Why Don’t Need to Insist on Speaking Standard Cantonese Pronunciation

Language changes over time

Language change is the alteration of a language’s features over time. It is researched in the domains of historical linguistics, sociolinguistics, and evolutionary linguistics, among others. Three main types of change are identified by traditional theories of historical linguistics: systematic change in phoneme pronunciation, or sound change; borrowing, in which characteristics of one language or dialect are changed as a result of influence from another language or dialect; and analogical change, in which a word is changed in shape or grammatical behavior to more closely resemble that of another word.

First of all, we agree that correct pronunciation is very important, wrong pronunciation can lead to all kinds of misunderstandings, but we must distinguish this to be different from the accent. In London, we can find different English accents from all over the world who can communicate with each other happily and no one cares which one is the orthodox accent.

Every live language is evolving all the time. Some observers imply that linguistic change results in a decline in the quality of a language by using pejorative terms like “corruption,” especially when the change is the result of human error or usage that is prescriptively forbidden. This idea is rejected by contemporary linguistics since, from a scientific standpoint, it is impossible to assess the merits of such advances. Any criteria of evaluation applied to language development, according to John Lyons from Cambridge University, “must be built upon an understanding of the many duties a language ‘is called upon to play in the society which uses it.”

What are the causes of the language change?

1) Economy: Speech communities frequently alter their utterances to be as effective and efficient (with the least amount of work) while still achieving communication objectives. Therefore, communicating with purpose includes weighing the advantages and disadvantages.

2) Expressiveness: Overused or common language tends to lose its emotional or rhetorical heft over time; as a result, fresh words and constructs are constantly used to rekindle that heft.
Analogy: Over time, patterns of rules in certain words, sounds, etc. are unintentionally applied by speech communities to unrelated other words, sounds, etc.

3) Language contact occurs when words and phrases from one language are used in another.

4) Cultural environment: Whether or not a culture comes into contact with new people, new situations, and objects inevitably enter its language as a culture develops.

5) Migration: Speech communities that move to an area with a new or more complex linguistic situation will influence language change and be influenced by it; they occasionally even end up with completely new languages, such as pidgins and creoles.

6) Learning errors: Children frequently learn adult forms incorrectly, and the modified forms later become the new norm. Alternately, imperfect learning frequently happens in a particular segment of society, such as a group of immigrants, when the minority language serves as a substratum and the modified forms might ultimately affect usage among the majority.

7) Social prestige: Language may not only change towards features that have more social prestige, but also away from ones with negative prestige, as in the case of the loss of rhoticity in the British Received Pronunciation accent. Such movements can go back and forth.

Circumstances of Cantonese Language Today

Hong Kong Style Cantonese has occupied the mainstream today but you may find it much different from the standard Cantonese Pinyin system which takes Guangzhou city as standard.

On the other hand, today’s Hong Kong Cantonese also have much different from decades ago. with the social change of fast development, today’s Hong Kong Cantonese is also much different from decades ago, many idioms may not use by the youth.

The standard romanization system (Cantonese Pinyin) is just a tool to help us learn the language, it is of course very important, but please don’t turn it into a tool that hinders our progress. In the United States, you may hear more than 10 different accents of Standard American English. When learning Cantonese, the said standard pronunciation is of course very important, but knowing the meaning of the words and the emotional expression during communication may be more important!

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