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Lau Chun-fat said the advent of television was one of the main culprits in the diminished use of indigenous languages in Hong Kong. Photo: David Wong

Hakka academic spreading the word on saving languages

Lau Chun-fat is on a mission to get people talking in their ancestral tongues again to preserve the languages and dialects from extinction

When Lau Chun-fat returned after eight years in Germany to live in the New Territories village where he grew up, he was shocked to find none of the children spoke Hakka any more. The language of the Hakka people simply wasn't being passed down to the next generation.

"I taught my children to speak Hakka," he says. "When they were small, I always spoke Hakka with them."

Lau's first academic career had been in biology. He initially studied at Chinese University, and in 1983 he went to Berlin and Gottingen in central Germany to read for a doctorate and post-doctoral degree in biology.

But his permanent return to Leung Uk village, near Yuen Long, in 1993 proved to be a transitional point in his life and career. "The children were no longer speaking Hakka," he says.

"Every language in the world deserves preserving. But no parents were talking with their children in their ancestral tongue."

So Lau started to study linguistics, first part-time and then for a full-time doctorate in which he examined local indigenous languages such as Hakka, the weitou dialect, Ting Kok and Tung Ping Chau - which are all in danger of extinction in a world of ever-increasing homogeny.

Parents spoke their ancestral language to their children until very recently, Lau says, but education, media and marriage to non-Hakka-speaking spouses were the main culprits in eroding that tradition.

For those who spoke indigenous dialects, Cantonese had previously been used only in education, he says. But that has changed gradually.

Perhaps the main culprit was the advent of television, which Lau describes as "the important member of the family, who speaks Cantonese". Villagers would, instead of meeting under a tree to discuss the day's events in their own tongue, all stay at home and watch Cantonese-language programmes.

To reverse that trend, Lau and some likeminded friends set up the Association for Conservation of Hong Kong Indigenous Languages in 2008.

He succeeded in getting a grant from the Lord Wilson Heritage Trust to fund an online dictionary and software that allowed participants to search for more than 2,000 words and to obtain the pronunciations in the four languages or dialects.

When Lau types in the Chinese character for cat, the online software produces the different sounds for the word.

Weitou, he explains, is spoken by residents around Kam Tin and Ping Shan. This includes the Tang clan, who first came to the area more than 1,000 years ago - as the first to settle, they got the best land.

Lau describes how great efforts are being made in Taiwan to save the Hakka language. Millions of dollars are being spent on producing dramas, singing contests and debates in Hakka.

He feels that this would be a good model for Hong Kong to follow and urges the government to get involved. Children will be keen to learn, he says, if it is part of a competition with prizes.

Languages do not have to become extinct, he says. In New Zealand, the Maori language was no longer being used. But it was reborn after a generation and has once again become a vibrant part of the national culture.

"Parents need to understand that preserving their ancestral tongue and speaking it to their children is not useless. It's useful, because it's so important that these languages are kept living in Hong Kong. They are part of our history, part of our landscape."

Lau also organises Hakka classes and his family have produced Hakka dramas for his students. Lau has been nominated for the Cultural Preservation Award of this year's Spirit of Hong Kong Awards, organised by the .

This article appeared in the South China Morning Post print edition as: Spreading the word on saving languages
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