I grew up in San Francisco where you could hear Cantonese spoken often out on the street and could go to the bank or hospital and there will often be someone who spoke it. Before I took Cantonese classes at the local college I though it sounded terrible, after I started learning and understanding the culture better it just became my hobby and made close Cantonese friends I still gather with 20 years later. It is a very colorful and expressive language I really enjoy using from time to time. I am Mexican

It’s not just Cantonese. It’s all the indigenous languages in China. It breaks my heart because languages are so unique and beautiful. Cultures should be cherished, not crushed.

I'm a Vietnamese growing up with TVB dramas as a part of my childhood. This made me fall in love with Hong Kong and its culture. At this moment, when lots of people choose to study Mandarin Chinese for their career, I still learn Cantonese simply because I love it and somehow Cantonese shares certain similar words with Vietnamese, which makes it cooler to me. Though I'm not from Hong Kong, I'm still really excited whenever I hear Cantonese. It gives me a vibe as if I was in a TVB drama, just like in Hong Kong in the good old days haha. Hope that people will continue to learn Cantonese, even if they don't learn how to read and write, it's still great if we can communicate in this language.

Part of the problem is a massive lack of Cantonese learning resources compared to those available for Mandarin. I would love to learn Cantonese one day.

Cantonese is, by far, the best language to swear in. That alone should justify efforts to preserve and spread it!

As a native speaker of a language spoken by less than 8 million people worldwide, I agree that languages should be preserved regardless of how 'unimportant' they are, since language is the most important and undeniable evidence that one group of people is distinct from another group that speaks another language.

as my mother tongue is cantonese, it’s a beautiful language, we have to keep going with cantonese…don’t let it fade away :(

as a teochew speaker (similar to cantonese) i thank you for this video. They call it "dialacts" but they are not dialacts. they are languages.

I've studied Cantonese and never gotten good at it, especially listening comprehension, but still consider it a wonderful, colorful language. Best wishes for its future. Thank you for covering this.

Even though the influence of Cantonese has declined, it still doing much better in survival than other Chinese dialects and this all because of the wide available popularity of Hong Kong entertainment and media within the Cantonese communities around the world and with Hong Kong as a SARS region still being a very important business trading center for all of the Cantonese speaking communities around the world, this is still encouraging the Cantonese people to retain the language and culture.

I am currently learning Cantonese and I am English. I love this language and it is sad to see the decline, but as long as Cantonese speakers stay strong nothing will be able to take that away.

I grew up thinking that my native tongue was Cantonese but later realized that it was a smaller dialect of Cantonese. Language varies greatly over a geographic area.

I applaud them for their efforts to preserve Cantonese language/ culture. This is a battle worth fighting. Also it made me happy to see ethnic diversity in the children's Cantonese class. Language is powerful and the more you know the richer your life and opportunities will be.

Funny thing is that Cantonese replaced my native dialect in many hakka families as we were persecuted for not being “native” cantonese speakers creating a sense of us and them.

When I watch Hong Kong movies, I hope to find in their original Cantonese dialogue, but about half or more are now in Mandarin versions. Sometimes the Cantonese slang used in Hong Kong movies will be lost in translation, if translated in Mandarin for its speakers, especially from mainland China. You have embrace Cantonese culture to fully enjoy it. I love speaking Cantonese, even though I'm an ABC. I particularly like Hong Kong culture.

Cantonese is also the funniest language you can learn out there, in the sense that you can come up with many puns and put them into everyday conservations casually. This is something relatively hard to deliver in most other languages, including Mandarin, despite it also has the property that a lot of words/characters have the exact same sound.

I am Mandarin-speaking Northern Chinese but I learned Cantonese (and still learning on a daily basis), it's fun and super useful for lots of things. Cantonese songs and movies used to be a huge part of Chinese-language entertainment, particularly pre-1997, when the center of the Greater-China entertainment industry was undoubtedly in Hong Kong. In my opinion, the difference between Mandarin and Cantonese is obvious but I think people tend to exaggerate it, as comparing to other southern dialects, Cantonese is not that hard to learn for a northerner like me as long as you spend some time to learn and pay attention to details, its a rewarding experience definitely.

Thanks DW for raising up this issue

I love Cantonese. HK cinema was a big influence as a kid, I loved watching the films despite not understanding anything.

I’m Canadian and will ensure my future kids continue to speak Taishanese/Cantonese just like the rest of my family ensuring the language is preserved

Every language must be allowed to thrive. People who learn and speak multiple languages are smart. It generates the curiosity and diversity in ideas.

