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1
Miao, Ruiqin, and Jiaxuan Li. "Urban migration and functional bilingualism in Guangdong Province, China." Journal of Asian Pacific Communication 16, no. 2 (2006): 237–57. http://dx.doi.org/10.1075/japc.16.2.06mia.
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Massive population movement across dialectal boundaries in contemporary China leads to increasing bilingualism in Putonghua (Standard Chinese) and regional dialects. This study investigates the functional distribution of Putonghua and Cantonese as spoken by immigrant residents in Guangdong Province. Results from questionnaire surveys in Guangzhou and Shenzhen reveal different patterns of Putonghua-dialect bilingualism in the two cities. For immigrants in Guangzhou, Putonghua and the local dialect (Cantonese) have comparable strength and functions, whereas in Shenzhen, Putonghua serves as the dominant language. To account for the differences between Guangzhou and Shenzhen, we argue that demographic structure is an important factor regulating the standard-dialect relationship in the urban communities of China. We propose that social network features correlate with the respective instrumental and integrative values of the languages or dialects in contact. This research provides insights into the dynamic interaction between the standard language and dialects in multilingual societies that are experiencing profound social changes.
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Barov, Sergey A., and Maia A. Egorova. "CANTONESE DIALECT IN MODERN CHINA: THE PROBLEM OF CONSERVATION." RUDN Journal of Language Studies, Semiotics and Semantics 10, no. 1 (2019): 152–66. http://dx.doi.org/10.22363/2313-2299-2019-10-1-152-166.
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The artice is devoted to the problem of preserving the Cantonese dialect (language) in modern China, where for several decades the government persistently pursued a policy of disseminating of the nation-wide Chinese language (“pǔtōnghuà”). Cantonese is the largest language by speakers among all Chinese languages and it is native to most residents of Guangdong and Hong Kong, however, unlike the languages of the national minorities of China, it is not fully protected by law and is consistently ousted from the education system and out of business communication. In the article the authors carefully analyze the linguistic history of China, the role of dialects in the system of Chinese languages and the historical and political significance of a single written norm. According to the authors, the division of China into two large cultural and historical communities (northern and southern) corresponds to the established linguistic division, but unlike many other countries in the world, the ethnolinguistic and ethnocultural differences between the northern and southern Chinese due to the centuries-old unifying efforts of the central government do not lead to the division of the Chinese nation. The article examines in detail the history of Cantonese, a linguistic analysis of the differences between Cantonese and Putonghua, and on this basis concludes that Cantonese should be considered not as a dialect of Chinese, but rather as a separate language of the Sino-Tibetan language group, albeit closely related to the Chinese language. Analyzing the role of Cantonese in the formation of a special cultural and historical community in Guangdong and Hong Kong, the authors conclude that the declining of the Cantonese dialect (language) will probably occur over the next several decades, unless the language and education policies of the Chinese government are changed. Otherwise this tendency will lead to the loss of the province's identity, which is part of the intangible cultural heritage of the entire Chinese nation.
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S. Bauer, Robert. "The Hong Kong Speech Community’s Cantonese and Other Languages." Global Chinese 1, no. 1 (2015): 27–55. http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/glochi-2015-1002.
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Abstract The Hong Kong speech community distinguishes itself from others in China by predominantly speaking Cantonese, a South China regional variety which is mutually unintelligible with Putonghua (or Mandarin), China’s official, national language. While Hong Kong is officially (but ambiguously) bilingual in 中文 ‘Chinese’ and 英文 ‘English’, yet simply in terms of its numbers of speakers, social domains in which it is spoken, and deliberate choice by the broadcast media, Cantonese unquestionably serves as Hong Kong’s de facto official spoken language. Other Chinese varieties (or dialects) and non-Chinese languages are spoken in the community, although the numbers of their speakers are relatively small. For both pedagogical and political reasons, schools have been switching from Cantonese mother-tongue instruction to Putonghua. Other language-education issues being addressed by the authorities are demands by Hong Kong’s ethnic minorities to learn to read and write standard Chinese through a comprehensive curriculum for Chinese as a second language and an end to segregated schools.
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Kalmar, Ivan, Zhong Yong, and Xiao Hong. "Language attitudes in Guangzhou, China." Language in Society 16, no. 4 (1987): 499–508. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0047404500000348.
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ABSTRACTCantonese and non-Cantonese students of the Guangzhou (Canton) Foreign Language Institute took part in a matched-guise experiment, expressing judgments about two samples of speech produced by the same person but presented as coming from two different speakers. In one sample the person spoke good Putonghua (Mandarin), in the other a Putonghua heavily influenced by Cantonese. All judges tended to agree that what they thought was the better Putonghua speaker would have a better chance for social advancement. However, Cantonese judges also showed some positive evaluation of a “heavy Cantonese accent” in the sphere of personal empathy. Such empathy was stronger among male than among female Cantonese. Similar attitudes regarding a “high” (Putonghua) and a “low” (Cantonese) variant in a multilingual society are typical for most Western societies that sociolinguists have studied. They now seem to be equally typical for an Oriental, socialist society like that of China. (Chinese dialects, evaluative reactions, comparative sociolinguistics)
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Chan, Leo Tak-hung. "The dialect(ic)s of control and resistance: intralingual audiovisual translation in Chinese TV drama." International Journal of the Sociology of Language 2018, no. 251 (2018): 89–109. http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/ijsl-2018-0005.
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AbstractThere are two types of intralingual translation in contemporary China: diachronic and synchronic. While the former involves rewriting older texts in the modern tongue, the latter involves translation between Putonghua and local/regional Chinese dialects. Two modes of intralingual translation – dubbing and subtitling – will be examined in this article, in terms of their use in TV serials produced in China since the 2000s. The evidence (largely Cantonese dramas in Guangdong) shows that the use of a control-resistance paradigm to understand the relationship between the national language and Chinese dialects is fraught with problems. The paradigm has often been used, albeit in different ways, by researchers of China’s central-local relations, scholars of dialect films, and theorists of minority language translation. However, to characterize dubbing into Chinese dialects as “resistance”, and subtitling into Putonghua as “control”, is nothing less than a simplification of sociolinguistic realities that reveals a lack of awareness of how translation mediates between the different speech varieties in a diglossic society.
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Bauer, Robert S. "Cantonese as written language in Hong Kong." Global Chinese 4, no. 1 (2018): 103–42. http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/glochi-2018-0006.
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AbstractA unique potpourri of historical, political, social, cultural, and linguistic factors have all influenced the development of the Hong Kong Cantonese language so that it has emerged into a distinctive, independent form of Chinese; while it most certainly shares features with other Chinese languages, nonetheless, it can be described as separate, different, and special. Hong Kong Cantonese and Putonghua are two mutually-unintelligible languages. The Cantonese language is not simply the standard Chinese characters plus their Cantonese pronunciations. One of the most distinctive characteristics of Hong Kong Cantonese that sets it apart from all other regional Chinese languages is its highly conventionalized written form that is being widely used throughout this speech community. What we clearly observe is that Hong Kong Cantonese-speakers are transcribing with Chinese characters and even English letters the lexicon and grammar of their Cantonese speech; this practice was precisely expressed by Huang Zunxian 黃遵憲 of the late Qing dynasty in his phrase《我手寫我口》(ngo5 sau2 se2 ngo5 hau2)The Cantonese romanization employed here is called Jyutping, i.e., 粵語拼音 jyut6 jyu5 ping3 jam1 which was devised by the Linguistics Society of Hong Kong (2002). Appendix 1 below has compared this romanization system with the corresponding IPA symbols. Mandarin pronunciation is romanized inPīnyīn., literally, ‘my hand writes my mouth’, i.e.I write the way I speak. This must be appreciated as no mean feat, given the lack of formal standardization, along with the fact that Cantonese-speaking schoolchildren are not explicitly taught to read and write Cantonese but learn to do so informally and indirectly through exposure to its pervasive use. In other words, in Hong Kong Cantonese-speaking children have acquired their Cantonese speech in the usual way from their parents and peers but without ever learning how to read or write its written form; and, up until relatively recently, they went to school to learn how to read and write a language, that is, standard Chinese/Putonghua, which they did not speak (this situation has been changing as an increasing number of schools have switched over to using Putonghua as their medium of instruction over the past 15 years or so). Not surprisingly, the combination of standard Chinese characters used in non-standard ways with uniquely Cantonese (nonstandard, dialectal) characters and English letters in a text of written Cantonese renders it almost unintelligible to Putonghua speakers from mainland China and Taiwan.Five processes can be observed operating in written Cantonese: viz., traditional usage of the standard Chinese characters, as well as their phoneticization, indigenization, semanticization, and alphabeticization (through intimate contact with English). Related to these five processes are 12 basic principles that underlie written Cantonese. In combination together these processes and principles provide us with the means for systematically analyzing written Cantonese. In order to promote the eventual standardization of written Cantonese, this study has identified two main problems of variation in the transcription of Cantonese lexical items that still require appropriate resolution.
