Cantonese and Putonghua in Hong Kong: Trends, Challenges, and Perspectives of Coexistence
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CANTONESE AND PUTONGHUA IN HONG KONG: TRENDS, CHALLENGES, AND PERSPECTIVES OF COEXISTENCE Freie wissenschaftliche Arbeit zur Erlangung eines Mastergrades am Fachbereich Geschichts- und Kulturwissenschaften der Freien Universität Berlin im Masterstudiengang Chinastudien eingereicht von: Isabella Valentini Dr. Andreas Guder Univ.-Prof. Dr. Klaus Mühlhahn 0 Contents LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS AND TABLES ........................................................................ 4 1. INTRODUCTION ......................................................................................................... 5 1.1. TERMINOLOGY ............................................................................................................ 7 2. THE FEATURES OF CANTONESE IN HONG KONG ............................................. AND MAINLAND CHINA ........................................................................................... 9 2.1. A LINGUISTIC AND HISTORICAL OUTLINE OF YUE AND CANTONESE .......................... 10 2.1.1. HISTORICAL BACKGROUND ....................................................................................... 12 2.1.2. YUE AND CANTONESE STUDIES ................................................................................. 14 2.2. CANTONESE AND PUTONGHUA IN GUANGDONG: ........................................................... THE EXPERIENCE IN THE MAINLAND .......................................................................... 18 2.2.1. THE BIRTH OF A UNIFIED CHINESE LANGUAGE ........................................................... 18 2.2.2. RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN PUTONGHUA AND DIALECTS .................................................. IN THE PRC LANGUAGE PLANNING ............................................................................ 20 2.2.3. PUTONGHUA AND CANTONESE INTERACTIONS: ............................................................. LANGUAGE PROMOTION AND LANGUAGE ATTITUDES IN GUANGDONG ........................ 22 2.2.4. THE 2010 GUANGZHOU TELEVISION CANTONESE CONTROVERSY .............................. 24 2.3. A CONTRASTIVE ANALYSIS OF CANTONESE AND PUTONGHUA ................................... 27 2.3.1. PHONOLOGY ............................................................................................................ 27 2.3.2. LEXICON .................................................................................................................. 30 2.3.3. MORPHOLOGY.......................................................................................................... 32 2.3.4. SYNTAX ................................................................................................................... 33 2.4. THE WRITTEN CANTONESE OF HONG KONG.............................................................. 37 2.4.1. CHARACTERISTICS OF WRITTEN CANTONESE ............................................................. 39 2.4.2. HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENTS .................................................................................... 45 2.4.3. WRITTEN CANTONESE IN PRESENT HONG KONG ........................................................ 47 2.5. POSSIBILITIES AND LIMITS FOR CANTONESE ................................................................. AS A STANDARD LANGUAGE FOR HONG KONG ........................................................... 50 1 3. HONG KONG, THE HEADQUARTERS OF CANTONESE .................................. 57 3.1. HISTORY OF HONG KONG .......................................................................................... 57 3.1.1. FROM THE ORIGINS TO THE BRITISH RULE.................................................................. 59 3.1.2. DEVELOPMENT AS A COLONY .................................................................................... 61 3.1.3. GROWTH, CONTRASTS, AND SEARCH FOR STABILITY .................................................. 63 3.1.4. RETURNING TO CHINA .............................................................................................. 65 3.1.5. HONG KONG AFTER THE HANDOVER ......................................................................... 67 3.2. CANTONESE AND PUTONGHUA, LOCAL AND MAINLAND DIALECTIC .............................. IN THE EVOLUTION OF THE CINEMA OF HONG KONG ................................................. 70 3.2.1. CHALLENGES, SUCCESS AND INNOVATION ................................................................. 72 3.2.2. CURRENT FEATURES OF HONG KONG CINEMA ........................................................... 73 3.3. LANGUAGES IN HONG KONG SOCIETY ...................................................................... 75 3.3.1. LANGUAGE CENSUSES AND THE ROLES OF ENGLISH AND ‘CHINESE’ .......................... 