Chinese Babel

What non-Chinese often overlook is the robust and rugged strength of the various Chinese dialects. To the non-Chinese, the Chinese are homogeneous. In many ways there is homogeneity. But, not in many other ways.

Just last month, over lunch with some management staff of a multinational company that I am associated with, the conversation turned to the impression within the Chinese Malaysian community that the Hokkien (Fujian) community are dominant in business. I suddenly realised that the staff were either Hakka, Cantonese or Hainanese. That was interesting.

Now, I hear that the Cantonese populace in Hong Kong are getting restive on the issue of the Cantonese dialect in education. As I understand it, when Hong Kong was a British colony, the Chinese schools in Hong Kong used Cantonese as a medium of instruction. But, since 1999, when China reclaimed sovereignty over Hong Kong as an autonomous region, the official Mandarin language has been the dominant medium of instruction.

The Cantonese dialect groups are trying to make a case for the freedom of choice for schools to revert to Cantonese as a medium of education.

Is this a troglodytic behaviour on the part of the Cantonese dialect groups in Hong Kong?

Is Cantonese a dialect or a language?

When the Mandarin text books are used in classrooms where Cantonese is the medium of instruction, does something get lost in translation?

And, here in Malaysia, many non-Chinese think that the Chinese community is homogeneous!

Dialect rules!

Quite an amusing thing, this Babel-like approach to education and choice of language or dialect. But, as we know, to many, it can be an emotional matter. Is this a indication of insecurity or, cultural imperative? One wonders.

Anyway, here's an interesting take on the issue by the Economist:

THE first reports of protests on behalf of the Cantonese language in China that I saw, about two weeks ago, I dismissed. Language has signally failed to become a major issue in China. This is despite the fact that the country is—it needs to be said again and again until people stop referring to "dialects"—hugely mutlilingual. Mandarin Chinese is a language, and so is Yue (Cantonese), so is Wu (Shanghaiese) and so are the others (Hakka, Northern and Southern Min, etc.) Speakers of two of these various languages simply can't have a proper conversation with each other in their home languages. (There are, of course, dialects of Mandarin, Yue and so forth, and these are by and large mutually comprehensible.)

Mandarin complicates this picture because it is the biggest, it is learned in schools around the country, is the official language, and is the basis of the writing system. The writing system is not a pan-dialectal written form that ties all varieties of Chinese together, as many believe. The character 我 is pronounced wǒ in Mandarin, ngóh in Cantonese/Yue, góa in Taiwanese, ngú in Shanghainese, ǎ in Gan, and so on; it means "I" in all those languages. But this doesn't mean written Chinese is pan-dialectal. To write Cantonese so it can properly be read out and accepted as real Cantonese requires different character order, special characters, sometimes Roman letters, and quite a bit of ingenuity, since it there is no standard way of doing so (though more Cantonese are trying).

Meanwhile many Chinese really do believe that they speak dialects of a single thing called Chinese, which they all write the same way—even if, to use a European analogy, the Chinese language family resembles not British vs. American vs. Irish English, but something more like English vs. Frisian vs. German. And they persist in believing in their linguistic unity probably because the Chinese really do see themselves as part of a single Han people. (This does not include non-Han minorities like Tibetans and Uighurs, and speakers of Miao-Yiao and so forth in the south.) Language has rarely disturbed national unity, as it has in so many places, whether Spain or Turkey or Belgium. So when I saw the second report (video) of such protests—admittedly small—in the past few weeks, I took note. Language policy (and language resentment) has been the dog that hasn't barked in China. Now it has barked meekly—twice. Both protests have been quite small. But this situation should be an interesting one to keep an eye on.