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Linguistic landscapes

Multilingual Macau

By April 22, 2013June 6th, 201964 Comments6 min read25,461 views
The front cover of the tourist map of multilingual Macau

The front cover of the tourist map of multilingual Macau

Last week I had the privilege of visiting the University of Macau and in Macau I discovered yet another unique variation on the many multilingual landscapes we have featured here on Language on the Move.

Macau, a former Portuguese colony, has been a Special Administrative Region of China since 1999. The official languages of Macau are Chinese and Portuguese. English plays an unofficial but highly prominent role: it is the medium of instruction at the University of Macau and at a number of secondary schools. Other schools use Cantonese as medium of instruction and there is one Portuguese-medium school.

Trilingualism in Chinese, Portuguese and English is just the beginning, though. The linguistic situation is further complicated by the diversity of Chinese and the importance of the tourism industry.

The version of Chinese that is local to Macau is Cantonese but Putonghua is gaining in importance. Macau has about half a million residents but welcomes a staggering number of tourists: close to 30 million tourists visit Macau each year. Most of these come from Mainland China and so it is not surprising that in tourism spaces I overheard much more Putonghua than Cantonese. Written Chinese, too, comes in at least three varieties: traditional characters, simplified characters and pinyin. Furthermore, pinyin looks different depending on whether the writer followed English-based or Portuguese-based conventions.

The languages of other tourist markets also feature with maps and signs in Japanese, Korean and Thai.

The linguistic landscape of Macau is thus extremely diverse and each tourist site has its own conventions, as the following examples demonstrate.

A-Ma Temple

Chinese inscriptions at the A-Ma Temple

Chinese inscriptions at the A-Ma Temple

The famous Taoist temple dedicated to the goddess of seafarers, Matsu, from which the name “Macau” is thought to derive, is enlisted on the UNESCO World Heritage List. On the day we visited it was crowded with Chinese tour groups. The languages on display were ancient Chinese inscriptions in stones and on the temple façades. The prayer tablets where the devout can record their wishes and prayers also seemed to be Chinese only (although there were hundreds of them so I cannot be sure that prayers in other languages were not also hidden away somewhere).

The direction and prohibition signs were either in Chinese only or in Chinese and English (of the non-standardized “Chinglish” variety). One stall selling incense sticks and other devotionalia featured Chinese and Thai signs. Portuguese and what might be called “standard English” were notable for their absence.

Our Lady of Penha Church

Latin and Chinese on a devotional card at La Penha Church

Latin and Chinese on a devotional card at La Penha Church

One of Macau’s many Catholic churches (Macau used to be the staging post for the Christianisation of East Asia and has the largest number of Catholic churches by square mile in Asia), Penha Church sits on a hill and affords an excellent view over the harbour and across the bay to the mainland. The church itself is not a tourist destination but the spiritual centre of a community of Trappist nuns from Indonesia.

When we visited, the church was empty. Outside, there were a few newly-wed couples in Western wedding garb who were out to have their pictures taken. As far as I could hear, they received their instructions from the photographers on how to pose in Cantonese.

The languages on the signage could not have been more different from the A-Ma Temple: inscriptions on the façade were also monolingual but monolingual in Portuguese rather than Chinese. Signs about the code of conduct came in three language combinations: Chinese-Only, Chinese-English and English-Chinese.

Signage relating to the spiritual life of the church was either predominantly in Chinese or English, with one or the other language predominating and a few expressions in the other interspersed. To my great surprise, I also discovered some Latin slogans on devotional cards. A collection box, which looked quite old and featured Portuguese, Chinese and English suggests that the English presence in Macau predates the tourism boom and globalized signage of the past decade.

Mandarin House

Trilingual poster at the Mandarin House about 盛 世 危 言 (Warning to a Prosperous Age)

Trilingual poster at the Mandarin House about 盛 世 危 言 (Warning to a Prosperous Age)

The so-called “Mandarin House” is another UNESCO World Heritage listed building. It used to be the residence of the Qing dynasty reformer Zheng Guanying. When we visited, the building was deserted and other than the attendants we were the only people present making it a very serene space. Information and prohibition signs were relatively standardized and trilingual in Chinese, Portuguese and English although some prohibition signs were more haphazard and contained only Chinese and English.

What was most interesting was the posters about Zheng Guanying’s book Words of Warning to a Prosperous Age (Shengshi weiyan 盛 世 危 言). What little information about the book I could gather from the information panels suggests that it is a highly relevant text for Intercultural Communication Studies. One website sums up the argument as follows:

As a famous reformer of late Qing China, Zheng Guanying was the earliest advocate of representative and participatory political system in the 1870s, the earliest to call for “commercial warfare ” against Western economic imperialism, and one of the earliest to seriously study international law and its relevance to China’s national identity and foreign relations. He was also one of the earliest Chinese to emphasize the combination of Western medicine and Chinese medicine.

His ideas continue to be highly influential in contemporary China and a translation of Shengshi weiyan would be highly desirable. Unfortunately, I have not been able to discover an English translation. I hope this is not another case of “no translation;” if it is, a translation would be highly desirable not only for Chinese Studies but also for Intercultural Communication Studies.

Casinos

Official trilingual "no smoking" sign

Official trilingual “no smoking” sign

A discussion of the touristic linguistic landscape of Macau would not be complete without reference to the casinos because that is where most of the 30 million annual visitors are headed. I got to visit two of them: the Venetian, which is operated by the Las Vegas-based Sands corporation and is an imitation of the Las Vegas Venetian, and City of Dreams, a joint venture between the Macau casino dynasty Ho and the Australian billionaire James Packer. Before anyone gets the wrong idea, the gambling areas occupy only a relatively small part of the casinos and while that is obviously where the action is, I did not enter.

