02-10-2022
Dr. Hilário de Sousa is a linguist at CRLAO – EHESS (East Asian Language Research Centre, School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences), France. In this article, the author shares some thoughts surrounding the New Zealand Chinese Language Week [NZCLW], and suggests an alternative way forward for Chinese New Zealanders who feel excluded by NZCLW.
It has been many years since I have lived in New Zealand. Nonetheless, as a linguist from Aotearoa, I pay close attention to the developments in the language ecology in Aotearoa New Zealand. It is delightful to see Māori, NZ Sign Language, and the various other Language Weeks blossom over the years. The various communities have shown their enthusiasm in the maintenance and development of their community languages. This is very heart-warming for me.
This week (25 Sept – 1 Oct 2022) is the New Zealand Chinese Language Week [NZCLW]. I am more-than-half Cantonese, a type of Chinese. The aim of NZCLW is to increase Chinese language learning in New Zealand. “Chinese” in this case means Standard Mandarin. Unlike the other language weeks, which are primarily driven by, and aimed at, the members of the respective communities, the Chinese Language Week is primarily driven by non-Chinese people, mostly aiming at non-Chinese people learning Mandarin.
This itself is not a problem; they have clearly stated that their aim is the promotion of Chinese (Mandarin). Ethnicity is also not a problem when language promotion is concerned, as long as the motive is sincere, and the promotion is done in a way that is respectful to the native speakers (including consultation with them). NZCLW seems to have achieved this, and I can imagine all the hard work that the organising committee and other participants have put into NZCLW.
I myself have certainly benefited from being able to speak Mandarin to some degree. (I picked it up from Taiwanese friends in NZ when I was young.) When I was a linguistics student, I had hardly any experience with doing linguistic research on Chinese languages. For instance, my thesis was on a language spoken in the interior of New Guinea; no Chinese there. Academic jobs are very hard to get; I pretty much had to apply for whatever. Somehow I landed a job in France which required me to do linguistic fieldwork in China. That would not have been possible if I did not know some Mandarin. Dealing with academics in China basically meant that I had to speak Mandarin. In China I gave lectures and conference talks in Mandarin. Mandarin is an interesting language. Since the Early Mandarin period in the twelfth century, Mandarin has had a glorious literary culture. I encourage people to learn Mandarin, like I do with any other language. Russian for instance. (As a linguist, I do not have a “favourite child”.)
Some Chinese New Zealanders are Mandarin speakers. Some are native speakers of other Chinese languages, but welcome the promotion of Mandarin. Some, however, see Mandarin, or rather the aggressive promotion of Mandarin to the exclusion of other Chinese languages, as a threat to their heritage languages. Identity is multidimensional. On one hand, Chinese New Zealanders can be said to share one identity: they are New Zealanders who share the “Chinese” ethnic label. On the other hand, Chinese New Zealanders are far from forming a single community. One hears each cohort of Chinese New Zealanders expressing resentments towards a newer cohort of Chinese migrants. Newer Chinese migrants bring with them culture and values that are different from the pre-established Chinese population. The speech variety that the newer Chinese migrants speak can also be different, and the pre-established Chinese New Zealanders can feel disadvantaged due to the power imbalance between these dialects or languages. The earlier Chinese migrants to New Zealand are mostly from the less-metropolitan areas in or near the Pearl River Delta, for instance Szeyap 四邑, Tsengshing 增城, and Chungshan 中山. Most of them speak speech varieties that are closely related to Standard Cantonese, but are not that easily intelligible to speakers of Standard Cantonese. They are also looked down upon by speakers of Standard Cantonese. (There were also migrants from Punyü 番禺, who spoke Standard Cantonese or something rather close to it. The old Punyü County 番禺縣 included Canton (Guangzhou) city centre.) In the 1980s and 90s, there was an influx of migrants speaking Standard (or Standard-like) Cantonese from Hong Kong and Macau. There were also the (first or second language) Cantonese-speaking migrants from Malaysia and Singapore. The pre-established Chinese New Zealanders found themselves having to accommodate these newcomers by switching to Standard Cantonese, if they could. It was also common for them to keep a distance from the newer Cantonese migrants. Some would rather speak English to the newer Cantonese migrants, lest they get stigmatised for speaking their “hillbilly” dialect. The Cantonese of the 80s and 90s was in turn “trumped” by the Mandarin-speaking Mainland Chinese migrants who came in large numbers since the 2000s. (Not all of them are native speakers of Mandarin, but most are used to using Mandarin as a lingua franca. There are also Cantonese speakers among the newer Mainland Chinese migrants.) In the traditionally Cantonese-speaking shops, one finds more and more staff, and sometimes even owners, who speak only Mandarin. There are people like my father, who spoke Cantonese and no Mandarin. He told me about his trips to some of these shops in Auckland, and discovering that they no longer spoke Cantonese. He would then switch to English, only to discover that they did not speak much English either.
