2024-01-19 03:52:48
2024-01-19 11:52 Lianhe News Network Wan Zonglun “Please speak “Mandarin”: Looking at the endangerment and revival of the language, how it affects the “unified” narrative of identity, culture and power”…
Interview/Wan Zonglun (Assistant Professor, Department of Foreign Languages, National Yang-Ming Chiao Tung University)
Respondents/James.Griffith（James Griffiths）
This article is“Please Speak “Guoyu”: How the Endangerment and Renaissance of Language Shape the “Unified” Narrative of Identity, Culture and Power”Author James. Interview with James Griffiths. James is currently the Asia correspondent for Canada’s largest newspaper, The Globe and Mail. At the time of the interview, James was in Taipei observing Taiwan’s presidential and legislative elections. Visitor Wan Zonglun is currently an assistant professor in the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures at National Yang-Ming Chiao Tung University, specializing in sociolinguistics.
▌Why we need to “revitalize” endangered languages
Question: The book “Please Speak “Guoyu”” discusses the issue of “language revitalization”. I would like to start with this topic. For many people, they think language revitalization is not an important thing. Some people Even thinking that if the world can be united by a common language, why not? And don’t countries need a common language to shape national identity? We often hear opinions like this. So why is it important to talk about language death and language resurgence?
A: Yes, we often hear this attitude from especially monolingual speakers. The idea is that it makes everything easier if everyone speaks the same language. I think English speakers often feel guilty about being monolingual, whereas Mandarin speakers feel less so.
This idea assumes that everyone should speak “our language” and that this will make life easier. People have deep personal connections to their native or historic languages that are often overlooked, as well as the ideas, art, and poetics that may be embedded in the language that cannot necessarily be translated.
I think anyone who speaks more than one language knows that there are some concepts that are easier to understand in one language than another. Sometimes these concepts have counterparts in two languages, but not in the third language. I speak Welsh, English and Chinese. There is a word in Welsh that translates into Chinese as “trouble”, but it is not easy to translate in English.
Language revitalization is not just about preserving these words and these concepts, but also the art that exists within the language. If you read Chinese poetry and then try to read the English translation, it’s not the same, it doesn’t capture what traditional Chinese poetry can do, and losing such an art is a significant loss. This is not to say that a universal language is unnecessary. Rather, let’s promote bilingualism or multilingualism, which are great, and shouldn’t eliminate other languages just because it’s useful to have a common language.
Although the territory of Wales was actually connected to England, Wales was also an imperial frontier. The picture shows one of the English flags in the sea…
Q: When discussing language revitalization, your book focuses on Wales, Hong Kong and Hawaii. Why did you focus on these three cases? I know you were born in Wales and now work in Hong Kong. What about Hawaii?
A: Yes, I grew up in Wales and then I’ve been living in Hong Kong since 2014 and the inspiration for writing this book came from the discussions I saw around Cantonese and Hong Kong, very similar to how I grew up in Wales. The discussion I came into contact with is this fear of losing language.
Or even on the other side, like what language should be used in schools, should we be using English and Welsh in schools? Or should we use Mandarin? This is the situation in Hong Kong. Everyone will say that it is still allowed to speak Welsh or Cantonese at home, but I know from my own family background that speaking in Wales, using Welsh at home will not prevent the decline of the Welsh language. So I started exploring what “Cantonese at home” means to Cantonese.
I was working at CNN at the time, and I wrote an article about language resurgence, and I wanted to try and talk about other places as well, places that were comparable in size to Wales and Hong Kong. In the end I chose Hawaii because not only are there some similarities in size, but they are both island countries. I grew up on an island in Wales, which was simultaneously an imperial frontier even though the territory was actually connected to England.
Wales was one of the earliest colonies of the British Empire. Hong Kong, as a former British colony, a former Qing territory, now, no matter how we want to describe it, may belong to the People’s Republic of China, but Hong Kong is still distinct from the rest of China, so Hong Kong is also borderline. Hawaii, illegally annexed by the United States, is now a state, but was once a territory and colony and has historically remained distinct from the rest of the United States.
I think there are these interesting parallels, and it gives me the opportunity to look at these languages, although there are similarities, but these languages are at different stages of development. Wales has suffered a long and sustained historic decline but has been recovering since 1980 and now the number of Welsh speakers is actually growing and is expected to exceed one million speakers for the first time since the 19th century first.
