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Hong Kong written Chinese (HKWC) is a local variety of written Chinese used in formal written communication in Hong Kong and Macao. The common Hongkongese name for this form of Chinese is "written language" (書面語), in contrast to the "spoken language" (口語), i.e. Cantonese. While, like other varieties of Written Chinese, it is largely based on Mandarin, it differs from the mainland’s national variety of Standard Chinese (Putonghua) in several aspects, for example that it is written in traditional characters, that its phonology is based on Cantonese, and that its lexicon has English and Cantonese influences. Thus it must not be confused with written Cantonese which, even in Hong Kong, enjoys much less prestige as a literary language than the "written language". The language situation in Hong Kong still reflects the pre-20th century situation of Chinese diglossia where the spoken and literary language differed and the latter was read aloud in the phonology of the respective regional variety instead of a national one.

History

With the establishment of Modern Standard Chinese in the Republic of China teaching materials began to be exported into the British Crown Colonies Hong Kong, Singapore and Malaya. The victory of the Communists over the nationalist Kuomintang in the Chinese Civil War, the retreat of the Republican government to the island of Taiwan, and the subsequent diplomatic isolation of the People's Republic of China under the One-China policy led to a diversification of the Standard Chinese language, so that there are four varieties of more strongly standardized Chinese today: Putonghua in mainland China, Guoyu on Taiwan, and Huayu in Singapore and Malaysia. Hong Kong on the other hand was a British colony until 1997 and for most of the colonial era English had been the only official language. Chinese was only recognized as a co-official language in 1974 after recurring riots as well as scholarly activism. And although legal texts were translated from English into Chinese in the late 1970s the English versions alone continued to be the ultimately valid ones. This meant that there was not much historical effort on the British side to standardize Chinese in Hong Kong. This lack of political intervention facilitated the formation what was coined Hong Kong style Chinese (港式中文, translated as Hong Kong written Chinese by Shi, 2006) by linguist Shao Jingmin in 1996 in order to distinguish it from Putonghua.

Development of registers

Hong Kong written Chinese, if taken to mean all forms of Chinese writing employed in Hong Kong, has different registers depending on the context in which it is used. The high register used in government, schools, and formal settings, is the closest to Standard Chinese. Yet lower registers, used in more informal settings, also developed through an intermixture with written Cantonese. The rising popularity and prestige of the Cantonese language with the boom of the Hong Kong entertainment industry (especially cinema and music) in the 1980s was an important factor in the establishment of written Cantonese as a language used in subtitles, magazines, comic books, and popular fiction. In more formal settings, written Cantonese also appears in court protocols.

After 1997

Chinese, without specification of the variety, became a fully recognized official language of Hong Kong (besides English) with the handover to China in 1997. Since then Hong Kong written Chinese, or rather the high register, has been used on a local government level, while Putonghua is used in communications with the central government. In recent years the national government has promoted the use of Putonghua in Hong Kong as part of a process of political centralization while growing economic dependence on the mainland and migration into Hong Kong have increased the need for locals to learn the national standard. These and other political issues have led to tensions between mainlanders and locals trying to preserve the political and linguistic autonomy of Hong Kong.

Phonology

The grammar of the Hong Kong written Chinese is largely based on Mandarin Chinese, while its phonology is based on Cantonese. Yet one distinguishes between colloquial and literary readings of Chinese characters. The latter are based on traditional rime dictionaries and employed when reading out loud texts in Classical or modern written Chinese. Thus students in Hong Kong schools get corrected by their teachers when reading aloud HKWC texts in the colloquial pronunciation. Some regular differences between colloquial and literary readings in Cantonese are:

