{"id":86,"date":"2010-05-06T14:14:19","date_gmt":"2010-05-06T18:14:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.tobeycat.com\/ub\/?p=86"},"modified":"2010-05-18T14:08:16","modified_gmt":"2010-05-18T18:08:16","slug":"a-different-kind-of-language","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wancatcat.com\/ub\/?p=86","title":{"rendered":"A Different Kind of Language?"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Anna Chan Choi Cheng<\/strong><\/p>\n

Mum: \u201c\u4f60\u505a\u54a9\u51fa\u53bb\u5440?\u201d (Why are you going out?)<\/p>\n

Daughter: \u201c\u6211\u8981\u505aproject\u5440!\u201d(I have to work on my project!)<\/p>\n

Mum: \u201c\u54a9\u5440?\u201d (What?)<\/p>\n

Daughter: \u201c\u2026Project \u5440!\u201d (\u2026Project!)<\/p>\n

That is a common conversation between a mum and a university student in Macao.<\/p>\n

Most Macao residents speak Cantonese. If you listen attentively to the post-80s, however, you will find out many utterances like Okay<\/em>\u5566<\/em>.<\/em> (It\u2019s okay.), \u6211\u5730\u4e00\u9f4a\u98df<\/em>lunch<\/em>\u56c9<\/em>!<\/em> (Let\u2019s have lunch together!), \u6211\u4fc2<\/em>Facebook add <\/em>\u5de6\u4f60\u505a<\/em>friend<\/em>\u5566<\/em>!<\/em> (I\u2019ve added you as friend on Facebook!), Keep\u597d\u5572\u4f60\u5572\u91ce<\/em>!<\/em> (Keep your belongings carefully!), <\/em>or \u807d\u65e5\u6211\u6709<\/em>presentation<\/em>\u5440<\/em>! <\/em>(I have a presentation tomorrow), which are not pure Cantonese. English words or phrases are often inserted into the dialogues which make their Cantonese a sort of mixed language.<\/p>\n

A group of post-80s students were asked to tell the Cantonese equivalent for the word project<\/em>. Interestingly, no consensus on that expression is achieved. They prefer to use the English word project <\/em>instead. Regarding as to why they choose to use a mixed language, one of them said, \u201cI do not intentionally use a mixed language but I tend to use that only when I cannot find proper expressions for some technical terms.\u201d<\/p>\n

The phenomenon of using a mixed language becomes fairly common especially among the educated post-80s and the younger generations in Macao. This is largely attributed to the impact of the Hong Kong media, as well as a rapid increase of English use especially in education, the Internet, commerce and tourism nowadays in Macao. Many of them are so accustomed to this \u201cCantonese\u201d that they are not even aware of using English words to fill in their stylistic gaps of lexical items in Cantonese, while some think that it is cool to use a mixed language as it shows that they are more stylish, or simply, more educated.<\/p>\n

Dr. Brian Chan Hok-Shing, assistant professor in the Department of English, University of Macau, points out that the widespread phenomenon of language-mixing started from the post-80s is largely due to their increasing contact with English in their daily lives. With or without intention, this phenomenon has been shaped naturally like a habit, and is even becoming a post-80s identity. Using a mixed language of Cantonese and English is unavoidable as it comes to symbolize a \u201csolidarity marker\u201d among them, Chan said. Culture and language are always interrelated and inseparable. We have freedom to be creative in speaking despite certain cultural constraints in Macao, he added.<\/p>\n

Paddy Chan, a\u00a0Year 4 student from Macau Polytechnic Institute, holds a different view on this issue. As one of the Macao-born post-80s herself, she finds\u00a0this language-mixing\u00a0phenomenon inevitable\u00a0since Macao is a multi-lingual and multicultural city. Facing such a growing trend towards language-mixing, nonetheless, she adheres to the belief that the language integrity of Cantonese should be kept and respected, under any circumstances and for any reason whatsoever.\u00a0\u201cIt\u00a0is really\u00a0weird not to be able to fully express ourselves with only our mother tongue,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n

Linguists named the mixture of two or more languages as \u201ccode-switching\u201d or \u201ccode-mixing\u201d. Using code-switching or code-mixing is not a matter of right or wrong, but an ongoing development of language instead. Critical communication scholars tend to argue that this phenomenon reflects the linguistic and cultural hegemony of certain world powers. However, code-switching or code-mixing seems to be an irresistible general trend and there is no way around it. Consider<\/em>\u4f60<\/em>\u767c\u9001<\/em>\u500b\u77ed\u8a0a\u7540\u6211\u5566<\/em>! <\/em>(Send a message to me!) or simply\u4f60<\/em>send message<\/em>\u7540\u6211\u5566<\/em>!<\/em> (Send a message to me!), which would you prefer to say?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Anna Chan Choi Cheng Mum: \u201c\u4f60\u505a\u54a9\u51fa\u53bb\u5440?\u201d (Why are you going out?) Daughter: \u201c\u6211\u8981\u505aproject\u5440!\u201d(I have to work on my project!) Mum: \u201c\u54a9\u5440?\u201d (What?) Daughter: \u201c\u2026Project \u5440!\u201d (\u2026Project!) That is a common conversation between a mum and a university student in Macao. Most Macao residents speak Cantonese. If you listen attentively to the post-80s, however, you […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":102,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-86","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-communication-style"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wancatcat.com\/ub\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wancatcat.com\/ub\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wancatcat.com\/ub\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wancatcat.com\/ub\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wancatcat.com\/ub\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=86"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.wancatcat.com\/ub\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":330,"href":"https:\/\/www.wancatcat.com\/ub\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86\/revisions\/330"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wancatcat.com\/ub\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/102"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wancatcat.com\/ub\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=86"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wancatcat.com\/ub\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=86"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wancatcat.com\/ub\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=86"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}