中国抗议活动的形式多种多样，但因为拆除明代将领塑像基座上的粤语铭牌而引发的抗议活动，可以说是绝无仅有。
涉及的“违禁物品”是刻有这位将领鼓舞部下冲锋陷阵时使用的一句粤语粗话的铭牌。作为广州11月份主办亚运会前一系列“扮靓”措施的一部分，这块铭牌已在7月份拆除。在对有7000万人使用的俚俗语言——粤语进行这种公开打压的同时，还有人提议在黄金时段不再播放粤语节目。主要电视频道将转而使用属于北方方言的普通话。
愤怒情绪在粤语网友中扩散。于是，7月底，近千名年轻人聚集在广州的一个地铁站，表达对自己的母语被边缘化的恐惧。一些人还用铭牌上的俚俗冲锋口号讥讽警察。约有20人因滋事被捕。
蔡淑芳(Choi Suk-fong)在香港组织了一场声援集会——香港特别行政区也有很多人讲粤语。她说她以前对粤语思考得不多，但现在有了不同的看法。“语言是表达自我、表达自己文化的方式。我曾经把粤语看作一种方言。但我现在意识到，如果我讲粤语，北方人就听不懂我在说什么。”
香港大学语言学家洪柏陶(Umberto Ansaldo)表示，语言可以很快成为政治抗争的焦点。许多国家的历史都是一种语言或方言战胜其他语言或方言的历史，这其中就包括他的祖国意大利——托斯卡纳语成了意大利的主要语言。这位语言学家说：“一种方言拥有了陆军和海军就成为了语言。”
在中国，如今占主导地位的是普通话。20世纪30年代，蒋介石的国民党政府焚烧了地方文献。近年来，工业地区吸引了大量主要讲普通话的农民工。由于学校教授普通话，并且普通话已经成为了通往成功的阶梯，年轻一代已经被吸引到了主导语言的轨道上。其他的中国语言都仅被视为方言。在广州，一名记者就见到学校里挂着这样的标语：“写规范字，用文明语，做文明人”。
西方语言学家表示，实际上，汉语中至少包括八种语言，其间的差异就像英语和葡萄牙语或法语之间的差异一样。但香港大学语言学教授马诗帆(Stephen Matthews)说，这种解读在中国受到排斥，虽然许多“方言”无法互相沟通，但中国还是强调汉语的统一性。
中国学者提到这样一个事实：所有中国人使用的都是同一种象形文字。因此，虽然说普通话的人可能对上海话一个字也听不懂，但还是可以阅读上海的报纸。多数西方语言学家对这种理论不以为然，因为几乎任何语言都可以用汉字书写，就好像不同的欧洲语言都可以用罗马字母书写一样。
正如最近广州街头的抗议活动所显示的那样，对此问题的讨论已远远超出了学术界的范畴。推广普通话并不是国家建设的必然组成部分，但是许多中国人会说，它是中国统一和实力的有力象征——这个论断可能是对的。
然则其他国家却采取了不同的方式。印度独立后，印度领导人最初试图在全国推广印地语，但在泰米尔纳德等邦的分离威胁下，他们退缩了，最终让确有殖民色彩的英语充当起重要的桥梁角色，给各邦留下了在课堂上和工作场所使用地方语言的空间。洪柏陶赞扬印度是语言宽容政策“勇敢实验”的范例。
这并不是批评北京过度推广普通话，也不是暗示中国的语言问题像印度一样具有爆炸性。但如果官方不那么偏执，对地域文化和语言差异的正当自豪感便会逐渐萌芽。的确，北京正在做出更多努力，承认地区差异，或至少是地区间的差距，如向相对不受重视的内陆和西部省份拨付更多资金。在诸如北京奥运会开幕式之类的仪式上，也对中国的民族多样性给予了象征性的认可，尽管几乎没有迹象表明，这种做法不仅仅是迪斯尼式的表面功夫。
不过地方上的激动情绪无论如何都算不上是“反对汉语”。许多粤语人士都津津乐道粤语对古汉语的保留，用粤语朗读唐诗时能感觉到工整的韵脚，用普通话就不会。
“有人说粤语是古汉语的俚俗遗物，”香港中文大学教授叶彩燕(Virginia Yip)说道。“但事实恰好相反，唐诗是中华文化的瑰宝。”中华民国国父孙中山所讲的粤语与普通话一样都是汉语。这并不是说两者就没有什么不同。
译者/何黎
http://www.ftchinese.com/story/001034620
Chinese protests take many forms. But it’s a pretty safe bet that only one has been triggered by the removal of a Cantonese plaque from the plinth of a Ming-dynasty general.
