For those who do not know, Mandarin, and dialects of, are spoken across China. In the deep south - Guangdong Province and Hong Kong, the official language is Cantonese (also known as Guangdonghua).

Over the last few years, more and more people are learning Mandarin, and many foreigners who are new to the region do not bother learning Cantonese - they learn Mandarin.

Will Cantonese become a slowly dying language?

Replying to [ChurchillUK]:
If Cantonese dies .... so what?

Languages evolves over time and situation. You must adapt to the changes to be in the forefront of the Enterprises and commerce, as you said " Speak their language, so they will buy from you."

The Power comes from the ones who hold the money, we got the phrase "MONEY TALKS".If you want your product to sell over the INTERNET, you have to understand who does the Search Engine, and how to get the hit rates and exposure to the right type of audience. If your potential buyers speak and reads German, then you must place your keywords in Deutch.

Here, in Singapore, business people speaks multi-tongues. We must know the local language, that is the Malaysian and Indonesian language, and to deal with the Singapore businessman, whom some of them do not speak English, we speak Mandarin, and even the Hokkien dialect, but dialects are discouraged by the Government in their "Speak Mandarin Campaign".

James OO7

Quoting from [James 007]:


Replying to [ChurchillUK]:

If Cantonese dies .... so what?


Languages evolves over time and situation. You must adapt to the changes to be in the forefront of the Enterprises and commerce, as you said " Speak their language, so they will buy from you."


The Power comes from the ones who hold the money, we got the phrase "MONEY TALKS".If you want your product to sell over the INTERNET, you have to understand who does the Search Engine, and how to get the hit rates and exposure to the right type of audience. If your potential buyers speak and reads German, then you must place your keywords in Deutch.


Here, in Singapore, business people speaks multi-tongues. We must know the local language, that is the Malaysian and Indonesian language, and to deal with the Singapore businessman, whom some of them do not speak English, we speak Mandarin, and even the Hokkien dialect, but dialects are discouraged by the Government in their "Speak Mandarin Campaign".


James OO7

So what? Well because with languages come their own culture, such as arts, music, literature, history, pride, tradition. There is the need to learn new languages, but not at the expense of your own history.

 

Replying to [James 007]:

SO WHAT?

That is my mother tongue, 'cause my mother spoke to me in Cantonese. It will be a pity that this language will die away. I cannot imagine that a language will fade away just like that.........

Nah!.... Cantonese will not die. Simply because, HK is home to 7 million Cantonese speaking Chinese. It will take a meteor to crash down on HK to make Cantonese a dying language.

Replying to [ChurchillUK]:

No, Cantonese is not dying, and it's not a language; it's only a dialect.

Tom

Quoting from [tomorrowneverknow]:


Replying to [ChurchillUK]:


No, Cantonese is not dying, and it's not a language; it's only a dialect.


Tom

Really? I dialect of what? If someone from Shanghai speaking their local language cannot understand someone speaking the local langauge of HK, that is not because it's a different dialect, it's because it's a different language.

Replying to [ChurchillUK]:

A mother-tongue, is the communication media within the family and to most people, it is the verbal communication without the written words.

One of the reasons for a tongue, be it a main tongue or a dialect to be lost in the generation is the lack of use, the lack of documentation and verbosity. Inter-racial marriage is one good killer of the mother-tongue, yours may be from your mom, who speaks a Chinese dialect, say Cantonese for example, and you married a beautiful Japanese lady. Your children's mother-tongue will not be Cantonese anymore, but Nihon Go. The abrupt cut off from the mother-tongue is the death of the parents, and the next generation continues.

As for me, my parents spoke to each other in their own dialect, HOCKCHIA, and they both spoke to us in HOKKIEN, only in verbal form, never in written form. Some words in Hokkien were never in the mainstream Chinese language, Mandarin. Like they call a woman "char boh" in Hokkien, which is never found in Chinese, only "ne ren".

Everyday, words in the English language are dying, out of lack of use, they are dropped out of the Vocabulary, and new words are added in, even some colloquial ones. However we cannot say the language is dying, it is evolving, changing and words in the King James Bible like "thou" or "divers" to mean various, "do not fall into divers sins." are no longer in the current usage.

Most of us speak two languages and use one for our business communication and one for our family communication. I know of a Professor in the National University of Singapore, whose family is mixed, father is Taiwanese, mother Japanese, he stayed in Hong Kong over a decade, and went to German University for his Degrees. He speaks Japanese, Cantonese, and German fluently, but could hardly manage Taiwanese Fujian dialect. To him, it is a lost of a dialect, or the death of a tongue, but he has got another three new languages.

James OO7

James 007 - excellent response. I guess Singapore is probably Asia's melting point of languages, so no better person to hear that analysis from!