Languages are most fundamentally close to the hearts and minds of the people of each society and all countries. People don’t give up these too easily. In 1952 on February 21st I was a second grader and went to the march for our language Bangla in Dhaka and on that basis in 1971 Pakistan split up in two, Bangladesh and Pakistan because the ruling class was unable to come to an amicable settlement. Countries need to respect each languages and nurture their population.

we have the same problem in India with hindi being promoted officially :(

I don't think Cantonese people need to worry, just now. I'm Swiss, I speak Swiss German. We use the Germans' German to write (with some simplification because nobody cares about the eszett). There's no schooling, no standard, no nothing, people just use it in their daily lives. It's been like that for ages and Swiss German is alive and well. And there are FAR fewer Swiss German speakers than there are Cantonese speakers. so long as people keep using it, it won't disappear.

My grandmother, her siblings and their parents who emigrated from Guangdong spoke Hakka. That too needs preserving.

Even in Guangzhou, locals also speak Cantonese.

多谢为广东话发声。广东不灭，粤语永存。广东话永远係广东人心中。

As a native Cantonese speaker in Taiwan I advocate Cantonese and all indigenous languages.

I speak Mandarin and Taiwanese before learning Cantonese years ago while working in Hong Kong. Cantonese is a very colorful language and it's amazing how certain words (my favorite is water) can be used in so many different contexts. I can't say the same about the other 2, especially Mandarin. It would be a big blow to Chinese culture if Cantonese disappears. Hope all Cantonese speakers around the world unite and keep this awesome language for generations to come.

I am born in a cantonese speaking family in Kuala Lumpur. When my family is posted to china I used my understanding of cantonese to help me to speak mandarin. There are lot of words which are quite similiar between cantonese and mandarin.

great info. thank you.

Belarus, Ukraine, and other ex-Soviet countries had our languages threatened by Russian during the Empire and Soviet Union times. We are still recovering and reclaiming our languages and cultures. My heart is with the Cantonese speakers. Don't let them take away your heritage.

Cantonese is such a wonderful language!! It breaks my heart to hear this news. I hope Cantonese will able to endure thru these current trials!

This reminds me of Alsatian, a German dialect spoken in Alsace-Lorraine, France. Prior to the world wars, it was spoken by about 90% of the population, but ever since then, the French governments have made little effort to preserve the language, so much so that only about 30% of the population can speak it now, and even fewer use it as their first language.

Cantonese is much older than Mandarin, and a closer derivative of Middle Chinese. Hence, if you tried to read ancient Chinese poems using Mandarin it mostly wouldn't make sense because they were written in something much more similar to Cantonese.

I very much appreciate this extensive coverage of this growing issue, as a Cantonese speaker, I too hope we are able to preserve it.

The anthology movie Ten Years had a short story which showed this exact thing happening. A taxi driver is pressured to start speaking Mandarin for his work, his son is more comfortable speaking Mandarin than Cantonese, a young woman gets fired from her work for not being able to speak Mandarin. It might not seem like a big deal but to me this was the most horrific story. If you take our language you take our identity. To think that it is all coming true makes me feel so bitter.

Recently I've seen a lot of content for learning Mongolian, Cantonese and Tibetan languages rising on Douyin for some reason.. it's either just my algorithm or just more people are starting getting interested I'm not sure. I hope that China can preserve all their beautiful languages and cultures.

the cantonese language and culture is so beautiful. it's so sad if it fades in the future...

As a Cantonese speaker that knows a little Mandarin and is learning Japanese, there are so many more onyomi words (Japanese words that have a pronunciation based on Chinese) that sound like Cantonese than ones that sound like Mandarin.

As a Cantonese native speaker myself, I can say that Cantonese is dying fast within Hong Kong, Macau and Guangdong. Back in the 70s-90s expats actually tried to learn the language according to my parents. Nowadays mainlanders, expats and increasingly international school kids are unwilling to learn the language as they think its useless, old-fashioned and lame. And surprisingly enough, people with these attitudes only speak one or two languages at most which shows how ignorant they are about other cultures. One should never forget their native language. Like myself, I speak English and Mandarin fluently alongside Cantonese, and this really broadened my circles without abandoning my roots.

Finally someone talk about the political oppression on Cantonese.

cantonese is such a fun language.

