If you browse a university’s language courses, you’re bound to find “Chinese” somewhere on their list. And while they may not specify this upfront, “Chinese” generally refers to Mandarin Chinese. What you probably won’t find is Cantonese, which usually refers to the standard Cantonese spoken in cities like Hong Kong by over 60 million people. And what you definitely won’t find is Toisanese—my family’s language.
Toisanese is a dialect of Cantonese spoken in the greater Toisan area or Sze Yap region of Guangdong, and it’s a dying language. In fact, it’s become a relatable Toisanese thing not to know Toisanese. After all, it’s not uncommon for diaspora in America to not know the language of their country of origin. What’s somewhat less common—but still all too common—is for these people to be unable to learn their language due to a lack of resources.
Tutors and classes for Toisanese are scarce if not nonexistent. There are no Toisanese courses offered at the institutional level through universities. There is one Toisanese-learning app. With so few options, learning the language is much more challenging than it should be. Standard Cantonese, the closest practical option, has far more resources but still remains difficult. Few universities offer Cantonese, so I’d have to have concurrent enrollment at a nearby college to take it.
Beyond my own experiences, I also spoke with friends about some of the many other languages that face this problem. Linguistic extinction is a major issue among Indigenous communities due to colonialism, forced assimilation into white culture, and other factors. My friend Sofia of the Comanche Nation said, “When I was reading about the language, it said that some elders in the tribe could speak it, but younger people were trying to keep their language alive. There aren’t many resources or ways that I see to really, actually learn most of the language.” It’s been estimated that around one hundred people—less than 1% of the Comanche population—speak the language.
The problem isn’t just with parents not passing down their language to their kids, or kids just really sucking at their language. It runs deeper than that. The root of linguistic extinction is at the societal level: some languages are valued higher than others.
If you ask someone whether you should learn Mandarin or Cantonese, chances are they’ll advise you to choose the former—I’ve asked a lot of people. The reasoning is that Mandarin is more “useful” because more people speak it. It would help me with business, open new doors, allow me to communicate with more people. Some even cite that it’s a prettier language. Cantonese is less ubiquitous and supposedly less sophisticated, and Toisanese is straight-up considered a lower, obscure “peasant” dialect. When I asked my Toisanese grandpa about the language, even he unfortunately viewed standard Cantonese as nicer and expressed that I should learn standard Cantonese rather than Toisanese. In Toisan, the language is institutionally undervalued, and schools teach only Mandarin. Outside Toisan, the negative associations are even more powerful. When a language isn’t deemed worth learning, learning and teaching it become an unfortunate challenge.
Language, however, isn’t just about usefulness. Language is part of our culture, history, and community. And usefulness also varies with the person: although Mandarin is prevalent in the professional world, I think being able to talk to my grandparents would be pretty useful. And I think communicating with other Toisanese Americans would be pretty useful, too.
Linguistic hierarchies therefore only erase the importance of languages like Toisanese and Comanche, contributing to their unfortunate crawl towards extinction. Our society must recognize that all languages are valuable in their own way, are significant to their people, and deserve to be preserved.