Last week broadcaster Guangdong Television (GDTV) unexpectedly announced that it was ceasing Cantonese programing and switching to Mandarin. The decision came as a shock to many who had watched the network's nightly news in Cantonese for years, but it's far from the first move made by authorities to suppress the southern language.
Four years ago, Hongkongers and their neighbors across the border were joined together in a rare moment of solidarity as demonstrations in both the SAR and provincial seat Guangzhou sought to defend the regional tongue from Mandarin incursion.
Interestingly, however, rumors have been circulating that this latest anti-Canto shot was fired so as to avoid implicitly insulting President Xi Jinping with the language. In Mandarin, the two-character abbreviation for President Xi is pronounced Xi Zong, but in Cantonese these same characters are pronounced Jaap Jung, which sounds identical in Cantonese to what in Mandarin is pronounced zazhong — an insult roughly analogous to "bastard."
Reports have also surfaced this morning of Foshan being instructed by authorities to reduce their Cantonese content to under 20% and conduct all news broadcasts and interviews in Mandarin. The city was also warned that they will have "points deducted" for every word of Cantonese heard in their programing — which they can recover each time they forbid Cantonese at meetings and in official correspondence.
Despite the "silencing" of Cantonese down south, however, it appears that up in Shanghai there are still plenty of people interested in learning the language. This Shanghai school specializing in Hong Kong Cantonese is doing a roaring trade teaching northerners the language, which continues to be seen as rather cool (if slightly funny-sounding to their ears) and just maybe, as more officials turn against it, even a little bit badass.
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