1. The Late Middle Chinese (LMC) initial */fɦ-/ corresponds to colloquial /p-/ and /pʰ-/, but to literary /f-/, e.g. 婦 LMC */fɦuə̌/, coll. /pʰou˩˧/, and lit. /fu˩˧/, '(married) woman'.
2. The LMC syllables /ŋiC_nasal/ and /ŋi̯eC_nasal/ correspond to colloquial /ŋɐC_nasal/ and /ŋa:C_nasal/ respectively, but to literary /jɐC_nasal/ and /jiC_nasal/, e.g. 吟 LMC /ŋīm/, coll. /ŋɐm˨˩/, and lit. /jɐm˨˩/ 'to recite; to groan'; 研 LMC /ŋi̯ên/, coll. /ŋaːn˨˩/, and lit. /jin˨˩/ 'research'.
3. The colloquial rimes /-ɛːC/ and /-ɛːu̯/ correspond to literary rimes /-ɪC/ and /-iːu̯/ respectively, e.g. 名 coll. /mɛːŋ˨˩/ versus lit. /mɪŋ˨˩/, 'name'.
4. The colloquial rime /-ɐɪ̯/ corresponds to literary /-ɔɪ̯/ when going back to LMC */-ʌi/, whereas it corresponds to literary /-iː/ when going back to LMC */-i/.
5. The colloquial rime /-œː/ corresponds to literary /-ɔː/.
6. LMC syllables with voiced/breathy obstruent initials and rising-tone rimes correspond to colloquial readings with aspirate initials and low-rising-tone rimes, but to literary readings with tenuis initials and low-even-tone rimes, e.g. 棒 LMC /pɦə̌ŋ/, coll. /pʰaːŋ˩˧/, and lit. /paːŋ˨/. Here the colloquial variant preserves the phonetic realization of the LMC tone more authentically. The literary reading imitates the correspondence of LMC syllables with voiced obstruent initials and rising-tone rimes with Mandarin syllables with falling-tone rimes (the Cantonese mid- and lower-even tone rimes correspond to Mandarin falling-tone rimes).

Lexicon

Lexical differences between HKWC, Putonghua, and Guoyu

Some lexical differences between the varieties of Standard Chinese in the mainland (Putonghua), Hong Kong, and Taiwan (Guoyu):

Notes

1. lit. rental car, meaning exactly that in Guoyu.
2. loan from eng. taxi, as Singaporean and Malaysian Standard Chinese (Huayu) 德士 déshì.
3. lit. calculate-mileage-car.
4. All three forms ultimately calqued from eng. mobile phone.
5. All three forms lit. mean serving tool.
6. lit. middle one, also in Huayu.

Semantic differences between Putonghua and HKWC

Some lexemes appear both in Hong Kong written Chinese and Putonghua, but may differ in their semantic range and value:

Notes

1. Also in Huayu.

Grammar

HKWC's grammar is slightly different from that of Putonghua:

• Conjunction words that are paired in Putonghua can be used alone in HKWC. For example, the latter parts of 即使…也… ("even if") and 单…就… are commonly omitted in HKWC. Shi & Wang (2006) argues this is due to influence from English.
• Conjunction words are used in pairings not seen in Putonghua.
• Null anaphoric forms can refer to the object of a preposition.
• Null anaphoric forms have longer-ranged antecedents compared to Putonghua; there is no requirement for a strict, linear order.
• Null anaphoric forms can refer to an antecedent in a different level.
• The resumptive pronoun 这 ("this") is commonly elided, compared to Putonghua.
• The Putonghua demonstrative 这 is not commonly used. Instead, three demonstratives, 该、是、今, function for specific types of nouns.
• The use of 该 is expanded compared to that of Putonghua, being no longer limited to singular nouns with no morphemes between the demonstrative and the noun.
• The demonstrative is commonly elided.
• The indefinite 有 functions more like 一个/一些 in Putonghua.
• Several sentence structures borrowed from English exist.

Comparison with written Cantonese

When written, HKWC generally differs almost as much from written Cantonese as Standard Chinese does. Some examples:

References

1. Li, David C. S. (4 October 2022). "Trilingual and biliterate language education policy in Hong Kong: past, present and future". Asian-Pacific Journal of Second and Foreign Language Education. 7 (1): 41. doi:10.1186/s40862-022-00168-z. Retrieved 24 October 2023.
2. ^ Shi, Dingxu (2006-10-12). "Hong Kong written Chinese: Language change induced by language contact". Journal of Asian Pacific Communication. 16 (2): 299–318. doi:10.1075/japc.16.2.09shi. ISSN 0957-6851. S2CID 143191355.
3. ^ Lee, Siu-lun (2023). The Learning and Teaching of Cantonese as a Second Language. Abingdon/New York: Routledge. ISBN 9781000889895.
4. Bauer, Robert S.; 包睿舜 (2018-03-26). "Cantonese as written language in Hong Kong". Global Chinese. 4 (1): 103–142. doi:10.1515/glochi-2018-0006. ISSN 2199-4382.
5. Kihara, Takeshi; Cheung, Frances (2022-12-13). "Hong Kong under pressure to use standard Chinese language". Nikkei Asia. Retrieved 2023-06-28.
6. "More than 100 HK restaurants refuse to serve customers from China". Bangkok Post. 2020-03-06. Retrieved 2023-06-28.
7. ^ Shi, Dingxu; Wang, Dongmei (2006). 香港汉语书面语的语法特点 [Grammatical peculiarities of HKWC] (PDF). 中国语文. 2: 118. Retrieved 22 April 2024.

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