Chinese community in the United States: Cantonese is no longer popular.

In recent years, many Americans have found that the Chinese spoken in Chinatown has a different flavor. Within Chinatown, it is recognized that Mandarin is gradually replacing Cantonese.

Shopkeepers in Chinatown learn Mandarin with clear pronunciation.

However, more than 10 years ago, if you spoke Mandarin in San Francisco and Chinatown in New York, many people would think that you were not speaking Chinese. At that time, in many big cities in North America, Cantonese occupied a "dominant position" in the Chinese community. However, with a large number of immigrants from Chinese mainland, the influence of Putonghua in the Chinese community is rising strongly. Whether trading in the market, gathering community leaders for business activities, looking for a job or doing social surveys, Mandarin is becoming a common language accepted by different dialect groups in the Chinese community. Chinatown in new york, San Francisco and Toronto was once the base camp of Cantonese-speaking immigrants. Even in these communities, people can clearly feel that Mandarin is unstoppable. Although Cantonese is still the main language of the older generation of immigrants there, shopkeepers in Chinatown have begun to study Mandarin hard. After a few years, you can basically meet your business needs in Mandarin. When they meet customers from the mainland, these shopkeepers sometimes "ask questions without shame". They learned a few words from pronunciation to word formation, but they still learned clear pronunciation and mellow voice, making progress day by day.

Americans find themselves misled by Cantonese for decades.

According to the explanations of "Mandarin", "Putonghua" and "Mandarin" here, the word "Mandarin" appeared in the late Qing Dynasty. 19 10, Jiang Qian, a member of the Senior Advisory Committee of the Qing Dynasty, advocated that "Chinese characters should be combined with homophonic characters to achieve unity". Later, the northern warlords and successive governments called the official Chinese "Mandarin". "Putonghua" also appeared in the late Qing Dynasty. 1906, Zhu proposed to promote "Putonghua" throughout the country. 1955, in order to respect minority languages and avoid misunderstanding caused by "Mandarin", the new China government decided to name standard Chinese as "Putonghua" on the basis of Beijing dialect, in which "common" means universal. "Chinese" refers to the appellation of Chinese in Singapore and other countries for the common language of Chinese.

Before 1979, many Americans always thought that Cantonese spoken in Chinatown was the standard official language of China. It was not until after the establishment of diplomatic relations between China and the United States that they saw that the words spoken by China diplomats were different from those spoken by local Chinese, and they were surprised to find that Cantonese had misled them for decades. Most of the speeches made by more than 654.38 billion people in China are not in this tone.

Bai Lan, consultant of the Chinese Community Activities Chamber of Commerce in San Francisco, said that when she first arrived in San Francisco 30 years ago, she spoke Mandarin with Chinese shopkeepers. The other party often looks at her with a dirty look first, and then whispers "there is a stranger who can't speak Chinese" behind her back. However, in today's Chinatown, shopkeepers and waiters warmly greet customers in selling groceries and Cantonese restaurants selling fried noodles, and the number 10 used for bookkeeping is even more accurate. Even the music played on the loudspeakers in the street is popular songs sung in Mandarin.

According to statistics, with the reform and opening up and the improvement of Chinese mainland's economic strength, the usage rate and scope of Putonghua are constantly improving and expanding. A survey published by 1986 found that 70% Chinese families in San Francisco speak Cantonese, while only 19% people speak Mandarin. However, in 2003, a survey released by KTSE, an Asian TV station in San Francisco, showed that the gap between them had narrowed to 53%: 47%. According to some surveys conducted by Lee Advertising Company, Chinese families in Vancouver, Toronto, Montreal, Ottawa, Los Angeles and new york speak Mandarin in roughly the same way. In some Chinese community activities, English, Mandarin and Cantonese are often used alternately. In some grand diplomatic activities, English and Mandarin are simply translated into each other.

The rapid increase of mainland immigrants has changed the situation in Chinatown at once.

Mai Liqian, a Chinese scholar who studies the history of Chinese in the United States, explains the changes in Chinese language use from the immigration tide in different periods. He said that in the middle of the19th century, in an era of underdeveloped politics and economy, tens of thousands of Cantonese fled the war-torn Pearl River Delta and immigrated to Guangdong in North America. They first took root in major cities such as San Francisco and Los Angeles, and then promoted the rise of Chinese communities. From 65438 to 0965, the American immigration law partially lifted the restrictions on China's immigration, which caused the second immigration wave. These immigrants are mainly Cantonese-speaking Hong Kong people and Mandarin-speaking Taiwan Province people. Many of them are students. Later, with the development of computer and information industry, they founded their own companies, which are active all over the world. During this period, many "Little Hong Kong" and "Little Taipei" appeared in cities such as Los Angeles, Vancouver and Toronto. In recent years, mainland immigrants who speak Mandarin have surged. Statistics Canada shows that since 1999, mainland immigrants have moved to Canada for the first time, surpassing those from Hongkong and Taiwan Province Province, with an annual population of over 30,000. According to American federal statistics, about 665,438+million people came from Chinese mainland in 2002, which is 10 times that of Hong Kong immigrants and 6 times that of Taiwan Province immigrants. It is this wave of immigrants from the mainland that has accelerated the popularization of Putonghua in the Chinese community and promoted the Putonghua in Chinatown.

China media is ready to give up Cantonese slang.

At the same time, Mandarin has penetrated into more families through movies and Chinese TV. Although readers who speak Cantonese and Mandarin can understand the traditional Chinese characters in the local World Journal and Ming Pao, the owners of these newspapers are gradually giving up Cantonese slang and vertical traditional Chinese characters in their articles and replacing them with more understandable standard Mandarin to attract more readers. Liu, general manager of Sing Tao Daily in San Francisco, said that in order to cater to this change, it is the general trend to gradually reduce Cantonese slang in newspapers.

Sullivan, Chairman of Asia Market and Media Service Company in Los Angeles, believes that with the increase of immigrants from Chinese mainland, Mandarin is being used by more and more people in China, and its coverage will continue to expand.