San Francisco’s Cantonese and Toisanese Speaking Communities at Risk of Disenfranchisement

San Francisco has one of the largest Cantonese and Toisanese speaking populations in the United States. In 2022, City departments reported interacting with 267,911 Cantonese speakers with limited English proficiency. 

The City College of San Francisco (CCSF) has traditionally held a large role in ensuring the Cantonese-speaking community does not become disenfranchised by the City. 

Grace Yu, a professor of Mandarin and Cantonese at CCSF for over 33 years is one of the first and last Cantonese professors left in the Bay Area. Most instructors of Cantonese in the Bay Area have either passed or retired, leaving Yu as the last one remaining at CCSF.

Yu finds most of her Cantonese students are non-heritage speakers; meaning students who have no historical or cultural ties to the Cantonese-speaking areas. 

This contrasts the typical image of Chinese language classes being filled with students who either already know the language or have family who speak it. Many are studying the language for professional use as doctors, nurses, or lawyers. 

Cantonese is the dominant language in Hong Kong, Macao and China’s Guangdong Province and is the most commonly spoken language among Chinese residents in San Francisco.

Lauren Chinn has taken four Cantonese courses at CCSF. In a public forum with the Board of Trustees, she said the language was useful to her as a worker at a COVID-19 vaccination clinic, as a student employee at the campus library in Chinatown, and as an English as a second language tutor.

“I’m a fifth-generation Cantonese San Franciscan, so my ancestors came from Cantonese-speaking regions of China, but I never learned it growing up,” she said at the meeting. 

“Most of my ability to speak Cantonese has come from the Cantonese classes I’ve taken at CCSF.” 

Chinn is grateful for the program’s existence and how it allowed her to connect not only to her community, but to her roots.

Historically, the Department of World Languages and Culture at CCSF believed that Cantonese was not as important as Mandarin language instruction, leaving only part time positions for Cantonese and none of them being tenure-track — a critical status to ensure the longevity of a program according to Yu.

“We learn a bit of the language and then assimilation is thrust upon us and mostly forced upon us,” said Julia Quon, a former student who took classes at CCSF. 

While already declining in enrollment and funding, the COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated the issue and jeopardized the Cantonese programs’ ability to survive at institutions of higher learning, including those at CCSF and Stanford University.

When student organizers, including Quon, who took Dr. Yu’s classes, found out the program was at risk of getting cut, they created a petition to protect Cantonese classes following the lead of efforts at Stanford University in 2020. The Save Cantonese Coalition further fundraised and was able to assist in creating endowed teaching positions in Cantonese at Stanford University.

They are now working to get funds for an endowed position that would increase the courses and sections offered in Cantonese at CCSF. 

Alan Wong, president of the City College Board of Trustees, first proposed the 16-unit Cantonese certificate program in 2022 after administrators planned to cut Cantonese classes from the school's curriculum.

At the time, Cantonese was the only language program lacking both a certificate program and UC-transferable credits — two metrics the state uses to allocate funding, Wong noted. Cantonese classes, however, were popular, reaching full enrollment since 2019, Wong said.

CCSF’s funding is directly impacted by the number of programs that are California State University and University of California transferable. For the Cantonese program to bring funding to the college, a 16-unit certificate would need to be offered. Currently, a nine unit certificate in conversational Cantonese is offered.

“I think having this certificate is kind of like a way to fight back [against that assimilation],” Quon said.

The college passed Wong's resolution to create the certificate program in the fall of 2022, allowing the proposal to advance to the curriculum committee, which would have to recommend the program to the board of trustees. 

After receiving the recommendation of the curriculum committee, the proposal was then ratified by the board of trustees. Its final step is to be submitted to the state chancellor's office for approval. The certificate was initially supposed to be offered in the 2023-24 academic year but is should be offered next year according to an annotation in the current academic bulletin.

San Francisco has one of the strongest language access laws in the United States, but the rights its Language Access Ordinance (LAO) protect could be disappearing on their own.

Since the 2017-2018 fiscal year, the number of bilingual employees in San Francisco have continued to decline. As a result, the number of Limited English Proficient (LEP) client interactions with city/county governmental departments have continued to decline. 

Quon is currently studying nursing at San Francisco State University. She finds having a person in the hospital who knows what patients are saying in their native tongues makes a difference in their comfort.

San Francisco has a high volume of residents with limited English proficiency. Through its LAO, the City is required to provide fair language access, making it one of the strongest local language laws in the nation. As part of this, an annual report is created which gives SF policymakers insight into what City departments are doing to meet the spirit, intent and requirements of the LAO.

Departments are encouraged to hire employees who are fluent in the threshold languages identified by the LAO requirements. While translation apps for interpretation help, Quon’s ability to speak Cantonese aids in patient outcomes. 

“I see the faces of people who speak Cantonese every day. I see what happens when Cantonese monolingual speakers don't receive the health care that they deserve,” Quon said. 

Cantonese is an integral part of San Francisco culture, and therefore, its use in many contexts is essential for the government to function.

“They don't file police reports. They don't call 911,” Quon said.

Quon believes that Cantonese-speaking callers are apprehensive about having to navigate the emergency dispatch system, since they don't know if the operator on the other side speaks Cantonese or even Toisanese. 

 “As long as we have food, as long as we have the physical relics of our community, the culture will never die,” Yu said.

Back in Toisan, restoration efforts to the Haikou port in Duanyen are being worked on as a memorial for overseas Chinese emigrants. This is an example of just some of the ongoing efforts to preserve our stories, not only in America, but also back home.

“If we want to have Cantonese to continue to be around and serve our community and allow us to communicate with our elders, then we need to have these Cantonese classes,” Wong said. 

“The next generation of young people — the American-born Chinese that want to talk to you, their seniors, their grandparents, their in-laws too — to be able to learn this language, we need the certificate and we need those classes,” Wong said.