I remember walking with a Mandarin-speaking acquaintance in Auckland many years ago. There was a big sign with the word 屋崙 (Mandarin Wū Lún) on it. He figured that it meant ‘Auckland’ from the English translation above. The Mandarin acquaintance exclaimed: “Why is Auckland written 屋崙 Wū Lún? 屋崙 Wū Lún makes no sense. Wū Lún sounds nothing like Auckland. Auckland is not 屋崙 Wū Lún, and should not be 屋崙 Wū Lún. Auckland is 奧克蘭 Àu Kè Lán.” I was taken aback by that acquaintance’s exclamation. 奧克蘭 Àu Kè Lán is how Auckland is transliterated, based on Mandarin phonology. In Cantonese, nowadays one also usually calls Auckland 奧克蘭 Ou Hāak Làahn, modelled on Mandarin 奧克蘭 Àu Kè Lán. So where does the name 屋崙 Wū Lún come from?
The name 屋崙, pronounced Ūk Lèuhn in Cantonese, is the traditional name that the earlier Chinese migrants in New Zealand have for Auckland. For Cantonese, 屋崙 Ūk Lèuhn does indeed make more sense than the Mandarin-inspired 奧克蘭 Ou Hāak Làahn, with 屋崙 Ūk Lèuhn having two syllables like Auck-land in English. (Cantonese phonology allows a syllable to end in a -k, and hence the English syllable Auck can easily fit into one syllable Ūk 屋 in Cantonese. This is not the case in Mandarin, and hence Auck is repackaged into two syllables Ào Kè 奧克 in Mandarin.) The pressure on Cantonese to conform to Mandarin transliterations is huge. I can imagine how the earlier Chinese Aucklanders might have felt when the name of their beloved 屋崙 Ūk Lèuhn gradually became 奧克蘭 Ou Hāak Làahn. Imagine one day if no one remembers the name New Zealand, and you have to introduce yourself in English, even within New Zealand, by saying “Hi! I am from 新西兰 Xīn Xī Lán”. These days I try to use the name 屋崙 Ūk Lèuhn as much as possible when I speak Cantonese, as a sign of respect to the earlier Chinese New Zealanders. (And for a somewhat similar reason, I have a preference for 紐西蘭 Náu Sāi Làahn over 新西蘭 Sān Sāi Làahn for New Zealand. Perhaps I can go even more old-school and start calling New Zealand 鳥施崙 Níuh Sī Lèuhn.) However, I am not against having two names; they both have histories of their own. You can have preference for one, but it is fine as long as there is proper respect for each other.
Back to the Mandarin-speaking acquaintance. Unfortunately, disrespectful attitudes like that are not uncommon amongst Mandarin speakers (and also many people who are not native speakers of Mandarin, but accept the hegemony of Mandarin). Mandarin is at the top of the pecking order. Mandarin is aggressively promoted. While I encourage people to learn Mandarin, and Mandarin can co-exist with other languages (language diversity is good), many in the Mandarin promotion sector have the attitude that Chinese languages other than Standard Mandarin must be suppressed.
