Chinese authorities have been anxious to suppress the growing pro-Cantonese movement, sparked after a political advisory body in Guangzhou proposed this month that local TV stations broadcast their prime-time shows in Mandarin instead of Cantonese ahead of the Asian Games there in November.
Adopting China's official language, also known as Putonghua, would promote unity, "forge a good language environment" and cater to non-Cantonese-speaking Chinese visitors at the huge sporting event, authorities were quoted as saying.
Hundreds of Guangzhou residents defied government orders and staged their first demonstration last Sunday. But the protest was soon suppressed by the authorities, according to reports.
To echo the Guangzhou campaign, about 200 protesters marched to the government headquarters in Hong Kong Sunday.
"We want to show our support to our Guangzhou friends in their campaign to protect Cantonese against any threat of elimination," said Choi Suk-fong, organiser of the rally.
Participants wore white T-shirts with a logo which said: "You want us to shut up! We will speak louder in Cantonese!"
A number of Guangzhou residents crossed the border to take part in the Hong Kong rally, saying that authorities there were trying to silence the protesters.
"I really regretted not going to the rally in Guangzhou last week. I came to Hong Kong today because I want to protect my own culture. Unlike on the mainland, here I can voice my view more directly," said 21-year-old Wyman, who refused to give his family name for fear of retaliation by the Chinese authorities.
Instances of mainland protests spilling over into Hong Kong, which was returned to China in 1997, are rare since China's 1989 Tiananmen crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrators.
Cantonese is the mother tongue for an estimated 70 million people in Hong Kong, Macau and China's southern Guangdong province, and is widely spoken in overseas Chinese communities.
The Guangzhou city government on Thursday sought to deny rumours that they planned to ditch Cantonese in favour of Mandarin, according to the state-run Guangzhou Daily.
Its spokesman Ouyang Yongsheng was quoted as saying that the government had a responsibility to protect and promote Cantonese culture, including the language.
"The citizens and concerned people can be reassured that Guangzhou would... not go for the so-called cause of 'abolishing Cantonese to promote Mandarin'," he said.
Now if only Hong Kong young people would learn how to speak Cantonese properly... I read the claim before on some newsgroup that Sun Yat-Sen and others wanted to make Cantonese the official language of Chinese. (Since there is corroboration in an newspaper, this must be a fact, right?) How would Mandarin-speakers feel if Cantonese had been chosen?
Communist China is an example of how not to order a polity in so many ways... Cultural and linguistic homogeneity is the hobby horse of centralizing bureaucrats. At least the emperors did not seek to impose one language on the Chinese Empire. It was enough for government officials and the literati to know classical Chinese and to be able to communicate with one another.
Learn Cantonese! 學廣東話!
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