Hanyu 汉语 Hànyǔ

You do?

Think again! Unless you take the time to understand the politics and ideologies surrounding speaking and learning Cantonese, you may find the difficulties of actually using the language far outweigh any linguistic structural complexities. As this abstract to an academic paper suggests, whether or not anybody will appreciate your attempts at learning the language largely depends on traditional sociological categories like race and class.

Anyway, academics aside, here are 5 reasons why learning Cantonese could be a bad choice and not worth the hassle:

1. Cantonese is only a “dialect” - not a “real language” like Mandarin.

Cantonese doesn’t receive the same respect as Mandarin because it’s not an official or national language. Speaking a local “dialect” like Cantonese tends to mark group solidarity and in-group status. If you are white, or visible “non-Chinese-looking”, like it or not, you’re probably not going to qualify for in-group status unless you have a local spouse, significant other or somebody else to make you appear more “in-like”.

In Hong Kong, the language of power, wealth and prestige is English. English, then, and to a lesser degree, Mandarin, are perceived as the languages of opportunity. If you want to show that you are educated, you speak English. It’s no coincidence that fierce political battles have raged in Hong Kong (and still do) over the medium of instruction in secondary schools there ever since 1997 when the Hong Kong Government introduced mother tongue instruction.

Teaching Cantonese as a Second/Foreign Language is, given the political climate, hardly a priority. It’s not surprising that it’s difficult to find decent Cantonese learning materials and Cantonese language classes in Hong Kong. Some native Cantonese speakers may discourage you from learning Cantonese, insisting that it is uncultured and primitive and too difficult for outsiders (especially white ones) and offer you little help when you try to learn it. Because of its low status, some speakers in Hong Kong will refuse to speak to you in Cantonese and either reply in English or ignore your initial attempts at speaking it. Here are some experiences of an Australian learning Cantonese.

Ironically, if you “look Asian” in Hong Kong, you’ll more likely be expected to speak Cantonese, or somehow acquire it through osmosis. So, if you were born in Elliott Lake, had great-great-great grandparents from Toi San and can’t use chopsticks, or don’t have a clue what a tone sounds like, that trip back to the “Old Country” to trace your roots and learn Cantonese could be a tough slog.

Wanna learn Chinese? Er, go learn Mandarin!

2. No officially recognized romanization system

Whereas Mandarin has “pinyin”, there is no equivalent official romanization system for Cantonese. Although the Yale system is found in most materials for foreigners, no Cantonese speakers in Hong Kong (apart from a few Cantonese teachers) would have a clue how to read or write Yale. The same can be said for Jyutping, an alternative system to Yale which uses numbers to mark tones and can also be used as a computer input method for Cantonese, as well as the system used by the Hong Kong Government.

Cantonese learners who cannot already read Chinese characters are at a distinct disadvantage because they are forced to rely on their textbook and dictionary. It is difficult for the beginner to learn from her surroundings because everything is either written in Chinese or in inconsistent ad hoc systems that are unhelpful for serious learners. Even Hong Kong surnames and place names are anglicized so that the romanized spellings are inconsistent and unhelpful for the learner. When a Cantonese speaker is speaking English, Cantonese names are pronounced as if they were English. All these factors converge to give an English-speaking outsider the feeling of being shielded or protected from having to deal with Cantonese. There is rarely any expectation that she should bother learning Cantonese - despite its status as the language of the majority in Hong Kong.

3. Cantonese is dying out

That’s what they said in the LA Times article Cantonese is Losing its Voice. In North American (and probably other) Chinatowns Cantonese is mostly spoken by older people. New immigrants tend to speak Mandarin and young ethnic Chinese born overseas are learning Mandarin because of the economic and professional benefits. It is also “discouraged” (read “banned”) in Singapore, where Mandarin and English are actively promoted by the government. Now that more Hongkongers are going to Mainland China for business and work, they are also learning Mandarin. If you want to learn Chinese, it will be far more practical to learn Mandarin than learn Cantonese. And, anyway, [see 5. below] “everybody speaks English in Hong Kong”.