In Chinese culture, there is the ideology of Oneness of Chinese: there can only be one Chinese. “Chinese” is either their Chinese, or whatever the government says is Chinese. For instance, in this article published by the ABC, the author (who works or worked at the NZ embassy in Beijing) says “[s]ince more and more students and visitors to Australia are from the Mandarin-speaking area of China, Australia will have to shift its perception of Chinese culture”. Notice that people have to “shift”, and not “widen”, their understanding of Chinese culture. The author found many “Chinese” customs she encountered in Australia foreign to her. Many of these things that she found foreign are in fact Cantonese, for instance the Lion Dance that one often encounters during Chinese New Year celebrations in the Antipodes. (The rest of the article was written in a similar tone, that Cantonese is not “Chinese”. “Chinese” is whatever the norm is in modern day Mainland China, e.g. proudly Mandarin-speaking, sending electronic red pockets over WeChat.) In Hong Kong and Macau, where Cantonese is currently still allowed to be the medium of instruction, students are marked wrong if they write native Cantonese sentences like 我畀錢你 ngóh béi chín néih [I give money you]; one has to write in Mandarin 我給你錢 wǒ géi nǐ qián [I give you money] (which is then read out in Cantonese as 我給你錢 ngóh kāp néih chín). The doctrine says that there can only be ONE Written Chinese, and that is Written Mandarin. The constant fight between users of Traditional Chinese and Simplified Chinese characters is another manifestation of the ideology of Oneness of Chinese: there can only be ONE Chinese script. The two camps incessantly point out the merits of their own script, and the inadequacies of the other. (For whatever flaws that these two scripts have, they are part of people’s literate identities. You can have pride in using the script that you like, but otherwise just accept that there are two standards, and respect other people’s choice of using Traditional and/or Simplified Chinese characters.)
NZCLW does represent some Chinese New Zealanders; NZCLW has the aim of promoting Mandarin, and some Chinese New Zealanders do speak like the (Mainland Chinese Standard) Mandarin promoted by NZCLW. The use of the name “Chinese” in NZCLW is understandable: these days, in most places around the world, if you say you are studying “Chinese”, it means Standard Mandarin. Nevertheless, it is also understandable how some Chinese New Zealanders feel upset with NZCLW (e.g. this, this, this, this, this): despite the name NZCLW having the word “Chinese” in it, NZCLW does not represent them. A large number of Chinese New Zealanders are not from a Mandarin-speaking background. This includes the pre-1960 Chinese population (and their descendents), the population affected by the Chinese Poll Tax. They also fall under the “Chinese” ethnic label, but NZCLW is not there to help them maintain and develop their heritage languages. NZCLW is there to promote Mandarin. There is a feeling that the New Zealand Chinese heritage is being ignored, or wiped out. (On top of that is the general disrespect exhibited by some people who subscribe to the Mandarin hegemony.)
