Robustness of Guangzhou-Hong Kong style Cantonese (Part 1): Languages in Pearl River Delta

(Video: People in Hong Kong and Guangzhou rallying in defense of Cantonese. In my impression, Cantonese is still very robust in the Pearl River Delta; people could perhaps be a bit oversensitive due to the massive influx of migrants from other provinces.)

I used to feel relieved to cross the Hong Kong-China border over to Shenzhen, because I was finally getting out of the strange (to me) environment of Cantonese and going back into the familiar Mandarin-speaking environment of Shenzhen. Shenzhen could be one of the most Putonghua-friendly cities in China. The majority of its citizens come from many different provinces. So although it used to be a Cantonese and Hakka speaking small town in the past, many people you come across in Shenzhen today don’t speak much Cantonese. (It seems, though, that speaking Cantonese is considered fashionable among some young people who grew up in Shenzhen regardless of where their parents come from. This is probably because of the Hong Kong influence. It is entirely possible that there will be a shift in Shenzhen towards Cantonese in just one generation.)

But further inland the Pearl River Delta, it become a Cantonese world. Although there is a huge outsider population in Guangdong, people will try Cantonese first if they are not sure what language you speak. In modern and upmarket places, people seem to use Cantonese more. Like in Hong Kong, they may associate Cantonese with modernity and urban life, and consider all other languages as “Heung-ha wa (country bumpkin languages).

It seems to me that Cantonese is more robust than many people in the area think. Perhaps the local Cantonese-speaking people feel under threat because of the presence of a large number of migrant workers from other provinces in their area. Although almost everybody in Guangzhou are fluent in Mandarin, they seem to be making it a point to speak Cantonese, just to let others know that they are city folks, unlike those who come from other poorer provinces to work. (Those people are generally called “northerners”, regardless of which part of China they come from.)

 Another reason why Cantonese is so robust is because it is still used as the primary broadcast language in Guangdong, despite the fact that probably more than half of the population in that province are from non-Cantonese backgrounds. (Aside from those migrant workers from other provinces, there are other non-Cantonese indigenous languages in Guangdong, such as Hakka, Teochew, etc. But those languages are almost never used in broadcasts. As a result, most of those non-Cantonese Guangdongers have passive understanding of Cantonese.) This is probably because radio and TV stations in Guangdong need to compete with Hong Kong stations that provide superior programming, and are widely available in the province. (The situation is rather different in Amoy, where the only Hokkien-speaking radio station has a function of propaganda machine targeted at Taiwan, and mainstream broadcasts for locals are in Mandarin.) I remember hearing a friend from Guangzhou telling me about 30 years ago that he never listened to local radio stations because he preferred Hong Kong stations.

What is notable about Guangzhou-Hong Kong style Cantonese is that it is probably the only regional lingua franca other than Putonghua still robustly used in China. In various parts of Pearl River Delta, different dialects of Cantonese are spoken. But they are now gradually replaced by Guangzhou-Hong Kong accent Cantonese, probably because of the media influence. For example, in Shunde, Foshan or Jiangmen, the older generation may still speak their distinct variety of Cantonese, but the youth can only speak Guangzhou-Hong Kong style Cantonese plus Putonghua. This is unlike other important languages in southern China. In southeastern Fujian, it seems (I have never been there), people in each place speak their own variety of Hokkien plus Putonghua, and Amoy-Taiwan style Hokkien doesn’t really function as a regional lingua franca although it is the variety used on the radio.

This robustness of Cantonese always surprises me. In the post-war Taiwan, all the regional languages died out within one generation. Even in families where parents are from Shanghai, their siblings in Taiwan speak zero Shanghainese, and often don’t even have passive comprehension. Many young people are not proficient even in their own local language: Amoy-Taiwan Hokkien. On the other hand, I’ve met families where even the third generation born in Taiwan can still converse fluently with also Taiwan-born parents in Cantonese. (Their Cantonese-speaking grandparents may be from Vietnam, Malaysia or Canton.) I also know of people whose either parent only is Cantonese, but consider themselves Cantonese-speaking.

Another interesting thing I noticed is this: Malaysian students studying in Taiwan become proficient speakers of Cantonese only after they arrive in Taiwan, where Cantonese is seldom used by locals. Yes, Cantonese is a lingua franca in some parts of Malaysia including Ipoh and Kuala Lumpur. But in other cities in Malaysia, some other Chinese language is the lingua franca, for example Hokkien in Penang, Hokchiu in Kucing, Mandarin in Malacca, etc. Regardless of that, after they arrive in Taiwan, they all start talking to each other in Cantonese. All this despite the fact that they are all Mandarin-educated and that most of them also speak Amoy-Taiwan Hokkien pretty well. I wonder why…

Well, that’s another story, so I’ll write a separate article some other time.