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The future Sinitic languages of East Asia

Language Log 2024-04-21

Is monolingualism a normal, natural, necessary state of affairs for human beings?

Can you imagine a world in which there were only one language?  How is that even possible?

These are questions that come to mind after reading Gina Anne Tam's deeply thought provoking "Mandarin Hegemony: The Past and Future of Linguistic Hierarchies in China", pulse (4/18/24).

Tam begins with a gripping, hard-hitting scene that we at Language Log were already well aware of last fall:  "Speak Mandarin, not Cantonese, even in Macau" (10/31/23).  Here are the opening paragraphs of her article:

At a concert in Macau in the autumn of 2023, Cantopop superstar Eason Chan used an interlude to talk about his songwriting process. Suddenly, shouts from the audience interrupted his soliloquy, as a few fans demanded that he shift from speaking in his native Cantonese, the majority language in Macau, to Mandarin, the Chinese national language. Chan stopped and quickly launched into a multilingual lecture, reprimanding those who deigned to tell him what to speak. In English, Cantonese, Mandarin, and Thai, he defended multilingualism for the freedom it grants: ‘I love speaking in whatever way and language I want’ (Huang 2023).

Chan noted that these demands dripped with a sense of entitlement. ‘You can ask nicely,’ he quipped. ‘Would you ask David Bowie to speak Mandarin or Cantonese?’ This entitlement, Chan implies, is emboldened by presumptions of power. Instinctively, both he and his audience know that most of them would not feel entitled to shout at a native English-speaking performer for the language they chose to speak. But to these members of Chan’s audience, Cantonese speakers should speak the common and official Chinese language. Cantonese, in their world view, is a lesser, local variant of Chinese, whereas the official language should be the presumptive language of communication in Chinese-speaking spaces.

Tam goes on to address a number of vital language issues in China today, sensitively probing the meaning and implications of "hegemony", comparing the position of Mandarin in China with that of English in the world, analyzing the situation regarding the non-Mandarin topolects vis-à-vis the place of non-Sinitic languages like Uyghur, Tibetan, and Mongolian of the PRC, which shows how racialized Mandarin hegemony is in China, and so forth.

Unsurprisingly, Mandarin hegemony does not go unchallenged, particularly in a place like Hong Kong, where Cantonese speakers resist with all the resources at their disposal, including fighting for mother tongue education in the schools.

In the final section of her article, Tam shows clearly whose side she is on:

De-Normalising Linguistic Hegemony

Nonetheless, Mandarin hegemony remains pervasive. And with a powerful government as invested in its maintenance as is the Chinese Communist Party, it remains difficult to challenge. Yet, it is important to recognise that while hegemony is structural, it is not outside our control. Humans create structures. We all have agency, big or small, in how we respond to hegemonic structures, linguistic hegemony included. As Mikanowski (2018) reminds us, linguistic hegemony is normalised by one dangerous idea: ‘[T]hat a single language should suit every purpose, and that being monolingual is therefore somehow “normal”.’ We all have a role to play in ensuring that this is a normal that we will not accept.

I like the idea of "de-normalizing" an odious government policy.  Worth a try, isn't it?

One of the first future languages of East Asia will be Cantonese.  It will no longer pejoratively be thought of as a mere dialect of a hierarchically superior Mandarin.  It will be followed by languages like Hokkien (also spoken widely throughout Southeast Asia), Wu (includes the topolects of Shanghai, Suzhou, Wenzhou, Hangzhou, Ningbo, etc. and is spoken widely in Han emigré communities in Europe), and I dare say even topolects of regions like Sichuanese / Szechwanese (remember Der gute Mensch von Sezuan?) — with its hip-hop and rap pop culture and tongue-rocking cuisine — and Northeast / Dongbei / Manchuria with its ultra-talented entertainers.

It will be much easier for these languages to emerge in their full glory if people stop referring to the totality of Han languages as Chinese, which is a political construct, and think of it rather as Sinitic, which is a linguistic concept.  As soon as you buy into the dogma / doctrine that Mandarin is the sole, unique, superior brand of ethnic Han language, then you allow the Mandarins of Beijing / Peking to relegate all the other forms of Sinitic speech to the status of lowly "dialect" — including Cantonese, which in actuality is a mighty language with nearly a hundred million (!) speakers.

 

A note on Wu

Intellectually, economically, and in other ways, this group of Sinitic languages was remarkably consequential and powerful already from the middle period of Chinese history.  Its dramatic downturn in recent decades is the result of purely political machinations:

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The decline of Wu began from around 1986, when students were banned from speaking "uncivilized dialects" during class, a term used by the State Language Commission to refer to all Chinese languages other than Standard Chinese. In 1992, students in Shanghai were banned from speaking Wu at all times on campuses. Since the late 2000s, Wu mostly survived in kitchens and theatres, as a "kitchen language" among the elderly housewives and as a theatrical language in folk Yue opera, Shanghai opera and Pingtan. As of now, Wu has no official status, no legal protection and there is no officially sanctioned romanization.

(Wikipedia)

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Selected readings

[h.t. Geoff Wade]