Casino resorts are intended to be spectacular and novel. The Venetian, for instance, looks like a cross between a baroque church and Venetian canals and plazas and City of Dreams features a huge fish tank with (digital) mermaids. However, when it comes to signage there is no trace of the spectacular and unique. In both casinos, commercial signage was completely standardized in the non-language of other global consumer spaces. Direction signs were also standardized in Chinese and English.

Portuguese, by contrast, only had a tiny presence on state-mandated signs, particularly the ubiquitous no-smoking signs, which are in Chinese, Portuguese and English. The biggest surprise were the emergency exit signs: they did not contain any English and were in Portuguese and Chinese only.

Linguistic Pragmatism

Analysts of multilingualism in Macau have described multilingualism in Macau as “an illusion” because official societal Chinese-Portuguese bilingualism is rarely undergirded by individual bilingualism. Indeed, all the people I had extended conversations with were either English speakers from Australia, UK and the USA or Putonghua speakers from Mainland China and Taiwan. With three exceptions none of these had learnt either of the two official languages (the exceptions being an American and a Tawainese who had learnt Cantonese and an Australian who had learnt Portuguese).

Despite the amazing multilingualism in the public signage it may thus well be that the various language communities largely keep themselves to themselves. The fact that each space I visited has its own language practices with regard to signage seems to point in the same direction. If so, it is a pragmatic approach that seems to work perfectly well as a way to manage linguistic diversity and public communication with multiple audiences.

Ingrid Piller

Author Ingrid Piller

Dr Ingrid Piller, FAHA, is Distinguished Professor of Applied Linguistics at Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia. Her research expertise is in bilingual education, intercultural communication, language learning, and multilingualism in the context of migration and globalization.

More posts by Ingrid Piller

Join the discussion 64 Comments

  • Diana BaRob says:

    I would like to add to the conversation as a first-generation immigrant, born and raised in Macau. It is not just secondary schools that use English as the medium of instruction. Most international or Catholic schools, such as The International School of Macao and Escola São João De Brito (my school) respectively teach English as their MOI starting from elementary. My school specifically is separated into a Chinese and English section. In fact, English speakers outnumber Portuguese speakers as schools that use Chinese as the MOI typically teach an English class rather than Portuguese. Hence, most of the people I know personally do not know how to speak Chinese nor Portuguese (official languages of Macau), despite living here our whole lives. Even the settings on our social media or media outlets differ linguistically. For instance, my Chinese friends have Chinese as their settings, whereas my Western and other Southeast Asian friends use English. Personally, my media is very Westernized.

    I do regret not having learnt Chinese, as it still is the main language of Macau, but I have never been able to practice speaking Chinese because I have been surrounded by people that converse in English my whole life. I know basic conversational Chinese (Cantonese specifically) because some shopkeepers (mostly the elderly) cannot speak English. With that said, it is quite easy to survive in Macau as most of the populace is already capable of speaking English in a communicative level (w/ the exception of some of the elderly as mentioned). I have also retained my parents’ native tongues because, in addition to communicating with them in their native tongues at home, Macau is home to multiple Catholic churches that offer mass in four languages: Chinese, Portuguese, English, and Filipino (due to most Catholics in Macau being Filipino).

    Apart from education and tourism, many people from all over the world come to Macau for work (mostly Westerners or Southeast Asians), which leads to English being the medium of intercultural communication. This is all I have observed from my experience within my community, which obviously differs from the experience of someone from an all-Chinese community. My friends and I have compared our differing experiences growing up in Macau, so I have a semblance of what life is like for them here. However, I do not want to go into detail because it would not be authentic and I would never be able to explain it as well as they could.

    Anyway, thank you for beautifully capturing the essence of Macau in your writing! ¬¬¬¬

  • Jeff says:

    Thank you for the posts, Ingrid!
    Another example of a place with intense language and culture contact is New York City, which was founded after European settlers encountered Native Americans using maritime technology. Throughout its history, New York City has maintained a high level of language and cultural diversity. A closer look at the neighborhoods within the city reveals an incredibly linguistically diverse landscape where cultural contact is an everyday occurrence. Even now, the dominance of English in New York City is becoming tempered as Spanish is increasingly used, and is often included on official and unofficial signage.

    Reference:
    https://www.businessinsider.com/new-york-city-brooklyn-manhattan-language-maps-2018-5

  • Enkhzaya Regzendorj says:

    Thank you Ingrid for these interesting articles.
    I have never known that Portuguese is used in Macau, even though I have a friend from Macau. Also was interesting to read about Turkey as we also share a lot in common with the Turkish language.
    In our country, we had a close relationship with Russia throughout history and Russian was widely used in our country for few decades. There was big Russian cultural and language influence since 1920s.
    Especially, I grew up in a city where there is a big mining company that cooperated with Russia. In our city, we had a lot of Russian shops, school, tv channels and so on. Now things has been bit changed and people are being attracted to Western culture and language more nowadays. Especially English is becoming very popular at schools, names and signs are written in English a lot.
    But at same time, eventhough it is nice to see diversity and multilingualism , it is make me feel bit sad that we are loosing our own language value. I have seen a lot that people in my country prefer to use English at home, using a English words (to look fancy) a lot while they are speaking in their native language for their everyday conversation, a lot of children are growing up with fluent English but less of their native language. Eventhough we have to go forward with modernism, we have to keep our unique culture and language alive at same time.

