From www.richmond-news.com - August 29, 10:57 PM

"'Language is a dialect with an army and a navy:' Chinese speakers reflect on diversity in Richmond


“Chinese is not just Mandarin or Cantonese; we have a lot of dialects,” says a KPU undergraduate.


 Zachary Zheng


 


Imagine you speak Mandarin, but another Chinese person in Richmond asks you for directions in their own dialect, and you feel lost because what they are saying sounds like a foreign language to you.


 


For many Chinese people living in Richmond, this could be part of their daily experience.


 


“Chinese is not just Mandarin or Cantonese; we have a lot of dialects,” said Jojo Dong, a Kwantlen Polytechnic University student who grew up in Richmond.


 


Dong’s grandparents immigrated to Canada from Taishan county, Guangdong province, which is across the water from Hong Kong.


 


Growing up with her grandparents, Taishanese was the first Chinese dialect she learned.


 


She later learned Cantonese from her mother, who grew up in Guangzhou. Dong then began studying Mandarin at language schools in Richmond and Vancouver from the age of three until she was 17.


 


She has heard many Chinese dialects in Richmond, including Hakka and Shanghainese.


 


Although Hakka is also spoken in her family's home province of Guangdong, Dong said it's “very different” from Taishanese.


 


“As a Taishanese person, I can only understand the tiniest bits,” she said. And, if someone speaks to her in pure Hakka, she can't understand anything.


 


What does “Chinese” mean?


Dr. Zoe Lam, a lecturer in Cantonese language and culture at the University of British Columbia, said the term “Chinese” can have both broad and narrow meanings.


 


In the linguistic sense, Chinese is an “umbrella term” for all Sinitic languages, including Mandarin, Cantonese and Shanghainese, and they are considered different languages because of their significant differences in sentence structure, vocabulary and pronunciation, Lam said.


 


According to Ethnologue, China has a population of about 1.4 billion and more than 280 living languages, including Mandarin, Wu, Min, Yue (Cantonese), Gan, Hakka, Jin and Hui.


 


While Mandarin is the most widely spoken language in China, with more than 1.1 billion speakers — about 80 per cent of the country’s population — Chinese speakers in Richmond are fairly evenly split between Cantonese and Mandarin.


 


According to the 2021 census, 92,930 of Richmond’s roughly 209,000 residents speak Chinese languages.


 


The most common is Yue, that is, Cantonese, with 44,985 speakers, followed closely by 44,060 Richmond residents who speak Mandarin.


 


Many dialects, which linguistically are not considered languages, weren't counted in the census.


 


But the 2021 census noted Hakka, Min Dong, Wu, also known as Shanghainese, and Min Nan, which includes Chaochow, Teochow, Fukien and Taiwanese, are spoken in Richmond.


 


Lam cited a common saying, “Language is a dialect with an army and a navy,” suggesting political and social power can impact whether a variation is recognized as a language or a dialect.


 


Even how a language is called can have political overtones, for example, “Mandarin” is called “Guoyu” in Taiwan, but it is referred to as “Putonghua” in mainland China to be “politically correct,” said Lam.


 


And the word “Chinese” can also be interpreted differently by different communities, she added.


 


“When Taiwanese people ask, ‘Do you speak Chinese?’ they are asking whether you speak Mandarin,” Lam said. “But in Hong Kong, if someone asks you, ‘Do you speak Chinese?’ they are basically asking if you speak Cantonese.”


 


Richmond as a multi-dialect Chinese community


Ronald Zhang, a Cantonese speaker who was born in Guangdong province and has lived in Richmond for 13 years, said he has encountered a wide variety of Chinese dialects in the community, including Beijing dialect, Shanghainese and Chaochow.


 


Zhang has noticed many older immigrants in Richmond speak Taishanese.


 


Gavin Lu, who has lived in Richmond for 32 years, said his dialect, Shanghainese, is particularly expressive when describing things such as size, direction, colour and emotions.


 


He said Shanghai is an immigrant city, historically attracting people from other parts of China and from overseas; therefore, some terms in Shanghainese are derived from English. For example, “Chadeu” in Shanghainese comes from the word “charter,” and means “taxi.”


 


Dong describes Shanghainese as a “beautiful” and “interesting” dialect, particularly when she hears it in Chinese movies.


 


Dong said she enjoys hearing different Chinese dialects in Richmond, and she wants people to understand that Chinese languages and dialects are as diverse as the ethnic groups, regions and food in China.


 


Chinese languages carry culture, tradition and memory


Dong’s great-grandfather, Tom Dong, came to Canada as part of the early waves of immigrants from China.


 


He ran a food stall and sold food to Chinese workers who were building the Canadian Pacific Railway in the 1880s. This allowed the workers to “taste a bit of home” and feel less homesick, Dong said.


 


In high school, Dong learned many of these immigrants came from Guangdong province, including Taishan, which explains why Taishanese was once widely spoken in some North American Chinatowns, including in Vancouver and Los Angeles.


 


“It is interesting because I remember my dad telling me, ‘There was a time when you went to these Chinatowns, you’d hear our dialect,’” Dong said.


 


Dong’s grandparents spoke only their “very specific” dialect, Taishanese, and could not speak standard Cantonese, while her parents primarily spoke standard Cantonese and were less familiar with Taishanese.


 


She believes many kids born in Canada can relate to the experience of their grandparents who may speak little English. As a result, a family dialect can become almost the only way for grandparents and grandchildren to communicate, Dong said.


 


Learning Taishanese at an early age allowed her to keep a connection to her grandparents, something that makes her feels “very blessed.”


 


But she is also concerned about what will happen when younger generations lose the ability to practice their family dialects after their grandparents and parents pass away.


