Some Thoughts about Cantonese as a Heritage Language

Is it possible to convince people of the importance of heritage languages given the growing dominance of the powerful language? Is it crucial to be bilingual in my hometown GZ, a multilingual cosmopolitan city?

The article

Duff, P., Liu, Y., & Li, D. (2017). Chinese heritage language learning: Negotiating identities, ideologies and institutionalisation. In O. Kagan, M. Carreira & C. Chik (Eds.), Routledge Handbook of Heritage Language Education(pp. 409-422). London, New York: Routledge.

inspires some of my thoughts about Cantonese as a heritage language.

• 1. It is not uncommon that children with Cantonese parents do not know Cantonese. All three little kids in my neighborhood were born in Cantonese families. They all spoke Cantonese before they went to kindergarten. Whereas after that, they all went through L1 attrition. Consequently, now almost six years old, they speak Mandarin only, (but it seems that they still can understand Cantonese). I came across several times an awkward conversation in which their parents and grandparents spoke in Cantonese while they responded in Mandarin.

• 2. The article mentioned that first generation immigrants generally impose a Chinese-first family language policy; otherwise children’s shift to English (or other most dominant languages in society) will be considerably accelerated. Although in this case learning Chinese heritage language in countries like the U.S., Britain, Canada and Australia is being focused on, I should say it is a similar case as for Cantonese. Since the Reform and Opening up policy, mobility of population in my hometown has been raised substantially. The direct consequence is that there is a surge in the number of hybrid Cantonese children, like many of my friends and classmates. As a result, Cantonese is put in a competition against Mandarin (and other dialects) for the position of first language in a family.

• 3. This article also mentioned that some parents, given English as a privileged language, do not regard learning Chinese as beneficial to children’s academic, social and professional interests. Again, the same thing happens to Cantonese. Firstly, as for academic interests, I once talked about my suspicion of the negative influence Cantonese as L1 has had on my Mandarin performance in school. Nevertheless, since there is no detailed research on this field, not to say agreement on this issue, I cannot exclude any other reasons for my unsatisfactory Mandarin writing performance. Secondly, as for professional interests, certainly high Mandarin proficiency is enough for most of the jobs, yet others like sellers and receptionists may see fluent Cantonese as an advantage.

• 4. It is not a simple answer to the question whether being a Mandarin-Cantonese bilingual is significant in my city. Undoubtedly, the answer varies from person to person. Many of my friends, with non-Cantonese parents working in this city, do not see anything wrong or regrettable for not even understanding Cantonese even though they have been living here for twenty years. They feel the city is their second hometown, whereas it does not necessarily mean they have to identity with Cantonese culture and learn the language. Taking into consideration the high rate of non-hukou population (a Chinese term, basically meaning people who do not live in the city in which they were born) and cultural exchange between different regions in my country, I would say that such a view does make sense although it may sound new to older generations, like my parents and grandparents.