The number of Hawaiian speakers has decreased rapidly, and the Hawaiian language is almost extinct. It is now in the early stages of revival. Hawaiians have had to rely on their grandparents to teach their younger children Hawaiian because the generation in between doesn’t speak Hawaiian. This is a last resort to save the language.
The number of Hawaiian speakers has decreased rapidly, and the Hawaiian language is almost extinct. It is now in the early stages of revival. The picture shows summer…
Currently, Cantonese is another story. The sustainability of Cantonese is often overstated, and yes, Cantonese is spoken by tens of millions of people around the world, and it is not an endangered language by any stretch of the imagination. But the only mother-tongue-speaking community is in Hong Kong, and the rest are scattered communities.
If Cantonese declines in Hong Kong, as we have already seen in Guangdong Province, which is also on the border with China, Cantonese will change from a mother tongue to a diasporic language, which will have an impact on diasporic communities because it is usually the mother tongue region that creates culture, Promote literature and produce cultural products that sustain diasporic communities around the world. If you are a Cantonese speaker in Canada, you watch Hong Kong movies and Hong Kong TV. When Cantonese disappears in Hong Kong, what kind of Cantonese culture will Canada’s diaspora communities still have access to?
So Wales, Hawaii, and Hong Kong, three places that share political and geographical similarities but completely different stages of language development, can be used to explore the broader question of language decline.
Q: Speaking of Hong Kong, I read a discussion about your work online. That forum invited a Hong Kong writer and Taiwanese cultural figures to talk about your work. They seem to feel that in the book, you discuss Hong Kong in less space than Wales and Hawaii. Is this intentional on your part?
Answer: Well, no. If you are reading this book through a Chinese translation, you may have this question. Because for international readers of the English version, any issue in the Chinese context must be explained first. It is necessary to provide a huge historical background and context, which reduces the space to talk about Hong Kong. And, another point is, a lot of what we talk about in Hong Kong, some of it is indeed ongoing, but more concerns about Cantonese, about the future of Cantonese, right? Especially speculation.
In contrast, the two chapters on Hawaii and Wales talk about the historical suppression of the Hawaiian and Welsh languages. We can talk about what happened in Hong Kong, I can talk about context, I can talk about speculation about the future of Cantonese and what people might care about, but there’s not that much history to recount, and I think that’s why there’s probably a slight The reason for the imbalance.
Cantonese is a dying thing in Hong Kong. Not only Cantonese but also Hong Kong’s autonomy is disappearing. The picture shows 2019…
▌Language revitalization is a resistance to colonialism
Question: Got it. I think this is also related to the fact that for Taiwanese readers, the most similar country they find to Taiwan in the book is Hong Kong, because they jointly face the threat of China. But in fact, I think that in terms of language revitalization, Taiwan’s case may be more similar to Wales. Could you please tell readers whether the language revival in the other two cases is more relevant in the context of Taiwan than the present continuous tense in Hong Kong?
Answer: I agree. I don’t think Hong Kong is a particularly good place to compare it to Taiwan because, you know, a lot of the discussion is about self-determination and when you talk about Cantonese, Cantonese is a disappearing thing in Hong Kong. Not only Cantonese, but also Hong Kong’s autonomy is disappearing. So when discussing Hong Kong, we are actually discussing that the ability of Hong Kong people to protect these things is fading. This decline is the reason why Cantonese is facing threats.
The history of Taiwanese and other Taiwanese minority languages. If you compare them to Welsh, it’s very similar. Governments that also face this kind of colonization, such as the British government, historically have been very active in suppressing non-mainstream languages and forcing a unified language, which has had a huge negative impact. Then, as people began to gain democracy and autonomy, people began to stand up against language suppression and promote the use of their own languages. We see this in Wales, which is why there is a resurgence of the Welsh language.
We are seeing a similar situation in Taiwan. We are now at a critical stage, like the KMT candidate Hou Youyi, who is a Taiwanese speaker. Yes, his staff told me that Hou Youyi’s Taiwanese is better than his Chinese.
You know, from the Chiang Kai-shek era, this was unimaginable. I think there’s a lot of parallels between Taiwan and Wales in that both are connecting language issues to issues of self-determination, but also, you know, protecting Aboriginal culture and rights. These are social issues that are more progressive and we see this in Wales, where language rights tend to be an issue on the left in Wales, and also in Taiwan where it’s an issue associated with the DPP and the more progressive parties, including building that Taiwanese or Welsh identity.