 


She said it is a “beautiful thing” that she can stay connected to her ancestors by sharing the same “knowledge, language and phrases.”


 


“Like how our forefathers did, our grandparents taught our parents and passed down a language, like idioms,” Dong said.


 


She noted Chinese languages can put so much meaning into just a few characters.


 


For example, the sentence “If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles” originally came from an eight-word idiom in The Art of War by Sun Tzu, “zhi ji zhi bi, bai zhan bu dai (知己知彼，百战不殆),” meaning “understanding both sides wins battles.”


 


Speaking “standard Mandarin” is not the goal


For some people, like Zhang, differentiating Chinese dialects feels like “second nature.”


 


“In fact, I don’t have to understand; it is all about feeling,” he said — it's like recognizing a friend as soon as you hear their footsteps.


 


According to Zhang, people from Beijing tend to think how they speak is “standard” Mandarin, perhaps because of the political power and status of the capital city.


 


However, to him, people who speak Beijing dialect sound like “they have a candy in their mouth.”


 


 


In contrast, he believes the most standard Mandarin is on China Central Television (CCTV), where reporters speak very “nice, pleasant and comfortable” Mandarin.


 


Zhang believes people from different regions of China should be more tolerant of others when they’re not speaking Mandarin in a “standard” way.


 


“Although someone’s Mandarin is not that standard, as long as we can communicate with each other, that is all that matters,” he said.


 


Is Cantonese a language or a dialect?


Whether Cantonese should be considered a language or a dialect is a subjective debate among the Chinese community, according to Dong.


 


“If you go to Hong Kong, of course, they’ll say it’s a very different language,” she said.


 


While Guangzhou was previously a Cantonese-speaking area, younger generations are learning Mandarin in school and are becoming more accustomed to using it, although they may still understand Cantonese, Dong explained.


 


“Here in Richmond and Vancouver, there’s a lot of Cantonese-speaking individuals and seniors, and they’re very proud of their Cantonese dialect,” she added.


 


Dong considers Cantonese a distinct language because its pronunciation and sounds are significantly different from Mandarin, and learning it also requires a different process.


 


Lam said Cantonese and Mandarin should be considered different languages from a linguistic perspective, comparable to the difference between German and Swedish.


 


People who speak only Mandarin or only Cantonese can be mutually unintelligible, Lam said.


 


According to some scholars, Cantonese retains some features of ancient Chinese that have disappeared in today’s Mandarin, including vocabulary and a different tonal system.


 


History might have played a role in this.


 


More than 2,200 years ago, a series of military campaigns known as the "Qin campaign against the Baiyue" pushed people from the Central Plains of the Yellow River basin southward into present-day Guangdong province, bringing with them “Yayan,” also known as Old Chinese.


 


Mandarin and Cantonese differ in writing


Zhang also considers Cantonese an independent language especially with its own writing system.


 


Mandarin is written in simplified Chinese characters, while Cantonese is written in traditional Chinese characters.


 


Dong remembers learning to write traditional Chinese with its more intricate strokes and her hand cramping as she mastered the characters.


 


“I would be really frustrated having to write so many strokes,” she said.


 


Her parents wanted her to be able to read traditional Chinese characters, but she later learned simplified Chinese because it was more practical for work.


 


“There are many words that we cannot express in simplified scripts. It has to be written in traditional,” she said.


 


Despite the difficulty, Dong said she is grateful she learned traditional Chinese writing.


 


“It really does show a lot of history in each character, each word,” she said.


 


She pointed to the word “爱” in simplified Chinese and “愛” in traditional Chinese, both meaning “love.”


 


“In traditional, it has the word ‘heart’ (心) in it,” she said. “But in simplified, they have to remove it to save space.”


 


How Chinese dialects change in Richmond


Chinese dialects, like many other languages, are not static but change as communities move and interact.


 


Lu recalled hearing the Beijing dialect in Beijing in the early 1980s and said the version he hears in Richmond today sounds different.


 


He described the Beijing dialect he remembers as having “undulating heights,” while the version he hears in Richmond is “a little bit plain.”


 


He attributed the change partly to adaptation.


 


“When in Rome, do as the Romans do,” Lu said, suggesting perhaps Mandarin speakers adjust their speech to accommodate people from different Chinese-speaking backgrounds in Richmond.


 


Dong has observed a similar shift.


 


Many Chinese Canadians may learn a family dialect at home but later switch to standard Cantonese or Mandarin when they enter the workforce, she said.


 


“When we grow up and work, we have to learn standard Cantonese, because at work, they don’t expect us to speak the dialect (Taishanese) anymore,” she said.


 


Passing on Chinese dialects is key


For Dong, one of the biggest challenges to preserving less commonly spoken Chinese dialects is the lack of accessible learning resources.


 


“If I Google how to learn Mandarin, YouTube will have a bunch of lessons for me,” she said.


 


She continues to learn Taishanese from her parents, even though they don't remember as much of it as her grandparents did.


 


She hopes more online resources will become available to help people learn less commonly spoken Chinese dialects and help to stay connected to their roots.


 


“Even though we move so far away, we go to study in the U.K., or U.S. or Canada, I feel like us Chinese people, we never forget our roots, and that’s something to cherish,” she said.


 


“I spend time with my family and learn these traditions, because traditions can only be passed down if one of us puts in the effort and doesn’t forget it,” she said.


 


For Lu, preserving Chinese languages and dialects in Richmond is not only important for immigrants from mainland China, but also for people from Hong Kong, Macao and Southeast Asia.


 


With shared languages and cultural traditions, he said, Chinese communities around the world can “support and warm each other.”"


https://www.richmond-news.com/local-news/language-is-a-dialect-with-an-army-and-a-navy-chinese-speakers-reflect-on-diversity-in-richmond-12707271


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