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Jie, Xiaoping. "A Case Study of Code-switching in a City of East China." Ethical Lingua: Journal of Language Teaching and Literature 4, no. 1 (2017): 1–10. http://dx.doi.org/10.30605/ethicallingua.v4i1.294.
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This study attempts to observe how natives of different age groups in a city of south-east China switch between Putonghua (Mandarin Chinese), the H language variety, and the local dialect, the L variety, the linguistic features of different CS patterns, and the function of the H variety in conversation. Topics of the participants’ conversations ranged from family to friends, neighborhood, games, movies, computers and business. Data analysis shows that the participants mainly use the local dialect and Putonghua in their daily conversation, while English and other dialects in China like Cantonese and Dongbeihua (Dialect in north-east China) are also used.
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Li, David C. S., Shuet Keung, Hon Fong Poon, and Zhichang Xu. "Learning Cantonese as an additional language (CAL) or not: What the CAL learners say." Global Chinese 2, no. 1 (2016): 1–22. http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/glochi-2016-0001.
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AbstractBased on qualitative data obtained from 33 participants in four focus groups, two each in Putonghua (17) and English (16) respectively, this study shows that learners of Cantonese as an additional language (CAL) in Hong Kong experience a lot of difficulties. As a ‘dialect’, Cantonese has not been standardized and is not part of school literacy. A variety of romanization systems are used in commercially obtainable learning aid like Cantonese course books and bilingual dictionaries, which tend to diverge from romanized Cantonese in street signs and personal names. Independent learning is difficult while incidental learning is almost impossible. Cantonese tuition, often focusing on tones, is reportedly not so helpful. With six distinctive tonemes, the Cantonese tone system appears to be a major stumbling block. When spoken to in Cantonese, local speakers tend to switch to English or Putonghua. Inaccuracies in tone contours often trigger laughter, damaging CAL learners’ self-esteem and dampening their motivation to learn and speak Cantonese. Unlike sojourners, non-Chinese residents who see themselves as Hongkongers often get upset as their identity claims are questioned or even challenged by the mainstream Cantonese society.
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Erbaugh, Mary S. "Southern Chinese dialects as a medium for reconciliation within Greater China." Language in Society 24, no. 1 (1995): 79–94. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0047404500018418.
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ABSTRACTSouthern Chinese dialects – Cantonese, Taiwanese, and Hakka – have received little official support from the governments of the nations where Chinese is spoken; they are not mutually intelligible with Mandarin, and are often deeply stigmatized. Although China's language wars have paralleled cold war hostilities, unofficial forces in the 1990s are rapidly enhancing dialect prestige, as an economic boom increasingly links the “Greater China” of the People's Republic, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singapore. (Chinese dialects, Mandarin, Cantonese, Min, Hakka, bilingualism, Hong Kong, Taiwan, official language)
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Chen, Yiya, and Carlos Gussenhoven. "Shanghai Chinese." Journal of the International Phonetic Association 45, no. 3 (2015): 321–37. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0025100315000043.
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Shanghai Chinese (Shanghainese; 上海话) is a Wu dialect (ISO 639-3; code: wuu) spoken in the city of Shanghai (CN-31), one of the four municipalities in the People's Republic of China. Over the last century, the dialect has been heavily influenced by neighbouring dialects spoken in the provinces of Jiangsu and Zhejiang, such as Jianghuai Mandarin (江淮官话), the Suzhou Wu dialect (吴语苏州话), and the Ningbo Wu dialect (吴语宁波话), in addition to two other, more distant dialects, Cantonese (广东话) and Northern Mandarin (北方官话). Most native speakers of Shanghai Chinese are in fact descendants of immigrants from Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces who moved to Shanghai in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. More recently, the position of Shanghai Chinese has been eroded with the influx of immigrants from other parts of the country and the widespread adoption of Standard Chinese.
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Zhou, Yang. "Exploring the emergence of the postverbal sin1 先 in Cantonese". Language and Linguistics / 語言暨語言學 19, № 2 (2018): 333–75. http://dx.doi.org/10.1075/lali.00012.zho.
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Abstract Sin1 先 as a function word in contemporary Cantonese encodes a number of grammatical and pragmatic meanings. As its most prominent feature in syntax, it predominantly occurs in the postverbal position while indicating the meaning of ‘first’. This paper explores the emergence of the postverbal sin1 先 ‘first’ in Cantonese. We first examine the word order typology on the element for ‘first’ in the languages and dialects of southern coastal China. In this linguistic area, the postverbal elements for ‘first’ in Chinese dialects are contact-induced by Tai-Kadai and Hmong-Mien languages; whereas sin1 先 ‘first’ in the mainstream Cantonese shows a stronger tendency to be placed in the postverbal position than its counterparts in other Chinese dialects. We then discuss the word order and semantic changes of sin1 先 from 1820s to 1960s based on Cantonese historical materials. Besides the pressure of language contact, the formation of the postverbal sin1 先 ‘first’ has been further triggered by the semantic motivation to formally differentiate the ‘precedent-subsequent’ polysemy within sin1 先 itself. In short, the emergence of the postverbal sin1 先 ‘first’ in Cantonese has been a two-stage process, dually driven by external and internal causes, respectively.
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Gao, Yihong, Xinchun Su, and Lei Zhou. "Pre-handover language attitudes in Hong Kong, Beijing, and Guangzhou." Journal of Asian Pacific Communication 10, no. 1 (2000): 135–53. http://dx.doi.org/10.1075/japc.10.1.08gao.
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In May 1997, a matched guise test was conducted on 304 college students in Hong Kong, Beijing, and Guangzhou. The stimulus material was presented in 4 guises: Cantonese, English, Putonghua, and Putonghua with Cantonese accent. Major findings: (1) What distinguished Hong Kong subjects’ sociolinguistic identity was not Cantonese, English or Putonghua as found in previous studies, but Putonghua with Cantonese accent. In light of Brewer’s (1991) optimal distinctiveness theory, this would suggest parallel needs of “being Chinese” and “being Hongkongers.” (2) Guangzhou was closer to Beijing rather than to Hong Kong in language attitudes. The cutting boundary appeared between the mainland and Hong Kong, not between Cantonese-speaking and non-Cantonese-speaking communities.
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Kirkpatrick, Andy. "‘Chinese English or English Chinese?’." Global Chinese 1, no. 1 (2015): 85–110. http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/glochi-2015-1004.
