Cantonese speakers how many

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Account icon An icon in the shape of a person's head and shoulders. It often indicates a user profile. Log out. US Markets Loading H M S In the news. Politics Contributors. Felicia Sonmez , Agence France Presse. Sign up for notifications from Insider! According to the Hong Kong by-census , Over the same year span, the percentage of residents who primarily speak Mandarin rose from 1. So how can a language appear robust on paper, yet inspire death knells from the general public?

Hong Kong was a British colony from to While English was the only official government language until , Cantonese was the language of the people. When Hong Kong emigrants left for other lands, they brought Cantonese with them, leaving a lasting imprint on the Chinatowns of Vancouver, New York, and beyond. The UK and China agreed that preserving these institutions would ensure stability in the short to medium term. The city is culturally distinct from mainland China, and Cantonese contributes to that divide.

In recent years, tensions have flared between Hong Kong and mainland China. The clearest manifestation of this was the Umbrella Movement protests, which were immediately sparked by a directive from Beijing on how Hong Kong gets to elect its leader—allowing people to vote only for candidates rubber-stamped by Beijing—but were also an outlet for a host of other social, economic, and political grievances.

This sort of fractured allegiance might seem familiar to residents of Catalonia or Puerto Rico. That can make proclaiming a Hong Konger identity feel like a precarious position, as local identity becomes a moving target. In , the Communist government promoted standardized Mandarin, or putonghua , in order to improve interregional communication.

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