Half of Chinese speak national language

Politics Taiwan Politics
41

I’m pretty sure. Go through any of the 4 kings of canto pop or any current pop artist in HK song list and you will find some lyrics that have non colloquial terms used on HK. Many HK’er know that they are taught proper Chinese at schools but insist on speaking pidgin Cantonese in HK.[/quote]
I wouldn’t classify canto-pop lyrics as classical Chinese. Most canto-pop lyrics are in formal written Chinese sprinkled with Cantonese-only usage. I’d say that it’s a form of modern written Chinese with a heavier dose of classical elements than Mandarin vernacular elements. But it’s still modern Chinese in my books. Then there are those songs that are very very Cantonese – a recent hit song called 左鄰右里 (Alan Tam, Hacken Lee) is a good example.

Kids in HK are taught proper “modern written Chinese”, which means baihua or written Chinese based on Mandarin but with substantial elements from classical Chinese. Classical Chinese is only taught rigourously at higher forms (starting in form 5 I believe).

I guess the intellectual class needed something else complain about when they were overthrowing the Qing Dynasty.

The short answer is that Classical Chinese has too much “cultural baggage” if one is thinking about creating a progressive thinking population. Improving functional literacy was huge issue during those times. Who really has time to read the classics to understand an idiom when the nation was embroiled in a few wars.[/quote]
I think Jive Turkey’s questions are obviously rhetorical as he knows quite a bit about the development of modern Chinese. One way to improve functional literacy rates was to have a written language match the spoken language. Classical Chinese was so far removed from the spoken vernacular that most intellectuals at the time of the revolution (the Sun Yat-Sen one) felt that it had to be replaced in order to drastically improve literacy. And if you’re going to have the writing system match the vernacular, you had to choose a standard vernacular, which turned out to be Northern Mandarin. Cultural baggage certainly was an issue as many felt like the old and backwards ways had to be discarded, but that reason alone was not the reason that classical Chinese fell by the wayside.

42

sjcma,

Anita Mui canto pop diva hit single 床前明月光. A clear illustration of Classical Chinese in KTV.
I don’t know many people after the age of 5 in HK that talks like that anymore… :laughing:

Are you still trying to insist that Chinese people are speaking Japanese?
Thanks goodness the Japanese developed kanji on their own so the Chinese would understand them… :laughing:

43

And Teresa Teng can pop diva hit 獨上西樓. So what? I believe you wrote “MTV in HK are all in classical Chinese” as opposed to “once in a while, a canto-pop hit will be written in classical Chinese”.

Am I?

44

鄧麗君 had no choice back then. Bai hua wen was barely established back then.
In those days man just began to walk upright and discover fire.

45

Trying to bring the thread back on topic.

If we use HK as a comparison to Taiwan. Couldn’t we consider HK more nationalistic, in identifying with Chinese culture than the Taiwanese, even though, they speak even less PTH or Mandarin than their Taiwanese counterparts.

46

Speak of poo coming from orfices - the claim that KTV is written in Classical Chinese is like saying that Puff Daddy uses the Queen’s English becaase he quotes Shakespeare every once in a while or because every once in a while he uses an iambic pentameter. Just because words, organization and some grammer are corrowed from classical, hardly means it is.

Also, it is complete poo that it has to be in classical for written Chinese to be understood in writing. For example, the local newspapers in HKG use written Cantonese, which uses different grammer and words, but it does not take long to adjust from, lets say a Taiwanese newspaper, even though at this point my Cantonese is limited to luch and directions to a taxi driver.