Cantonese is a very old language, complex and unique. It’s a very important part of Chinese history and culture. Keep it alive.

as someone that speaks native cantonese, i really want more people to speak this language. it is such a beautiful language and i'm worried that in the future lesser people will be able to speak cantonese

You are absolutely right, Cantonese is NOT a dialect. It IS a language!

This has already happened to my parents' Fujian dialect. Young people do not need to learn it and parents only speak Mandarin to their child at home. I hear more Fujian dialect outside China, due to overseas immigration pattern like the anchor said. Sadly, I knew this was going to happen in HK when I visited in 2004, just 7 years after the handover, I spoke with so many parents and others lamenting that they had to speak Mandarin in many situations as part of their daily life already.

Supporting Cantonese!

Isn't english an official language of the entire India? Isn't that done so people could communicate nationally and not be disadvantaged? Why is that okay in India, but not in China? Why is DW making the same political moves in China malicious and what happens in India not? I bet if China didn't have mandarin classes, DW would report, "Why is China disadvantaging Cantonese speakers and keeping them out of their economy?"

I would love if many people know more or use Cantonese.i spoke Cantonese so it's easy to communicate

Cantonese forever!

I understand the desire for a common language, but also see the need to preserve culture. It seems that many countries want a common language to unify the people. That may or may not work, but seems to be the idea. It is a problem here in the Philippines. There are over 100 languages but the two official languages are Filipino and English. "Filipino" is very similar to Tagalog... and that causes issues in other parts of the country. So after years of complaints, the schools are now teaching Filipino and English, like they have been, but also the local area's mother tongue. Most people just speak their mother tongue at home, and in their city. So when we travel, even on the same island, my wife cannot speak to the people sometimes. They supposedly learn Tagalog & English in school, but never use them, and forget quite a lot (after all I supposedly learned Spanish & French is school and speak neither).

Cantonese is facinating.

As a people from South East Asia, we love to hear Cantonese language than Mandarin. It is nice to hear than Mandarin. I remember watching HK movies starting by Anita Mui, Lee Chin Hsia, and other HK star so emotionally attached to our heart. But when watching Mandarin drama series, it sounds so weird language and it is not enjoyable to watch it.

As a Cantonese (Canton is the old English name of Guangzhou), I'm furious! We need to preserve our language, but the social environment prohibits young school kids from speaking Cantonese. Nowadays, even children, born into native Cantonese families, aren't able to converse in Cantonese fluently! It's SAD!

Way more than 80 million. There are 100 million in Guangzhou alone... if you factor in all of the Cantonese speakers in the entire world? Many many millions more. I know most of the big Chinese populations in places like Monterey Park and Alhambra, CA - alone are Cantonese speakers.

My wife is chinese and I've been learning both languages, mostly to speak to her relatives as all of her family don't speak english. We've been wondering which one to focus on, I think I'll go with Cantonese.

Wow this lady seems to be so good at both Cantonese and Mandarin. Interesting video. The long history of Cantonese was particularly interesting.

Unfortunately, other Chinese dialects do not have these privileges or very limited in such like the way Cantonese has. Cantonese is the only Non-Mandarin Chinese dialect with widespread influence other than Mandarin. Hong Kong currently as a SARS region is what is encouraging Cantonese speaking communities in Guangdong and internationally to retain their culture and language and keeping it alive, but once Hong Kong is very likely to fully return back to China after 2047, Mandarin will be more fully enforced in Hong Kong and Cantonese entertainment and media will then start to decline and then at that point, that is when the Cantonese influence will really be in danger of dying out and will lose all of the privileges like other Chinese dialects.

i don't realy understand most of this discussion, i just have a question, is mandarin something like a "lengua franca"? second question, in writing do you use the same system for mandarim and cantonese?

when my close friend who speaks cantonese as her mother tongue visited china with me and our asian studies class (has family from hong kong but parents immigrated from vietnam), she was constantly looked down upon when she revealed that shes chinese but had poor mandarin. it was like she wasnt even seen as chinese at that point to some people. i dont know and havent learned any chinese languages, but i know the difference when hearing them, and its always interesting that i associate cantonese more with chinese americans just because its rarer for me to find a chinese american who speaks mandarin.

Hokkien language had been spoken well across the globe for 400 years especially in S.E Asia and Mutual mutually unintelligible to other Chinese. . Same with Shanghai(wu) language

Interesting video. As a cantonese speaker in south east asia, I have not “yet” feel my identity being lost. Though I am really curious about other communities who have lost their old native language. Do they feel something missing in their self identity? Would love to hear your thoughts.