76 3.3.2. PATTERNS OF DIGLOSSIA IN HONG KONG .................................................................. 84 4. ‘ONE COUNTRY, TWO SYSTEMS’ FOR LANGUAGES: ....................................... CANTONESE AND PUTONGHUA PERSPECTIVES IN CURRENT ...................... LANGUAGE POLICIES AND ATTITUDES ........................................................... 88 4.1. LANGUAGE POLICIES SHAPING LANGUAGE DISTRIBUTION ......................................... 89 4.1.1. ‘BILITERACY AND TRILINGUALISM’: ............................................................................ A NEW GOAL FOR THE NEW SPECIAL ADMINISTRATIVE REGION .................................. 90 4.1.2. THE EMERGENCE OF PUTONGHUA ................................................................................ UNDER THE ‘BILITERACY AND TRILINGUALISM’ POLICY ............................................ 90 4.2. CANTONESE AND PUTONGHUA AS MEDIUMS OF INSTRUCTION ...................................... IN HONG KONG SCHOOLS .......................................................................................... 92 4.2.1. ‘MOTHER TONGUE TEACHING’: THE ISSUES .................................................................. OF CANTONESE IN HONG KONG EDUCATION .............................................................. 93 4.2.2. PUTONGHUA AS MEDIUM OF INSTRUCTION: IMPLEMENTATION AND LIMITS ................. 96 4.3. PERSPECTIVES OF PUTONGHUA DEVELOPMENT IN HONG KONG: .................................. DRIVING FORCES, ATTITUDES, AND CHALLENGES .................................................... 103 4.3.1. THE CULTURAL-POLITICAL VALUE FOR PUTONGHUA PROMOTION ............................ 104 2 4.3.2. CONSTRUCTION AND MAINTENANCE OF HONG KONG LOCAL IDENTITY VERSUS .............. CHINESE NATIONAL CONSCIOUSNESS ..................................................................... 105 4.3.3. THE ECONOMIC-PRAGMATIC VALUE FOR PUTONGHUA PROMOTION ......................... 110 4.3.4. LANGUAGE ATTITUDES AND LANGUAGE LEARNING MOTIVATIONS .................................. IN HONG KONG ..................................................................................................... 112 5. DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION ........................................................................ 118 5.1. PUTONGHUA AS A THREAT TO THE VITALITY OF CANTONESE .................................. 118 5.2. CONCLUSION: THE ACHIEVEMENT OF STABLE COEXISTENCE ........................................ BETWEEN CANTONESE AND PUTONGHUA................................................................. 123 6. BIBLIOGRAPHY ..................................................................................................... 125 3 List of illustrations and tables Figures Figure 1: Distribution of Yue speakers in Guangdong and Guangxi 11 Figure 2: Written Cantonese in the Hong Kong MTR – “Don’t eat me so soon!” 38 Figure 3: Map of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) 59 Tables Table 1: Pitch curve of the six Cantonese tones and Jyutping transcription of the Cantonese syllable si 29 Table 2: Putonghua and Cantonese aspect markers 37 Table 3: Proportion of Population Aged 5 and Over Able to Speak Selected Languages/Dialects, 2001, 2006 and 2011 (Section) 83 4 1. Introduction Hong Kong Cantonese, a variety of the Chinese southern dialect group Yue, enjoys a formal status which is not common for a Chinese vernacular: together with Putonghua and English, it is official language of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR). The city of Hong Kong, located on the south-east coast of China and bordering with the Guangdong province in the north, also has a particular status and history which differentiate it from the rest of the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Hong Kong, in fact, has been part of Great Britain for one and a half century, ceded to the British Crown by the Heavenly Empire after the First Opium War in 1842 and returned to socialist China in 1997. Over 150 years of separation from the mainland have deeply influenced Hong Kong which, for this reason, has been made a Special Administrative Region of the PRC and therefore enjoys a higher degree of autonomy from Beijing, in the context of the policy called ‘One country, two systems’ (Carroll 2007). One of the main differences between Hong Kong and the rest of the PRC lies in the language situation: as politically absent from China, Hong Kong has not been invested by the vast promotion of Putonghua, official language of the PRC, which has been carried out in the second half of the last century, and has thus retained strong vernacular features (Bauer 1984). Cantonese, in fact, is the mother tongue of the vast majority of the inhabitants of Hong Kong and an important symbol of its identity. Hong Kong, on the other hand, is a new frontier for Putonghua, which has officially entered it at the moment