Putonghua-ization or Cantonization in Guangdong?

[Ian_Lee]

Atitarev:

Moreover, there is hardly any "brainwashing" against simplified script as you conceive in HK.

In fact, a lot of Mainland printing houses participate in the annual Book Exhibition held in HK. If there is any kind of "brainwashing" against simplified script as you said, then these publishers would not bother to participate at all!

And there is even a bookstore that specializes in selling books published in simplified script. Moreover, many people cross border to Shenzhen just to buy books (because simplified-script books are cheaper than traditional-script books even though they are of the same content).

Whether HK police needs to learn simplified script is up to their job requirement. As far as I know it used to be if they can converse in any additional language or dialect, they will receive extra pay. Back then (before '97) the police had a red color shoulder badge to show that they could converse in English. But I bet now it is almost a prerequisite.

IMO the HK Customs officials should know simplified script since they have more chance to get into touch with Made in China products which may have simplified script labels.

[Mark Yong]

Ian_Lee wrote: But how do you define "modern Chinese"?

This thread has clearly illustrated that there can be as many as three different types of so-called modern Chinese, as exemplified by that of Mainland China, Taiwan and Hong Kong - subtle as the differences may be.

My best answer to this, and one that can blanket all three of the above into the same general category of modern Chinese, would be:

1. The 白話文 modern vernacular style of writing based on (but not exclusively) the vocabulary and grammar of the Northern dialect

2. That which also includes the vernacular writings of the previous centuries, e.g. 紅樓夢, 西遊記, 三國演義 and 水滸傳

3. That had its origins in the Council of 1917, which was adopted as the national written language to supplant文言文 Classical Chinese.

Of course, there will inevitably be minor divergences over the past century, with influences from local usage, but the general model is common.

[Mark Yong]

gato wrote: I doubt HKer and Taiwanese find it hard to read modern Chinese.

For native Cantonese speakers from Hong Kong, I will need to seek the expert opinion of a Hong Kong resident who has been educated under that system (Ian Lee, perhaps? ):

Do you find a 'gap' between learning a written language that is based on a grammar (and to a smaller extent, vocabulary), i.e. Mandarin (if one may correctly call it that), that is different from the spoken language, i.e. Cantonese? If so, are Hong Kong-ers in general consciously aware of that gap, and how do they reconcile it? In particular, 'speech words' such as 吧, 呢 are peculiar to Mandarin speech, and alien to the Cantonese dialect - do Hong Kong-ers find it 'weird' to use them in writing, and are they often consciously aware of it?

I suppose the phenomenon would not be unlike that of pre-modern China, where all Classical Chinese texts were read exclusively using the pronunciation of the local dialect. (the only difference being, Classical Chinese stands on more 'neutral' ground than Mandarin. ). I personally am a proponent for the revival of Classical Chinese as the true model for good Chinese language writing... but that's a different story, which I have written at lengths in another thread elsewhere!

Given that Mandarin is more widely used in Taiwan than Hong Kong, I would imagine that this is less of a problem. Any comments?