At this point, I must discuss another word in the name NZCLW: “Language”, from a Chinese context. Translation is a tricky matter; pairs of terms in two languages that are often considered translational equivalence can in fact be interpreted quite differently by speakers of the two languages. Two such problematic pairs are English language versus dialect, and Chinese 語言 versus 方言 (Mandarin yǔyán and fāngyán respectively). Now, the distinction between language and dialect, and what can be considered the same or separate languages or dialects are inherently very complex, and I am not going to present an entire academic thesis on this here. I shall simply say that the English concept of language versus dialect, and the Chinese concept of 語言 yǔyán versus 方言 fāngyán, are different. (They both have their problems, so it is not a matter of whether the Western or the Chinese way of classification is better.) To give you a sense of what 方言 fāngyán in Chinese means, I remember being at a major international linguistics conference (the talks were given in English). The speaker gave example sentences from Thai and Lao to illustrate their point. At the end of the talk, a prominent Mandarin-speaking linguist in the audience made a comment, in English, something along the lines of: “What is the point of giving examples from both Thai and Lao? They are just dialects of each other.” By dialect, he meant 方言 fāngyán. Thai and Lao are two languages that are indeed quite close to each other. Nonetheless, it is not that easy for a speaker of Central Thai (Standard Thai) to understand casual conversations in Lao. In Mandarin, one would kind of understand if you say that Thai and Lao are 方言 fāngyán of each other. However, in English, saying that Thai and Lao are dialects of each other is questionable. (Let alone the cultural and political faux pas of saying that Lao is a “dialect” of Thai or vice versa.) Translating 漢語方言 Hànyǔ fāngyán into English as Chinese dialect(s) gives English speakers a wrong impression of the distance that Chinese speech varieties like Cantonese, Hakka, Hokkien / Taiwanese, Teochew, Hainanese, Shanghainese, Mandarin etc. have with each other. (Many linguists in the West, when writing in English, use the term “Sinitic languages” instead of “Chinese dialects” to better reflect the situation.) If one applies the same Chinese metrics, Polynesian languages as diverse as Tongan and Hawai‘ian, and perhaps even Fijian and Rotuman (the non-Polynesian languages that are closest to Polynesian), could easily be considered 方言 fāngyán of the same 語言 yǔyán. Again, the Chinese way of classifying speech varieties is simply a different way of classifying things. It is the translation which is the problem: it is often not appropriate to translate 方言 fāngyán as dialect. Translating 語言 yǔyán as language also requires much caution.
Based on the ideology of Oneness of Chinese, Chinese societies have long downplayed the linguistic diversity amongst the Chinese people(s): there is one Chinese people, and one Chinese language (read: yǔyán). Cantonese etc. are mere dialects (read: fāngyán). With the Language Weeks, because there is one Chinese Language (read: yǔyán), then there is one Chinese Language Week, and this Chinese is obviously Standard Mandarin. Mandarin itself already fills up an entire week; there is no room for Cantonese and the other dialects (read: fāngyán). They are not there to promote the New Zealand Chinese heritage; they are there to promote Mandarin.
By now I hope that you have understood what some of the problems are. There is a “New Zealand Chinese Language Week”, and many Chinese New Zealanders, seeing the success of the other Language Weeks, expect the “Chinese Language Week” to be a Chinese-driven enterprise that fosters their heritage languages. However, NZCLW is primarily driven by non-Chinese people, and it promotes a language that is not the heritage language of a large portion of Chinese New Zealanders. These people, especially Chinese New Zealanders whose ancestors came here the earliest, feel excluded by the Language Week which bears their ethnic label, Chinese. (There also seems to be other ill-feelings; other people can comment on them.)
Personally, I would have preferred that the Chinese Language Week calls itself the Mandarin Language Week. The problem with having a “Chinese Language Week” that is entirely on Mandarin is akin to having a “Polynesian Language Week” that is entirely on Sāmoan, or an “Indian Language Week” that is entirely on Standard Hindi. God forbid “dialects” like Fiji Hindi, Gujarati, and Punjabi being discussed at all during the “Indian Language Week”. (Just a satirical analogy; I wish the Hindi and Punjabi Language Weeks all the best. May there also be other South Asian Language Weeks.)
Nonetheless, I suggest that we leave NZCLW alone; it is great to have a week devoted to the promotion of a major language, and it does serve some Chinese New Zealanders. (That Mandarin-speakers are late comers does not mean that they deserve a Language Week less.) People who are upset at NZCLW emphasise the diversity amongst the Chinese languages. However, they have failed to look past the Oneness of Chinese ideology: Who says that there can only be one Chinese Language Week? “Chinese” is not one people (ask yourselves), there are many Chinese languages, surely there can be at least two different Chinese Language Weeks. Just leave the existing Chinese Language Week alone. Squeezing Cantonese contents into the existing Chinese Language Week is also not what Cantonese deserves; Cantonese itself can easily fill up an entire Language Week.