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Abstract A question which is frequently asked in discussions about the future roles of English and Chinese (Modern Standard Chinese or Putonghua and often also referred to as Mandarin) in the Asia-Pacific region is whether Chinese will replace English as the primary regional language or lingua franca. In this article, I shall first consider the roles that each language is playing in China itself and within the Asia-Pacific region. I shall argue that it is important to take these languages together, as the combination of Modern Standard Chinese and English is threatening regional languages, including other major Chinese languages such as Cantonese. In dealing with these two major languages in combination, I shall also consider how each language has influenced and continues to influence the other linguistically, illustrating this with examples at the levels of lexis, syntax, rhetoric and pragmatic norms. I shall conclude by tentatively suggesting how the roles of these two languages may develop in future, and the potential sociolinguistic consequences of this.
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AU, TERRY KIT-FONG, WINNIE WAILAN CHAN, LIAO CHENG, LINDA S. SIEGEL, and RICKY VAN YIP TSO. "Can non-interactive language input benefit young second-language learners?" Journal of Child Language 42, no. 2 (2014): 323–50. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0305000913000627.
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ABSTRACTTo fully acquire a language, especially its phonology, children need linguistic input from native speakers early on. When interaction with native speakers is not always possible – e.g. for children learning a second language that is not the societal language – audios are commonly used as an affordable substitute. But does such non-interactive input work? Two experiments evaluated the usefulness of audio storybooks in acquiring a more native-like second-language accent. Young children, first- and second-graders in Hong Kong whose native language was Cantonese Chinese, were given take-home listening assignments in a second language, either English or Putonghua Chinese. Accent ratings of the children's story reading revealed measurable benefits of non-interactive input from native speakers. The benefits were far more robust for Putonghua than English. Implications for second-language accent acquisition are discussed.
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Kurpaska, Maria. "How to choose the proper words? The process of vocabulary standardization in Putonghua." Lingua Posnaniensis 62, no. 1 (2020): 41–53. http://dx.doi.org/10.2478/linpo-2020-0003.
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Abstract As with most fields of life, China can trace its history of word standardization back to ancient times, when the first dictionaries (such as Erya, ca. 3rd century B.C.) appeared. Modern Standard Chinese used in Mainland China – Putonghua – has been subject to standardization since its proclamation as the official national language of China in 1956. The definition states quite clearly that its base is formed by the Northern dialects. This statement concerns also vocabulary. However, it is not a simple matter to make a choice of words which are to be used throughout the country. On the one hand, the so-called “Northern dialects” are spoken by almost 70% of the Han Chinese population, i.e. by about 800 million people. Although the Northern dialects are said to be quite uniform, the vast area that they cover must bring diversity in vocabulary. On the other hand, the remaining 30% of the Han Chinese speak a range of mutually unintelligible tongues, which are bound to penetrate the Northern dialects. The aim of this paper is to show how the lexicon of Putonghua is being codified. An attempt will be made to reveal how the basic vocabulary was selected during the forming of Putonghua in the 1950s. Some of the tools used by the State Language Commission in order to control the process of vocabulary standardization will be described. Moreover, the paper intends to describe the ongoing changes in the Chinese lexicon. It will show the sources of new words that are gradually accepted into the authoritative dictionaries of modern Chinese.
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Novita, Sherly, Dwi Widayati, and Bahagia Tarigan. "THE SOUND CORRESPONDENCE OF TEOCHEW, HAKKA, AND CANTONESE." HUMANIKA 27, no. 2 (2020): 105–21. http://dx.doi.org/10.14710/humanika.v27i2.33140.
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This research is based on a theory in Historical Comparative Linguistics. This theory is also called a diachronic theory, which involves the analysis of the form and regularity of changes in common languages such as those accompanied by sound changes. The objects of the research are Teochew (TC), Hakka (HK), and Cantonese (CO) dialects used in Medan city. These three dialects are categorized into the Sino-Tibetan family. Sino-Tibetan (ST) as one of the largest language families in the world, with more first-language speakers than even Indo-Europeans, is having more than 1.1 billion speakers of Sinitic (the Chinese dialects) constitute the world's largest speech community. According to STEDT (Sino-Tibetan Etymological Dictionary and Thesaurus), Chinese is considered as a Sino-Tibetan language family. The research method used is the qualitative method. The data collection method and technique used to refer to the conversation method with the techniques of recording and writing. The data were analyzed using the qualitative method of glottochronology. The result of the research shows that TC, HK, and CO were related in terms of sound correspondences and were separated thousands of years ago. TC and HK were related and both corresponded identically one similar vowel, one similar consonant, and one different phoneme, and one similar syllable. TC and CO were related and both corresponded to one similar vowel, one similar vocalic cluster, one similar consonant, and one different phoneme, and one similar syllable. HK and CO were related and both corresponded identically, one similar vowel, one similar consonant, one different phoneme, one different vocalic cluster, and one similar syllable. From all the findings and discussion in this research, the writer has concluded that HK and CO are the closest dialects among the three compared dialects.
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Ben Said, Selim, and Teresa Ong. "Catering to Multiple Audiences: Language Diversity in Singapore’s Chinatown Food Stall Displays." Lublin Studies in Modern Languages and Literature 43, no. 4 (2019): 31. http://dx.doi.org/10.17951/lsmll.2019.43.4.31-48.
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<p>The visibility of bilingualism and multilingualism has increased in the urban landscape of major cities, a phenomenon commonly attributed to a globalized world economy, increasingly fluid national boundaries, and the subsequent contact between people, languages, and cultures. This is no truer than in countries such as Singapore, which has a history of cultural multilingualism driven by economic imperatives. Our study employs a mixed methods approach to present the diversity of language variation on signboards in Singapore’s Chinatown having resulted from the area’s culture and history, which dates back to the early 19th century. Following our examination of display practices, we observed that the dominant languages represented were Chinese and English, while the other official language (in this case, Tamil) was represented. Chinese dialects such as Hokkien and Cantonese, which were transliterated, were also widely represented. Reasons and explanations for the chosen languages on the signboards were elicited through consultations with hawkers. As a result, this study found that the exclusivist use of Chinese together with Chinese dialects is associated with an ethnic affiliation and territoriality commonly encountered in ethnically-marked neighborhoods, while the global language of English is used as a commodity catering to foreign and non-Chinese patrons.</p>
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Wu, Hongmei, and Sethawut Techasan. "Chinatown in Bangkok: The Multilingual Landscape." MANUSYA 19, no. 3 (2016): 38–52. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/26659077-01903004.
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This paper examines the linguistic landscape (shop names) of Chinatown in Bangkok, a prosperous minority language (Chinese) community of diverse commercial establishments. Informed by an ethnographic framework, it explores the preservation of Chinese language and culture under the circumstance of language contact with Thai, the majority language, and globalization influence of English. Unsurprisingly, the inherited Chinese language (dialects as Teochew or Cantonese) was lost in the 2nd or 3rd generation of the Chinese descendants in Chinatown. However, the shop names suggest that in part because of its commodifying value and cultural awareness of the current proprietors, the Chinese shop owners are inclined to preserve the Chinese language and culture of the shops through the use of traditional Chinese characters, colors, layout and other marks of the shops. On the other hand, an analysis of the mutual translations of Chinese and Thai indicates that Chinese has more of a symbolic rather than informative function for Thai monolingual customers. Moreover, the ascendancy of English has contributed to the complexity of the multilingual landscape in Bangkok’s Chinatown.
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Evans, Stephen. "The Long March to Biliteracy and Trilingualism: Language Policy in Hong Kong Education Since the Handover." Annual Review of Applied Linguistics 33 (March 2013): 302–24. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0267190513000019.
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Since the handover, policymakers in Hong Kong have faced the daunting task of determining the educational roles of two major international languages (Putonghuaand English), as well as a vibrant local language (Cantonese), which is the mother tongue of around 90% of the city's predominantly Chinese population. Their response to this unprecedented challenge has been to set the ambitious goal of developing students’ ability to read and write Chinese and English and to speak Cantonese,Putonghua, and English. At the same time, however, they are pursuing policies that in some respects run counter to this commendable if ill-defined aim. This article examines the background to and rationale for the promotion of biliteracy and trilingualism and reviews recent research into the government's major language-in-education initiatives since 1997, namely, the adoption of a compulsory mother-tongue policy at junior secondary level, the recent fine-tuning of this controversial policy, and the use ofPutonghuaas the medium of instruction in Chinese subjects at primary and secondary levels.
