This language has a rich history in Australia but it's at risk of disappearing forever
Learning a language can help with employability, but that focus is putting one of Australia’s most popular languages — and its connection to culture — at risk. https://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/this-language-has-a-rich-history-in-australia-but-its-at-risk-of-disappearing-forever/1e80480tn?fbclid=IwY2xjawIHorBleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHRLS3w7vzy73PMfWQP1KTJgR6i2z6D5cmfBOo7vMJ3aTLkve58ENfp8rUw_aem_wEbOkP0SDMOnyIJ2WfpmOQ
=> More informations about this toot | More toots from NZChineseGenealogy@mastodon.nz
Only in China could this happen. Let's keep the Cantonese up - New Zealand
=> More informations about this toot | More toots from NZChineseGenealogy@mastodon.nz
@NZChineseGenealogy It has happened in many countries, and is still happening all over the world. Reo Māori almost fell to assimilation and cultural erasure efforts here, too, as you know. Last time I was in Torino, places that I remembered being rich with Savoyard only 20 years prior had given way to government Italian.
On the positive: HK Poly's intro to Cantonese is starting up again next week on EdX. It's free.
https://www.edx.org/learn/language/the-hong-kong-polytechnic-university-cantonese-language-and-culture-for-beginners
=> More informations about this toot | More toots from libroraptor@mastodon.nz
@NZChineseGenealogy One of my Singaporean friends, in her 40s or 50s, learnt Cantonese a few years ago (she already spoke two other dialects and English, so absorbed Cantonese by binge-watching Cantonese TV) because she found that it is still essential for business in Guăngdōng. There are conversations and relationships that just don't happen without it.
=> More informations about this toot | More toots from libroraptor@mastodon.nz
@NZChineseGenealogy
It's sad that the whole situation is not being helped by the cultural genocide going on in HK, aided in no small part by various government policies there.
Plus, the sheer numbers thing, and everyone gravitating to the loudest shouty voice (admittedly attached to a nasty beast with chains around various folk's necks)
=> More informations about this toot | More toots from aligorith@mastodon.nz
@NZChineseGenealogy
It's probably not wise to say this, but personally:
=> More informations about this toot | More toots from aligorith@mastodon.nz
@aligorith @NZChineseGenealogy How about a Guānhuà (官話) revival project? That's the REAL Mandarin.
The way people say 'Mandarin' is unwittingly ironic – the entire point of a pŭtōnghuà is almost the polar opposite of having a Mandarins-only language.
I tend to answer white people with a question about their CCP sympathies when they "nĭhăo" me. A local policeman got quite a lecture from me about that a few years ago.
=> More informations about this toot | More toots from libroraptor@mastodon.nz
@aligorith @NZChineseGenealogy Something that puzzles me is why the Poll Tax Trust and my county Chinese association are now using pīnyīn romanisations of pŭtōnghuà. Like the heavily publicised (and partly plagiarised) "Farewell Guangdong" book that could just as well have been titled with a romanisation of the Cantonese. It seems misaligned with the point of having these organisations. Preserving Cantonese culture is in at least some of their mission statements.
=> More informations about this toot | More toots from libroraptor@mastodon.nz
@libroraptor @aligorith subtle take over by the new comers? They are infiltrating our local organisations, bit by bit.
=> More informations about this toot | More toots from NZChineseGenealogy@mastodon.nz
@NZChineseGenealogy @aligorith My local branch of the NZCA is almost all first-gen Chinese NZers; very few Cantonese. But even Gordon at the Dong Jung Association had been promoting pŭtōnghuà in the newsletter for years by the time he passed away, and using pŭtōnghuà placenames for our towns and villages.
We've always had the options of standardised Cantonese romanisations (I vote Yale; I find Jyutping's numerals obstinate). I'm guessing that he was looking for a way to bridge gaps.
=> More informations about this toot | More toots from libroraptor@mastodon.nz
@NZChineseGenealogy @aligorith Also I'm thinking that the Poll Tax Trust trustees have to be descendants of poll tax payers, no? But we're at a generation now that mostly speaks Cantonese as a second language or not at all.
The newer Chinese NZers are getting there, too. A friend here is from Wuhan; her daughter's about 11 and doesn't speak Chinese at all. She was complaining to me a few days ago about not having an anglo name. So I told her about my generation's double identities.
=> More informations about this toot | More toots from libroraptor@mastodon.nz
@libroraptor @aligorith The Trustees are Poll Tax descendants.
=> More informations about this toot | More toots from NZChineseGenealogy@mastodon.nz
@NZChineseGenealogy @aligorith The way I grew up, with almost no one ever calling each other by their names, I find it incredibly abrasive and presumptuous to be addressed by my Chinese name by anyone who isn't close family. Quite a different practice from what's now become normal in the Chinese-speaking countries. I've been told more than once that we NZ Chinese are incredibly old-fashioned because we've maintained quite a lot of imperial-era norms without realising it.
=> More informations about this toot | More toots from libroraptor@mastodon.nz
@libroraptor @aligorith You're correct - I believe that we were brought up more Chinese than the Chinese.
=> More informations about this toot | More toots from NZChineseGenealogy@mastodon.nz
@NZChineseGenealogy @aligorith Like they used to say about Manchus!
You find other versions of it among other diaspora, too. The Italians of Australia and New England I'm familiar with – a torment of lost identity, a drive to assimilate when discriminated against, exaggerated overcompensation (hence US pizza and pasta), and "going back" only to find that what they left is no longer there – and eventually realising that they, too, have evolved in a new direction.
=> More informations about this toot | More toots from libroraptor@mastodon.nz
@NZChineseGenealogy @aligorith I once hosted a group of academics from Chongqing who recognised what I was – they'd practically all studied in a first-rate university whether in China, the US or the UK, after experiencing the Cultural Revolution and the Opening-Up – and were so very nice to me, insisting on maintaining the decorum that we here knew as mere "normality". Little (but deep) things like that are why I think there's still profound commonality to connect through.
=> More informations about this toot | More toots from libroraptor@mastodon.nz
@NZChineseGenealogy @aligorith Meanwhile, our local international dean who's always off to China speaks about Chinese people in the most belittling choices of words. And the international dean of my faculty at Auckland was pretty much an overt white supremacist which is apparently what NZ's universities stand for.
The vice-chancellor then had actually been Gordon's neighbour many years ago but wasn't exactly positive about cultural diversity. I couldn't tell Gordon that, though.
=> More informations about this toot | More toots from libroraptor@mastodon.nz
@NZChineseGenealogy @aligorith Another of the old connections – someone once saw my surname and introduced himself to me with reference to the peach garden 1800 years ago, recalling that his ancestor was there with mine.
It's quite different from "I'm descended from an bastard son of a rapist third-cousin twice-departed of Henry VIII" or, for Australia, "My great-great-great grandfather was transported for being too friendly with the baron's sheep."
=> More informations about this toot | More toots from libroraptor@mastodon.nz This content has been proxied by September (3851b).Proxy Information
text/gemini