HK rushes to learn Mandarin for 1997

HK rushes to learn Mandarin for 1997

By Kwan Chooi Tow

HONG KONG (Reuter): In a cramped Hong Kong classroom,
multinational executive Fjorn Cho struggles with the vowels of
Mandarin Chinese and an alphabet called pinyin.

She is among thousands of Hong Kong's Cantonese-speaking
Chinese rushing to learn Mandarin to improve career prospects and
communicate with their future rulers and fellow citizens after
the British colony reverts to Chinese rule in mid-1997.

"It is quite hard, especially when it comes to words where we
have to roll our tongues. In some ways, learning Mandarin is
harder than learning English," Cho, who has been studying the
dialect for two years, told Reuters.

"But in my job I have to deal with officials from China's
stock exchanges. If we don't speak Mandarin, it seems as though
we are very distant. Speaking the same language bridges the gap,"
she added.

Mandarin, also called putonghua or "plain speech", is China's
official language, but can be incomprehensible to speakers of
other Chinese dialects such as Cantonese or Hokkien.

Pinyin is an official spelling system that converts the
pictorial characters of Chinese into a Roman alphabetized script,
providing a guide to pronunciation and making it possible to
translate Chinese names.

The vast majority of Hong Kong's six million mostly Chinese
people speak Cantonese, an earthy southern Chinese dialect which
is about as far from Mandarin as French is from English.

As Hong Kong counts off its final days under British rule
after one and a half centuries as a colony, Mandarin is taking
over some of the ground that English has occupied as a desirable
and useful second business-tongue for the Cantonese speakers.

"Nineteen ninety-seven is approaching. Hong Kong people have
to face the needs of a different environment," said Losina Fung,
a secretary who is taking Mandarin lessons.

Mandarin and Cantonese share the common Chinese character
script, as do all China's dialects, but the southern dialect's
pronunciation and vocabulary diverge widely from Mandarin.

Adding to the confusion, the Chinese script used in Hong Kong
is an older, complex, traditional version of characters, many of
which have been supplanted on the Chinese mainland by simplified
characters introduced by the communist government.

Distinctions between Cantonese and Mandarin are so vast, and
the pronunciation of both is so subtle that mispronunciations
often lead to blunders and blushes.

A local reporter, in halting Mandarin, recently asked the head
of a Chinese aviation agency how a mainland airline could fly
from the territory if "it did not have pigs and vegetables in
Hong Kong as required by the Sino-British Joint Declaration".

Flashing a grin, the Beijing official replied tactfully: "Your
question is too complicated, I can't answer it."

The reporter had mispronounced the Mandarin zhu ce, which
means "register", as zhu cai, meaning "pigs and vegetables".

In the other direction, a Hong Kong newspaper, quoting a drugs
suspect shouting abuse at a judge in court, wrote: "You foreign
devils "shrimp' us yellow race. I curse you to die in three
days."

The quote would have stumped Mandarin readers because the
reporter used a character meaning "shrimp" because it sounds like
the colloquial Cantonese word ha, meaning "to bully".

There is no corresponding word for ha in Mandarin. Formal
Mandarin users would say qifu, which is written differently.

Rationalize

On a more serious and practical level, different Chinese terms
and jargon used in professional spheres in Taiwan, Hong Kong and
China have led to a need to rationalize terminology.

The Hong Kong Federation of Insurers, for instance, has
compiled its own glossary of more than 1,000 insurance terms in
Chinese in an effort to standardize terms in current use.

The growth in business links between Hong Kong and China, as
the territory acts as a gateway for foreign investment in China
proper, has accelerated interest in Mandarin in Hong Kong.

Kindergartens and schools offer Mandarin classes, lessons are
available on the radio, companies hold Mandarin lessons for their
staff, office workers go to evening classes and people belt out
Mandarin pop songs at karaoke clubs.

Mandarin advertisements are appear on English and Cantonese
television channels.

The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology found in a
survey last year that many local firms preferred to hire
graduates who can speak Mandarin. Many headhunters and job
advertisements in the Hong Kong press now demand Mandarin.

At the Chinese University of Hong Kong, John Jamieson, head of
the Chinese Language Center, has seen growing interest in its
Mandarin courses in recent years.

Each year 2,500 undergraduates apply for 1,000 places in the
course, said Jamieson, an American who first learned Mandarin at
high school and then developed it at university in Taiwan.

"Student interest and anxiety over putonghua has been growing
over the last few years," he said.

"The main factor is employment. They feel it is necessary to
have it on their records when they apply for a job," he said.
"With south China as one of the liveliest economic machines in
Asia, and with so many jobs directed towards China business,
there's been a necessity for Putonghua."