Laura Kubiatko Asian Americans, specifically Chinese Immigrants, are the largest growing demographic in the United States increasing over 35% in the past 10 years. Despite the impression of this statistic, systemic and cultural communication barriers still exist between Asian Americans and accessibility to services in society. In particular, many regional East Asian languages, like Cantonese, aren’t considered “nationally” recognized languages, making this barrier even steeper. Facing the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, the need for critical deliberation of public health and healthcare information is only exacerbated. To focus on Cantonese in specific, this language has over 80 million worldwide speakers, but only 18 four-year universities in the United States offer it as a formal language program. More universities and institutions favor Mandarin, also known as Putonghua, as the standard for Chinese languages. In comparison, Cantonese is often referred to as a “regional language” or academically as a Less Commonly Taught Language (LCTL). A common misconception about Cantonese and Mandarin is that they are simply dialects of each other – the expected comprehension between an English-speaking individual with a New York accent holding a conversation with an English-speaking Californian. Although they both share the same written characters, Cantonese and Mandarin are entirely different languages, featuring varying tones and pronunciations. The two are essentially incomprehensible to the other. Areas featuring lots of older Southern-Chinese immigrants in North America are historically Cantonese speaking enclaves. However, despite areas like the Bay Area with counties like San Francisco, San Mateo, Santa Clara having large populations of Chinese and, in particular, elderly Cantonese speakers, many institutions even in these areas do not prioritize Cantonese as a foreign language; Mandarin dominates in terms of popularity within Chinese academia. Many Chinese schools across North America do not even offer Cantonese as an option, meaning students with a historically Cantonese speaking family will only be offered the option to learn a language foreign to their heritage. The movement to #SaveCantonese originated in the wake of the termination of 20-year Stanford Professor, Dr. Sik Lee Dennig. Dennig served as Stanford’s only Cantonese language professor. In particular, she helped students reconnect with their heritage culture – incorporating both traditional language learning as well as immersive experiences. Despite the outcry of support by both Stanford students as well as Cantonese community members, Stanford denied the request to reinstate Dennig as a professor. Instead, they only offer two Cantonese courses – neither of which is taught by Dennig. Photo Courtesy: @SaveCantonese_CCSF
To support the #SaveCantonese Movement at Stanford and Community College of San Francisco, Asian American activist and writer Celeste Ng organized a petition garnering over 4,000 supporters. You, too, could add your signature to this list! Eradicating and de-prioritizing a language so essential to the Chinese-American immigrant population is also facilitating the creation of structural barriers: erasing cultural and communicative relationships. China is extremely linguistically diverse, in fact, Mandarin and Cantonese are only two of the most popular languages spoken by the Chinese population. Attempting to homogenize Chinese culture and linguistics by only offering instruction in one of the languages only erases, instead of highlighting, the rich history of Cantonese immigrants in North America.
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