Cantonese or Putonghua in schools? Hongkongers fear culture and identity 'waning'
As debate rages over which language of instruction is best for learning, many Hongkongers feel they are struggling to hold onto their dialect and culture
When Lau Chaak-ming was casting around for a kindergarten for his daughter, he had trouble finding one that used Cantonese. It was a strange, if not ridiculous, situation for a city made up primarily of Cantonese speakers, he thought.
"Most nursery schools have adopted Putonghua and English as their medium of instruction. Parents see playgroups as a way to learn a new language ... But I want to send my daughter to playschool for fun and interaction with other children, not for learning a new language," Lau says.
It's ridiculous that we cannot use our mother tongue to learn in our own place
The increasing emphasis on Putonghua at the expense of Cantonese among local schools is causing concern - and some resentment - among Hongkongers. While educators are split about the efficacy of adopting Putonghua as the medium of instruction, some residents fear that Hong Kong's identity may be lost as the special administrative region is integrated into mainland systems.
It is particularly galling for Lau, a lexicographer with a professional interest in analysing language development.
As a cognitive science student at the University of Hong Kong, he studied how the brain processes languages, spent three years compiling a glossary of spoken Cantonese and a Cantonese-English dictionary, and went on to earn a masters in linguistics.
Now lecturing part time at the university, Lau has taken on an even more ambitious project - compiling an exhaustive online dictionary of Cantonese words in common use.