Bulletin No. 1, 2016

40 Chinese University Bulletin No. 1, 2016 Familiarity Breeds Interest —A Month-long Discourse on Cantonese Over 50 million of the world’s population use Cantonese as their mother tongue. They include residents in Hong Kong, Macau, Guangdong and Guangxi, and many overseas Chinese in the UK, US, Canada and Australia. A series of activities was organized at The Chinese University of Hong Kong for the promotion of Cantonese. Lectures, talks, a workshop and a book exhibition spanned from late March to April, drawing the attention of the education sector and the public to the seemingly familiar language. Why do we need to promote Cantonese—the first-language that we use daily? More than six million people, i.e., close to 90% of the Hong Kong population, speak Cantonese, according to the Government’s 2011 Population Census. But most Cantonese speakers do not know much about the language itself, e.g., in terms of phonetics, grammar, and history. We should know more about this daily communication tool of ours. Why are we so ignorant about Cantonese? Hong Kong claims to be a ‘bilingual and tri- literate’ metropolis. While English and Mandarin (or Putonghua) are usually taught, the schools seldom teach the fundaments of Cantonese. The basics of Cantonese are only acquired through listening and speaking. The lack of a systematic introduction to the Cantonese language gives Prof. Tang Sze-wing Director, T.T. Ng Chinese Language Research Centre, Institute of Chinese Studies, CUHK Director, Research Centre for Cantonese, CUHK Vice-chairman, Department of Chinese Language and Literature, CUHK people a false impression that there is no grammar to it. The government should invest more resources and teachers more effort in teaching the pronunciation, grammar and basic knowledge of Cantonese. In a gist, what are the special features of Cantonese? Cantonese has six tones, more than 40 verbal suffixes, and a wide array of sentence- final particles which distinguish it from other languages. There is also a set of highly flexible functional morphemes which allow numerous forms of combination. What approach shall we take in order to know Cantonese better? Cantonese is the mother tongue of the vast majority of the Hong Kong people. We have a natural bond with it. We love it and treasure it without doubt. When we explore Cantonese more seriously from the linguistic perspective, we will discover the immense sophistication, inclusiveness and vibrancy of the language. This will serve as a rational base to support our passion for it and, in turn, motivate us to study it in depth, and ultimately find more fun in it.