When discussing Hong Kong, we are actually discussing that the ability of Hong Kong people to protect these things is fading. Such decline is a threat to the Cantonese language…
Q: We’ll come back to your book in a moment. You mentioned that Hou Youyi used Taiwanese. You have been observing the elections in Taiwan these days. For example, in the TV debates, we saw Hou Youyi using Taiwanese a lot. On the contrary, we saw Lai Qingde using Chinese. This is completely opposite to what we imagined in the past. situation, do you have any observations about this?
A: I don’t know much about Taiwanese politics, but this phenomenon is very interesting. From my observation, this is Hou Youyi’s political strategy, which is a “moderate KMT” line that tries to absorb the “Taiwanese identity” political line. This is why he always says, “We do not support ‘one country, two systems'” ”, “We don’t want to become the next Hong Kong.” This makes sense if the Taiwanese language has become a marker of Taiwanese identity.
Because using Taiwanese can very easily send a signal to voters, I am one of you, I am part of this island, and I am not the KMT from the other side of the sea in history. You know, not the Kuomintang that suppressed the language.
Q: It’s interesting that in your book you focus on language resurgence as a resistance to colonialism, not just about cultural diversity. For many language revitalizers, even if KMT politicians speak Taiwanese, it has nothing to do with anti-colonialism. When KMT politicians speak Taiwanese, they are not fighting against anything. As you said, they are Trying to re-symbolize this language and make it part of the KMT’s political strategy.
Answer: Yes, I understand this point of view. We always have a lot of worries about such a situation. I wouldn’t say Taiwan’s language revitalization campaigners have won, but they should think so. This should be seen as a victory for a party that suppressed this language in the past and now has to campaign on it. Even if people are using Taiwanese for stupid reasons, it’s still a victory for language revitalization in a way because they feel like they’re going to benefit from using Taiwanese, which shows how far the language revitalization movement has come. , showing the power of this language today and the public’s recognition of this language.
You’ll see similar debates in other countries, such as a recent discussion in New Zealand aboutMaoriusage of.There is a New Zealand singerLordeissued withAlbum in Maori language. Some people objected to it, some people thought it was great because they thought releasing an album for Māori was the most attention-grabbing thing the language could ever achieve, but some people thought it was uncomfortable. , because they feel that white people took away the language, but for Māori to be successful, it needs to be spoken by everyone. Right?
You can’t, you can’t hope that this language will be widely used, and then limit (gatekeeping) who can speak this language, so that only a few people can use it, so that this language will always be a minority language.
So, I can understand some discomfort when people feel uncomfortable with KMT politicians using Taiwanese for political purposes. But you could also see it as a phased victory for the language revitalization movement.
The same is true in Wales. The revitalization of the Welsh language has traditionally been associated with parties on the left in Wales, such as the Independence Party or the Labor Party, and now we have Welsh-speaking Conservative politicians in Wales who speak Welsh and who now It would never be possible to say anything against “everyone should speak Welsh”, and everyone would feel stupid if such a thing was said, which shows how far the Renewal Movement has come.
Picture/Facebook Publishing
author: James.Griffith
Translator: Wang Ling
the publisher:Facebook Publishing
Publication date:2023/8/31
brief introduction:With the expansion of colonization and imperialism, as well as globalization and the popularization of the Internet, languages are disappearing faster than ever before. The planet’s linguistic diversity is slowly declining. Faced with a few hegemonic “super languages”, will the living space of minority languages only continue to shrink and eventually become unsustainable? The author of this book, James. Griffiths was born in Wales, England, and is fluent in English and Welsh. Welsh, one of his mother tongues, is the language used by minority groups. The language and culture of my hometown were once marginalized in the British Empire, and then embarked on the road of revival in the 20th century. In addition, he has lived in Hong Kong for work since he was an adult, and has also seen the changes in Cantonese in Hong Kong due to the national language policy in recent years. Therefore, he invested hundreds of hours in interviews, document research and report writing. In addition to recording the decline, struggle and then rise of the Welsh language he used, he also extended his exploration of Cantonese and another minority language half a world away. :The fate of the Hawaiian language.
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