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Chawla, Chanyaporn. "A Semantic Study of the Classifiers 只Zhī, 个Gè and 条Tiáo in Mandarin and Three Southern Chinese Dialects". MANUSYA 19, № 1 (2016): 1–27. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/26659077-01901001.
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As we know, in spoken language, 个gè is a commonly accepted general classifier 3 in Modern Chinese. However, this is not the case for other dialects. In the Southern dialects, the specific classifier 只zhī in Mandarin is adopted (Wang, 2008 (c): 279-281). Additionally, in certain Southern dialects, 条tiáo has a wide range of uses. Thus, it can be said that all these individual classifiers share one common feature: all are often used with several kinds of common nouns, i.e. for persons, animals, body parts, objects of daily use, etc. Consequently, in this paper, I will explore the three Chinese classifiers 只zhī, 个gè and 条tiáo in Mandarin, comparing them with the three other Southern dialects, namely Hakka, Chaozhou, and Cantonese, employing the prototype theory (Rosch, 1978) and interview technique, in order to reveal how Northern and Southern people view the world through these classifiers.
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Zavyalova, Olga. "Language Diversity of China and National Security." Problemy dalnego vostoka, no. 4 (2021): 168. http://dx.doi.org/10.31857/s013128120016163-0.
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China with its dozens of languages of national minorities and numerous Chinese dialects is still a linguistically very diverse country, and this diversity regularly finds its reflection during the events in various regions. In 2020, medical teams sent to Wuhan during the coronavirus outbreak faced difficulties with understanding the patients speaking local Mandarin dialects. Later on, language problems in Wuhan were urgently solved by the local administration. Starting from 2019, language confrontation became more visible during the protests in Hong Kong. Already in 2021, a volume devoted to the complicated language situation in the recently created economic cluster of the Greater Bay Area, which is to combine Hong Kong and Macau with nine cities across the Pearl River Delta, was published in the series of the annual reports of the State Language Commission. According to the model proposed by the linguists, Standard Chinese is to become the main spoken language both within the Greater Bay area and in contacts with other regions of China. Cantonese is to be used only as an additional local means of communication, while English and partially Portuguese in Macao are to be preserved as the languages of contacts with foreign countries. To solve various problems of the economic cluster, new structures are to be created with the help of the latest information technologies and participation of the linguists. Language unity as a whole is considered to be a key guarantee of the national security of China.
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Yan, Xi. "A study of Macao tertiary students’ attitudes to issues in postcolonial Macao’s language policy and planning." Language Problems and Language Planning 43, no. 3 (2019): 241–61. http://dx.doi.org/10.1075/lplp.00033.yan.
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Abstract This study focuses on Macao, a former Portuguese colony and a Special Administrative Region of the People’s Republic of China after 1999. A questionnaire survey and semi-structured interviews were conducted in 2012 and 2013 respectively among freshmen of the University of Macau to investigate their attitudes to issues in Macao’s language policy and planning (LPP). Findings of this study reflect their practical attitudes, as reflected in their attitudes towards the choice of English or Portuguese as the first foreign language in Macao public schools. At the same time, their attitudes also reflect their strong local allegiances and resistance to Mainland China’s cultural practices, as reflected in their views on the issue of the official status of Putonghua in the Macao SAR, the choice of Putonghua or Cantonese as the medium of instruction, and the maintenance of traditional Chinese characters, written Cantonese, and Cantonese Romanization System in Macao.
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Li, David C. S. "The Functions and Status of English in Hong Kong." English World-Wide 20, no. 1 (1999): 67–110. http://dx.doi.org/10.1075/eww.20.1.03li.
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This paper is an update of Luke and Richards' (1982) study on the functions and status of English in Hong Kong. The sociolinguistic matrix is described by outlining the distribution of the main functions of the two written languages standard written Chinese (SWC) and English, and the three spoken languages Cantonese, English and Putonghua, in four key domains: government, media, employment and education. Cantonese and English remain the most important spoken languages. The macro-sociolinguistic analysis "diglossia without bilingual-ism" has given way to polyglossia with increasing bilingualism. There are two written H varieties, SWC and English, the former is penetrating into some domains formerly dominated by the latter. Cantonese, typically interspersed with some English, is assigned L functions in both spoken and written mediums. There is some indication that Putonghua is getting increasingly important in post-colonial Hong Kong, but there are as yet no significant social functions assigned to it. Compared with the early 1980s, significant changes have taken place at all levels. Language-related changes are discussed in light of a critical review of recent local research in a number of areas: medium of instruction, language right, linguistic imperialism, Hong Kong accent, Hong Kong identity and language attitudes toward Chinese and English. In view of the tremendous social prestige and symbolic predominance of English, it is argued that "value-added" is a more suitable epithet than "auxiliary" to characterize the status of English in post-1997 Hong Kong.
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Li, David C. S. "Towards ‘biliteracy and trilingualism’ in Hong Kong (SAR)." AILA Review 22 (November 16, 2009): 72–84. http://dx.doi.org/10.1075/aila.22.06li.
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Despite the Hong Kong SAR (Special Administrative Region) government’s determination to implement the ‘mother tongue education’ policy amid strong social resistance one year after the handover, English remains a prestigious language in society. The need for Putonghua (Mandarin/Standard Chinese) is also increasing following ever-expanding trade and other activities with mainland China. The societal demand for both English and Putonghua in postcolonial Hong Kong is important for understanding the SAR government’s language-in-education policy called ‘biliteracy and trilingualism’. The learning of English is fraught with two main problems: (a) the absence of a conducive language-learning environment outside the classroom, which makes English in Hong Kong more like a foreign than a second language, and (b) tremendous typological difference between Chinese and English on one hand, and considerable linguistic differences between Cantonese and Putonghua on the other. Given the significant phonological differences and, to a lesser extent, lexico-grammatical divergence between the majority’s vernacular and modern written Chinese, the learning of Putonghua is no straightforward task either. The dilemmas of the medium-of-instruction (MoI) debate will be discussed by elucidating the main concerns as seen from the respective vantage points of the government and five key stakeholder groups: employers, parents, school principals, teachers and educationalists, and students.
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Kwok, Bit-Chee. "Reconstructing the development of the aspect marker te ‘to acquire’ in Southwestern Yuè: a missing link between Yuè and Hakka." Cahiers de Linguistique Asie Orientale 45, no. 1 (2016): 71–104. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/19606028-00451p03.
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This paper provides a synchronic description and reconstructs the developmental pathway of the aspect marker te in four Southwestern Yuè dialects of Chinese, located in far western Guǎngdōng. Synchronically, te functions as a perfective aspect marker and a perfect aspect marker (similar to Mandarin Chinese le but different from Cantonese zo). Diachronically, te is believed to have been transferred from the neighboring Hakka dialects through substratum influence. We argue that te is grammaticalized from the verb dé 得 ‘to acquire,’ of the Hakka dialects. This study reveals that the aspectual use of te is an essential part of a missing link between Yuè and Hakka. Cet article offre des descriptions synchroniques et reconstruit la voie de développement du marqueur aspectuel te dans quatre dialectes chinois de Yuè du sud-ouest, qui se trouvent à l’extrême-ouest de la province de Guǎngdōng. Synchroniquement, te fonctionne à la fois comme un marquer aspectuel du perfectif et du parfait (comparable à le en chinois mandarin mais différent du zo en cantonais). Diachroniquement, nous pensons que te a été emprunté des dialectes voisins de Hakka, et ainsi subi d’une influence de substrat. Nous argumentons en faveur de l’origine Hakka de te : il est grammaticalisé du verbe dé 得 qui signifie ‘acquérir’ dans les dialectes Hakka. Cette étude révèle que l'usage aspectuel de te joue un rôle essentiel du lien manquant entre les groupes dialectaux de Yuè et Hakka.