  • Suyeon Kim says:

    Thank you, Ingrid. I really enjoyed reading your two articles. Your articles encouraged me to investigate Singapore’s multilingualism. Even though I travelled to Singapore for twice, honestly, I didn’t wonder what kind of official languages are specifically being used there. I just thought English and Chinese were their official languages since I could hear and see those languages often when I stayed there. As Singapore is composed of three different ethnic groups, Chinese (74.1%), Malay (13.4%), Indian (9.2%) and others (3.3%), it turns out that their official languages are Malay, and Tamil including English and Mandarin Chinese. It is interesting to know that Malay is the national language of Singapore. Next time, if I have another opportunity to visit Singapore again, I’ll carefully look around the signs of streets and listen to people’s conversations to experience the multilingual culture of that place!!

    https://www.holidify.com/pages/singapore-languages-629.html

  • Anaid says:

    Thanks, professor Piller for sharing those articles. In the contemporary world, it is an everyday reality that two or more languages are in contact for different reasons such as political, cultural or economic. We can see as an example of intense language and culture contact between languages in the United States between English and Spanish. The mix between English and Spanish is usually known as “Spanglish” in the United States. This term refers to Spanish speakers who speak fluent English will often insert Spanish into English phrases such as ¿cómo estás? ¿qué estás haciendo this Friday? However, it is essential to consider Spanglish itself is not a language on its own. Still, the Spanglish of Mexican-Americans in Los Angeles varies from the Puerto Rico neighbourhoods of New York City and the Cuban-Americans living in Miami. It will be interesting to see how many more varieties of Spanglish continue growing and changing in the next couple of years because of the emigrations after the pandemic.

    Reference:https://mvorganizing.org/what-is the-origin-of-Spanglish/

  • Ness says:

    Thank you so much for these two interesting articles.

    They remind me of an area in the Amazon Rainforest where the borders of Brazil, Peru, and Colombia meet, which is called Tres Fronteras (“the triple frontier”). This area is inhabited by several indigenous groups, among which Ticunas are more numerous. In the early XX century, and forced by nationalist interests, the indigenous peoples in the region had to acquire a nationality, which drove them to cut ties with their own ethnicity.

    As a consequence, indigenous inhabitants in each part of the border speak their indigenous languages in addition to Spanish (in the case of Peru and Colombia) and Portuguese (in Brazil), respectively. Nevertheless, mobility among the three countries is considerably high, which allows inhabitants of one country to go to another one to work, study or even have lunch. Staple products are also commercialized among the three countries.

    One of the most meaningful indications of the interaction among peoples is a festival called ‘Festival de la Cofraternidad Amazónica’ where people share and celebrate the mixture of influences from the different cultures. A linguistic variant called ‘portuñol leticiano’ (a combination of Spanish and Portuguese) is registered to be spoken by people in the area between the Colombian and Brazilian Amazonian areas.

    Another sample of how these cultures and languages in contact interact is the existence of a song called ‘Mariquinha’, a popular Amazonian song product of Colombian, Peruvian and Brazilian musical expressions that describes a trip throughout the triple frontier and highlights places, music, food, fruits from the three countries that are part of this region and, of course, Portuñol.

    SONG: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=asXogPpOvMk

    I had the chance to travel to the Colombian state of Amazonas three years ago. On the last day, we were taken by bus from Letizia (Colombia) to Tabatinga (Brazil) in less than 10 minutes This last stop on this tourism agency-type of trip is destined for tourists to do some shopping. I found that all salespeople I interacted with spoke Portuguese but were able to understand everything I said in Spanish. Signage in stores was in both languages, which is proof of the constant contact among cultures in this area and how they target tourist needs by making sure to include Spanish in their businesses to facilitate communication.

    REFERENCES:

    – Congreso de Valladolid: El español en la frontera amazónica (Brasil-Colombia) : https://cvc.cervantes.es/obref/congresos/valladolid/ponencias/unidad_diversidad_del_espanol/5_espanol_y_portugues/moreno_f.htm
    – Revista Amazónica 2014: https://sinchi.org.co/files/publicaciones/revista/pdf/7/7%20la%20frontera%20amaznica%20de%20colombia%20con%20brasil%20y%20per%20elementos%20para%20comprender%20la%20pertenencia%20de%20la%20integracin%20y%20la%20cooperacin%20fronteriza.pdf
    – “Alegría sin fronteras” entre Brasil, Colombia y Perú de cómo “tres países hermanos” celebran el nacionalismo: https://dialnet.unirioja.es/servlet/articulo?codigo=4073104

  • Yuxuan Zhang says:

    Thank you for sharing these 2 interesting blogs, Ingrid. I would like to share my experience in Thailand. I went to Thailand for isolating before I could come to Australia, and when I arrived in Bangkok, I called the driver who was supposed to picked me up in the airport in English. But I couldn’t understand what he was talking about and neither he could understand what I was talking about, as he couldn’t speak English very well. Then he asked me where I came from, I told him I am a Chinese, and he began to talk with me in Mandarin. That’s really surprised me as I could tell he is not Chinese, but he could speak Chinese better than English. When we saw each other, he even introduced delicious Thai food to me in Mandarin. At first, I thought even though I couldn’t speak Thai, English is an official language in the world, I could use English to communicate in Thailand, But, I found that most Thai could speak Mandarin, and some of them even couldn’t speak English.
    Many restaurants are Thai and Chinese menus instead of Thai and English menus, and many historical places have Chinese introduction as well as Mandarin-speaker tourist guides. I asked some Thai for why they could speak Mandarin better than English, and some of them told me that their parents are Chinese, they were born in Thailand, but they learned Mandarin when they were in their childhood, and some said because there are more Chinese tourists than English tourists, in this case, Mandarin is more popular. I found that probably for some people, they don’t care too much about which language is the official language in the world, instead, which language can bring more benefits to them is the most important point and is the motivation of why they learn this language.

  • Siyao says:

    Dear Ingrid,

    Thank you very much for sharing two wonderful articles. In fact, many cities in the world like Istanbul and Macao use multiple languages, such as Manchester and Toronto, and I believe that linguistic diversity will be an inevitable trend with the development of tourism and the increase in the number of immigrants. These two articles remind me of my only trip abroad to Japan two years ago. On a subway, I was pleasantly surprised to hear that the station was announced in four languages: Japanese, English, Chinese and Korean. In many tourist attractions, signs are usually written in Japanese and English. Therefore, I searched relevant information and found that the use of foreign vocabulary, especially English, is dominant in Japan and is particularly prominent in the commercial sector. Tokyo’s streets are full of commercial signs and billboards which contain English words and phrases. A data of the languages contained in the Japanese signs shows that the use of English accounts for 97.6%, followed by Japanese at 72.1%. Except for Chinese (2.7%) and Korean (1.7%), the signs contain 11 languages with less than 1%.

