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Save Cantonese at Stanford – Petition

by brianjunyinchan on 1/5/21, 9:49 PM with 7 comments

• by science4sail on 1/6/21, 1:06 AM

  The enforcement of one language or dialect over others is a pretty common tool among nation-builders; the sharpest example in my mind is Parisian French taking over France [0]. Xi's CCP is definitely pretty nationalistic, so it's not surprising that they'd attempt to promote the speech patterns used around Beijing as the true form of Chinese.

  It remains to be seen whether Cantonese has enough critical mass to resist being displaced by Mandarin, although Wikipedia suggests that ironically it has been prospering at the expense of smaller Southern Chinese tongues [1].

  [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vergonha [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_shift#China

• by partingshots on 1/6/21, 12:08 AM

  OP, are you personally involved in this and/or go to Stanford?

• by swaggyBoatswain on 1/6/21, 4:41 AM

  I speak cantonese and it's a dying language imo. Most schools teach mandarin over cantonese. Also most people who speak cantonese speak English or another common language. And the learning resources out there for it aren't very good compared to mandarin. Most of my nephews and nieces don't speak it either. With every new generation I see less and less native speakers. It's kind of a shame

• by Grustaf on 1/5/21, 11:04 PM

  Where's the petition to save Cantonese in Hong Kong?