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Kirkpatrick, Andy, and Heng SU. "Mǎi dan or mái dan?" Chinese Language and Discourse 3, no. 2 (2012): 227–46. http://dx.doi.org/10.1075/cld.3.2.04kir.
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The term maidan has become a common way of asking for the bill in Putonghua. In this paper we investigate whether this is the transfer of a Cantonese expression which has been re-interpreted as a Putonghua expression, and thus an example of language change being caused by a mistake or mishearing. The study surveyed Mainland Chinese in a number of settings to elicit their preferred way of asking for the bill. By asking them to write the characters, we were also able to determine whether those whose preferred way of asking for the bill was to say maidan were using the Cantonese or the Putonghua expression. We conclude that, in many contexts, maidan has indeed become the preferred way of calling for the bill, and that the majority of those who use this expression are using the Putonghua ‘buy the bill’ rather than the original Cantonese expression.
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Chen, Weirong, and Foong Ha Yap. "Pathways to adversity and speaker affectedness: On the emergence of unaccusative ‘give’ constructions in Chinese." Linguistics 56, no. 1 (2018): 19–68. http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/ling-2017-0038.
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AbstractIn this paper, we examine the characteristics of unaccusative ‘give’ constructions in Chinese, and additionally identify the pathways for their emergence in some Chinese dialects, in particular Southern Min and Mandarin varieties.In this paper, the termsdialectandvarietyare sometimes used interchangeably, with the termvarietybeing the more general term that can also include variations within dialects.We distinguish between Type 1 and Type 2 unaccusative ‘give’ constructions, the former involving reversible ‘escape’-type intransitive predicates, and the latter irreversible ‘die’-type intransitive predicates. Type 1 constructions are attested in many Chinese varieties, such as Mandarin, Min, Wu, Hui, Hakka and Cantonese, whereas Type 2 constructions are more rare and thus far are mainly attested in Southern Min and some Mandarin varieties. Two major pathways in the development of unaccusative ‘give’ constructions are identified in this paper, namely, the causative pathway and the passive-mediated pathway. Our analysis also traces how the unaccusative ‘give’ construction develops into a marker of adversity and speaker affectedness. The findings of this study have implications for understanding the relationship between changes in valence (i.e., the number of core arguments that are profiled in a given construction) and speaker’s subjective stance.
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Lee, Cher Leng. "Filling gaps or code choice? Code-switching across generations in colloquial Singapore Mandarin." Global Chinese 5, no. 1 (2019): 1–24. http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/glochi-2019-0001.
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AbstractSingapore is a multiracial, multicultural island nation; three quarters of its population is ethnic Chinese. This paper examines the phenomenon of code-switching between the younger generation and their parents, and grandparents, focusing on the English, Chinese dialect and Malay elements present in this variety of spoken Mandarin. The data is taken from university students who have recorded their conversations with their parents, grandparents, siblings and friends. Many of the older generation in their 70s still speak southern Chinese dialects such as Hokkien, Teochew, Cantonese, Hakka, and Hainanese as well as Bazaar Malay (which was a lingua franca with Hokkien). Their spoken Mandarin consists of code-switching with these dialects. The middle generation in their 50s is the generation that is able to communicate both with the older generation and younger generation in the various languages. Their spoken Mandarin consists of English, dialects, and even some Malay. The younger generation in their 20s can hardly understand or speak these dialects as a result of the Speak Mandarin Campaign which was launched in 1979 to replace all dialects with Mandarin. As such, the younger generation’s spoken Mandarin consists mainly of English code-switched elements. This paper argues that code-switching takes place mainly due to convenience to fill in the gaps when younger speakers do not know the Mandarin equivalent of the words in certain domains, given the changes in language policies in the nation. In this case, it is not necessarily a choice of code but rather filling the gaps with the language that they know out of necessity.
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Hyland, Ken. "Language Attitudes at the Handover." English World-Wide 18, no. 2 (1997): 191–210. http://dx.doi.org/10.1075/eww.18.2.03hyl.
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Britain's 150 year colonial administration of Hong Kong came to an end in June 1997 when the territory reverted to Chinese sovereignty. Because the fate of languages is closely related to the power of different groups in a society, this constitutional transition raises important issues of language and identity. At present English continues to play an important role in business and administration while Cantonese is the lingua franca of a highly cohesive and independent community. However, the extent to which the colonial language is a component of the Territory's identity, and the prospect of it retaining an influential role, remains to be seen. Reunification is likely to have a considerable impact on language attitudes and use with Putonghua, the official language of mainland China, emerging to challenge English and Cantonese as a high status language in public domains. This paper builds on previous studies by Pierson et al. (1980) and Pennington & Yue (1994) to examine the changing language attitudes brought about by the handover. A questionnaire was administered to 900 Hong Kong undergraduates to discover students' perspectives on language and cultural identity, social, affective and instrumental attitudes and general predictions for language use with a view towards the political transition.
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Lai, Mee Ling. "Exploring Language Stereotypes in Post‑colonial Hong Kong through the Matched-guise Test." Journal of Asian Pacific Communication 17, no. 2 (2007): 225–44. http://dx.doi.org/10.1075/japc.17.2.05lai.
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After the change of sovereignty in Hong Kong from Britain to China on July 1st, 1997, the status of Putonghua (the language of the new Chinese ruler) has been formally recognized in addition to Cantonese (the vernacular language) and English (the international and ex-colonizer’s language). Four years after the political handover, a Matched-guise test was conducted on a total of 1048 local Hong Kong Secondary 4 students. The aim of this study was to ascertain the respondents’ subjective reactions towards the three languages when the city was undergoing significant political and socio-economic changes. The results showed that the Cantonese guise was rated the highest on traits of solidarity, the English guise the highest on traits of power, whereas the Putonghua guise was rated the lowest in both dimensions. Although the study started from a micro perspective investigating the attitudes of the respondents towards the three target languages and their speakers, the research results helped to reveal the vitality of the three target languages in post-colonial Hong Kong and suggest directions for language education.
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Fengtong, Zhang. "The initials of Chengdu speech as compared with Standard Chinese." Journal of the International Phonetic Association 15, no. 2 (1989): 59–68. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s002510030000298x.
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Chengdu speech is the received pronunciation among the various Sichuan dialects spoken by ten million people in Southwest China. In this short paper, I intend to discuss the characteristics of the initials of Chengdu speech as compared with Standard Chinese. The following abbreviations and conventions are used: CDH = Chengduhua, i.e. Chengdu speech of Chinese. PTH = Putonghua, Standard Chinese based on Beijing pronunciation. CPA = the Chinese Phonetic Alphabet. Chinese characters are transliterated into CPA first when they are cited as examples. A phonetic transcription of CDH pronunciation follows, in square brackets. Tone symbols are placed before the CDH syllable: [̄] High Level, [̖] Low Falling, [̀] High Falling, [̬] Fall-rise. For PTH the tone symbol is placed above the CPA nuclear vowel letter e.g. mā High Level, má High Rising, mǎ Fall-rise, mà High Falling.
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Huang, Jing. "Language use difference and social group differentiation: Immigrants’ negotiation of an imposed category of lau in bilingual Guangzhou." Global Chinese 4, no. 2 (2018): 293–313. http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/glochi-2018-0014.