    Reference:
    https://www.researchgate.net/publication/233256736_Multilingualism_in_Tokyo_A_Look_into_the_Linguistic_Landscape

  • Alicia says:

    In addition to the annotation of tourist attractions, linguistic diversity is also reflected in the public transport facilities in the different regions. The official language of China is Mandarin (based on the Beijing regional dialect). With the increasing globalisation of the economy in recent years, the importance of English cannot be overstated. In the northern parts of China, such as the capital Beijing and my home (Liaoning province in the north-east of China), the metro stations are announced in Mandarin and English. In other cosmopolitan cities in China where East meets West, the local public transport system does not overlook the importance of local dialects. For example, Shanghai Metro Line 16 – Mandarin, English and Wu (the local dialect); Guangzhou (the capital city of Guangdong province) Metro – Mandarin, Cantonese (the local dialect) and English; Hong Kong Special Administrative Region – Cantonese, Mandarin and English (in a different order to the Guangzhou Metro). In contrast, there is currently no metro in Macau and public buses announce stops in Cantonese, Portuguese, Mandarin and English. The choice by the Metro to use the distinctive local dialect for station announcements is seen by several people as one sign of strong confidence in the region’s economy and culture (“What cities across the country can announce their stations in dialect?”, 2017).

    Reference:

    What cities across the country can announce their stations in dialect? (2017). Retrieved August 14, 2021, from https://www.zhihu.com/question/24303576/answer/31118414

  • Kelly says:

    Thank you Ingrid for sharing this two research blogs about Macau and Istanbul! When I finished reading these two articles, it suddenly aroused my urge to travel as soon as possible as a travel lover.

    When it comes to language diversity, there is one country I have to mention here which is Malaysia. Malaysia is a multi-ethnic, multi-lingual and multi-cultural country dominated by the three ethnic groups of Malays, Chinese and Indians. In terms of the number of languages users, Malaysia has four major languages: Malay, English, Chinese and Tamil. But there are currently 137 living languages. Due to the complex racial situation, people of minority ethnic groups not only have to learn these languages, but also have to take care of their own languages. Moreover, Malaysia attracts a large number of tourists from all over the world every year and most of them are tourists from China, so Chinese can be seen in many popular cities. Also, multilingual and multilingual code switching is very common in Malaysia.

    Overall, it is precisely because of the linguistic diversity in many countries around the world that cultural and language contacts can produce so many collisions.

  • Phan Nguyen Quang Khai (Khai) says:

    It is exciting to see many comments about cultures in contact in this comment section. It is obvious that the movement of people (globalization, tourism, war, etc.) has affects the languages used in a region (as mentioned in your posts and other students’ comments). I would like to add one more variable to the language movement equation: politics. Most of us learn a foreign language at school but which language chosen to be taught at school could be related to some social-political change/movement. For instance, in my extended family, my grandfather knows French, my aunt knows Russian, and my mom knows English. When I first learned about this, I was surprised (because most people now learn English at school). However, the foreign language taught at school also depends on the social-political environment at that time. Vietnam used to be France’s colony until 1945 (my grandfather’s time), then Vietnam became a socialist state allying with the USSR (which resulted in Vietnamese schools preferring to teach Russian to my aunt), and finally, in 1986, Vietnam opened up its economy and normalize its relationship with America (1993), which encouraged a new wave of English learners (my mom’s time). It is surprising to learn that English as a standard foreign language is not the status quo in Vietnam up until recently.

    • Thank you, Khai, for this important observation! Couldn’t agree more about the role of politics in language and culture contact. One of the reasons I find histories of language and culture contact so fascinating is that they remind us that the seemingly monolithic hegemony of English will be transient, too …

  • Frances Tran says:

    In my home country – Vietnam, there are lots of tourists to visit, close to 20 millions tourists visit each year, and 96% are foreign visitors. That’s why Vietnamese Government implements strategies to develop tourism and most of Vietnamese are working in tourism industry.
    I had come to Sapa – is an mountainous region in the northwestern Vietnam and I was suprised there. Most of public signages were written in Vietnamese and English, but the special thing was language in ethnic villages. Many of the ethnic minorities in Sapa do not speak Vietnamese as their first language. They communicate using their own languages and dialects. But, the local people also speak English, it is not the broken English, that the kind of English with well pronunciation and grammar. All of them learn English from the tourists themselves.
    In other town, we can see the linguistic diversity and public communication with multiple audiences through the public signages, similarly in Macau. But, in Sapa, the locals can not speak Vietnamese, they just speak ethnic languages and English. Thus, I am worried that it can be a threat to Vietnamese Goverment when a part of young Vietnamese do not speak Vietnamese as their first language.

    • Thank you, Frances, for this intriguing example! Are the minority languages and cultures an attraction in itself? I mean, do tourists go to Sapa for the natural beauty and leisure attractions, or also to experience minority cultures?

  • Xiaowen Xu says:

    Dear Ingrid, these two posts are intriguing to read, I haven’t had the chance to visit Macao yet, but I am surprised about the great impact of tourism and colonialism can have on language diversity in a place.

    I think metropolis in China nowadays can be great examples of language and cultural contact. The example I want to mention here is Shanghai, the economic hub of China. A huge number of international economic activities are held in Shanghai each year, foreigners around the world (especially from English-speaking countries) came and left this city for business. Therefore, it will be not surprised to see a lot of foreigners on the street in Shanghai. Under this condition, many people from the young generation are fluent in both Chinese and English, some of them can even master three or four languages such as Japanese or Korean. Also, Disneyland in Shanghai attracts millions of tourists globally each year, this city has already become a melting-pot place where different cultures and languages are connected and infused with each other.