4. The everyday spoken language is not directly related to the way it’s written.

Cantonese uses a number of nonstandard characters not found in Mandarin and which may be omitted from Chinese dictionaries. Whereas it is possible to write in Cantonese, rather than Standard Written Chinese, the practice is frowned on and highly stigmatized.

The lack of an official romanization system mentioned above, and the negative attitude towards (especially) white Westerners speaking/learning it one frequently encounters, means you’re on your own if you decide to learn the language.

5. In Hong Kong everybody speaks English

So, you don’t need to learn Cantonese! This is really not true, but it’s a common myth. It may feel like it when you first arrive in Hong Kong. Frequent high-end department stores and shopping centres and it will mostly be true. Furthermore, if you are an expat with a high salary and good job, you will be surrounded by English-speaking Cantonese anxious to show you that Hong Kong is “Asia’s World City” where the outsider can get along in English and need not go to the trouble of learning the local “dialect”.

But venture off the beaten track, you will realize that it’s just not true that “everybody in Hong Kong speaks English”. Nevertheless, the belief that they do is a big part of the popular ideology and essential to branding Hong Kong as a modern, democratic “world city”. Assuming you are white and English-speaking, by trying to learn Cantonese, you are basically trying to turn the world upside down as it’s understood by many Hongkongers.

In case you didn’t guess, I don’t think the above should deter you from learning Cantonese. I hope it doesn’t! While you will surely often encounter negative attitudes, you might be lucky enough to meet a bunch of great Cantonese people who are really happy you want to learn their language and will do everything to help you. I hope you do!

But, if you run into problems and get frustrated and discouraged, understanding the politics of learning Cantonese may put things in perspective. As Linguist Carol Edelsky noted in her paper Not Acquiring Spanish as a Second Language: The Politics of Second Language Acquisition, majority language speakers usually do not acquire the minority languages in their community. Edelsky found that Anglo first graders in a bilingual Spanish Program in Arizona failed to learn that language. She concluded that the classroom situation reflected the more general relative political position of Spanish and English in the outside world. A similar situation surely exists for Cantonese in Hong Kong. As many native English speakers find, it can be a struggle to position oneself in the role of a learner of Cantonese when the expectation is that English speakers are teachers of their own language and Cantonese speakers are the learners of English.

In Part 2 of this article I’ll give a few ideas about what kinds of people in Hong Kong will be most likely to appreciate your interest in learning Cantonese and suggestions for dealing with speakers who want to speak English when you want to practice Cantonese.

When I first read Jonathan Zimmerman’s Christian Science Monitor op/ed Beware China’s role in US Chinese classes, I wondered if Canadians would react as he did. Jonathan, a Professor of Education and History at New York University attempted to draw parallels between the funding of Mandarin classes in the US by the Chinese Government and attempts by Mussolini’s pre-WWII Fascist government to promote political propaganda through the financing of Italian language schools.

Two years after Jonathan’s piece we find a similar case in BC where Mandarin courses are being 100% funded by the Hanban. The courses will also be available online for free to BC residents. Dennis Pilon, Political Science professor at University of Victoria, believes it is “undemocratic” to accept or solicit money from foreign governments and that the “BC government was putting itself in a position of conflict”.

Click here for a Chinese version of the story.

Dennis Pilon makes an important point. So what about the ideological implications? What sort of curriculum might be expect from the Hanban? Presumably a modern version of what China has been successfully teaching to foreign students from around the world for over 40 years.

Mussolini and Fascism? I doubt it. How about Sunzi in Neo-liberal clothing - ie soft power? Is the Hanban really so different from the British Council?

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Maybe one day Global Hanyu will become a multi-billion dollar language industry on a par with Global English. And despite the belief among some that the number of people learning the language is exaggerated, perhaps there really will be a “Global Hanyu”.

But it may take a while. Becoming a global language is not easy. As Phillipson, Pennycook and others show for English, there’s more to it than just historical accident. The Rise of English is a political and ideological story (pdf file).

Fortunately, developing a global language industry involves more than publishing and marketing materials that promote spreading a language to every corner of the globe. The industry’s less commercial arm - conference proceedings and academic works - also examines the field critically. Articles like Marnie Holborow’s Ideology and Language: the interconnection between Neo-liberalism and English inevitably come with the territory - at least for English.

