Len's News, Notes, and Stuff

French is Not the Only Endangered Language in Canada

Distinct society! Distinct society! Oh, won’t those whiny Quebecois ever shut up?

That is honestly what I had been thinking for years. Yet, like an experience out of the movie District 9, I find myself now eminently able to relate to their plight. I looked around and recently realized that my own culture and language are in jeopardy.

Many North Americans may not realize that there is no singular Chinese culture or spoken Chinese language.  But there may soon be.

I speak Cantonese. I grew up in a Cantonese home and for me, until recently, “Chinese” = Cantonese. Here, in the heretofore self-selected North American Chinese environment, that used to be true. But it never was in China itself, and now as Chinese nationals emigrate around the world, the Cantonese language is being threatened, and the culture that I know as Chinese is being rapidly moved aside.

For this post, I will concentrate on the language. I will leave the matter of culture for another time, because it is not Cantonese culture per se that is assailed, but Hong Kong Cantonese culture. That is a thornier, more contentious, and riskier topic – I am not yet ready to write in public about that.

With regards to language, Mandarin is the only official spoken language in China, and Simplified Chinese is the way billions of Chinese in China since Mao’s rule have been taught how to write.

Cantonese as a spoken language is but a sideshow in China, much as Quebecois French has, for all practical purposes, been relegated to the sidelines in Canada.  But surely there are enclaves where the language remains strong, right? Not really. I traveled back to Canton (now properly called Guandong) Province in China – home of the Cantonese language – and yet Mandarin prevailed there.  The Cantonese in Canton are being outnumbered by emigrants from other provinces.

Here in North America, in Toronto with a vibrant Chinese community and a strong Cantonese population, I hear Cantonese with friends and family but when I go to Chinese supermarkets I hear Mandarin on the PA system.

I even read an article not too long ago that there are Cantonese in China making real efforts to keep the language from dying in its native land. It is an uphill battle, and not one with a sure outcome.

It was not until I realized that the supermarkets – possibly the most linguistically democratic of places, since everyone has to buy food to eat – had become Mandarin-based that I realized my own language is in jeopardy.

With regards to the written language, Mao’s Communist Party developed and standardized Simplified Chinese. Chinese people outside of Communist China continue to use Traditional Chinese. But as immigrants from China itself continue to come over to North America – something that in and of itself is neither good nor bad – while the pool of Chinese immigrants from elsewhere has dried up, even the written language is in peril.

“Traditional Chinese will be superceded by Simplified Chinese here in Canada in 5, maybe 10 years.”

I heard that just the other day, and I fear it will happen. Simplified Chinese is not a natural evolution of the language – it is a deliberately, artificially modified version of the written language. It is, to many Cantonese here in North America, an abomination and an unwelcome creation of the Communist Party. Yet, the way the numbers will play out, Simplified will likely become the standard the world over. Even Taiwan has begun to transition to Simplified, bowing under the pressure of it’s enormous neighbor.

The language that I have grown up with, that I have always known as Chinese, is endangered and threatened. That it will eventually become irrelevant on the main stage, even amongst North American Chinese, is no longer in question. The question is whether it will be wiped out.

At least I now understand much better where the Quebecois are coming from. But for the Cantonese, there won’t be any public cries of distinct society – the Chinese language in any form is not an official language here, and Cantonese doesn’t get special recognition even in its own homeland.

I am Canadian, and my language is in peril. But I’m Cantonese, not Quebecois. How interesting that the same stories are played out in only slightly different ways.  Even more interesting how my perspective on the Quebecois cries for recognition and appreciation changed almost overnight.