Learn Cantonese, Dammit!

The other day, one of my Cantonese students said to me (no name; in fact there are depressingly many people who now have the same mindset, which helps the misconception to become true) “Well, it’s all over for Cantonese anyway now. Mandarin will soon take over.”

Really? Is it like some irresistible force of nature, like a tsunami that can’t be stopped? Like a forest fire that can’t be contained?

Of course not. “Mandarin will take over” (I puke just writing the words) is purely political. The mainland government (and, to a certain degree, its people) have decided that Mandarin will take over Hong Kong, and they are doing it in the time-honoured fashion of flooding Hong Kong with mainlanders, instructing headmasters in primary schools that it’s Mando or death a stern reprimand, plus, inexplicably, trying hard the communist way to make Mandarin – the mind boggles – ‘cool’.

There is one very easy way to avoid Mandarin taking over, and that is to speak Cantonese. Everywhere, every day, and with everybody. Hong kong singers should sing in Cantonese, not the ridiculous hybrid “written Chinese with Mando characteristics and Cantonese pronunciation”. Teachers should teach in it and teach it. Then Mandarin can be learnt as a second or third language, for forays into the hinterland.

Those commies don’t have a monopoly on how Chinese should be spoken or written. Spanish, Portuguese, French and Italian live side by side without one of them trying to elbow in and eradicate the others. It’s time Mandarin shut up and went away to its little boring corner with its 100 word vocabulary, all of which is shrrrrr.

Learn Cantonese today! Then it can be you who is conversing freely with locals in their own language, with all the hilarity that ensues. The best way to learn Cantonese is to speak Cantonese, and I can put you on the right track. Wooo hoooo! The world is your lobster! With Cantonese.

國語 – Gok Yu (Mandarin)
共產黨 – Gong Chan Dong (Common Property Party/Communist Party)
西班牙 – Sai Ban A (Spain)