This article helps me understand the similarity between Cantonese and Mandarin and explains why in my narrative, it took me little effort to speak Cantonese. Erbaugh mentions in the beginning that Cantonese and Mandarin are written in the same Chinese characters and the only difference is in phonology. She uses the character “bone” to exemplify her argument. In Mandarin it is pronounced “gu” with a low dipping tone while pronounced “gwat” in Cantonese with a high level tone. (Erbaugh 80) In my narrative, I wrote, “I tried to speak Cantonese myself. Surprisingly, it was not hard at all.” This mutual lingual intelligibility between Cantonese and Mandarin introduced in the article helps me to understand why I successfully assimilated into a new language environment so fast.
Furthermore, the latter part of this article accounts for why my Cantonese classmates were so proud of Cantonese though it is a dialect. The southern economic boost brought unprecedented prestige to language minorities in the southern area. Erbaugh even mentions that people who have a mastery of Cantonese are far more competitive than others when looking for a job in Shenzhen now. Extra opportunities and wealth that arise from the mastery of a dialect might result in pride or even arrogance. As suggested in the article, the Cantonese speakers used to mock Mandarin speakers as “those National Language people.” (Erbaugh 87) This kind of arrogance is also manifested in my narrative where my Cantonese classmates were unwilling to communicate with us because we spoke Mandarin. They even made jokes about us and nicknamed us in Cantonese words.
My own experience gives me a general impression that dialects and Mandarin are at war with each other, but this article helps me to understand why and gives a preliminary answer to my question: In the first place, Mandarin establishes total supremacy over dialects. However, the economic success which is in part attributed to the use of dialects gradually tips the balance in dialects’ favor. Dialects have become as important as Mandarin, and the linguistic minorities even sometimes define their languages to be superior. However, there are also some limitations of this article. Throughout the article, Erbaugh constantly mentions how the linguistic minorities struggle on their own to promote the status of their languages and how the official forces stop the development of dialects. It is true that official forces have had negative attitudes towards dialects, but they do implement laws in certain time periods to push the development of dialects. This is the part that Erbaugh overlooks in her arguments. She should not focus just on the negative side of government policy. From my point of view, the elevation of status of the minority language should be attributed both to their own struggle and to the help from government. This point can be shown in the next source with more details.
Furthermore, the latter part of this article accounts for why my Cantonese classmates were so proud of Cantonese though it is a dialect. The southern economic boost brought unprecedented prestige to language minorities in the southern area. Erbaugh even mentions that people who have a mastery of Cantonese are far more competitive than others when looking for a job in Shenzhen now. Extra opportunities and wealth that arise from the mastery of a dialect might result in pride or even arrogance. As suggested in the article, the Cantonese speakers used to mock Mandarin speakers as “those National Language people.” (Erbaugh 87) This kind of arrogance is also manifested in my narrative where my Cantonese classmates were unwilling to communicate with us because we spoke Mandarin. They even made jokes about us and nicknamed us in Cantonese words.
My own experience gives me a general impression that dialects and Mandarin are at war with each other, but this article helps me to understand why and gives a preliminary answer to my question: In the first place, Mandarin establishes total supremacy over dialects. However, the economic success which is in part attributed to the use of dialects gradually tips the balance in dialects’ favor. Dialects have become as important as Mandarin, and the linguistic minorities even sometimes define their languages to be superior. However, there are also some limitations of this article. Throughout the article, Erbaugh constantly mentions how the linguistic minorities struggle on their own to promote the status of their languages and how the official forces stop the development of dialects. It is true that official forces have had negative attitudes towards dialects, but they do implement laws in certain time periods to push the development of dialects. This is the part that Erbaugh overlooks in her arguments. She should not focus just on the negative side of government policy. From my point of view, the elevation of status of the minority language should be attributed both to their own struggle and to the help from government. This point can be shown in the next source with more details.