ABSTRACT
This chapter investigates why Cantonese language textbooks published in the Chinese mainland make such liberal use of written Cantonese – i.e. Cantonese written in Chinese characters – despite the fact that in the mainland written Cantonese is rarely encountered in print culture. The study analyzes 15 Cantonese textbooks and also – for purposes of comparison – 15 textbooks for other regional varieties of Chinese. This chapter finds that: 1) Even though the textbooks all emphasize that their purpose is to teach oral skills, they all include substantial amounts of text in written Cantonese. 2) The textbooks do not claim to teach Cantonese reading skills, but they are generally designed in ways that require users to learn to read Cantonese as well as to speak it. 3) The likely reason for this anomaly is that, even though in the Chinese mainland written Cantonese is not common in printed texts, when textbooks need to represent spoken Cantonese using printed text, it is still perceived as more appropriate and user-friendly to use Cantonese written out in Chinese characters than to write out Cantonese in other ways such as pinyin.
