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<h1 class="gmail-title" id="gmail-page-title">Mandarin and Cantonese can both be mother tongues for Hong Kong people</h1> </div>
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<div class="gmail-node-published" datetime="2018-05-12T13:03:28+08:00">PUBLISHED : Saturday, 12 May, 2018, 1:03pm</div><div class="gmail-node-updated"><span class="gmail-node-updated-date gmail-node-updated-date-hl">UPDATED : Saturday, 12 May, 2018, 1:03pm</span></div> </div>
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<p class="gmail-v2-processed">I refer to the recent dispute over whether our mother tongue in Hong Kong is Cantonese or Mandarin (“<a href="http://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/politics/article/2144578/should-mandarin-replace-cantonese-hong-kong-says-no" shape="rect" title="www.scmp.com">Carrie Lam refuses to be drawn into debate on ‘mother tongue’</a>”, May 4). </p><div class="gmail-scmp-inline-newsletter-subscription" style="height:83px"><form class="gmail-scmp-newsletter-subscription-form element-processed-processed gmail-newsletter-323850 gmail-ajax-form-processed" action="https://www.scmp.com/api/rest/public/v2/newsletter/subscribe.json" method="POST" id="gmail-scmp-newsletter-subscription-form-323850">
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<p class="gmail-v2-processed">The issue arises from a 2013 article by Song
Xinqiao, a professional consultant at the Chinese University of Hong
Kong’s Mandarin education research centre. He wrote that calling
Cantonese a mother tongue does not fit with the strict definition of the
term, which refers to a language but not a dialect, or the local
version of a language.</p>
<p class="gmail-v2-processed">The Chinese version of Hong Kong's official
language policy of “two written forms of words and three spoken forms”
has often been misunderstood to mean three written forms of words –
English, Mandarin and Cantonese. The aim is to produce secondary school
graduates proficient in writing Chinese and English and able to
communicate confidently in Cantonese, English and Mandarin.</p>
<h4 class="gmail-v2-processed gmail-link"><em><a href="http://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/article/2144681/debate-over-cantonese-and-handover-highlight-hongkongers" title="www.scmp.com">Debate over Cantonese and the handover highlight Hongkongers’ feeling of political helplessness</a></em></h4>
<p class="gmail-v2-processed">In fact, Mandarin and Cantonese are but two
dialects of the same written form of words. Mandarin has been chosen to
be the UN standard written and spoken form of words for Chinese, with
Hanyu pinyin, from the beginning. Thus Chinese is a form of written
words that can be taught through both the mother tongues of Cantonese
and Mandarin.</p>
<p class="gmail-v2-processed"><em>Peter Lok, Heng Fa Chuen </em></p>
<br>-- <br><div class="gmail_signature" data-smartmail="gmail_signature">=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+<br><br> Harold F. Schiffman<br><br>Professor Emeritus of <br> Dravidian Linguistics and Culture <br>Dept. of South Asia Studies <br>University of Pennsylvania<br>Philadelphia, PA 19104-6305<br><br>Phone: (215) 898-7475<br>Fax: (215) 573-2138 <br><br>Email: <a href="mailto:haroldfs@gmail.com" target="_blank">haroldfs@gmail.com</a><br><a href="http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/" target="_blank">http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/</a> <br><br>-------------------------------------------------</div>
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