Comments by "canto_v12" (@canto_v12) on "Cantonese or Mandarin? A debate in Hong Kong education since 2008" video.

  1. Vernacular Cantonese was not adopted as a formal written language due to the language policies of ROC-era China (the official dialect was famously voted to be Mandarin by a very slim margin, over Cantonese). Even the last few Manchu emperors of Qing China spoke the northern Mandarin dialect--Emperor Puyi famously couldn't even speak Manchu and only spoke Mandarin. Cantonese has long been overshadowed by written Mandarin for centuries. As the PRC rapidly industrialised beginning in the 1980s, the possibility of Cantonese ever catching up as a formal written language became even more dire. Standardisation of colloquial terms, grammar and even sentence structure to Mandarin norms meant that the gap with vernacular Cantonese would never be closed. As a HKer who has to speak Mandarin due to working abroad, we're lucky that Cantonese still survives to the extent that it does today. We've got to try to keep it alive as it's one of the key connections to Middle Chinese and a key to further understanding Chinese history.
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  2. It's patently ridiculous to attempt to teach a language in a dialect foreign to the majority of the population. Much more practical to cater special classes to new immigrants who don't know Cantonese. To force the 95% to bend to the 5% just seems to be an insane waste of resources when helping the 5% adapt is so much easier and fairer to all. The fact that PMI is on the decline is proof that this shot is Hong Kong's to call.
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