In Hong Kong there are many of us who want to preserve Hong Kong/Cantonese culture from erosion by CCP/mainland culture. For example, sometimes you can see a lot of mandarin around school kids rather than cantonese. The government is also pushing for schools to teach in mandarin rather than cantonese. Mandarin is the language for mainland china, Cantonese is a minority language.

I imagine it is like this in other parts of the world where someone from a ‘minority’ culture wishes to preserve their culture & language against the dominant culture/language. Is there a word for someone like this in English?

the closest i could think of is “nationalist” but that’s definitely not correct, it’s not like one saying one culture is superior, but just that you want to protect it and conserve it and keep it in place.

  • The Snark Urge@lemmy.worldEnglish
    11·
    10 months ago

    You could just about make the phrase “cultural conservative” do the job, but it has regrettable connotations from American politics.

    Then there’s traditionalism, but it doesn’t come prepackaged with the nuance you intend. You’d still have to explain what kind of traditions you mean.

    You could avoid an outright label and just talk about “preserving Cantonese identity”. Or feel free to coin a neologism, e.g. “Cantoneist”. There’s no wrong answer in English if you do it with style. IMO.

    Edit: Cantonism was already coined for use in Russia, so maybe make your own word up instead to avoid associations with er, pogroms and such. There are no wrong answers, assuming you are being original. Never assume.

        • Pat12@lemmy.worldOP
          3·
          10 months ago

          And do maintain the struck portion, it adds all the nuance required.

          could you explain? english isn’t my first language

          • The Snark Urge@lemmy.worldEnglish
            8·
            10 months ago

            If you say it as “Cultural conservative conservationist”, with the crossed out bit, that will signal that you’re just talking about preserving the culture and not outright ethnic chauvinism.

    • Pat12@lemmy.worldOP
      61·
      10 months ago

      You’d still have to explain what kind of traditions you mean.

      Well, there is the cantonese ethnic group with their own traditions like food, they have a different history than people from northern china, the people may be more spiritual than mainland china, the cantonese language itself is distinctive from other chinese language (it is a dialect of the yue languages), hong kong itself has its own history and culture because it’s been an ‘east meets west’ city for so long

      I don’t think these aspects are specific to HK, I would imagine it would be like someone from a minority ethnic group in South Africa or India or Afghanistan where they want to preserve their own ethnic group’s language and culture and history against the majority group’s culture