Looking at the other Language Weeks, there is the example of the Rotuman Language Week. (As a linguist I am very happy to see an entire week devoted to such a fun language. Noa'ia!) With Rotuman, there are about 1000 Rotuman people in New Zealand, and there is a Rotuman Language Week. With Cantonese, there are at least 50000 Cantonese people in New Zealand; Cantonese certainly deserves a Language Week of its own. There are also the examples of the Sāmoan, Tokelauan, and Tūvaluan Language Weeks. These are three wonderful languages and nations. New Zealand has a historical responsibility in supporting at least Sāmoan and Tokelauan in New Zealand. They deserve their Language Weeks, and I wholeheartedly wish these three Language Weeks success. One observation that can be made is that, the linguistic distance between these three languages is no larger than the linguistic distance between e.g. Standard Cantonese, Szeyap, Tsengshing, and Chungshan. It is absolutely not a big ask to have one Language Week for these various heritage Cantonese varieties. We should pressure the government (and ourselves) into having a Language Week that is inclusive of Cantonese, separate from the existing NZCLW. The New Zealand Government has a moral obligation to provide more support to Cantonese, the heritage language of the vast majority of New Zealanders who were discriminated against under the Chinese Poll Tax policy. (There is the compensation in the form of the Chinese Poll Tax Heritage Trust, but it is debatable whether this is enough to redress the injustice.)
As for the contents of this new Language Week, it would be up to future brainstorming. Here are some preliminary ideas. This Language Week should include foremost the 粵 Yuet languages (Standard Cantonese, Szeyap etc.), in tribute to the earliest Chinese New Zealanders. Perhaps other Chinese languages would like to be included. Especially welcome would be 客家 Hakka, as the Chinese communities in the Pacific are traditionally dominant in either Yuet (e.g. NZ, PNG, Fiji) or Hakka (e.g. Sāmoa, Tahiti), and Pacific people in New Zealand with Hakka (and/or Yuet) ancestry are very much part of the Pasifika Aotearoa and Chinese Aotearoa families. As for the name of this Language Week, some possibilities are “Heritage Chinese Languages Week”, “Chinese Languages Week”, “Sinitic Languages Week”, and “Chinese Language Week 2”. Perhaps in the future there will be enough demand (and resources) to have separate Language Weeks for Yuet, Hakka, Min (e.g. Hokkien, Teochew, Hainanese) etc., like how there are separate Hindi and Punjabi Language Weeks, and separate Sāmoa, Tokelauan, and Tūvaluan language weeks. The more the merrier; we can help each other out. It would be good if the two or more Chinese Languages Weeks are somewhat evenly spread throughout the year, and they can cross-promote each other.
There will be strong opposition from some people due to the Oneness of Chinese ideology: “there is only one Chinese language and there should be only one Chinese Language Week”. Nonetheless, I guess some supporters would be from none other than the NZCLW committee itself. Not least because non-Mandarin Chinese people would then stop pestering them, and leave them in peace to do what they do. I guess many members of the NZCLW committee are reasonable people, and are not against the promotion of Cantonese and other heritage Chinese languages, on a platform different from theirs. (Would be nice if this is true, but it does not matter if this is not. We will continue to fight for our dignity as usual.) In case there are any messages from NZCLW that you do not like, our new Chinese language week will be full of counter-arguments. (Aren't we lucky that we live in a country with democracy and rule of law?) Having more than one Chinese Language Week strengthens, and not weakens, the Chinese voice in Aotearoa New Zealand. There is a lot we can learn from the experience of NZCLW. Based on the experience of NZCLW and other Language Weeks, we should pressure the government into having at least one other Chinese Language Week for the heritage Chinese languages.
(Lastly, I would like to reiterate that we are not Mandarin-bashing here. Mandarin is a great language, with many interesting dialects. There is a great number of Mandarin-speaking people who support linguistic diversity, and are politically savvy.)
p.s.: This week is also the Tūvalu Language Week. Tālofa! The Tūvalu Language Week has been celebrated in New Zealand since 2013, one year earlier than the NZCLW.