[lg policy] Carrie Lam dodges question on Cantonese

[Harold Schiffman]

 Carrie Lam dodges question on Cantonese Local
<http://www.thestandard.com.hk/sections_news_list.php?sid=4> | 3 May 2018
1:52 pm

Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor today refused to be drawn into a
row about the status of Cantonese in Hong Kong, dodging a question in Legco
about whether the language – or dialect – is her mother tongue.

Social Welfare sector lawmaker Shiu Ka-chun raised concerns about an
Education Bureau document which quotes a mainland official as saying that
Cantonese is only a dialect and therefore it cannot be someone's mother
tongue, RTHK reported.

Shiu asked Lam during a CE question-and-answer session what her mother
tongue is. But she refused to give an answer, saying the question was
"frivolous".

Lam went on to say that some people have been hyping up the issue by
focusing on just two or three lines of a 2013 Education Bureau document.

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She said Hong Kong people speak Cantonese every day and therefore the issue
is a non-starter and society should not waste time debating it, adding that
the government has no plans to change the city’s language policy in
schools.

Lam also said that there is room for improvement in English standards in
the city, urging people to read more books in the language.


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 Harold F. Schiffman

Professor Emeritus of
 Dravidian Linguistics and Culture
Dept. of South Asia Studies
University of Pennsylvania
Philadelphia, PA 19104-6305

Phone:  (215) 898-7475
Fax:  (215) 573-2138

Email:  haroldfs at gmail.com
http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/

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