Thanks for a fascinating article! I'm a native Cantonese speaker but because I was born and raised in Canada, my mother-tongue language skills have become rusty. (I also have a good dose of internalized racism having been brought up in the western world, which I write about a lot on Medium if you're interested in that sort of thing.) Thus, it warms my heart to read articles like these that celebrate a language I have all but forgotten. And it motivates me to invest more time and energy in re-learning aspects of my mother tongue.

I wonder if you've dipped your toe into Cantonese at all? Some linguists categorize it as a completely different language, and the differences between Cantonese and Mandarin are quite fascinating. I would be interested in a newcomer's perspective. While it's true that all Chinese-variety-speakers use the same written form, the written form of Chinese is very different from a language like Cantonese. Cantonese speakers have to almost "translate" their language into Mandarin before writing it down, which is a big barrier to people like me who can speak but can't read or write, lol.

Anyway, all thoughts aside, I really appreciated this piece! (My mom found it and sent it to me, haha.)