I love Cantonese

I grew up watching Hong Kong movies, dramas and even operas. Cantonese is such a colorful language. It is sad that Hong Kong will one day become another Chinese city, losing its unique identity and culture.

As a Hokkien who speaks many dialects, I feel that Cantonese is the most beautiful of all.

Me who speaks Mandarin and Cantonese Glad to have grown learning them. Such beautiful sounding languages

Cantonese is the language of the beloved films of my youth, and the language of Bruce Lee! And like me, Bruce Lee was born in California, USA. So I consider Cantonese also an (adopted) American language, and it must be preserved!

She said more or less the same as Portuguese and Spanish but that is not the case. Spanish and Portuguese have an 89% lexical similarity so basically 90% of the vocabulary is the same whereas in mando and Canto it’s much different with a lot less similarities. The similarities however lie in the mapping due to the characters. What I mean is when you hear a pronounciation in mandarin if you never heard the word in canto you can guess if you speak both languages. For example 人口 (ren kou) in mandarin meaning “population”’ I know that 人 in Cantonese is (Jan4) and 口 is (hau2) in Cantonese so I can guess that based off the mapping which is convenient if you know both languages

Oh give me a break. European countries have promoted language unity throughout the 20th century. Russian is now banned in Estonia.

thank you DW for raiasing attention on this issue

Hong Kong is just about the only Chinese territory where Cantonese is used as medium of instruction for local schools. In HK universities English is the medium of instruction. So if there is any push it is only in Hong Kong (and Macau). Taiwan by the way uses Mandarin as instruction medium. Given Taiwan's very diverse ethnic background, it makes sense. Such ethnic diversity is less of an issue in Hong Kong. Across China, Standard Chinese (Mandarin) is used in schools and bilingual education and local dialects are encouraged though I suspect it is mainly local community efforts. If Cantonese or any dialect is under treat of preservation the very sizable community can easily raise to the occasion. Except for very uncommon regional dialects, it is not likely that any dialect be lost. Languages and dialects are emotional subject. One should rightly understand the goal of any policy that involve this emotive subject. The Touyin clip is not about suppression of the use Cantonese but one of monitoring online contents. It could easily be done without intrusion and was perhaps done by someone inexperienced, creating an incidence that upset a group of people unintentionally. This is a good video. If we start off by seeing the Chinese government in a more positive light, we could avoid slanting the issue eh ... unfairly. I am from Singapore where the very diverse Chinese community heeded the call to 学华语 in favour of our dialects. And English to connect to the world. I think we did rather well. And oh, we still retain our dialects and took an interest in where our forefathers hail from.

Best way to control people is to make them forget their roots.

Ironically, Cantonese is closer to the real, ancient Chinese. Poetry is better spoken in Cantonese.

I'm glad she brought up that Cantonese is actually a very old language. You can hear a lot of the cognates in Korean and Japanese - the on'yomi and hanja-eo sound much more like Cantonese than Mandarin.

There's nothing wrong with having a national, official language. Canada has two official languages: English and French. Laws are written in these two languages.

Considering how the CCP treated some cultural aspects of society in the past. The fact that they are pressuring to have Mandarin mainstream like this is just another way for them to destroy a culture. I am glad that DW talks about this topic. Despite being only about 10 mins, it holds significant relevance for me.

I've always enjoyed the fact that the 'official' dictionaries of Putonghua (the government-endorsed variant of Chinese) are called 'Xin Hua' dictionaries. That's 'New Speak' dictionaries - exactly the same term used in the book 1984...

cantonese is also way funnier to listen to, i doubt movies like shaolin soccer and kungfu hustle would be as funny if it was in mandarin

I am not worried about that. Cantonese has been spoken for awhile in Guangdong and HK. Different dialects can exist in a country.

I speak Mondrian and English, however I am learning Cantonese which is one of the real Chinese languages and is so beautiful.

I'm Cantonese, and there are many words in the Cantonese language that Mandarin doesn't even have a translation for it. Cantonese predates Mandarin, we Cantonese are not gonna let our language die off. Even Shanghainese is being eliminated, sad.

It may be sad but if you think about it, languages are simply mouth noises that we make with our vocal cords. We all know it would be much better for humanity if we all spoke the same language.

