Inside Hong Kong’s cage homes - Page 2 - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

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#14940315
Beren wrote:It's still the same people, the same country and the same culture, even if there are different dialects.


They are not the same culture (my wife's family is from Hong Kong). Hong Kongers are seeing their culture and language destroyed. The mainland actively does shit like ban books on Cantonese grammar for example. They install pro-mainland puppets in the Universities and government. There are often protests against the mainland as well. I feel like I remember my wife's mom telling me about some sort of student protest recently.

Anyway, one of Xi Jingping's main goals is to "deal with Hong Kong". Which is basically to say, he wants to wipe out Cantonese culture/language and replace it with Mandarin. He will be successful.

There is a large Hong Kong Diaspora around the world, so I don't know if Cantonese will disappear as a language, but it's epicenter will disappear for sure.

Keep in mind, until recently, most of the Chinatowns in cities around the world were largely Cantonese speaking.

In the 80s and 90s a flood of Hong Kongers left because they knew the mainland was going to encroach on their culture.

Hong Kongers definitely see themselves as a different culture/language. The mainland sees this too. There wouldn't be any conflict if this weren't true.

Living in China ultimately sucks. The only reason people put up with it is the government is giving out benefits and jobs like crazy. This is only possible because of their economy. Once the economy slows, people will start demanding freedom. This is going to take a few generations. Long enough for China to change the face of geopolitics.

It's going to be an interesting future. Hopefully the rest of us don't come out losers, and hopefully there's no large scale war.
#14940317
Side note, in North America we look back at the destruction of Native American culture as something horrible and regrettable. I wonder if in the far future when China liberalized culturally and economically, will they look back at the destruction of Cantonese culture with regret?
#14940375
I wouldn't exactly consider the expansion of American/European culture across the US via violent wars and deportations of entire populations to be comparable with the economic/cultural spread into China. I think the changes to Japanese culture in the 20th century are the interesting case study there.

But China is China. It has survived thousands of years of cultures washing over it, and has, while not staying the same, remained coherent. We may compare the modern culture spread into China with, at most, the Buddhist spread. China isn't exactly experiencing large acceptance of American culture, while still modernizing to the western standards. If anything, I'd expect them to absorb that and come out of it enhanced and competitive socially and economically.
#14940378
Rancid wrote:Anyway, one of Xi Jingping's main goals is to "deal with Hong Kong". Which is basically to say, he wants to wipe out Cantonese culture/language and replace it with Mandarin. He will be successful.

If there must be one common language everybody should speak in China, it must be Mandarin, the Beijing variant of which Cantonese people understand 90% anyway.

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#14940385
Beren wrote:If there must be one common language everybody should speak in China, it must be Mandarin, the Beijing variant of which Cantonese people understand 90% anyway.


If you look at it from a utilitarian perspective. Of course you're right.

However, if you care about preservation of a culture, then you're not going to be happy. Especially if you belong to that culture. It's not just a language, it's a culture, it's traditions, etc. etc. etc. To Hong Kongers this is a threat to their very identity.
#14940387
Rancid wrote:If you look at it from a utilitarian perspective. Of course you're right.

However, if you care about preservation of a culture, then you're not going to be happy. Especially if you belong to that culture. It's not just a language, it's a culture, it's traditions, etc. etc. etc. To Hong Kongers this is a threat to their very identity.

That's how it always is, but I think some cultural autonomy is still possible for them. However, they'll have to accept Mandarin dominance.
#14940388
Beren wrote:That's how it always is, but I think some cultural autonomy is still possible for them. However, they'll have to accept Mandarin dominance.


Yes and yes.
#14940481
Beren wrote:If there must be one common language everybody should speak in China, it must be Mandarin, the Beijing variant of which Cantonese people understand 90% anyway.


https://www.weareteacherfinder.com/blog ... cantonese/

Fuck off...

Most spoken International dialect is Cantonese and that won't change anytime soon. Also it's older than Mandarin.

I hope you enjoy your Peking Duck(Canto-name for the dish, Peking gives it away)!

That's how it always is, but I think some cultural autonomy is still possible for them. However, they'll have to accept Mandarin dominance.


No they don't. Cantonese is the most popular dialect internationally. So while Mandarin dominates Mainland China.... Most Chinese in the Diaspora speak Canto as their first language, the local language of where they live as their second language and maybe Mandarin as a distant third.... The main reason they seem to understand Mandarin is because when written down it's practically the same written language. Also some words naturally sound similar anyway so you can mostly guess what the Mandarin speaker is saying. But statistically it will be the "third spoken language" most likely.

Just go to your local Chinatown and check it out for yourself..... Most of the foods you eat at your local Chinese Restaurant is Cantonese cuisine mate... Including Fried Rice, Yum Cha and Lemon Chicken.....

Yum Cha is Cantonese mate.... You go to a Yum Cha serving "Chinese Restaurant" and have Yum Cha restaurants nearby you are in Canto-domimated cultural territory mate.
#14940484
A lot of people seem to speak both Cantonese and Mandarin; they are closely related languages, similar to how many people in Europe speak more than one language.

A bigger issue IMHO than the languages is the character sets. Like Taiwan and Macau, Hong Kong is still using the traditional characters, mainland Chinese are using the simplified characters.

My preference is that traditional characters are more aesthetically pleasing but they are also harder to learn. This is arguably a realistic issue unfortunately when you consider all of the scientific and technical stuff that there also exists to learn these days. On the one hand, young Hong Kongers and Taiwanese seem to do just fine in technical fields. On the other hand, I know it's hard for me to learn all these characters at my age :hmm: And the thing about some of the traditional characters being more aesthetically pleasing is that there is no law against using them for artistic purposes in mainland China, so you still come across them in the mainland now and then anyway.

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