But if it’s no longer about “just language”, then will “language pedagogy” be different according to the language we teach? The titles of a recent TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) symposium - Locating TESOL in the Age of Empire, and of H. Douglas Brown’s paper, The Place of Moral and Political Issues in Language Pedagogy, is strangely inappropriate attached to languages other than English. How often does the theme of “moral and political issues” get raised at academic conferences on teaching Hanyu? It didn’t get mentioned at the last one I attended.

Pennycook, back in 1994 wrote

“the crucial issue here is to turn classrooms into places where the accepted canons of knowledge can be challenged and questioned”.

Some may disagree. And not everybody owns a copy of Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed (nor has heard of Paulo Freire). But to see language teaching as involving humanistic principles where:

“introducing a cosmological perspective … for promoting ecological interconnectedness and spirituality to counter material and monetary interests that cause environmental destruction and militarism”

is an important goal, is (hopefully) not entirely controversial.

Textbooks, as pedagogical tools, rarely make their ideological underpinnings transparent. But it is usually History, not language learning, texts that receive the most attention. For Hanyu textbooks produced in China, though, censorship comes with the territory.

This is the sort of problem that presumably bothers Jonathan Zimmerman. Jonathan recently published an article in The Christian Science Monitor called Beware China’s role in US Chinese classes. Jonathan believes that an Advanced Placement (AP) course in Chinese Language and Culture offered to American high school students and that is jointly funded by the Chinese Government is a bad idea. He goes on to caution that Americans should study Chinese language - but on “our terms”.

As he puts it:

“The same regime that has brought us public executions, forced labor camps, and Internet censors will soon be funding a language and culture class in a school near you.”

“Given what we know about China’s rulers, it’s fair to ask what’s in it for them. And to answer, we might examine the last time a dictatorial foreign government tried to influence our language instruction.”

Jonathan is referring to Mussolini and Fascism in his last sentence.

Jonathan has a point. He believes that China will try to cover up its past crimes

But, (and, surely Jonathan is aware) language instruction, just like history, is rarely, if ever, a neutral endeavour. Being “influenced” is the default. For US President George Bush, learning Mandarin Chinese is important because it is critical to national security. For the corporate crowd it is all about “competing in the global marketplace”. Or, consider the link between teaching English and Christian missionary work described in Pennycook’s paper.

Any language textbook has the potential to perpetuate stereotypes and give a biased impression of the target language and culture - not to mention it’s history. And, clearly, there’s no shortage of agendas.

Sure, Hanyu textbooks produced in China will ignore the “3 T’s” (Tibet, Taiwan and Tian’anmen). And I doubt if the Falun Gong will even get a footnote. But let’s not forget that western textbooks that market English have been equally ideological in their portrayal of capitalist societies. More useful than good guy, bad guy narratives, might be to teach critical literacy skills that help us all to read between the lines, regardless of who wrote the text and in what language.

So how about the Language and Culture Course that Jonathan warned us all about? How ideological is it? Here are a couple of, presumably typical, extracts from a sample exam (traditional characters in the original).

聽說你考上南京大學了﹐祝賀你啊﹗
哪兒能跟你比啊﹐ 考上北大了。 真恭喜你。
你打算學什麼專業啊﹖
學醫﹐你呢﹖
做醫生太辛苦﹐我要學法律﹐以後當律師。

Here’s a quick and dirty translation:

A: Congratulations! I hear you got into Nanjing U.

B: No big deal! You’re the one that deserves the congratulations - you got accepted into Peking U.

A: So what are you planning to study?

B: Medicine. How about you?

A: Studying Medicine is too tough. I’m going to study Law and become a lawyer.

To anyone familiar with modern education systems in Asia - especially the elitist ones - there will be no surprise that our two Chinese students are discussing their future academic/career plans. And, in the context of an assumed affluent middle class, what could be more natural than being admitted to a top university to study Medicine or Law? Surely nobody, in this day and age, expects them to go off and “serve the people”!

As Jonathan predicted, these types of exchanges tend to “play up China’s economic achievements and play down its crimes”.

