Those who still desire to move there for work have struggled to find jobs owing to the city’s slow economic recovery and changing language requirements. “Every job I applied for required Mandarin, especially in law,” says a woman who trained as a lawyer in Britain, but moved to the city to work as a financial analyst.
“International City” is just a euphemism for a city where you never have to interact with locals and learn their languages.
If the local language is Cantonese, but the government is forcing to use Mandarin in law and other official businesses, to me it sounds the same as forcing Ukrainians to speak Russian (in the old USSR), Catalans to speak Spanish, and French Canadian to speak English. It’s soft cultural assimilation.
I don’t know much about the local language usage in HK, so i could be wrong though.
I don’t know, I didn’t read the article.
I try to make as little assumptions as I can… It could just add easily be a native that trained in the UK, but then i suppose it would have been mentioned.
Which language do you think the government should use/expect from it’s employes in HK?
“International City” is just a euphemism for a city where you never have to interact with locals and learn their languages.
Sexpat gets angry that they have to learn the language of thr country they live in. It’s a story as old as imperialism.
Their language is Cantonese…
That is exactly why I used the plural form of the word language. You just have to add an “s” at the end of the word like this: languages.
If the local language is Cantonese, but the government is forcing to use Mandarin in law and other official businesses, to me it sounds the same as forcing Ukrainians to speak Russian (in the old USSR), Catalans to speak Spanish, and French Canadian to speak English. It’s soft cultural assimilation.
I don’t know much about the local language usage in HK, so i could be wrong though.
Are you under the impression that the British-trained woman being quoted is fluent in Cantonese but not Mandarin?
I don’t know, I didn’t read the article. I try to make as little assumptions as I can… It could just add easily be a native that trained in the UK, but then i suppose it would have been mentioned.
Which language do you think the government should use/expect from it’s employes in HK?
Yeah I can tell that you don’t know much about Chinese languages.
The spoken form is different, but the written formal form is mostly the same between Cantonese and Mandarin.
Instead of cultural imperialism of forcing English, this measure is giving power back to the populace.