I taught Cantonese a few years ago. The language school was struggling to keep the classes since less and less family chose Cantonese. Not because the families speak Mandarin, but rather they think their kids would be able to do business with China years down the road. Many kids ended up quiting since they don't speak Mandarin at home. What's the point of learning a language when it's not used?

Language unification is seen everywhere around the world. Sometimes violent. Sometimes less so. In cases such as like this it becomes moreso the responsibility of the community to teach the language to the next generation.

Orwell's playbook many regional dialects have already been lost; even people who live overseas who try to teach them on youtube or the like can be targeted for harassment or threats; same reason they have come down hard on foreign language tutors who aren't employed by the state. After all you can't censor or control what you can't understand.

I haven’t studied Cantonese since grade school but this sort of news saddens me

My mother speaks Cantonese. I hope this beautiful language never dies.

Never forget, China is also trying to suppress the Mongol language, which is different from the one used in Mongolia, since the Mongols in China still use their traditional alphabet to write their language while in Mongolia, they use the Cyrillic alphabet (that’s the same alphabet used to write Russian)

Even without government's suppression, dialects or local languages are slowly fading away due to high mobility and globalization, e.g. parents from different dialect groups tend to just speak standard language to their kids, and kids might avoid speaking dialects in order to fit in with other kids coming from different language background.

Cantonese is not just a Chinese language to me- its in my heart and soul. Cantonese forever...

In Malaysia our children learned Mandarin at school but they are reminded to speak Cantonese or their mother tongue at home and we're proud of it. China can mandate learning of Mandarin like us here in Malaysia we learned Malay as national language but people should feel free to speak own cultural languages. Malaysian Chinese speak chinese Mandarin, Canto, Hokkien, Hakka and many other chinese languages.

A number of people in the comments seem to think that it will be easier to have only one standardised language worldwide, but that is not possible. A first requirement for that would be a global government that could actually implement standardisation. Then, the global language should be chosen. If you choose an existing language, that will generate a huge amount of dissatisfaction. If you construct a language, which is the better choice, then its grammatical properties will still be based on certain languages over others, and there'd be no native speakers OR cultural identity for the language to actually be adopted as a tool for communication. But let's suppose that those problems could be solved easily and a global lingua franca is implemented... then it would still be unethical of the global government to deny people education, news, road signs, you name it, in their own language. And IF as if by magic everyone in the world spoke a single language, then there's two possible futures. The first is that the standard language is artifically kept the same while the people in the streets locally innovate their own varieties, leading to a bilingual situation where people speak the official language in certain contexts and an increasingly divergent local variety in informal situation (as is the case with Arabic). The second possibility is that the standard language is constantly adapted in order to accommodate inevitable language change, but if >8 billion people are part of the linguistic community then that can never be done properly, it is doomed to fail. A multilingual global society is inevitable. A quest for a monolingual global society can only lead to a loss of identity, knowledge, and colour.

Mandarin speaking Chinese move around much more nowadays, globally and nationally to the south, Hong Kong. Mandarin is the language of the ruling party. Of course, this will keep them being dominant.

This is after all DW documentary, watch it with many grains of salt.

It’s all about balance. I don’t think China wants to discourage Hong Kong people to learn Cantonese. Hong Kong people need to be trilingual - English, mandarin and Cantonese in order to stay competitive. Just like a lot of people in Europe can speak 2-3 languages.

Why don't we get rid of English as the official business language then?

One can understand standardisation in schools and universities. There's a lot of practical value to something like that. But to limit other languages online in like Tiktok... Why? That's a bit too overt to explain away as mere practical consideration. Online translation tools are amazing these days. There's zero need for it. To wilfully impinge on cultural identity like that reminds of the so called "cultural revolution" and what good came of that?

This motivates me more to learn Cantonese as a foreigner.

Guangzhou's Cantonese influence has waned a lot, but even in Guangzhou alone, the survival of Cantonese is still faring better than the other Chinese dialects due to their important cultural and business relationship with Hong Kong as currently a SARS region and the wide availability and popularity of Hong Kong entertainment and media; even Guangzhou is allowed to produce and broadcast some Cantonese language medias and entertainment, some schools in Guangzhou are allowing limited amount of Cantonese language classes to be taught including some are hosting Cantonese cultural appreciation events, the Cantonese families are placing way more emphasis now on their children to retain the language/culture and Cantonese. And if you add Hong Kong and other Cantonese speaking towns surrounding Guangzhou in Guangdong and with the large international Cantonese communities, the survival level is even higher.