The Putonghua vs Cantonese debate: mired in foul language

A friend recently told me his daughter will soon learn Chinese in primary school in Putonghua instead of Cantonese. Other local parents are opting to enrol their children for this service, while international schools that offer good Putonghua programmes have long waiting lists.

Predictably, many Hongkongers are incensed by what they perceive to be an erosion of the local language. Circulating online are writings that roll out hoary chestnuts that Cantonese is the more ancient tongue and how classical poems sound better when read in the vernacular. In one incendiary essay, with the borderline racist title "Cantonese, the natural fruit of the ancient Middle Kingdom; Putonghua, a linguistic freak of northern barbarians", southern China is upheld as having been the repository of the "purer" form of the Chinese language at various times in history, when Han Chinese elites took refuge south of the Yangtze from the invasion of nomads from the north.

Putonghua is a descendant of the northern dialect that had been adulterated by the mispronunciations and vocabulary of the warlike and uncultured "barbarians".

While the writer is right in identifying Cantonese as the older tongue, "older" doesn't necessarily mean better. Unless one uses Chinese solely to recite classical poems and write archaic essays, Cantonese isn't any better or worse than Putonghua. Hongkongers are right to defend their mother tongue, but should do so with more convincing arguments and less xenophobia.