Misconceptions of Putonghua and Cantonese

The continual use of Cantonese in Hong Kong, especially as a medium of instruction in schools, has recently been a subject of much concern among scholars, educationists, and advocates of the local dialect. A few non-Cantonese speaking scholars have made frequent comments on the historical role and status of Cantonese as well as published quasi-academic articles on the subject of Chinese language and its evolution1. While the obvious intention of these comments and publications was just to promote the use of Putonghua in Hong Kong, the approach taken was unnecessarily curvy, and to some extent naive! In fact, the use of Putonghua for convenience of communication is hardly disputable and actually has been very well received in Hong Kong. The negative reaction from local communities has nothing to do with the use of Putonghua. Instead the objection focuses on the poorly fabricated theory that Putonghua is the legitimate Han language (漢語) while Cantonese is an insignificant dialect2. So, a good intention ended up with unexpected backlash. The truth is that Putonghua (or Mandarin as its predecessor) was never the legitimate Han language, and like Cantonese, it was a dialect!

Brief History

For a long long time, people in different parts of China spoke their own dialects, and most actually had their own written forms as well, like Cantonese. In Hong Kong today, we still speak and "write" Cantonese. In China, before 1880s, the official written form was the Classical Chinese (文言文), which was mainly used in scholastic works, literary works, government papers, and transactions in the imperial court. Classical Chinese was learned by scholars and upper classes. The general literate public, however, did not normally have a high proficiency of using Classical Chinese, but they used the colloquial languages in most commercial and social communications. In fact, the Bible had a complete Chinese translation which was written in Cantonese, published in around 1860 by European missionaries. Change in the status of Classical Chinese began around 1880 when the Qing government faced military challenges from foreign countries. From around 1880 to 1910, blaming the conservative language and Confucius thinking as a hindrance to China's advancement, some academics and government officials began advocating the use of "people's language" to boost literacy and make China more advanced in technology. Mandarin, which was the dialect or colloquial language used in the northeast and pretty much also in the capital (Beijing), was being advocated to replace Classical Chinese as an official written form (書面語). Unofficial source reveals that even Emperor Guangxu (光緒皇帝) would appreciate his ministers addressing him "Dear Emperor" (親愛的皇上) in official court communications. Interestingly, scholars at that time used the term vernacular language (白話文) to describe this new written form.

China's painful defeat in the First Sino-Japanese War (甲午戰爭) in 1894 was the turning point of the shift of the language paradigm in China. The end of this war heralded a new era for the popular use of Vernacular Mandarin as the official written and spoken language in China. Then, the May Fourth Movement in 1919 further accelerated it, and with the effort of scholars led by Hu Shi (胡適), Vernacular Mandarin 白話文 as the official Chinese 書面語 had become firmly established. It is worth noting that Mandarin was a dialect and made official. So, it is obviously incorrect to say that Mandarin is the legitimate Han language. While "拉肚子" (diarrhoea) is a proper expression in Mandarin, "肚疴" is also very proper in Cantonese. They are all dialects!

After the fall of Qing Dynasty, while much of China's northern regions had made Mandarin the popular written language, most areas in southern China remained unaffected, and continued to use Cantonese, Hokkien, Chiu Chow, etc., in both verbal and written communications. Then, 1956 was the turning point when the communist party began wiping out dialects and enforced the compulsory use of Mandarin, which is now called Putonghua (普通話, literally the general language). Thus, since 1956, the southern part of China, including Canton, also adopted Putonghua under the nation-wide enforcement of a unified language policy. Hong Kong, which was under British rule, was not affected by China's enforcement of the use of Putonghua, and in fact Hong Kong continued to use Cantonese and even developed its own language culture based on Cantonese. (It is worth noting that Putonghua is not exactly Mandarin and was created by the communist party based on Mandarin.)

Putonghua ≠ Chinese

The above brief account of history has clearly gainsaid any theory that puts an equal sign between Mandarin and Chinese. Promoting the use of Putonghua is nothing controversial, but fabricating a reason based on equating Putonghua to Chinese and denying Cantonese as a Chinese language is counterproductive. If it is a policy to be enforced, it will surely go down much more smoothly by presenting the advantages of the use of a unified medium rather than by twisting logic and distorting history. In fact I do support the use of Putonghua for convenience of communication with the rest of China, but I do not see any conflict in preserving a language or dialect which has such rich cultural and historical values. In terms of linguistic values, Cantonese retains many ancient usages and pronunciations and has a much wider range of acoustic properties, and hence is a fantastic medium through which to study our own history.

August 1, 2018

________________  References:

1 淺論香港普通話教育的性質與發展 — 宋欣橋 (發於香港教育局小學普通話課程配套資料網站)2 《視點31》母語爭議 （RTHK31：08/05/2018） (From this TV interview program, we clearly see how shallow a HKU education scholar can be in his understanding of the mother tongue of Hong Kong people. His misunderstanding presumably is not uncommon among mainland scholars.)