Cambria Press Author Ross King, who is the Head of Asian Studies at the University of British Columbia (UBC), was interviewed by The Economist on bringing Cantonese back to the university.
There are approximately 62 million people who speak Cantonese, but Mandarin is increasingly the language of choice for the Chinese diaspora, but
UBC is putting up a fight. The university has rejected four offers from the Confucius Institute, a cultural body financed by China’s government, to expand its teaching of Mandarin. “When a university can reject money, it’s a subtle form of pushback to an overbearing culture,” says Mr King. Instead, in 2013 UBC accepted C$2m ($1.5m) from a pair of philanthropists in Hong Kong to offer Cantonese.
Read more at http://www.economist.com/news/americas/21661035-chinatown-cantonese-squares-against-mandarin-long-live-cantopop?frsc=dg%7Ca
Ross King’s latest publication, released just last year, is Infected Korean Language, Purity versus Hybridity: From the Sinographic Cosmopolis to Japanese Colonialism to Global English, which has been praised for being “brilliant, innovative, … a real masterpiece.”
Dr. King’s book is in the Cambria Sinophone World Series, headed by world-renowned Sinologist Victor Mair (University of Pennsylvania), who blogs regularly at the Language Log.
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