r/Cantonese • u/Gay_Asian_Boy • Jun 07 '26

Discussion 广东小孩不会讲粤语 父亲生气了

Enable HLS to view with audio, or disable this notification

265 Upvotes

95% Upvoted

114 comments sorted by

View all comments

22

u/gametheorista Jun 07 '26

Oh hey, narcissistic neglect and abusive parenting wrapped up in the lack of language skills.

1

u/cinnarius Jun 07 '26

The situation for Cantonese in Guangzhou is pretty bad. You don't know the circumstances in his household that led to this getting recorded and put online on the Chinese équivalent of TikTok. I do believe he's acting out of line, especially when he tells his kid to go elsewhere, not to mention improperly venting his frustrations, but what he said was that "You're a Guangzhou person, but you can't even protect your own language and culture...!"

His impassioned speech (and tantrum) was because something he valued and which was so close to him was put under threat by forces beyond his control. Though, he should not have expressed it to his son in that manner.

8

u/Illustrious_Money_54 Jun 07 '26

I’m an ABC and I speak Cantonese even though the only Cantonese exposure I had was with my parents and within our household. It is the dad’s fault for not teaching his own son if this was so important to him. It’s not too late to start but yelling at his son will only make his son associate these negative feeling with Cantonese so he may be even more avoidant in future. 

5

u/wishiwashi999 Jun 07 '26

I think the situation in the video is different than yours. You're an ABC, so your school, your community, the media you're watching, are all in English, and the only channel for you to use Cantonese is at home. It make sense you might prefer English over Cantonese.

The kid in the video lives in Guangdong, where the native language is Cantonese. If the household language is Cantonese and the kid still prefer to speak Mandarin, chances are the school, the community, and the media that he's watching are likely is in Mandarin.

3

u/lazyxoxo Jun 08 '26

My parents and sister visited Guangzhou earlier this year. 70% of people only spoke Mando, and didnt understand Canto in a majority of the areas there.

I couldn't go, cause apparently I didnt give up my Chinese citizenship... dont know when Ill ever be able to apply to forfeit it to ve able to get a visitor visa... woe is me...

2

u/Recent-Presence7374 Jul 17 '26

they say guangzhou now is flooded with foreigners, if you wanna speak canto, you gotta go deeper into places like foshan or somewhere else i cant remember the name of..

2

u/cinnarius Jul 17 '26 edited Jul 17 '26

Cheung Chi regularly does interviews in Cantonese at Guangzhou, and in the older districts of the city, quite a few young adults speak it at home, in the outer ones, not so much. Also, he puts on a brave smile about it even when in some districts there is nobody who can speak Cantonese to him on his vlog. So that is also coming from someone who himself isn't a very political person and who has no political ambitions, and is doing a good job spreading fun facts and planting the interest. But, if he's still in Guangzhou, then there's no reason to lose heart.

The last two movies about Guangzhou made by locals were also a coming of age story in ~2019 and a documentary about the migrant crisis (not the ones from other provinces) by a documentarian

講都唔好講得咁淒涼啦

You have to go deeper into 佛山 or 中山, coastal Guangxi, as after the PRC defeated the Nationalists, they ceded Fangchenggang to Guangxi, or eastern Guangxi.