  • Hee Won Song says:

    After reading the both posts, and especially about multilingualism in Macau, It reminded me about the trip I went on just before the pandemic.
    I went to Taiwan for 9 nights and pretty much saw the similar phenomenon you have described in this post.
    Interestingly there are several languages spoken in Taiwan and they are: Mandarin Chinese, ‘Taiwanese’ and Hakka.
    – Mandarin Chinese is the most widely spoken language in the country, thus is the lingua franca of Taiwan and interestingly, in Taiwan they use traditional Chinese characters.
    – ‘Taiwanese’ is the colloquial term for Hokkien is considered the local langauge of Taiwan and is spoken to some extent at home and even used depending on context.
    – Hakka is spoken by a minority in Taiwan .
    Just like Macau, Taiwan was colonised by Japan and indeed Japanese did somewhat influence language in Taiwan.
    When I was in Taiwan, pretty much in every tourist location, I could see signs in traditional Chinese, English, Japanese and Korean, therefore 4 languages. Even in restaurant, when I walked in, the staff gave me a Korean menu even though I didn’t ask for one, and on most menus it consisted of the 4 languages. Also, the people who selling street food, knew some basic Korean to allow Korean tourists buy their food. I found this phenomenon very interesting and to see that Macau is quite similar to the experience I had in Taiwan, it made me want to go and experience the multilingualism present in Macau!

  • w2 says:

    Thank you Ingrid for sharing two interesting articles about Macau and Istanbul. I think Sydney could be a good example as well. It is one of the most multicultural cities in the world. Around 40% of people were born overseas. Cultural and linguistic diversity have always been a feature of Sydney and can be seen anywhere. For instance, the signage or direction signs of some churches were in Korean and English. In some churches, the worship services are in three languages: English, Chinese, and Cantonese. There are 3 different speaking groups. The Pastor speaks English in the congregation and a Chinese pastor interprets what he says into Chinese or Cantonese.

    Restaurants are another example of linguistic diversity in Sydney. When you walk into some Korean or Japanese restaurants, you will find the languages on the menu include Korean, Japanese, English, and Chinese so that people from different backgrounds can have a better understanding.

    Also, due to the rise of new immigrants and international students, the signs or notices in the garbage rooms of apartments come in several language combinations, such as English, Korean, and Chinese. The law on disposing of rubbish is different from their home country. So the signs can help waste management in Sydney.

  • Tu Nguyen says:

    My home country, Vietnam, is a multiethnic, multicultural and multilingual nation comprising one majority and 53 minority groups. In this complex ethnolinguistic situation, the case of Cham people, one of the largest minority groups in Vietnam, might be a prime example of intense language and cultural contact in the minority language. The Chams are the remnants of the ancient kingdom of Champa, whose mother tongue is a Malay-Polynesian (Austronesian) language. However, their language can only be used within their confined minority while the national language- Vietnamese, is successfully predominating in all formal domains of contemporary life, such as education, technology, and law (Chi & Huy, 2019). Consequently, the Cham language is losing its position to Vietnamese when later Cham generations gradually tend to speak Vietnamese as their first language. This tendency can make this minority language vanish in the long term if the Vietnamese government does not promote any proper guidelines to encourage Cham people to preserve their mother tongue.
    Reference:
    Chi, N., & Huy, N. (2019). Language Education Policy in Vietnam. Routledge. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/332866557_Language_Education_Policy_in_Vietnam

    • Thank you, Tu, for sharing this example! I know that the Cham language even has its own script – do you know whether that script is still taught and in active use?

      • Tu Nguyen says:

        Thank you for your reply!
        Nowadays, their scripts are still used in everyday life for written communication. Moreover, in few primary schools in central Binh Thuan and Ninh Thuan Province, where the largest Cham populations live, Cham language is taught 3 hours a week for grade 1 to grade 5, among other 9 compulsory subjects trained in the national language (Vietnamese). However, the majority of them remain impoverished, making it challenging to eradicate illiteracy in general and teach their script in particular.

  • tviq says:

    These are two great articles.I really enjoy it!
    From these two articles, we can learn that using multiple languages is a trend in Macau or Istanbul, and I also think that this trend will more and more happen in other countries. On a trip a few years ago, I visited Seoul and Los Angeles. You may be surprised to find that there is no longer a single language for prompts in airports, entertainment sites, or businesses company. There are English, Chinese, local languages, even Portuguese and so on. I was even able to communicate with local Korean guides in Chinese with some daily life. The combination of local languages and cultures with other countries, from the perspective of tourism, create more attractions for tourists.
    Over time, these phenomena will occur in all corners of the globe.

  • Ian P says:

    Hi Ingrid,
    I really liked both your articles, especially the one about the Turkish language becoming ‘modernised’. It is a shame that some languages change and lose their traditional meaning, similar to Dutch – which has changed a lot overtime because of English. The Macau article interested me because not only is it a place I want to visit, but there is so much history attached to it, both from colonialism and language. As for trilingualism, I visited Kazan, Russia in 2018 and was surprised to see the Russian, Tatar, and English languages on the metro train line. Tatar is the official language of Tatarstan, a so-called republic, located in Russia. This gave me the indication that there are many regions around the world that we might not even know that have their own language. Another area in Russia is the Altar Republic which has three official laguages as well Russian, Altay, and Kazakh. There is so much language diversity across all corners of the globe.

  • Tram (Sarah) says:

    The fact that Chinese Cantonese in Macau is losing its position to Putonghua due to a huge number of tourists from Mainland China has brought me to think of Nha Trang, one of the most attractive tourist destinations in Vietnam.

