For example, all the Cantonese schools for British Chinese children in the UK now also teach Putonghua, but none of the Putonghua schools teach Cantonese. With globalization and the rise of China as a world politico-economic power, the national, standardized variety, Putonghua, is gaining particular prestige amongst the Chinese diasporas. Cantonese and Hokkien are two of the most prominent dialects. Chinese communities outside Greater China (China, Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan), have traditionally been dialect dominant that is, the vast majority of Chinese immigrants are speakers of especially Southern) dialects. Unlike sojourners, non-Chinese residents who see themselves as Hongkongers often get upset as their identity claims are questioned or even challenged by the mainstream Cantonese society. Inaccuracies in tone contours often trigger laughter, damaging CAL learners' self-esteem and dampening their motivation to learn and speak Cantonese. When spoken to in Cantonese, local speakers tend to switch to English or Putonghua. With six distinctive tonemes, the Cantonese tone system appears to be a major stumbling block. Cantonese tuition, often focusing on tones, is reportedly not so helpful. Independent learning is difficult while incidental learning is almost impossible. A variety of romanization systems are used in commercially obtainable learning aid like Cantonese course books and bilingual dictionaries, which tend to diverge from romanized Cantonese in street signs and personal names. As a 'dialect', Cantonese has not been standardized and is not part of school literacy. Based on qualitative data obtained from 33 participants in four focus groups, two each in Putonghua (17) and English (16) respectively, this study shows that learners of Cantonese as an additional language (CAL) in Hong Kong experience a lot of difficulties.
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