Can Macau and Hong Kong citizens legally block the transition to simplified Chinese?

[roddy]

Kobo, in my opinion, simplified Chinese will supersede traditional Chinese by 2020 (unless strongly challenged).

 

If you actually hold that as a genuine opinion, you'd be well served by spending a few hours reading about Hong Kong society and its political system.

[Steingletscher]

Traditional characters are perfectly fine in advertising on the mainland, but all paperwork must be done simplified. They might make exceptions for citizens of Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan, but I'm not sure.

[Lu]

 

Traditional characters are perfectly fine in advertising on the mainland,

Even if the ads are explicitly by the government itself, apparently. Ruben, thanks for that picture, very interesting.

[Demonic_Duck]

Kobo, in my opinion, simplified Chinese will supersede traditional Chinese by 2020 (unless strongly challenged).

When a sentence starts with "in my opinion", contains a highly contentious statement and and doesn't give any hints as to what evidence is supposed to back it up, it naturally lends itself to the response "so what?"

[li3wei1]

In my opinion, everyone in China will speak English by 2025. Yeah, right.

[Kobo-Daishi]

 

Kobo, in my opinion, simplified Chinese will supersede traditional Chinese by 2020 (unless strongly challenged).

 

Why 2020?

 

I could believe sometime after 2047, when the fifty years are over. And the laws of the PRC will apply to Hong Kong as well and there will no longer be a limit to the number of mainlanders allowed to enter Hong Kong, no visas, etc.

 

But why 2020? Or 6 years from now?

 

 

That is why I asked, can Macau and Hong Kong citizens legally block the transition to simplified Chinese? Do the citizens have any legal right as an entity outside the Government?

 

I don't know why in a democracy a shop which chooses to use simplified characters shouldn't be able to. It might be unpopular, but, McDonalds should be legally able to.

 

This reminds me of an incident that happened back in 1999, out here in Southern California, in the city of Westminster out in Orange County. A Vietnamese video store owner put up a flag of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam in his shop and a picture of Ho Chi Minh. This was in Little Saigon. A lot of the Vietnamese living in Little Saigon had fled from South Vietnam during the war and were understandably vehemently opposed to the communists. There were daily protests and the shopkeeper was beaten up. Police had to deploy to keep the peace and protect the shop owner from being torn apart by the mob. Eventually the cops arrested the shopkeeper for having pirated videos.

 

https://www.google.com/search?q=vietnamese+flag+video+shop+protest

 

Anyway, in America we have this thing called free speech (one of those amendments to the Constitution?) and you have the right to express yourself even if it's unpopular.

 

Kobo.

[Lu]

McDonald's has a right to use simplified; other people have the right to be opposed to that and protest against it, and let McDonald's know it was a bad decision. The shopkeeper in your story had a right to put up a flag and picture that were offensive, but other people also had the right to protest that (although not the right to beat him up). Freedom of expression doesn't mean the opinions expressed won't be criticised.

[Kobo-Daishi]

 

I'm of the impression we are currently observing a world-wide trend towards regionalism, dialects, "heritage" and all that, so who knows where the development will lead. I think China has no choice but to cater to that trend to a certain degree.

 

When Chen Shui Bian was the president of Taiwan, they instituted Taiwanese Minnan classes as part of the school curriculum (as well as aboriginal languages?). It was only 1 class a day. All other classes were still conducted in Mandarin.

 

When Ma became president funding was cut because of budget constraints. I remember reading last year that funding was cut again. Tried to Google it but couldn't find it. Only found one saying funding had been cut in 2009.

 

Now, Ah Bian is rotting in jail.

 

Would the PRC fund to keep Cantonese in Hong Kong schools?

 

Kobo.

[roddy]

Thanks, Kobo, for adding so much clarity to the discussion by dragging California and Taiwan into the mix. 

[abhoriel]

well, when I was in mainland China, I saw quite a lot of traditional chinese.. mostly in advertising and commercial signboards and the like. If the government don't seem to be enforcing the use of simplified in the mainland, it would seem strange to force it upon HK...

[Ruben von Zwack]

I'm a bit confused here, this is because I do not know much about Cantonese. As far as I know, there are Characters unique to Cantonese, and also, the sentence structure is different at times, like, sometimes the adjective comes after the Noun (like in French). So when you look at a text, it would be unmistakeably either Cantonese or Mandarin, right? Please correct me if I am wrong.

 

So when we are talking about Simplified in Hongkong, is the suggestion here to simplify the writing of Cantonese? Or to make everyone use (simplified) Mandarin Putonghua in writing and speaking?

 

I'd still be curious to know what the OP meant with supersede, and why 2020 exactly.

[renzhe]

Cantonese is rarely written. Usually less official stuff like online chats and celebrity gossip.

Standard written language is pretty much the same in Hong Kong, Taiwan, Macau and the Mainland. The major difference is simplified/traditional.

[Ruben von Zwack]

I see, thanks.

[geraldc]

As a frequent visitor to McDs in HK, I was surprised that this story had bypassed me, so I googled it (in English naturally), and this was the first hit.

 

It reposts bloggers comments etc (a fine example of written Cantonese)

 

http://badcanto.wordpress.com/2012/05/28/war-on-simplified-chinese-character/

 

Re traditional vs simplified. If you grew up with traditional, simplified just looks ugly and wrong. Even if you can read it, it just slows you down. Imagine if the government legislated that everyone had to use comic sans, it's a bit like that. Then there's the political element too.

[Ruben von Zwack]

Uh, disturbing. In Europe edit: Continental northwestern Europe, a website that published such comments would be viewed as inciting racial hatred, and a threat to social peace.

 

Now pardon me. The McDonald's sign in central Munich is in Japanese, Kyrillic, and (gasp!) Arabic. I shall go and initiate a hunger strike in front of it.

Edited January 14, 2014 at 05:02 PM by Ruben von Zwack

[geraldc]

In the UK, any website that published such views comments would be any website with a comment section. Dailymail,Guardian, BBC etc

 

A very tenuous link to imposing simplification, but kind of similar with regards to the relationship between HK and China, and the larger one trying to impose things on the smaller one, but I always admired the Pillar Box war, and that was just down to whether it was ER I or ER II http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pillar_Box_War

[Ruben von Zwack]

Ok, I fixed it!

[Takeshi]

@skylee: I agree with the rest of your points, but using Putonghua in university education is controversial? Really?

 

Most universities in Hong Kong are English-medium outside of a few subjects, but like, say in CUHK for example, a fair number, I daresay majority, of their Chinese-medium courses are taught in Mandarin, not Cantonese. I get the impression that there is a similar situation for Chinese-medium courses in other universities as well, but I'm not sure.

 

Could you enlighten me? Or do you mean Putonghua is controversial in opposition to English?

[johnyork]

Thanks for everyone's continued replies on this topic. I realize there is no one-to-one mapping of a simplified character to a traditional character. Even after you use a software program to do the conversion, you still have to proof read it and make edits. I am aware it is not a straightforward process. However, mainland China will not wait until 2047 to impose this change and all they need is some cooperation from Government of the Macau (or Hong Kong or Taiwan), which is possible. If the citizens can't establish a "legal position" and their respective government decides to cooperate, then I don't see how they could stop it.

 

I support it (the changeover) and it will be another step towards reunification. Furthermore, the majority of simplified characters are drawn from conventional abbreviated forms anyways, so this whole process is only natural. This is progress.

[Ruben von Zwack]

Please share with us mere mortals how you come to these conclusions. You seem to be either extremely well informed to write these sentences, to the point that  commoners like us cannot follow you, or on the contrary, uninformed but bold. Which one?