    Nha Trang welcomes nearly 3 million foreign tourists each year, mostly are Chinese and Russian. For this reason, many of the shop signs, advertising signs, or even the menus are written mainly in 3 languages: English, Chinese, and Russian. In fact, this multilingual phenomenon exists not only in written forms. You can easily hear any street vendors, waiters, or taxi drivers speak these languages ( however, do notice that most of them using broken Chinese or Russian). Interestingly, the mother tongue Vietnamese is hard to be seen on these shop signs.

    Now, I do agree with multilingualism may bring out intense language and culture contact, however, as in the case of Nha Trang, probably “too intense”. This practice, too, happens in some other major cities in Vietnam like Da Nang, Ha Noi, Hai Phong, and so on. Hence, I started to question whether this is a fascinating multilingual landscape or a threat to its mother tongue?

    • Thank you, Tram! You pose a really important question. In tourism, as in many other domains, language follows the money … Thank you for allowing us a fascinating glimpse into Nha Trang!

  • Jay says:

    The two given blog posts about Macau and Turkey gave me a deeper insight towards multilingualism and trilingualism. Pakistan (my home country) also has a distinct diversity of languages and cultures because it was the part of subcontinent, which was colonised by British. Later after partition in 1947 the cultural influence was transferred across the border. Before the invasion of British the most common languages spoken in the region were Urdu, Sanskrit, Bengali Punjabi, Telugu and Hindi. Later after the British rule English was practiced as a second language and became the official language of the country. To conclude we can say that Pakistan has a strong influence of religion as well as culture when we discuss its multilingualism.

    https://www.thenews.com.pk/magazine/you/523460-the-others-living-among-us

  • Monica says:

    While it may seem a boring example, I think Australia displays examples of intense language and cultural contact in everyday situations in its large cities. During the current lockdown, I happened to be standing outside our house with my German speaking children when we were passed by a couple with a young child on their daily lockdown walk. Their young child spoke English, but also French and Pakistani – the languages of the child’s parents. I would argue that this is a fairly common scene in Australia – families who move between English and one or more additional languages and cultures. Increasingly, this multilingualism is being reflected through translations of official documents (my recent Census instructions provided information for translating services in 14 additional languages) and signage (in some areas). However, it is still surprising that despite the intense language and cultural contact we experience in a wide range of daily activities in Australia, large domains within Australian society still operate with a monolingual, English-centric mindset.

    • Thanks, Monica! I agree that Sydney’s linguistic diversity is an endless source of surprises. When my mother, who does not speak any English, visited, she would walk around our suburb and say “Gruess Gott” to everyone she met. I found this a bit cringe and tried to dissuade her, but she actually got to chat to a surprising number of people. In fact, she got to learn more neighborhood gossip than I ever do …

  • Brynn says:

    The link between immigration, tourism and multilingualism in this post about Macau reminds me a lot of being in Marrakech, Morocco. I visited for a few days in 2008 and was immediately interested in the prevalence of Moroccan Arabic, French, English and Spanish. Because Spain is only a quick 45-minute flight from Morocco, there is a large percentage of Moroccan tourism that comes directly from Spain. There were several times during my stay when I tried to speak Spanish, then English and finally a bit of French in order to be understood, and I usually got by with one of those languages. Interestingly, though, Moroccans were hesitant to speak Spanish (even when it was clear that they understood it) and much preferred to speak English or French with tourists. I later learned that this was because of current cultural and political tensions with Spain. It was a good reminder that just because a country or city SEEMS multilingual in its official signage, individual inhabitants may not view all of those languages as equal.

  • Roxie says:

    Compared to the two articles I realise that even if the linguistic record’s nature is fleeting and people tried to erase multilingualism in history, language and culture contact as Istanbul and Macau have similarities.
    First, because medieval Constantinople was a multilingual and multicultural city, linguistic diversity happened at that time. There were many language varieties for an ad of a room. The languages in Istanbul had changed many times in ancient history. When Mehmed II took the city, the main language changed from Greek and Latin to Arabic, Persian and Turkish. However, contemporary examples of linguistic diversity in Istanbul are the Russian ‘Sale’ signs in the shop windows and the tourist communications in all the languages of countries with strong currencies.
    While multilingualism happens in Macau as well, from trilingualism in Chinese, Portuguese and English when Macau was a Portuguese colony to multilingualism in public signage.
    Therefore, we can see that languages diversity are related to history. The application of these examples are linguistic diversity is the basis of the sociolinguistic inquiry that includes that hidden histories of linguistic diversity and modernity’s attempts to erase diversity.

  • Adam Cameron-Taylor says:

    Another former Portuguese colony and a place of great interest, both culturally and linguistically, is Melacca in Malaysia. There is still an area in the city, St John’s Village (Kampung Portugis) where the Kristang language is spoken. This language is a mixture of Malay and Portuguese. In addition both the cuisine and architecture show a wonderful mix of Portuguese and Malay traditions. Also there are many descendants of the Baba-Nyonya, Chinese Malaysians, who have been settled in this part of the world since at least the sixteenth century have their own language incorporating influences from many different languages including the expression for a coffee shop, a ‘kopi tiam’ – itself a mix of Hokkien and Malay.

  • Rhonda says:

    One of the predominant similarities between Istanbul and Macau is the religious and spiritual influence from history. Both of the cities have significant impacts by their historical culture of colonization. The multicultural and multilinguistic features create the uniqueness of the cities that become attractive to tourists. Moreover, it is fascinating for us as readers to reflect on the act of language reform, it can be both harmful and beneficial with maintaining the cultural heritages, such as languages and customs. The articles made me reflect on how I am as a teacher delivering Aboriginal culture studies to the children through Dreamtime stories, Aboriginal songs, arts and crafts to help the young generation understand the ancient history of Australia. By teaching and learning about the rich historical cultures within Australia, we together appreciate and embrace the multicultural society we are living in.

