Vancouver advocates aim to save Cantonese as language loses ground to Mandarin

Canadian-born Claudia Kelly Li and her seven-year old niece, Alanis Wong, both speak Cantonese but Li says elders should not shame the younger generation into learning Cantonese because it doesn’t work. Photo by Jennifer Gauthier (Metro).

Cantonese has been the most prevalent language spoken by the Chinese-immigrant community in Vancouver for decades but now advocates say the language is under threat. More than 389,000 people in Canada speak Cantonese according to a 2012 Statistics Canada report but changes in immigration trends and pressure from the Chinese government to establish Mandarin, the national language, as the dominant tongue in Hong Kong is having a dire effect on the southern-Chinese language. Click here to read more of this article published July 11, 2016 in Vancouver's Metro News.

www.metronews.ca/news/vancouver/2016/07/11/vancouver-cantonese-advocates-aim-to-save-language-.html