Why tell me my mother tongue isn't Cantonese?

The 1951 UNESCO document "The Use of Vernacular Languages in Education"¹ was recently quoted by a visiting professor at CUHK (宋欣橋) as suggesting Cantonese wasn't most Hongkongers' mother tongue. Well, anyone can say anything he likes, including twisting an authoritative source around to make his own point. It's freedom of speech! But if our Education Bureau publishes it in their official page with target audience being our school teachers and students, that's a different issue! The chance is that it is taken as a teaching and learning resource or supplementary information for supporting a certain language education policy. However, if the Education Bureau has no such intention, they should state clearly that the publication represents only the author's own opinion and not the Bureau's.

Yes, I fully support that Putonghua be compulsorily taught in schools as it is our national standard language, but not because it is our mother tongue! An Italian child in the US learns English but his mother tongue could still be Italian. What's wrong with that?

I took a look at the UNESCO paper. Luckily, it isn't that hard to understand, despite my being remote from the language profession. Actually the paper presents findings regarding vernacular languages and their use in education. Vernacular language by definition is the language or dialect spoken by people in a specific country, region or community. One of the key points the UNESCO paper tries to make is that our early childhood education is best done in our own mother tongue. The UNESCO paper has apparently been adopted by many countries, with so far very little confusion or controversy arising from what a mother tongue is supposed to mean. However, what is unusual about the visiting professor's study is how Hongkongers' mother tongue is being interpreted. The professor seems to believe that most Hongkongers belong to the Chinese Han race (漢族) and so their mother tongue is the Chinese Han language (漢語, which is fundamentally inconsistent with what a vernacular language means). His other key point is that a dialect cannot be a mother tongue, as stated in his article². Therefore, "according to the UNESCO paper," Hongkongers' childhood education should be based in Putonghua. I suppose we hardly need a language expert to tell the rather unskillful or distorted use of the UNESCO paper by the visiting professor in his construction of the line of logic leading to his conclusion. Political intention aside, the logic of the professor's equalling 漢語 to Putonghua clearly lacks evidential support, and in fact Putonghua has only existed for about half a century.³

If the motive behind the professor's comment is political, then it is simply just a damn bad idea trying to win people's heart by dwarfing their culture and belittling their language. Unless you do it with the help of a more drastic policy, like imposing death penalty for not complying, this will only create more confrontations from the local majority. Dear professor, your patriotism is appreciated, but you're making things worse!

Come on! Hongkongers' mother tongue is really just Cantonese!

May 2018

____________________________

BACK TO BLOG CONTENTS 返回網誌目錄