nji??/ ，但相比壮侗、苗瑶诸语表示“这”的nei/ni，这种观点待考。
再如，粤语表示“欺负”的“蝦”(/ha/)，武鸣壮语与粤语完全相同，西双版纳傣语是 /jam ho/，黎语加茂方言为 /h?/。除粤语之外没有其他汉语族语言有这个词（但西南官话湖南少数片区有类似的“吓”音”ha”），古文献亦不存在；
粤语表示“痒”的“痕”（/h?n/），连山壮族瑶族自治县壮语中为 /hom/，武鸣壮语中为 /hum/ 或 /h?n/，傣语 /xum/，临高话 /kum/；
粤语表示“拧”或“折取”的“搣”（/mit/），南壮语（壮傣语支）、榕江侗语跟粤语完全一样都是 /mit/，布依语、北壮语（壮傣语支）、毛南语、泰语都为 /bit/，傣语为 /bip/，黎语为 /mi?t/；
粤语表示“点头”的“岌”（/??p/），北壮语（壮傣语支）为 /?ak/，南壮语（壮傣语支）为 /wak/，傣语为 /??k/，泰语为 /?up/，侗语为 /?ap/，黎语为 /?ut/；而此字本身也表示摇动。
粤语表示“倒塌”的“冧”（/l?m/），北壮语、毛南语跟粤语完全一样，泰语为 /lom/；
粤语表示“跺脚”的“揼”（/t?m/），壮语与粤语完全相同，黎语为 /tom/；
粤语表示“摇晃”的“擙”（/?ou/），北壮语、毛南语、侗语为 /?au/，南壮语为 /?au/ 或 /?u/，临高话为 /??u/；
粤语表示动词“松开”的“甩”（/lu:t??/），壮语为/l?t?/，泰语为/l?t/。
粤语的这类“古南越语”底层词举不胜举，在现代壮语、侗语里面都可以找到系统性相同或相近的词，而且这类词多数都是日常生活中使用频率非常高的基本词汇。
Hi, i’m a Chinese guy from Malaysia. well, basically both dialects seem equally important to me because unlike HK and China, we don’t really have a serious cultural crisis here in Malaysia. the only thing is that in those Chinese primary schools students are not allowed to speak any dialect other than the official Mandarin. we also have some Chinese independent schools where students literally learn everything in Mandarin despite our national language is Malay and English, the students tend to be more sinocentric and they segregated themselves from getting along with other races of the bigger community, which i think it’s a little bit extreme and they are like “Chinese communists” to me, of course this does not apply to all of them. in my opinion, learning Chinese language is good but not to the extent that they totally forgot where they are living because they need to be more liberal and come out to mix with other people as well.
i personally prefer the distinctive Cantonese sense of humor and i don’t think there’s any dialect could be on par with that. though it’s inarguably China is a home to all Chinese cultures but the government can not do as it pleases. if it keeps going on like this sooner or later HK will lose its irreplaceable identity.
Loads and loads and load of replies. Guys, more people speak ‘english’ in chna, inc HK than in the USA. I’m an expat and strugglig to make a life here as every single job I apply for needs the Chnese language. If you are worried about your heritage, ha ha try applying for a job or move to England where there are 20 languages that govern.
To be honest, I find Cantonese people are pretty racist and many people have angry problems. I can say so because I am from HK. I examine at many of my friends from HK, they are such douchbag with very bad personalty, therefore they don’t have much friends beside their azn clan. While mandarin people are very polite and some are with great personalty, they seem to be good at making friends than the Cantonese. Yes they might be loud and such, but deep in they are very nice and passionate!!
being good at making friends is a trait of resourcefulness. socializing demands wit and sophistication.
there have been more and more mainland students coming to hk for tertiary education(coz awarded by generous scholarship as part of hk government’s talent attraction policy) yet most of them rarely mix well with the local students and the disharmony seems to be escalating with the recent rising anti-mainland sentiment in hk. some tend to blame cultural gap resulted from different exposure as the key note of this disharmony. one common impression the mainlanders have of the locals is their ignorance about china, overall shallowness and narrow mindset, the last of which is rather ironic given the locals’ sense of betterment over the mainlanders is actually largely based on their assumingly better international exposure.
cantonese is just like the ebonics of the chinese language.
ebonics is the dialect or vernacular form of American English spoken by a large proportion of African Americans. it developed from contacts between African langauges and nonstandard varieties of colonial English spoken by white americans in the southern states(the cotton plantation states where the african slaves worked). ebonics is used in the home or for day-to-day communication rather than for formal occasions. It typically diverges most from standard American English when spoken by people with low levels of education.
cantonese is a dialect of chinese spoken by a large proportion of ppl living in the southern most area(guangdong and guangxi) of china. it is developed from contacts between southern indigenous languages (such as vietnamese, zhuang, tai,etc) and nonstandard colloquial chineses spoken by migrant chinese(such as soldiers and prisoners) from central china. its accent and spoken form is more influenced by the indigenous languages as the chinese migrants married the southern indigenous women and their children’s speech is more influenced by their mother’s tongue than father’s (which is why cantonese accent actually sounds more similar to vietnamese and thai than other chinese dialects). they adopt the written form of standard chinese as none of the indigenous languages had developed a written form. as a result the spoken form and the written form have never been compatible. vietnamese used to adopt chinese characters for writing before the french came.
cantonese not only sounds unpopular to foreign ears. it has always been the least respected dialect in china and its accent is often mocked meanspiritedly. the connotations tagged on cantonese have hardly ever been positive.
despite hong kong’s success has little to do with the cantonese language or its culture, the glory might have given a bit twist of fate for cantonese but its destined to be only delusional and short-lived unless the cantonese ppl can upgrade their gene pool to become aesthetically appealing enough to project cultural influences to the other chinese. it has never happened in the last 2000 years though.
Pingback: Why Does Mandarin Win Out Cantonese as the Standard Spoken Version of Chinese? « HK Girl Talk