The offending item – a crude quote in Cantonese from the general urging his followers into battle – was taken down in July as part of efforts to spruce up the southern city of Guangzhou before it hosts the Asian Games in November. That affront to Cantonese, an earthy language spoken by up to 70m people, was accompanied by a proposal to take Cantonese programming off the air during prime time. Main channels would switch to Putonghua, literally “standard speech”, more commonly referred to in English as Mandarin.
Outrage spread among Cantonese internet users. Then, at the end of July, nearly 1,000 young people gathered at a metro station in Guangzhou to express fears about the marginalisation of their mother tongue. Some taunted riot police with the plaque’s vernacular call to war. About 20 were arrested for their troubles.
Choi Suk-fong, who organised a sympathy rally in nearby Hong Kong, a city state where Cantonese is also widely spoken, says she hadn’t thought much about Cantonese before. Now she thinks differently. “Language is how you express yourself, your culture. I used to think of Cantonese as a dialect. But I realise, if I speak Cantonese, northerners won’t understand anything I’m saying.”
Umberto Ansaldo, a linguistics expert at Hong Kong university, says language can quickly become a focus of political resistance. The history of many countries – including his native Italy, where Tuscan came to dominate – is of one language or dialect prevailing over others. “A language is a dialect with an army and a navy,” is how linguists put it.
In China it is Mandarin, native to the north, that now dominates. In the 1930s, Chiang Kai-shek’s nationalists burnt regional literature. More recently, industrial regions have become a magnet for mainly Mandarin-speaking migrants. Younger generations have been pulled into the orbit of the dominant language, which is taught in schools and has become a passport to success. Other Chinese languages are treated as mere dialects. In Guangzhou, a reporter spotted school banners bearing the slogan: “Write standard Chinese. Use civilised language. Be a civilised person.”
Western linguists say that, in fact, there are at least eight Sinitic languages, as different from one another as English is from Portuguese or French. But this interpretation, says Stephen Matthews, a linguistics professor at Hong Kong university, is rejected in China where the unity of Chinese is stressed despite many “dialects” being mutually unintelligible.
Chinese scholars point to the fact that all Chinese use a version of pictographic characters. Thus, a Mandarin-speaker unable to comprehend a word of spoken Shanghainese may nevertheless be able to read a Shanghai newspaper. Most western linguists dismiss this thesis, since almost any language could be rendered into Chinese characters just as different European ones can be written in roman script.
The discussion goes well beyond academia as the recent protests on the streets of Guangzhou demonstrate. The march of Mandarin is not an inevitable part of nation-building, although many Chinese would argue – probably correctly – that it is a potent symbol of China’s unity and strength.
Nevertheless, other countries have taken different approaches. The leaders of post-independence India initially tried to impose Hindi throughout the country. But they quickly backed away under the threat of succession from states such as Tamil Nadu. They ended up allowing English (colonial taint and all) to play an important bridging role, and gave states room to use regional languages in classrooms and workplaces. Mr Ansaldo praises India as an example of a “courageous experiment” in linguistic tolerance.
That is not to criticise Beijing unduly for promoting the use of Mandarin, nor to suggest that the language issue in China is anything like as explosive as it has been in India. But there are the beginnings of what, in the absence of official paranoia, ought to be viewed as a healthy pride in regional cultural and linguistic differences. Indeed, Beijing is making further efforts to recognise regional differences – or at least regional disparities – by, for example, funnelling more money to the relatively neglected inland and western provinces. In ceremonies, such as those at the Beijing Olympics, some token recognition is also made of China’s ethnic diversity, though there is little indication that this yet goes beyond a Disneyesque superficiality.
Yet regional stirrings are not, in any way, “anti-Chinese.” Many Cantonese speakers celebrate what they view as their preservation of ancient Chinese. If you read Tang-dynasty poetry aloud in Cantonese, it rhymes. In Mandarin, it does not.
“Some people say Cantonese is a vulgar relic of ancient Chinese,” says Virginia Yip, a professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. “But it is the exact opposite. Tang poetry is the jewel of our civilisation,” she says. The Cantonese language as spoken by Sun Yat-sen, the founding father of the Chinese Republic, is every bit as Chinese as Mandarin. That is not to say it isn’t different.
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