  • Yidan Liu says:

    Lydia
    From this article, I realize that multilingualism is a trend in Macau or Istanbul; this may cause by the colony, migration, globalization, and tourism development. I am interested in language usage in Macau. As a former colony of Portugal, Macau returned to the People’s Republic of China in 1999. English, Portuguese, and Cantonese have become common languages in Macau before 1999. However, the Macau Special Administrative Government began to promulgate language policies and encourage people to speak Mandarin. Therefore, Young (2008) investigated that dramatic improvement in Mandarin proficiency since 1999. Hongkong’s language policies are similar to Macau’s. Hong Kong was colonized by the British for more than 150 years. In 1997, Hong Kong ended a long period of British colonization and was reunified by the PRC. After 1997, the Mother Tongue Education policy started implementing, which requires schools used Mandarin to teach. This policy helped Hongkongers Mandarin proficiency improve rapidly. Through these two cases, we can discover the importance and status of Mandarin in Macau and Hong Kong in the last 20 years. However, the diversity of languages still exists due to the globalization and development of tourism.
    Reference
    Young, M. Y. C. (2009). Multilingual education in Macao. International Journal of Multilingualism, 6(4), 412-425.

  • Lynn says:

    After reading 2 blog posts (Erasing Diversity and Multilingual Macau), I feel quite surprised about the language history and its diversity. I found some common language and culture contact in 2 multilingual cities: Macau and Istanbul.
    Portuguese became official in Macau after this city was the former Portuguese colony. In Istanbul, languages changed from Latin, Greek to Arabic, Persian and Turkish after Mehmed II made the city become a Muslim one with mosque and its religions, beliefs. In Macau, English played a highly prominent role, proving that there is integration in the cultural value and customs of Europeans. (Example: the couple spoke Cantonese and wore Western wedding grab). And loans from modern European languages also contributed to Turkish language reform in Istanbul.
    In Macau, prayers tablets to record wishes were written in Chinese only. In Istanbul, similarly, Arabic was the language of prayers and religions, which did not change. Another example is the speech by Atatürk had to be translated repeatedly into contemporary Turkish. These stated that although there was change or repression of language diversity, religion and culture remained in their own ancient language. Another interesting story is the word ”city” (شهر‎ şehir).
    Additionally, the tourism economy affected directly language variety in 2 cities. In Macau, Chinese is important and even used and translated more than Portuguese (as tourists are mainly Mainland Chinese). In Istanbul, tourism has brought multilingualism back: handwritten Arabic ‘for rent’ signs or Kurdish music stalls and various languages.
    Both cities have experienced dramatic changes in language and culture contact. And religions and cultures always decide language development.

  • Anka says:

    To some extent, the highly intense language and culture contact in a city, especially these ones locate in transportation hub, is mainly caused by its historic contributions in terms of colonization, economic mobility, warfares, etc. And his city I want to mention here, whose language and culture contact is relatively more like a result of modernization, is Chengdu, China, and it is for sure that there must be other such cities both in China and other countries.
    We mainly speak Sichuanese dialect and mandarin here, and English is becoming increasingly common these days due to the economic globalization. More and more factories sprung up to manufacture products for world-class enterprise such as Apple in the past decades, workers from these factories are required to speak English to communicate with foreign clients. Sometimes some of them may be laid off unexpectedly and spread all over the city by doing some other jobs, this could be a story of a random food delivery who may get you your hotpot takeout and also a surprise by his/her fantastic English ability.
    Another example is Japanese language, ACG (animation, comics and games) culture in Chengdu has grown into a cult here. Especially young people, a part of them can understand and use Japanese in simple daily conversations without any instruction from Japanese classes but Japanese manga and animation. Especially in the east, you could probably bump into a group of people in cosplay costumes speaking Japanese, and meet some direction signs and ads standardised in Japanese, Chinese and English.
    Tibetan, is another language that is notable as well. There is small area in this city especially for Tibetan people. Apart from residents speaking both Tibetan and Putonghua, packaging of Incense and Tangka is both in Mandarin and Tibetan, and sometimes in English as well.

    • Thank you, Anka, for sharing this fascinating glimpse into multilingual and multicultural Chengdu! Japanese through anime, manga, cosplay etc. is also making in-roads among young people here.

  • Kim says:

    It is truly interesting to learn about trilingualism in Macau. Having never visited the place, it was a surprise to learn that Portuguese is a language in usage.

    My personal experience of identifying language and cultural contact would be in Seoul, Korea. To be more detailed, Myeongdong would be one area, like Macau, where many tourists, especially from China and Japan visit. Hence, the signs of the shops are in all three languages – Korean, Japanese, Chinese – plus English. Before the pandemic swept the globe, you could even hear vendors speaking Japanese or Chinese, instead of Korean.
    As Korea has a close relationship with Japan and China, in terms of history, language and culture, there is much to mention about the three languages existing simultaneously in certain areas.

    I think that Seoul is very definite about which areas are tourist areas and which aren’t. Or which areas are for commercialization and which are shown as historical artifacts.
    The reason behind this is because Myeongdong is a tourist attraction for shopping. To attract people to buy products, the signs and languages used are diverse. Yet, when you visit other areas in Seoul, which are tour areas to show the history of Korea, the restaurants and cafes have their signs put up all in only the Korean alphabet. For example, in Gyeongbokgung (a palace), Starbucks is written as ‘스타벅스’ (in the Korean language), whereas different areas of Seoul would have the English alphabet.

    Another interesting finding is that the Korean subways used to have their exit signs in both Korean and Chinese. It is difficult to find one with Chinese characters nowadays. Instead, the exits are replaced with the Roman numerals with the Korean word (names) plus English below it.

  • STUDENT says:

    In both Macau and Turkey, I believe that there is a close link between language on one side and religion and history on the other. Despite the trilingualism in Macau, the language used in each place visited in this region has something to do with the spiritual or historical background of that place. For example: the temple is mainly used by Chinese as a spiritual place, so the dominant languages are Chinese and Chinglish. As for the Mandarin house, I think that all three languages are used together because the place is not related to speakers of one language more than the other.
    The same link can be noticed in Turkey, where the dominant languages were Greek and Latin, when the dominant religion was Christianity. Then when Muslims took over, these languages were replaced by Persian, Arabic and Turkish. Then at last, when Turkey wanted to sever its links with its Ottoman and Eastern past, it turned back to their original language which is Turkish.

