Language Log

From the "Cantonese Resources" blog:

Ah To 阿塗, a graphic designer and part-time cartoonist who is concerned about the survival of Cantonese in Canton and Hong Kong, has just published a comic called "The Great Canton and Hong Kong Proverbs" on Hong Kong independent media "Passion Times".

(Click to embiggen.)

Gloria Bien sent in the following photograph and asked what to make of the Chinese text in it, especially the unusual character 叻, which is pronounced lè in Modern Standard Mandarin (MSM; but see below for the Cantonese pronunciation and meaning). Wenlin says it's part of a name for Singapore, but not used alone, as it is in this picture. Google says Overseas Chinese use it for Singapore. But, as Gloria observes, "I'm the most Singapore" doesn't make sense.

This is from a package of noodles from Emeryville, CA, and says "Product of China," but complex characters are used throughout.

Bruce Rusk, in a comment to "A bilingual, biscriptal product designation in Taiwan", mentioned "the informal Taiwanese Mandarin pronunciation of 給 ('give') gei3 as gie (3rd tone?), which is not a 'legal' Mandarin syllable" and noted that he "always assumed it was influenced by Taiwanese."

Bruce's mention of "給 ('give') gei3" in turn reminds me of a related Taiwanese-Mandarin interference that affected my own speech in a profound way.

Whether Cantonese is a language or a dialect is a subject that we have touched upon many times on Language Log, e.g., "Spoken Hong Kong Cantonese and written Cantonese" (see especially the remarks in the second half of the original post) and "English is a Dialect of Germanic; or, The Traitors to Our Common Heritage ."

But now it has become a hot-button issue in China, especially in Hong Kong, where the government's Education Bureau recently made a monumental gaffe by declaring that Cantonese was not an official language of the Special Administrative Region:  "Education Bureau rapped over Cantonese 'not an official language' gaffe:  Claim Cantonese 'not an official language' leaves public lost for words."

Here's an article in Chinese on the uproar that followed the announcement of the Education Bureau that Cantonese is not an official language of Hong Kong.

A very interesting question has come up about how to interpret the term xiǎo cài guǎn 小菜館 (lit., "small vegetable / dish shop").  Some people say it should be A. "xiǎo càiguǎn" (a small restaurant).  Other people say it should be B. "xiǎocài guǎn" (a place where you get side dishes / family style cooking).

See "Gourmet Chinese cookshop" and the comments thereto.

I think that it is not just one or the other, but that it can be both depending upon the circumstances.

When I want xiǎo cài guǎn 小菜館 to mean A. (xiǎo càiguǎn ("a small restaurant"]), I pronounce it with a slight pause after xiǎo and emphasis on the first syllable of càiguǎn.  When I want xiǎo cài guǎn 小菜館 to mean B. (xiǎocài guǎn ("a place where you get side dishes / family style cooking"]), I pronounce it with a pause after the second syllable and a slightly greater emphasis on the third syllable.

For the importance of pause and emphasis in Chinese elocution, see, for example, here and here (4th paragraph).

As we shall see from the survey and analysis below, there are even other possibilities for understanding this collocation.  In the end, its precise meaning can only be determined by context.

A recent issue (1/7/14) of the South China Morning Post (SCMP) carried an article by a staff reporter entitled "Hong Kong student's poem recital goes viral in the mainland ". The article features this amazing video of a Hong Kong high school student reciting a couple of Classical Chinese poems:

Bruce Balden sent in this photograph of a sign on a restaurant in the Vancouver area:

I just received this note from a colleague:

I found a document on the Hong Kong Education Bureau's website that says:  "Xiānggǎng de qíngkuàng shì yǐ Zhōngwén wéi mǔyǔ 香港的情況是以中文為母語" ("The situation in Hong Kong takes Chinese as the Mother Tongue").

Zhōngwén 中文 ("Chinese") is a rather curious, ambiguous, and imprecise term since it can essentially mean just about any kind of Chinese. I think using it to refer to a person's so-called mother tongue is especially dubious and sneaky.

Such a proposition is preposterous on the very face of it.  Yet a commenter to this blog has repeatedly made this claim in all earnestness, and even attempted to back up his claim with various types of evidence.  I asked some friends and colleagues what they thought of such an assertion, and many of the more temperate responses I received have been included in the comments to "No character for the most frequent morpheme in Taiwanese", where the comparison was made; see also the earlier "Spoken Hong Kong Cantonese and written Cantonese", where the same commenter made the identical claim.

Bob Ramsey sent in the following photograph of a portion of a Chinese restaurant menu (source; originally from engrish.com):