Thursday, January 12, 2006

I Ate Beef Jerky

Here is an interesting article about how Mandarin is replacing Cantonese as the Chinese dialect of choice in business and conversation in North America. Cantonese, which has far fewer native speakers, is the dialect of the original Chinese immigrants and the dialect of Hong Kong, which was mainland China's main contact point with the west prior to the rise of China's economic market. With plenty of immigrants coming from Mandarin-speaking areas these days and China's rise to prominence in the global economy, it's not surprising that Cantonese is losing its priviledged position. I'm in no position to judge the quirkyness of the Cantonese dialect, though if this is the case, I have even more incentive to study it since I am a big fan of linguistic quirks.

Michelle's family is from Hong Kong/Southern China so they speak Cantonese. Michelle speaks it too, and while she's not fluent, she is better than she lets on. She has taught me a handful of words and phrases in Cantonese that I can manage to pronounce correctly on occasion. I'm still not sure if I have ever pronounced her middle name properly, however. The important thing is that I know the names of a number of different food items. When we make it over to Hong Kong, I fully intend to spend most of my time there eating, so I should be all set.

Hat tip: Marginal Revolution

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1 comment:

Unknown said...

I don't see Mandarin taking the place of English either, but it will certainly become more and more important. An interesting thing to note about Canada's bilingual policy is that if immigration and fertility trends progress as expected, native Chinese speakers will outnumber native French speakers relatively soon. Unless the Chinese form their own province and threaten secession, I doubt Canada will institute a trilingual policy, but Canadians are so argument averse that it just might happen.