  • Alexander Genkin says:

    In Russia, there is an autonomous region called Bashkortostan. It is situated by the Ural Mountains, where Europe meets Asia.
    The indigenous people are the Bashkirs, a traditionally nomadic Turkic-speaking ethnic group. Their language contains Arabic and Persian influences. However, Bashkirs only make up a quarter of the population, and are the third largest ethnic and language, behind Russians and Tatars.

    The Tatar language is closely related to Bashkir, and until recently all school students in Bashkortostan regardless of ethnicity had to study two hours of Bashkir language per week. Students faced different difficulty levels learning the language depending on their L1. Language, history and policy intersect in this case.

    • Thanks, Alexander! This is a fascinating example. I’m intrigued that you say “until recently” all students had to study Bashkir in school, and so take it that that is no longer the case. Do you know when and why that policy was abandoned?

      • Alexander Genkin says:

        Thank you for your reply, Ingrid!

        This policy of mandatory teaching of indigenous languages in Russian “republics” (regions with significant ethnic minority populations) was abandoned in 2019, when a new federal law on education gave parents the right to opt their children out of minority language classes.
        Parents and school students, particularly those of non-indigenous backgrounds had longed complained about the old policy, as they resented having to learn languages that had little practical value. Moreover, due to those languages being very distant from Russian, proficiency was almost never attained, and the indigenous languages were often taught at the expense of Russian.

  • karan chaudhary says:

    plz, sir how to check and how to provide the macau language sir plz,,, reply sir

  • Ken Westmoreland says:

    The irony is that there are more fluent Portuguese speakers in Japan than Macau, Goa and East Timor put together – there are Portuguese language radio stations, TV channels, newspapers and schools, and cash machines offer Portuguese as a language for transactions. That’s all because tens of thousands of Brazilians of Japanese origin emigrated to Japan twenty years ago, a century after their ancestors emigrated from Japan.

    In East Timor, Tetum is heavily influenced by Portuguese, so people have a passive understanding of it, but Cantonese speakers in Macau have nothing like that, or even Konkani speakers in Goa. However, because of China’s growing trade with Brazil and Angola, possibly more mainland Chinese are learning Portuguese than Macau Chinese.

    Marcos Llanes: no gracias!

  • Marcos Llanes says:

    The people of Macau should adopt spanish as an official language!!!!!

  • Lemos says:

    During colonial Macau, most multilingual residents were the mixed race Macanese, usually fluent in Portuguese, spoken Cantonese, some English (due to proximity to HK), some French (taught in Portuguese high school). Most residents were ethnic chinese monolingual Cantonese speakers. Today, more ethnic chinese are either mandarin speakers or learn it in school. Some below 50s Macanese have learned to read and write Chinese with some also have learned to speak mandarin, to be competitive in the job market. Unfortunately the younger Macanese generation has dropped portuguese, choosing english medium schooling. This process however started in mid to late 70s when most portuguese colonies became independent, it just accelerated after the chinese takeover. So the only trilingual individuals you’re likely to meet are the middle aged Macanese. Unfortunately the Macanese community is tiny at most 4% of population and rapidly disappearing into overwhelming chinese community. They are a bit like the quebecois in canada except that they don’t have a geographical area to claim as majority. If they are officially recognized as ethnic minority, then perhaps they can be more encouraged to maintain the multilingualism. Otherwise Portuguese in Macau can become like Latin in Europe. Of course most educated people in Macau remain likely to know Cantonese, mandarin and limited English.

  • Alexandra Grey says:

    Interesting descriptions of the multilingualism of Macau! I am intrigued that analysts say individual bilingualism does not undergird the official multilingualism of Macau. That does not correspond to my personal experience of meeting people from Macau (all of whom have been bi- or tri-lingual), but my experience may well be skewed because multilingual Macanese can more readily move/travel/work in Mainland China and in other nations, which is where I have met them. Could it also been that the tiny local population is bilingual but the much larger community of monolingual visitors and those who live temporarily in Macau for work swamps the bilinguals?

    Of the people you spoke with personally, Ingrid, did many conform with the analysts’ view that the Macanese as individuals are not bilingual?

  • Li Jia says:

    Dear Ingrid, thanks for showing us this pragmatically balanced multilingual Macau.

    Can I add something more on my understanding of Macau’s LLs? I haven’t been to Macau before, but I know the main reasons for most mainland Chinese going there are “shopping” and “gambling”. Interestingly, your first photo about the “front cover of the tourist map” has highlighted the content of “Macau as a shopping and sight-seeing city” in Chinese whereas English only indicates “tourist map” (I assume Japanese version also means the same thing). Another interesting reading is about your “biggest surprise” on the emergency exit signs in gambling areas. No English contained, only Portuguese and Chinese at casinos, reminds me of a series of cop /gangster movies I’ve ever watched in China. Surely any sign in English will bring more troubles to mainland Chinese for emergent “escapement”?

    • Transport signs could be an interesting addition to your discussion on linguistic diversity in Macau. Since there is no rail system there, many people, including tourists, use buses there, and the timetables at bus stops are still written in Portuguese (perhaps new ones are not, though). While I was admiring and trying to figure out the timetables, a few local girls and I happened to engage in a quick conversation, and they said they don’t speak Portuguese at all. For them, Portuguese bus signs perhaps have no practical use, but remain visible in their lives, a daily reminder of the historical linguistic diversity in Macau. Thanks, Ingrid, for yet another fascinating post!

  • elana shohamy says:

    amazing tour in Macau and good indication about the need to examine such diversed contexts via LL in many aocations over time to begin to make sense of ML on the move. thanks Ingrid.

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