North American Cantonese Alliance, Founded by a Stanford Scholar

北美粵語聯盟，史丹福大學高材生創立

I started to consider forming a Cantonese coalition after a student published a story in Stanford Daily in 2017 about how Stanford’s Language Center rejected her request to use Cantonese to fulfill the university’s foreign language requirement. That experience made me realize how little administrators understand the Cantonese language and its importance to the Cantonese Diaspora. In October 2020, the Language Center’s decision to cut the Cantonese program towards further strengthened my resolve to form the coalition. Under tremendous pressure from the Save Cantonese at Stanford compaign, Stanford restored half of the program and can only commit to half of the program in perpetuity even with a generous donation of 1M from S.J. Distributors. It’s critical that we mobilize all concerned parties at the grassroots level to preserve and nourish the Cantonese language and culture for the generations to come. We’ll work together to rebuild the structural support that has been gradually eroded here and overseas

Mission

Connect Cantonese instructors, content creators, learners, and organizations to nourish and pass down Cantonese culture and language in the Cantonese Diaspora.
The need to maintain Cantonese has become very urgent as the structural support for Cantonese has been eroding. It’s important to connect Cantonese learners, instructors, content creators, and organization so that we can work together to rebuild that structure in North America.

Goals

Create an organization that serve Cantonese learners, teachers, content creators, and other Cantonese enthusiasts:
Design curricula and high-quality teaching materials that meet the needs of CHL speakers
Develop innovative approaches to the teaching of CHL
Hold workshops for instructors and tutors
Offer courses for language learners that go beyond the basic level
Provide fellowships for intensive studies of CHL
Provide grants for community schools, content creators, advocacy groups, and CHL research

Plan

Reach out to Cantonese teachers, content creators, community schools, and organizations
Collaborate with teachers and content creators to create Cantonese learning materials, e.g., the CantoTalk Music Podcast.
Sort out existing materials on the Internet and provide structure and guidance to learners, teachers, parents, and community schools
Identify unmet needs and create materials to meet those needs. Examples:
Proficiency guidelines
Intermediate Conversational Cantonese Curriculum
Form a core group of affiliated organizations
Create a website to showcase sample materials: Learn Cantonese in a Relaxing Way
Start hosting teacher training workshops in May
Offer Culture Cafe and Movie Club in June and July, 2022
Offer Canto Music Club in August and September, 2022
Form the Cantonese Language Teachers Association and recurit members in Fall 2022
Launch our fundraising effort in Fall 2022