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AbstractThis study is situated in a bilingual community of Guangzhou where the local speech Cantonese used to have comparable power to the Chinese common language Putonghua regarding the range of domains, but recently a local concern has emerged over the declining status of Cantonese in association with the large number of immigrants and the vigorous implementation of the state language policy of Putonghua Promotion. This concern has been demonstrated in Guangzhou locals’ boundary-making practices and the categorization of immigrants in relation to language practices. This study aims to investigate the ways in which immigrants take up stances (Du Bois 2007; Alexandra, Jaffe. (ed.). 2009.Stance: Sociolinguistic Perspectives. Oxford: Oxford University Press.) to negotiate their identities in response to an imposed category oflau. Immigrants’ narratives of and comments on language use in their interactions with natives are analysed, at both semantic and formal levels, from a perspective of Critical Discourse Studies (e.g. Martin, Reisigl & Ruth Wodak. 2015. In Ruth Wodak & Michael Meyer (eds.).Methods of critical discourse studies, 3rd edn. 23–61. London: Sage, Fairclough, Norman. 2015.Language and power3rd edn. London: Routledge.). As the analysis shows, immigrants negotiate the imposed identity category through coming to terms with the underlying language beliefs, negatively evaluating the social actors who categorize them, recontextualising the category, and combining Putonghua and Cantonese in one language unit to indicate the symbolic oppositions between social groups and languages.
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TARDIF, TWILA, PAUL FLETCHER, WEILAN LIANG, and NIKO KACIROTI. "Early vocabulary development in Mandarin (Putonghua) and Cantonese." Journal of Child Language 36, no. 5 (2009): 1115–44. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0305000908009185.
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ABSTRACTParent report instruments adapted from the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventories (CDI) examined vocabulary development in children aged 0 ; 8 to 2 ; 6 for two Chinese languages, Mandarin (n=1694) and Cantonese (n=1625). Parental reports suggested higher overall scores for Mandarin- than for Cantonese-speaking children from approximately 1 ; 4 onward. Factors relevant to the difference were only-child status, monolingual households and caregiver education. In addition to the comparison of vocabulary scores overall, the development of noun classifiers, grammatical function words common to the two languages, was assessed both in terms of the age and the vocabulary size at which these terms are acquired. Whereas age-based developmental trajectories again showed an advantage for Beijing children, Hong Kong children used classifiers when they had smaller vocabularies, reflecting the higher frequencies and greater precision of classifier use in adult Cantonese. The data speak to the importance of using not just age, but also vocabulary size, as a metric by which the acquisition of particular linguistic elements can be examined across languages.
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Wolff, Martin. "China's English mystery – the views of a China ‘foreign expert’." English Today 26, no. 4 (2010): 53–56. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0266078410000350.
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The mysteries of exotic China arise not only from its voluntary isolation from the modern world during some of the most formative and progressive decades, but from an inability or unwillingness of the west to understand Chinese logic and thinking. The west views China with western eyes and judges China according to western standards. The west asks some seriously ignorant questions about China, such as: What is the culture of China? What do the people of China think? What do the people of China eat?To fully comprehend the absurdity of these questions, simply invert them, as Chinese college students regularly do in their English classes that are taught by foreigners: How is the culture of America? How do the people of America think? How do the people of America eat? Each populace assumes that the other is a mono-culture. This thinking also carries over into the area of lingua franca. The west assumes that all Chinese people speak Mandarin or Cantonese and have a common written language. China actually teaches that one must learn ‘Standard British English’ or ‘Standard American English’ or ‘Standard International English.’ In addition to Mandarin and Cantonese, China has 55 minority languages and an uncounted number of localized dialects such as Shanghainese, Wuhanese, and many others. There are at least three written Chinese languages, not just one, for example, traditional Chinese, simplified Chinese and pinyin.
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Wu, Zhen. "Early Mandarin loanwords in contemporary English." English Today 36, no. 1 (2019): 23–29. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0266078419000208.
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English vocabulary has expanded over centuries by ‘borrowing’ lexical items from other languages (Katamba, 2005; Durkin, 2014). Compared with European languages, non-European languages are never major sources of word borrowing in English, with Chinese staying even more peripheral. Scholars have recorded no more than a few hundred English words of Chinese origin. This, however, does not make it easier to study the etymology and semantics of Chinese loanwords. The complication arises from the various source dialects from which Chinese words were borrowed (Mandarin, Cantonese, Amoy, Hokkien, etc.) and also from transcription processes, in which Chinese logograms are ‘romanised’ into phonetic representations so as to be readable for English speakers. It is a procedure easily affected by the transcribers' own cognition and the transcription systems employed, and the arbitrariness of the above variables contributes much to the fact that the orthography of Chinese loanwords, especially those entering the English language early, are prone to changes. This article aims to shed some light on how the ways of transcription may affect the spelling of Chinese loanwords.
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Curdt-Christiansen, Xiao Lan, and Jing Huang. "“Pride” and “profit”: a sociolinguistic profile of the Chinese communities in Britain." International Journal of the Sociology of Language 2021, no. 269 (2021): 47–72. http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/ijsl-2020-0005.
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Abstract In this study we explore the ongoing social changes and internal differences within the Chinese communities in Britain with regard to language practices, ethnic and cultural affiliations, and intra-community communications. Drawing on the notions of “pride” and “profit”, we report on how migratory experiences influence the linguistic practices of the Chinese communities. We argue that “pride” and “profit”, as manifested in language practices, are rooted in “prejudice”, a consequence of linguistic hierarchies related to broader socio-historical and socio-political systems. Data sources include ethnographic interviews with 15 stakeholders from three community pillars. The data analysis shows three major differences and changes within the communities: the multi-layered make-up of the Chinese communities whose members come from different countries and regions; the replacement of Cantonese with Putonghua as the communities’ lingua franca; and the increasing visibility of the Chinese communities in mainstream society. The findings suggest that social changes and language practices are associated with the social meanings of belonging, affiliation and reality, involving a form of symbolic struggle filled with “prejudice”. The study emphasises that “pride” and “profit” can make visible and explicit the sources of social inequality that tend to be concealed by neoliberal ideologies and discourses.
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Erbaugh, Mary S. "Ping Chen, Modern Chinese: History and sociolinguistics. Cambridge & New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999. Pp. ix, 229. Hb $59.95, pb $21.95." Language in Society 30, no. 1 (2001): 121–23. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0047404501281056.
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China's program of language modernization has been as successful as that of any other nation, yet until Chen's book, we have not had a readable and comprehensive discussion of its reforms. Literacy has risen from about 10% in 1949 to around 80% today. Spoken Chinese dialects, from Cantonese through Hakka to Mandarin, vary as much as do the Germanic languages English, German, and Swedish; so it is a major achievement that 90% of Chinese people can now understand Standard Mandarin, up from 40% in the 1950s (p. 8). The current reforms have roots deep in the 19th century, but Chen discusses how early visions of reform became successful only in the past few decades. An unusual virtue of this compact volume is that it discusses language reforms throughout Greater China – not only in the People's Republic, including Hong Kong, but in Taiwan and Singapore as well.
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Dede, Keith. "Standard Chinese and the Xining dialect." Journal of Asian Pacific Communication 16, no. 2 (2006): 319–34. http://dx.doi.org/10.1075/japc.16.2.10ded.
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Xining, the capital of Qinghai province, is an especially valuable location for observing the spread and influence of Standard Chinese, or Putonghua, for at least two reasons. First, the dialect’s history of contact with non-Sinitic languages, mostly Tibetan and Mongolic languages, created an older linguistic stratum that differs markedly from other Mandarin dialects, indeed with most all Chinese dialects, in clearly identifiable ways, so that comparisons between Standard Chinese and variations within the Xining dialect reflect unambiguous cases of standard cum dialect language contact. Second, the demographic history of the region, including large-scale migrations of Chinese-speaking people from other provinces, created a socio-cultural context in which the promotion of Standard Chinese would likely find fertile ground. This paper will show that the combination of these two factors has created a situation in which the old Xining dialect is rapidly disappearing. In its place is not Standard Chinese, per se, but an interdialect, a compromise variety stripped of the most obvious dialect features but clearly distinct from Standard Chinese. The differences will be shown to exist in the phonology, lexicon and syntax of the dialect and that the more highly educated members of the community are leading the changes toward the New Xining dialect. While Standard Chinese is shown to have been a powerful force in the creation the New Xining dialect, it has not completely replaced the local dialect.
