Bulletin Summer 1979

dialects are naturally relegated to a secondary position. This attitude is not surprising, for if China did not have a standardized written language, the nation would have broken up long ago into numerous small states like Europe in recent centuries. It is obvious that a standardized spoken and written language is a force contributing to the unity of a nation. Q. As a man concerned with culture, are you more inclined to take the cultural point of view? A. I favour the preservation of dialects and local cultures as far as possible provided that this does not jeopardize the unity of the nation. Q. However, the primary function of language is to communicate ideas. If pu tong hua was dropped in favour of dialects throughout the nation, wouldn't the language be less effective as a means of communication? A. Communication may be taken at two levels. A little knowledge of pu tong hua will suffice for everyday conversation, which is a comparatively superficial kind of communication. But one has to be truly proficient in the language one uses before one can have a deeper and more meaningful communication. It is doubtful whether an average person in Hong Kong can express himself in pu tong hua with the same degree of clarity and exactitude as in his ow n dialect. This is a hard fact to be faced. For people whose mother tongue is a dialect, there must be areas in which they are less articulate when communicating in another dialect or pu tong hua, based on northern dialects. These are the areas in which they have never been exposed to this dialect or pu tung hua. Q. H ow would you define 'mother tongue'? A. Theoretically ‘mother tongue' is the language a person learned to speak during the first few years of his life. However, if he is then taken away from that language environment in his formative years, his 'first' language ceases to be his mother tongue. The society of truly bilingual people must itself be truly bi-lingual. I have in mind the Italian immigrants in London. The first-generation Italian immigrants tend to stay together and have cultural activities of their own, providing a somewhat natural language environment for the second generation, who can still speak Italian in addition to English, but by the third generation, they can understand the Italian language but can no longer speak it fluently. The case of Chinese immigrants in Britain is even worse. The first generation, mostly not very well educated, does not normally have any interest in common with their children who are educated in Britain, nor is there any kind of organized cultural activities for the Chinese community. Therefore, although the second-generation Chinese start off by learning a Chinese dialect at home, they end up by speaking only the English language, the language of the environment they find themselves in. As for their own dialect, they can only understand but not speak it. Q. What do you think of the proposal of local educators to use mother tongue as the medium of instruction? A. I feel that, no matter what language the textbooks are in, the medium of instruction must be the one students are most at home in, otherwise, students' power of comprehension, thinking and expression will be severely restricted. The language most of the local students are conversant in is Cantonese. Hence, the use of the mother tongue for teaching means the use of Cantonese. At present Cantonese-speaking students are faced with countless difficulties. They use English textbooks, their teachers teach them in English or Cantonese or, more often, a hotch-potch of both, and although they think in Cantonese, it is not possible for them to express their ideas in written Cantonese. What makes it worse is that they are unable to express themselves well in either pai hua wen (written colloquial Chinese) or English because of their lack of proficiency. There will be no easy solution to this problem until the society makes up its mind on what to use as the medium of instruction. Q. It is generally agreed that the language standards in Hong Kong are gradually declining. Do you think there is a better way to study Chinese? A. When Cantonese-speakers learned to write in literary Chinese, they had to learn a written language whose construction is different from spoken Cantonese. Today Cantonese speakers who write in pai hua have also to learn a written language which is as far removed from spoken 7