Chinese are criticizing zero-Covid — in language censors don’t seem to understand

CNN ^ | Jessie Yeung,

[BenLurkin]

These posts are in Cantonese... It can be difficult to decipher by speakers of Mandarin – China’s official language and the one favored by the government – especially in its written and often complex slang forms.

In nearby Cantonese-speaking Hong Kong, anti-government demonstrators in 2019 often used Cantonese wordplay both for protest slogans and to guard against potential surveillance by mainland Chinese authorities.

Though Cantonese shares much of its vocabulary and writing system with Mandarin, many of its slang terms, expletives and everyday phrases have no Mandarin equivalent. Its written form also sometimes relies on rarely used and archaic characters, or ones that mean something totally different in Mandarin, so Cantonese sentences can be difficult for Mandarin readers to understand.

Compared to Mandarin, Cantonese is highly colloquial, often informal, and lends itself easily to wordplay – making it well-suited for inventing and slinging barbs.

When Hong Kong was rocked by anti-government protests in 2019 – fueled in part by fears Beijing was encroaching on the city’s autonomy, freedoms and culture – these attributes of Cantonese came into sharp focus.

Other plays on written characters illustrate the endless creativity of Cantonese, such as a stylized version of “Hong Kong” that, when read sideways, becomes “add oil” – a rallying cry in the protests.

For some, using Cantonese to criticize the government seems particularly fitting given the central government has aggressively pushed for Mandarin to be used nationwide in education and daily life – for instance, in television broadcasts and other media – often at the expense of regional languages and dialects.

These efforts turned into national controversy in 2010, when government officials suggested increasing Mandarin programming on the primarily-Cantonese Guangzhou Television channel – outraging residents, who took part in rare mass street rallies and scuffles with police.

[Fai Mao]

May I suggest, cursive? We need a code.

[seowulf]

Let's all start speaking a thick Scottish brogue. They'll never figure out what we're talking about.

[married21]

My daughter had an interesting conversation with a Cantonese speaker who showed her how mandarin characters, when Mao simplified them, lost a lot of nuance and expressiveness. I love that Cantonese people can circumvent the communist dumbing down of the language, and use their language for freedom.

[ifinnegan]

Their constant Covid testing is now more thann1% of their entire economy.

Zero Covid makes no sense.

[ifinnegan]

Taiwan and Hong Kong use the traditional Chinese.

Chicoms are going to force simplified characters and mandarin on Hong Kong now.