Blowing Water | Mandarin may be the ‘common language’, but here’s why Cantonese reigns supreme

About a decade before Hong Kong was to return to Chinese sovereignty, many Hongkongers and local expatriates rushed to learn Mandarin. I remember it was around the same time when it became increasingly popular in Hong Kong to refer to Mandarin as Putonghua, which literally means “common language”, because Beijing wanted to emphasise that this widely used dialect on the mainland was the official lingua franca and, at the same time, promote national solidarity.

China is an enormous country, home to a multitude of languages and dialects. Many people think that among the dialect groups, Cantonese, which is spoken by 60 million people across the globe, is the least pleasing to the ear. Its critics complain that it is harsh, guttural and cacophonous.

I love Cantonese, and I wholeheartedly believe it truly reflects the diversity of the Chinese language. Mandarin or Putonghua may be spoken by most Chinese people on the mainland, but I think Cantonese still reigns supreme. It is the most lively and fun, and is famously known for its rich, colourful and sarcastic colloquialisms. Love it, hate it, or both, no one can deny that it is a playful, yet bizarre and sometimes delightfully rude variety of Chinese.

Cantonese is mostly spoken and not written because it does not have a standard written form. This could be one significant contributing factor that allows it to be such a fun and animated dialect, because it is not tied down by the many restrictive rules of a written language.

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Take, for example, when every man and his dog were picking up Mandarin in Hong Kong back in the 1990s. The common complaint from native Mandarin speakers then was that many Hongkongers were so bad at adapting to the vastly different tones and pitches of Mandarin that they were struggling and speaking it in a “mm haam mm taam” fashion, which directly translates as “not salty, not bland”. You’ve probably guessed that this means “neither here nor there”, so you can see how unashamedly direct Cantonese is.

Some everyday phrases are equally colourful, such as “sing leh”, which is derived from video game culture and means to “level up” or to improve.