Being uncomfortable about Po Tong Wa, but not Gok Yu

On 4/11/2025 at 5:48 AM, learningculture said:

In Cantonese, the term "普通" means "ordinary".

Yes. In the 1990’s, not uncommon for HK origin Cantonese speakers to say this to reflect what I felt was some sense of “uniqueness” (some might say “snobbishness”). On the other hand, I haven’t heard this in HK for at least over two decades.

Once you start doing business with 普通話 speakers, such comments/attitudes don’t really help in developing 關係 and trades. 

In Malaysia, mandarin speakers use the word 華語 to describe speaking mandarin. 
 

If it helps, 普通 also translates as “common”, so it’s the common language. (Not the language of commoners). Canada was a land of immigration and acceptance so perhaps it is time to move with the times and consign such dated thoughts into history. 

I think this phenomenon is mainly because everyone, including you and me, is standing on one's own point.

On 4/11/2025 at 5:48 AM, learningculture said:

In Cantonese, the term "普通" means "ordinary".  And the way these new arrivals asked if we speak "ordinary language" felt a bit smug...as if these new arrivals are normal and we as the local residents are not normal. But if these new arrivals asked do you speak 國語 , or National Language, we didn't feel that same sense of being uncomfortable.  國語 Just makes me think the term "lingua franca", which doesn't have any real connotation associated with it other than the country probably has a lot of different languages and something has to be chosen for governing a country.

Personally I think ordinary, common and normal have subtly different meanings in English. I don't really have a knowledge of Cantonese, but a native speaker of both Mandarin and Shanghainese so my discussion is based on those two dialects. For me, I cannot find any sense of "lingua franca" from the term 国语 in contrary - a "national language" seems to be official (and it is, actually) rather that to be common (there are countries whose official languages are no lingua franca for the society. That's very common for African countries). For both dialects 普通 just stands for ordinary or common, and 正常 is for normal if someone's to find a proper Chinese translation. Uncommon phenomena or things aren't necessarily abnormal - The coronation of UK is kind of uncommon, but nobody find find it abnormal - after all the queen passed away so there should be a new king. 普通话 is literally more "lingua-franca" for us instead (BTW the linguistic term for lingua franca is 通用语). There may be a gap between the comprehensions from contexts of different dialects or different community. People use 华语 in Malaysia since they're to distinguish this language with other languages such as Malay.(And btw I think 华语 is actually a broader term, indicating any possible dialect of the Chinese language.)

We all have strange things we can't accept.

In my lifetime, the word for comrade switched to meaning gay, the term for waitress we were told to stop using, as it could be used to mean prostitute. I was happy to accept those changes, but the one thing I can't accept is the attempt to switch from 唐人街 to 华埠

As a child I had no idea why we called it 唐人街, but 华埠 is just ick.