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Chinese and English are both official languages of Hong Kong under the Hong Kong Basic Law (Article 9) and the Official Languages Ordinance (Chapter 5).

English was declared the primary language in former Colonial Hong Kong for more than 130 years. Chinese was standardized in 1974 due to the large population ratio of Chinese speakers to English speakers in the territory. In March 1987, the Official Languages Ordinance was amended to require all new legislation to be enacted in both English and Chinese. In 1990, the Basic Law declared English's co-official language status with Chinese after the 1997 handover.

Since the handover, the government of Hong Kong Special Administrative Region has adopted the "biliterate and trilingual" policy (兩文三語). Under the principle, Chinese and English must both be acknowledged as official languages, with Cantonese being acknowledged as the de facto official spoken dialect of Chinese in Hong Kong.

The Civil Service Bureau of Hong Kong monitors the implementation of the government's language policy at the civil level. The Department of Justice monitor and provision laws at the legislative level. The Education and Manpower Bureau monitors at the educational level.

The majority of the population in Hong Kong are descendants of migrants from mainland China. Smaller minority groups include expatriates and descendants of expatriates from countries such as India, Nepal, United Kingdom and the Philippines. The assortment of languages found are a direct correlation to the diversity in population.

Chinese

Spoken Cantonese

The majority of the population in Hong Kong speak Cantonese, a Chinese spoken variant originating from Guangdong province. It is the main dialect used in education, broadcasting, government administration, legislature and judiciary as well as in daily social communication.

To understand why there are so many flavors of Chinese, one must understand China began with many different dialects mutually exclusive by regions to begin with. Difference between Guangdong and Fujian is an example. During migration, the languages are spread to other provinces and eventually spread culturally to Hong Kong.

In the Western districts of Hong Kong, Toisanese and Teochiu are common. In Yuen Long and Kam Tin, Hakka is common. Other forms like Waitau Wah are mostly associated with the elderly aged groups living in walled villages. The Tanka people from the fishing villages is another group having their own variation of Cantonese.

Spoken Mandarin

Since the 1950s, Mandarin / Putonghua has been the primary language in mainland China and Taiwan. When the languages were facilitating in Hong Kong, the territory was already under the British colony. At the time, English and Cantonese was the most widely used language. As a result, it was far easier for Cantonese to make a way into Hong Kong's everyday life. The Cultural Revolution would split mandarin into traditional and simplified making it extremely difficult for Mandarin to integrate into Hong Kong. In China alone, the debate on the split have challenged everything from cultural legitimacy to pronunciation phonetics.

After the 1997 handover, Hong Kong developed a closer economic tie with China. As a result, the Hong Kong government has urged its citizens to acquire Mandarin skills. It became a core subject in many primary schools beginning in 1998, and was also integrated into the HKCE examinations in 2000. The government of Hong Kong has publicly encouraged students to be "biliterate and trilingual," thus adding Mandarin to the required arsenal of languages. Mandarin have also become an important asset in career advancements for adults. The usage of Mandarin in Hong Kong is also spreading to public service announcements, particularly on the metro and buses. However, many have criticized Hong Kong citizens for adapting too slowly to mandarin.

Written Chinese

For written Chinese, traditional Chinese characters are widely used, and is the de facto writing standard in Hong Kong. However China's simplified Chinese characters are becoming more frequently used in Hong Kong from posters, leaflets, flyers and signs in the tourist areas, to students using the simplified form in time-constrained exams.

There is also a writing system based on the vocabulary and grammar of spoken Cantonese, in which people write the way they speak. Written Cantonese is gaining popularity in newspapers and magazines for quotations, but such writings are often unreadable to people outside Hong Kong or Macau. It is also considered non-standard by many notably educators. Some have credited this system to the challenges standard Chinese writing system have faced in pop cultures of the past.

English

English is the major working language in Hong Kong, and is widely used in commercial activities and legal matters. Although the sovereignty of Hong Kong was transferred to the PRC by the United Kingdom in 1997, English remains one of the official languages of Hong Kong as enshrined in the Basic Law. For most of the population who are ethnicly Chinese, t is a second language acquired from school education, taught since the kindergarten level. About 25% of secondary schools use English from Form 1 to Form 3 in all subjects except Chinese language and history. The percentage of English used is increased starting with Form 4. Average Hong Kong who speak English, often do so with an accent.

Code-Switching between Cantonese and English

Many Hong Kong citizens use both Cantonese and English in the same sentence when speaking. For example, "唓，都唔 make sense!" ("Ugh, that makes no sense!"). The code-switching can freely mix English words and Chinese grammar, for instance "你 Un 唔 Un ?" ("Do you understand?") (not a common use) which follows the Chinese grammar syntax 'verb - 唔 - verb' to ask "Do you verb?". Notice also the corruption of 'understand' to 'un' since most Cantonese verbs are single syllables.