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Xu, Daming. "Speech community theory and the language / dialect debate." Restructuring Chinese Speech Communities 26, no. 1 (2016): 8–31. http://dx.doi.org/10.1075/japc.26.1.01xu.
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Much research has been done addressing the issue of language and dialect and has attracted much interest in the Sinophone world. In this paper, the issue is approached from the perspective of Speech Community Theory (SCT) with discussion of the identification of Chinese varieties. There are mainly two approaches in previous research: linguistic and sociolinguistic. In the linguistic approach, the classification of languages and dialects is through comparison of linguistic descriptions and intelligibility. In the sociolinguistic approach, actual language use and attitudes of the speakers are investigated and ethnic and political factors are considered. The two approaches tend to result in different classifications. The purely linguistic classification tends to be narrower than the classification invoking attitudinal, cultural and political factors, resulting in a larger number of languages than the sociolinguistic approach. The different approaches are traced to divergent understandings of what a language is. A language is often understood purely as a tool of communication or, alternatively, it is regarded primarily as an identity device. Applying SCT, we analyze the connection between communication and identity formation, taking the example of Cantonese speakers. That case shows a correlation of linguistic contact with linguistic identity among native speakers. Consequently, the relevance of cultural and socio-political factors is explained through their impact on communication rather than directly on a linguistic identity.
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Dreyzis, Yulia A. "Written at the Service of Oral: Topolect Literature Movement in Hong Kong." Vestnik of Saint Petersburg University. Asian and African Studies 12, no. 3 (2020): 415–25. http://dx.doi.org/10.21638/spbu13.2020.307.
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The article describes the history of the Topolect Literature Movement (TLM), which developed in Hong Kong in the 1940s, and analyzes its typological features. TLM was one of the most radical projects implemented to replace writing in the national standard language based on northern dialects with writing in the local language variety (Cantonese / Yue). This variety was a non-northern idiom that performed the function of the L-language in diglossia. TLM authors did not try to break the connection between the written language and its oral form: many, primarily poetic, texts were somehow intended for public performance; in other types of texts, a close connection with the spoken language was supported by the strong presence of a narrator. Texts were recorded using Chinese characters (a standard character with an identical / similar reading was used to write down a topolect morpheme, or a character using it as a phonetic element indicating reading was created). The final failure of TLM, in addition to purely political factors, can be explained by a shift in attention from the urban literate audience to peasants. This resulted from the attitudes of the Chinese Communist Party that functioned in a rural environment, very different from the urban one, where TLM writers who sympathized with leftist ideas actually lived and worked. The prevalence of traditional poetic forms reflected a bias towards the traditional culture of the rural community. The willingness to focus on a local audience, even to the detriment of the national language unity, created a potential conflict with the aspirations of most of the Chinese intellectual elite who were determined to solve the problem of nation-building. Nevertheless, TLM serves as a unique example of the rapid development of writing in one of the Chinese topolects in the checkered twentieth century.
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Cheung, R. T. F., P. D. Lyden, T. H. Tsoi, et al. "Production and Validation of Putonghua- and Cantonese-Chinese Language National Institutes of Health Stroke Scale Training and Certification Videos." International Journal of Stroke 5, no. 2 (2010): 74–79. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1747-4949.2010.00411.x.
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Wan, Yu, Baosong Yang, Derek F. Wong, Lidia S. Chao, Haihua Du, and Ben C. H. Ao. "Unsupervised Neural Dialect Translation with Commonality and Diversity Modeling." Proceedings of the AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence 34, no. 05 (2020): 9130–37. http://dx.doi.org/10.1609/aaai.v34i05.6448.
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As a special machine translation task, dialect translation has two main characteristics: 1) lack of parallel training corpus; and 2) possessing similar grammar between two sides of the translation. In this paper, we investigate how to exploit the commonality and diversity between dialects thus to build unsupervised translation models merely accessing to monolingual data. Specifically, we leverage pivot-private embedding, layer coordination, as well as parameter sharing to sufficiently model commonality and diversity among source and target, ranging from lexical, through syntactic, to semantic levels. In order to examine the effectiveness of the proposed models, we collect 20 million monolingual corpus for each of Mandarin and Cantonese, which are official language and the most widely used dialect in China. Experimental results reveal that our methods outperform rule-based simplified and traditional Chinese conversion and conventional unsupervised translation models over 12 BLEU scores.
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Jiang, Yan, and Jean-Marc Dewaele. "Language anxiety in Chinese dialects and Putonghua among college students in mainland China: the effects of sociobiographical and linguistic variables." Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 40, no. 4 (2018): 289–303. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01434632.2018.1515213.
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Hansen Edwards, Jette G. "Borders and bridges." Journal of Asian Pacific Communication 30, no. 1-2 (2020): 115–38. http://dx.doi.org/10.1075/japc.00047.han.
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Abstract This study examines the construction of linguistic identities at a time of significant political tension in Hong Kong, with a focus on Hong Kong’s three official languages: Cantonese, the most widely spoken variety of Chinese in Hong Kong; English, the longest serving official language of Hong Kong; and Putonghua, the official language of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), which became an official language in Hong Kong after the 1997 Handover of Hong Kong to PRC rule. Given the current political tensions between Hong Kong and the PRC, particularly in light of grassroots political movements such as the 2014 Umbrella Movement and the ongoing 2019 civil unrest due to the proposed introduction of an extradition treaty between Hong Kong and mainland China, the status of Hong Kong’s three languages is particularly interesting. Past research has primarily focused on the perceived value of these three languages in terms of instrumentality and integrativeness. The current study expands previous research by focusing on how the participants construct a linguistic identity of the self vs. a national language identity for Hong Kong, particularly within or in contrast to a national language identity of the PRC.
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Sung, Chit Cheung Matthew. "Hong Kong university students’ perceptions of their identities in English as a Lingua Franca contexts." Journal of Asian Pacific Communication 24, no. 1 (2014): 94–112. http://dx.doi.org/10.1075/japc.24.1.06sun.
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This paper presents findings from an exploratory study that investigated the perceptions of a group of Hong Kong university students concerning their identities in English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) contexts. Qualitative data were collected primarily via in-depth interviews with a group of second-language speakers of ELF who use English with people from different first-language and cultural backgrounds on a regular basis. The analysis revealed that these participants came to terms with their identities as non-native speakers of English and emphasized the importance of maintaining their cultural identities as Hong Kong or Chinese speakers of ELF. In addition, most of them valued their ‘multicompetence’ in English, Cantonese and Putonghua when speaking English in ELF situations. The inquiry also found that some participants’ identification with other non-native speakers of English within the ELF community was rather selective and that different members within the ELF community were not perceived as equally ideal speakers of ELF. The study offers some valuable insights into the identities of ELF speakers and the wider ELF community within an Asian context.
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Luo, Zhuosi. "The Synthetic Performances of Teochew." Lingua sinica 5, no. 1 (2020): 58–88. http://dx.doi.org/10.2478/linguasinica-2020-0003.
