Content Warning: language loss, language death
This week we’ll be looking at language maintenance and language shift, two sociolinguistic processes members of linguistic minorities often grapple with when their language is not the dominant language in society.
Language shift, language maintenance, language loss, and language death are not easy topics to discuss. Unfortunately, many people come to the study of language and society through these different processes particularly under the pretext of colonisation and Western imperialism as is the case of te reo Māori in Aotearoa New Zealand.
Firstly, language shift is where a community gradually replaces its language of origin with the language of the host community. One example of language shift we will focus on is the linguistic situation of the Cantonese language which is spoken by members of the Chinese communities in Aotearoa New Zealand.
The first ethnic Chinese migrants to arrive in Aotearoa New Zealand predominately came from the Cantonese-speaking regions of Southern China. Many of these early migrants came during the Gold Rush, but later established market gardens in rural centres like Taitoko Levin, Hakatere Ashburton, and Papatoetoe.
Cantonese was the main language used by these early Chinese communities and Cantonese language classes were set up by the New Zealand Chinese Association to ensure inter-generational transmission of Cantonese language and its customs.
When languages spoken question was first asked in the 1996 Census, 33,579 people said they could speak in Cantonese (Yue) about day-to-day things. This was roughly 40.79% of the ethnic Chinese population. By 2018, 52,767 people said they could speak in Cantonese. Despite this increase, only 21.30% of the ethnic Chinese population used Cantonese as a community language.
We can partly explain this demographic shift as a result of changes to immigration legislation following the 1986 Immigration Law Reform as well as social and economic changes in the People’s Republic of China. This period saw an increase of migrants from non-Cantonese speaking parts of China. We can also partly attribute the processes of language shift to these demographic changes.
In a survey of Cantonese speakers conducted by Janet Holmes et al., (1993), Cantonese language fluency decreased from 80.85% to 37.25% fluency between first generation Cantonese migrants and their children. By the third generation, fluency in Cantonese drops to 6.45% with 70.96% of this age cohort no longer able to speak in Cantonese.
We can see from these statistics that language shift is a generational process. There are many reasons why language shift may occur. These push factors could stem from economic, political, institutional, demographic, attitudinal, educational, or socio-cultural reasons. Social pressures to assimilate into the dominant English-speaking culture has been another factor in the case of Cantonese speakers in Aotearoa.
When a person no longer speaks a language if they don’t have sufficient access to a language it is known as language loss. On-going language loss may lead to the process of language death is the disappearance of a language with the death of the last (or sometimes second to last) speaker of a language.
Some communities may adopt language maintenance strategies to maintain ethnolinguistic vitality in a community. Language maintenance is a situation where a community continues to use its language of origin as well as the language of the host community. Most notably, the continued efforts of whānau, hapū, and iwi as well as advocates and activists in the te reo Māori language revitalisation effort is a success story in language maintenance (which we will talk about another time).
"It takes one generation to lose a language, and three generations to restore it."
- Esther Fung, Chinese Community Leader
My parents migrated to Aotearoa New Zealand as skilled migrants in the 1980s during the decline of the manufacturing industry. My parents saw the consequences of language loss so they implemented a number of strategies to nurture our Cantonese language skills while my brother and I were growing up in Te Awakairangi ki Tai (Lower Hutt).
Picture Books
My parents heavily invested in picture books published in traditional Chinese script in an attempt to immerse my brother and I with Cantonese language resources. Most of these books were monolingual, while some were bilingual with the English language translations included in the text. These are called parallel texts. A secondary function is that it taught us aspects of Cantonese culture and traditions.
Television and Popular Media
The media we consumed mostly came from Hong Kong. Some of you may remember the humble videotape. Every three months, we would make our way to the post office as a family to pick up a fresh delivery of videotapes from our relatives in Hong Kong. This ensured that we continued to have access to Cantonese-language media. We barely had access to English-language media.
As satellite TV became more affordable in the early-2000s, we began to receive our Cantonese-language media from a consortium of local and international television and radio stations known as World TV. We no longer needed to wait months to catch-up with the latest programme in Hong Kong, and special events were often broadcast live.
Nowadays, locally produced Cantonese-language media no longer exists with a majority of the content coming from streaming platforms or social media.
Language Classes
Most contemporary Chinese languages share a written register based on vernacular (or spoken) Mandarin. This written ‘standard’ Chinese has an opaque orthographic system based on logographs which means we wouldn’t develop literacy through passive exposure alone. On average, a person would need to comprehend at least 5,000 of the approximately 50,000 characters needed for basic literacy.
We were fortunate that we lived in a metropolitan area, and Mandarin-medium classes were held every Sunday at a local secondary school. I really didn’t enjoy attending the classes especially the Mandarin-medium classes as it made me feel deficient as a speaker of Cantonese. My parents later enrolled us to a Cantonese-medium class organised by the local Chinese Christian community.
Language Policy
As we grew older (and more rebellious), our family introduced a strict Cantonese Only policy. This meant we only spoke Cantonese at home and with the extended family. It became more apparent that a policy like this was needed as my brother and I were using more and more English. My parents also recognised the devaluation of Cantonese as a community language.
As an extreme measure, my parents had to introduce punitive measures such as the dreaded ‘English Jar’ where had to drop a gold or silver coin every time we spoke English at home. This measure was largely symbolic, but it was a constant reminder the Cantonese was the language of the home.
Community Connection
These are just some of the few example of language maintenance strategies my parents put in place. However, I found the most effective strategy was being around other Cantonese speakers in the community. We were frequently surrounded by other Cantonese speakers at home and out in the community. Cantonese for us was a living language. We used at school with other Cantonese-speaking children, at the temple, and even at work when we were helping out at our Grand Uncle’s supermarket selling Chinese and Asian foodstuffs.
In cases of language shift, my experience is an exception rather than the norm. Many Chinese children no longer speak Cantonese or any other Chinese languages such as Hakka, Hokkien, or Teochew. This process of language loss has led to a loss of cultural practices, traditional knowledge, proverbs, songs, as well as a connection to ancestors and heritage.
With the elevation of Mandarin as ‘the’ Chinese language taught in our education system, members of the Cantonese-speaking Chinese communities in Aotearoa New Zealand fear that we face language death. The process of language shift is not inevitable, but the consequences language death is permanent.
What responsibilities do we have as speakers of a language if not to honour the language of our ancestors?