Other code switched words are almost notoriously derived from poor pronunciations that have become regular terms, since they are so overwhelming used.

1. "like" is pronounced "lai-kee".
2. "Partner" is pronounced "park-la".
3. "File" pronounced "fai-lo".
4. "Number" pronounced "lum-ba".
5. "Case" pronounced "kei-see".

Transliterations in Hong Kong after 1997

Before 1997, Cantonese pronunciation was the basis for transliterating English proper names into Chinese. After the handover, however, the media in Hong Kong began to adopt already established transliterations based on Mandarin pronunciations in order to a line with the mainland.

1. Houston, which used to be transliterated as 候斯頓 (Jyutping: hau6 si1 deon6), has now become 休斯頓 (jau1 si1 deon6).
2. San Diego, formerly 聖地牙哥 (sing3 dei6 ngaa4 go1), has become 聖迭戈 (sing3 dit6 gwo1).
3. Wal-Mart is translated as 沃爾瑪 (pinyin: wòěrmǎ); when pronounced in Cantonese, as it is often done in the financial news broadcast in Hong Kong, the name becomes juk1 ji5 maa5.

Other European languages

French

In Hong Kong, French have also been associated with high culture. It is the 3rd most studied foreign language behind English and Japanese. Many institutions in Hong Kong, like Alliance française, provide French courses. The language is included as a subject in the HKCEE, but not in HKALE with accordance to British International General Certificate of Secondary Education's (IGCSE) standards. The IGCSE French syllabus used by the University of Cambridge Local Examination Syndicate (UCLES) is adopted in the examination. The only French book store, Librairie Parentheses, in Hong Kong is located on Wellington Street, Central.

Real estate developers in Hong Kong often give their buildings French names, such as Bel-Air, Les Saisons and Belle Mer. This kind of foreign branding is also used in boutiques and restaurants. An example is Yucca de Lac in Ma Liu Shui. Sometimes only French elements such as articles and prepositions are added to the name, as in the case of the restaurant chain Café de Coral. Similar mixing of English and French can be seen on the menu of Délifrance, a French-style restaurant chain in Hong Kong.

German

The exact number of German speakers in Hong Kong is unclear, but the number is significant enough for the establishment of the German Swiss International School (Deutsch-Schweizerische Internationale Schule), which claims to number more than 1,000 students, at The Peak of Hong Kong Island.. Many institutions in Hong Kong provide German courses. The most well-known one is the Goethe-Institut, which is located in Wan Chai. After spending a certain period of time in learning German, students can take the German Test as a Foreign Language (Test Deutsch als Fremdsprache; TestDaF for short). There are currently two test centres for TestDaF in Hong Kong: the Goethe-Institut and the Hong Kong Baptist University. The latter one also offers an European Studies degree course of German Stream, Bachelor of Social Science in European Studies (German Stream), in parallel with the French stream.

Other East Asian languages

Japanese

There are more than 25,000 Japanese people in Hong Kong, so it is common to hear Japanese conversations. If English was not the required second language, Japanese would be the dominate foreign language. More than 10,000 people in Hong Kong took the JLPT in 2005. ATV World broadcasts a TV programme for teaching Japanese. However, mis-use of the language is common.

Japanese culture, including anime, manga, sushi and pop music, has been popular in Hong Kong for decades. Sometimes Hong Kongers replace Chinese characters with Japanese words. For example, Aji Ichiban, a snack and candy chain, uses the hiragana の (no) in place of the Chinese character 之 (zi1), rendering their name as 優の良品. Another example would be the use of the Japanese kanji 駅 (eki) to substitute 站 (zaam6 "station"), as in Nu Front (東角駅), a shopping mall for Hong Kong youngsters in Causeway Bay. There are also some private estates named with the kanji 駅. These loanwords are pronounced by Hong Kongers as if they were their Chinese counterparts (i.e. の as 之, and 駅 as 站). The Japanese Kanji 駅 is actually the shinjitai of the Chinese character 驛 (jik6). However, 驛 refers to posts for horses in ancient times, and, in modern Chinese, has been replaced by 站, which refers to stops for vehicles. Some people pronounce 駅 as if it were the Chinese character 尺 (cek3), according to the folk wisdom you bian du bian, an often false rule for reading unknown characters.

Korean

Koreans in Hong Kong only make up a small minority. Korean culture has gained in popularity since early 2000s. Korean pop music was the first medium toe penetrate Hong Kong's market. Afterwards, several Korean TV series such as Dae Jang Geum have also been shown across a large audience base McDonald's restaurants in Hong Kong used a Korean catchphrase, Dea Dan Heyo (Korean Hangul: 대단해요, Revised Romanization: daedanhaeyo, McCune-Reischauer: taedanhaeyo, "it's great"), in one of their commercials in 2005.