The revolutionaries amongst us may be disappointed that such examples don’t show oppressed citizens talking furtively about how to use a proxy to circumvent the Chinese Government’s censorship of the Internet - although needless to say - words censored by Chinese search engines will be missing from these teaching materials. Others might question which Chinese city these fictional beings live in. Certainly it won’t be Linfen - or any of the other 15 Chinese cities that rank among the world’s top 20 most polluted.

I certainly wouldn’t deny the ideological content of the above dialogue. In a way, it reminds me of the extracts from Chairman Mao’s Dr Norman Bethune in the yellow Chinese textbooks given away by the Chinese Embassy in Ottawa that I used to study Mandarin with in the mid-70s. Bethune was a model with valued qualities for others to try to emulate - he was 豪不利己, 專門利人 (absolutely selfless, only thinking of others.) Thirty years later the main difference is that students who are accepted to famous universities are the new models. And it is no longer the masses that need to strive to emulate the ideological ideals. This time it is only for the elites of the Me Generation. And, if Time has got it right, they also come minus the 豪不利己 - not to mention with a lack of interest in politics.

Here’s another sample extract from the course.

我帶你去參觀一下我新買的房子, 好不好?

This seems fairly harmless. I’ve just bought a new house and I want to invite you to come over and take a look. In a society where the home ownership rate approximated that of affluent western nations, we wouldn’t bat an eye. But, in China with its population of 900,000 peasants, sentences like these obscure the reality of the gap between the rich and the poor far more than they do in affluent western capitalist societies.

Are the above examples deliberate attempts by a “dictatorial foreign government” trying to influence language instruction? I personally doubt it. If anything, the underlying ideology is a neo-liberal one that borrows heavily from what Holborow calls “today’s strident global chorus of market ideology”. In the end, it may be neo-liberalism that is the common enemy. Peter Kwong, in The Chinese Face of Neo-liberalism, points out similarities between the US and Chinese economies - both are being seriously damaged by a neo-liberal ideology. Others, such as Henry Giroux, discuss how neo-liberalism works to limit democracy in areas such as higher education.

China’s “economic miracle” where capitalism flourishes without democracy may not be so special after all. As Peter Kwong notes, Ronald Reagan and Deng Xiaoping - the latter adopted free-market reforms thirty years ago - were both admirers of economist Milton Friedman - the father of neo-liberalism. So while the label of a “dictatorial government” for the CCP is appropriate, it doesn’t tell the whole story of China.

Predictably, Julian Edge was referring to teaching English when he said

“We need to look again at the materials we use in class and the worldviews that they represent, at the methods that we use and the interactional and learning styles that they foreground, at the choices we make in selecting the content of our courses, at the extent to which we teach a language of compliance to the exclusion of a language of protest, at the tests we use, to what purpose, and at the policy decisions we make in language planning.

How long before we ask similar questions in teaching Hanyu?

And, dear students, the topic for our next week’s discussion will be “Should we boycott the Beijing Olympics“?

我们下课吧!

All languages at one time or another borrow words from other languages. Most of the scientific and technical vocabulary in English is composed of Greek and Latin roots. And for some reason, lost in history for most people, our swear words are Germanic. Loanwords in Chinese are not so obvious - but they are still there. One of the more common ones is 咖啡 . Another one is 法西斯 .

The first time I heard 法西斯 used in a real context was some time just after June 4th, 1989. Three year old 毛毛 had just arrived from Beijing with her mother to join me in Columbus, Ohio, where I was finishing up my PhD dissertation. We were listening to a rally by a group of Chinese students. 毛毛 was sitting on my shoulders earnestly watching and listening.

打倒法西斯, yelled the angry crowd
爸爸, said 毛毛, with that innocent curiosity that only 3 year olds seem to possess, 法西斯是谁?
Not knowing how to explain such an abstract concept to her, I mumbled 他是坏人

And 19 years later, according to Michael Ledeen, 法西斯 is still alive. You can read a bilingual English and Chinese version of Ledeen’s article over at anti-cnn.com.

Is he correct?

我不知道. But I imagine that most people who thought that Ledeen was right wouldn’t want to learn Mandarin. And that would be a shame, wouldn’t it?