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Abstract Huang (2015) characterizes “Modern Chinese as a language of high analyticity at multiple levels” and demonstrates “a ranking of relative analyticity among the three dialects: Cantonese > Mandarin > TSM”. This paper argues that Teochew (cháoshànhuà, 潮汕話), another variety of Min, different from TSM, shows more synthetic performances than Mandarin. Chomsky’s “productivity” criterion (1970) helps distinguish lexical operations from syntactic ones. In this spirit, this paper will illustrate its arguments from two perspectives -- lexical and syntactic operations. When it comes to lexical operations, analyses on both the semantic changes within the same categories and the categorial shifts will be made. Besides, syntactic discussions on emphatic inflection, bare classifier phrases, verb-object order and other variants of V-movements in Teochew will also be demonstrated. All analyses will be put under the theoretical framework of generative grammar with the help of a cartography approach. For analyses at the lexical layer, this paper adopts Si’s 司富珍 (2012, 2017a, 2017b, 2018) XW structure, trying to capture the synthesis performances of the Teochew lexicon. As for syntactic operations, the split-CP hypothesis of Rizzi (1997, 2001, 2004) and Rizzi and Bocci (2015), the CL-to-D hypothesis of Simpson (2005), the light verb approach of Chomsky (1995) and the split-light verb hypothesis of Si 司富珍 (2018) will be used as references. Through comparative studies with Mandarin, Cantonese and other languages like English, this paper will conclude that Teochew is a dialect with higher synthesis compared with Mandarin.
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Yeung, Marine, and Vic Lu. "English-Medium Instruction in Self-Financing Tertiary Institutions in Hong Kong – Views and Practices from the Students." English Language Teaching 11, no. 8 (2018): 28. http://dx.doi.org/10.5539/elt.v11n8p28.
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The medium of instruction (MOI) has been a bone of contention in Hong Kong, a former British colony, since its colonial days. Despite the Hong Kong government’s effort to promote the “biliterate and trilingual” language policy, advocating Cantonese, English and Putonghua as the three official spoken languages and emphasizing the importance of literacy in both written Chinese and English, most tertiary institutions today still adopt English as the medium of instruction (EMI). However, with the expansion of tertiary education in the early 1990s and the decline in the general English language proficiency of university students, some university lecturers have found it difficult to teach in English as required. This raises the issue of the practicality of the indiscriminate adoption of the EMI policy at tertiary level, particularly at the self-financing tertiary institutions where students are generally known to have under-performed in the English subject. In order to understand whether or how the EMI policy is upheld in these institutions, focus group interviews were conducted with students from various programmes of five self-financing tertiary institutions in Hong Kong. The findings indicate these students’ strong preference for English-medium instruction with the belief that it can improve their English proficiency, though their actual approaches to coping with the demand on their limited English and how they view and use the three languages in class deserve policy makers’ serious consideration.
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Berlie, Jean A. "Macau’s legal identity." Asian Education and Development Studies 5, no. 3 (2016): 342–54. http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/aeds-05-2015-0019.
Full textAbstract:
Purpose – The Macau Special Administrative Region (MSAR) of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has a unique identity. This study is based on a long period of research undertaken between 1995 and 2014. Permanent residents, the Chinese of Macau and all other MSAR residents constitute a body of model “citizens” which makes their legal identity understandable in the MSAR’s present social and economic context. Macau’s legal identity is based on centuries of trade and commerce. In Article 5 of the first chapter (I-5) of the MSAR’s Basic Law, the “way of life” in Macau’s society and economy are recognized as part of the MSAR’s legal framework. However, social change may play an important role in Macau’s development. The purpose of this paper is to look at the legal corpus as though it was a physical body with rights and duties, but also capabilities based on the nationality and residence statuses of its citizens, its companies and other entities (which will be studied more specifically in following articles). Design/methodology/approach – This study has used the combined approaches of fieldwork carried out between 2010 and 2015, interviews, and questionnaires. Findings – Way of life and the concept of One Country, Two Systems are key points that contribute to Macau’s contemporary identity. Way of life in the Basic Law constitutes a complex matrix formulation based on a series of particular facts and cultural traits, which leads to a better legal definition of important concepts such as nationality and residency in the particular case of Macau. The Basic Law is the constitutional law of the MSAR, but “Chineseness” still dominates the locals’ identity from day to day. More than 65 percent of the interviewees in the survey asserted their “Chineseness.” However, both Chinese and Portuguese, will continue to be official languages of Macau until 2049. The MSAR’s Chinese society speaks Cantonese and increasingly Putonghua, but it does not seem concerned by communicating using the Portuguese language. Clayton’s thesis emphasized the “unique cultural identity” of the MSAR and wrote that what made the Chinese of Macau “different from other Chinese, is the existence of a Portuguese state on Chinese soil.” Portuguese cultural tolerance is not mentioned, but it is a historical fact that has influenced Macau’s legal identity. The MSAR’s government has done its best to harmonize Macau’s multicultural society and it has particularly protected the Sino-Portuguese way of life in Macau. Practical implications – To apply the law and maintain the existing harmony in its society and economy, legal actions have had to be taken by the Macau government and courts. The courts of the MSAR are structured in three levels and have final powers of adjudication, except in very narrow political areas. The judicial system includes the following courts, from the highest to the lowest: the Court of Final Appeal, the Court of Second Instance and the Court of First Instance (Tribunal de Primeira Instância). Originality/value – This research is unique inasmuch as studies of legal identities focussed on large regions such as the MSAR of China are rare.
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Bauer, Robert S. "The Hong Kong Cantonese language: Current features and future prospects." Global Chinese 2, no. 2 (2016). http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/glochi-2016-0007.
Full textAbstract:
AbstractAs the contemporary Chinese language has evolved into various distinguishable varieties across East and Southeast Asian speech communities, the term pluricentric (i. e. having multiple centers or standards) has appropriately been applied to it. Because the development of the Chinese variety as spoken and written in Hong Kong has been profoundly influenced by a unique congeries of social, economic, political, cultural, environmental, historical, and linguistic factors intrinsically linked to Hong Kong, it systematically differs from those varieties used in mainland China and on Taiwan. Hong Kong’s predominant, most widely-used speech variety is Cantonese: this is to say that 90 % of the ethnic Chinese population of about 6.5 million speak it as their usual, daily language. The Hong Kong Cantonese language has acquired an extraordinary status due to its distinctive vocabulary and indigenous Chinese characters, identifiably colloquial phonetic features, highly conventionalized written form, large inventory of English loanwords borrowed through phonetic transliteration, and tradition of lexicography combined with romanization. Although Cantonese predominates in Hong Kong, however, at the same time, a worrying trend is the increasing number of schools switching their medium of instruction from Cantonese to Putonghua, just one noticeable difference between now and 1997 when Hong Kong, a British Crown Colony since 1841, was returned to China’s sovereignty as a Special Administrative Region. The Hong Kong speech community’s attitudes toward Cantonese are contradictory: some people denigrate it as “a coarse, vulgar relic of China’s feudal past” that should be replaced by Putonghua, the national language, while others praise it for preserving ancient rimes and extol it for expressing social, political, and cultural differences that set Hong Kong apart from mainland China. That Cantonese continues to decline in Guangzhou may be a harbinger of things to come in Hong Kong. Ironically, the Hong Kong government’s recognition of the Cantonese language as intangible cultural heritage which would seem to be a good status for it to have, on the contrary, has made some people fear it could become extinct in the future.
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Clark, Adam Scott. "use of Putonghua subject as a vehicle for a pan-Chinese identity." Journal of Language and Discrimination 4, no. 2 (2020). http://dx.doi.org/10.1558/jld.18489.
Full textAbstract:
In April 2015, a meeting of a Hong Kong Legislative Council Panel discussed the potential for using Putonghua, as opposed to Cantonese, to teach the ‘Chinese Language Subject’ within the Hong Kong curriculum. Their primary reason for making this suggestion was based on the idea that Putonghua and the Han Chinese ethnicity are somehow inherently linked – if you are Han Chinese, you should be able to speak Putonghua. This paper discusses the validity of this assertion and examines language-in-education policy related to Putonghua in Hong Kong from the late-colonial period and the contemporary period to establish whether Putonghua is used by the Hong Kong Legislative Council to encourage Hong Kong pupils to identify with a pan-Chinese ethnicity and by dint, a pan-Chinese language, Putonghua.