Vietnamese

Vietnamese is used in Hong Kong among ethnic Chinese from Vietnam who had initially settled in Vietnam then relocated to Hong Kong. Vietnamese refugees who left their home during the Vietnam War is another group.

The Vietnamese-language broadcasts made by the Hong Kong government in 1988 announced that Hong Kong was going to receive no more Vietnamese refugees. It has since become part of the collective memory of many Hong Kongers living in that era. The beginning words, "Bắt đầu từ nay", which mean "from now on", are probably the only Vietnamese phrase that most non-Vietnamese in Hong Kong know. The phrase Bắt đầu từ nay was then used by some locals to disparagingly refer to the Vietnamese people.

Southeast Asian languages

Tagalog

Tagalog and other Philippine languages are used by Filipinos in Hong Kong, most of whom are employed as foreign domestic workers. There is a long-standing practice with "No littering" signs written in Tagalog as well as Chinese and English.

Newspapers and magazines in Tagalog can also be easily bought in Central, Hong Kong. There are also a small number of churches in Hong Kong that have masses or services in Tagalog, for example the afternoon masses provided by the St. John's Cathedral in Central.

Many Filipina maids address their employers as either sir or ma'am . Some of them learn to speak Cantonese, and one of the most common Cantonese terms they utter is pengyau, meaning "friend" in Cantonese. It is a term synonymous with addressing strangers in public.

Indonesian

Indonesian is the common language for the significant number of Indonesians working in Hong Kong, though Javanese is also widely spoken. Most are domestic workers; on their days off, they often gather at Victoria Park in Causeway Bay to socialize and the language can be heard.

Thai

Thai prevails among the Thai population in Hong Kong, who are mostly working as domestic workers. The Thai language can be found in many shops and restaurants opened by Thais in Kowloon City. A number of Thai movies have been imported since the early 2000s, such as The Wheel in the medley Three, Jan Dara, the Iron Ladies, My Little Girl, and Ong-Bak: Muay Thai Warrior and Tom-Yum-Goong starring Tony Jaa.

South Asian languages

There is a significant number of South Asians in Hong Kong. Signboards written in Hindi or Urdu can be seen, and conversation in South Asian languages including Nepali, Sindhi and Punjabi, as well as Urdu and Hindi, can be heard.

There are two newspapers in Napalese in Hong Kong, The Everest and the Sunrise Weekly Hong Kong. In 2004, the Home Affairs Bureau and Metro Plus AM 1044 jointly launched radio shows Hong Kong-Pak Tonight in Urdu and Harmo Sagarmatha in Nepalese.

Middle Eastern languages

Arabic

Arabic is used frequently among members of Muslim communities in Hong Kong. Hong Kong University are presently the only tertiary institution in Hong Kong teaching Arabic-language courses. Some Islamic organisations do teach the language as well, but the current status can best be described as up-and-coming.

References

1. "ACTION PLAN TO RAISE LANGUAGE STANDARDS IN HONG KONG", Standing Committee on Language Education and Research. Retrieved on 2007-02-25.
2. http://www3.oag.com/Cities/Detail?city=86&cat=28&item=132544 Librairie Parentheses, "only French bookstore"
3. "Principal's Welcome". German Swiss International School. 2006-12-09. Retrieved 2007-01-12.
4. "Number of Applicants and Examinees by Test Site of the JLPT 2005", The Japan Foundation. Retrieved on 2007-02-25.
5. "2005年10月　ニホンコンゴ★ ついに映像化！", R by R Production. Retrieved on 2007-02-25. (in Japanese)
6. "學習韓語秘技傍身", Centaline Human Resources Consultants Limited, 2005-03-03. Retrieved on 2007-02-25. (in Traditional Chinese)
7. "Indonesian migrant workers in Hong Kong". Radio International Singapore. 2006-02-25. Retrieved 2007-01-09.
8. "Urdu and Nepali radio programmes to launch". Hong Kong Information Services Department. Retrieved 2007-01-12. {{cite news}}: Text "date-2004-11-19" ignored (help)
9. "School of Modern Languages and Cultures". Hong Kong University. Retrieved 2007-01-12.
10. "古蘭經及阿文新課程 (Qur'an and Arabic language class)". Islam.org.hk. 2006-04-03. Retrieved 2007-01-12.

Bibliography

• Bruce, Nigel (1996). Language in Hong Kong Education & Society: A Bibliography
• Pennington, Martha C. ed. (1998). Language in Hong Kong at Century's End. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press. ISBN 962209418X.

External links

• Website of Official Languages Division, Civil Service Bureau.
• Website of Standing Committee on Language Education and Research (SCOLAR), Education and Manpower Bureau.
• The British Council, Hong Kong.
• Alliance Française, Hong Kong.
• Goethe-Institut, Hong Kong.

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• Languages of Hong Kong