According to the Census, the total population Hong Kong for all ethnic groups was 4,, Table I, Place of Birth and Place of Origin, is an abridged version of a table prepared by the Hong Kong Census Department Hong Kong Census, Basic Tables, Table 2, pages and provides population data on places of birth and origin which can be identified as ethnic Chinese and excludes non-Chinese places of birth and origin.
Table I indicates that the place of origin of the majority of Hong Kong's Chinese population was Guangzhou, Macao, and adjacent areas with 2,, people or The second- rank ing place of origin in terms of number of people was the Siyi districts with , people or Other places in Guangdong Province accounted for , people or 9. Other places of origin within China but outside Guangdong were claimed by , people or 9.
Hong Kong was the place of origin of , people or 2. Because of the majority group's greater numbers, ethnolinguistic cohesive- ness, as well as the historical prestige associated with their Guangzhou speech variety, it is this majority group which has impressed its linguistic stamp upon Hong Kong. Table I above shows that 2,, people or Local places of birth implies linguistic assimilation, that is, those born and raised in a community grow up speaking the local language even if their parent s 'speech differs from the local variety.
The above statistics on local place of birth for various population groups with different places of origin imply that the local variety of Cantonese is spreading throughout the community as it is acquired by speakers whose parents' linguistic backgrounds have differed from that of the majority group. In Hong Kong the most influential formal mechanism promoting the spread of the local variety of Cantonese throughout the community has been the school because a sizeable portion of the eligible population attends school.
The school exposes the student to the community's linguistic norms in the form of the teacher's speech which makes him aware of his own speech variety as well as other varieties.
As a result, some students may consciously incorporate prestige linguistic forms into their speech. In addition, the school expands the child's contacts with peer groups from the local neighborhood to groups from the larger community. The child's peer group exerts a linguistic influence upon him that overrides that of his parents ;. Linguistic characteristics of the Hong Kong cantonese speech community.
As we will see below, Hong Kong resembles a linguistic microcosm of China itself with most of the major Chinese dialect families represented by speakers in the territory. The vast majority of the Chinese population speaks Cantonese, but the Census tabulated data on speakers of other major dialects, such as Mandarin, Wu, Min, and Hakka and the Cantonese Siyi dialect.
In when the Hong Kong Census was being conducted, census takers asked Hong Kong residents questions about their mother tongue or usual language spoken at home and their place of origin. Although the data is old and out of date, it is the best we have that tells us something about the multilingual character of the community. First of all, the Census distinguished between two kinds of Cantonese : Standard Cantonese or Coastal Yue Yuan : spoken in a large area of the Pearl River Delta which includes Guangzhou, Panyu, Nanhai, and Shunde - the so-called "Sanyi" region which also refers to the Cantonese spoken in the region, and in an area along the West River ; and Siyi or Seiyap Cantonese, the second-most important subcategory of Cantonese in terms of number of speakers in overseas Chinese communities, which refers to the Cantonese spoken in an area covering.
Phonological ly, Standard Cantonese and Seiyap differ to the extent of being almost mutually unintelligible with Standard Cantonese speakers claiming they cannot understand Seiyap speakers. The term "hoklo" is the Cantonese name given to people in Hong Kong who speak varieties of Min dialect. Within the Census context, the term Hoklo included all dialects of the Min group, viz.
The term Hakka identifies speakers of Hakka dialect scattered throughout central, southwestern, and southeastern China ; Hakkas in Hong Kong are concentrated mainly in the New Territories. The catch-all phrase "other languages of China" includes the major dialect families of Mandarin and Wu and presumably Gan and Xiang, although these two were not specifically mentioned in the census , and such non-Chinese minority languages as Mongolian, Manchu, Tibetan, etc.
Many Mandarin and Wu speakers came to Hong Kong from Northern China and Shanghai, respectively, in the late 's and early 's during China's civil turmoil. These figures clearly establish that Hong Kong is a predominantly Cantonese speaking community. With regard to the numbers of Mandarin speakers, the figures are not revealing.
As a result of relaxation in China's immigration policies and expansion of its commercial presence in Hong Kong, it. The Census unfortunately did not repeat the Census' questions on home language so we have no figures to deter-" mine to what extent the balance of linguistic groups has been maintained. However, if we assume that linguistic assimilation, i. Linguistic background of a sociolinguistic sample population.
In I conducted a sociolinguistic investigation of synchronie sound change in Hong Kong Cantonese and the results of this study appeared in my Ph. In the initial phase of my sociolinguistic project, I distributed a subject questionnaire to a large number of subjects who filled in answers to questions on the forms and returned them to me.
On the basis of the information supplied in the questionnaire, I selected a sample population of 75 subjects with whom I conducted sociolinguistic interviews. There were 42 men and 33 women in the sample and their ages ranged from 15 to Table 3 below indicates the sex, age, occupation, and years of formal schooling of the subjects.
The first number is the subject's age and the number in parentheses after occupation is the subjects's identification number. All but seven subjects were born and raised in Hong Kong but these seven had moved from Guangdong and settled in Hong Kong by age 10 or earlier. Four subjects were born in Guangzhou, one in Panyu, and one in Bao'an. The questionnaire asked subjects the following two questions about their knowledge and use of language : Can you speak any Chinese dialect other than Cantonese if so, please name it ; and what dialect s do tyou speak with your family at home.
On the basis of the subject's responses to these two questions, the subjects can be divided into the following six categories :. Speaks Cantonese at home and has no knowledge of any other dialect : 37 subjects. Speaks Cantonese at home and has some knowledge of Mandarin : 14 subjects. Speaks Cantonese at home and, in addition to knowledge of Mandarin, also has knowledge of some other dialect : 9 subjects. Mandarin and Dongguan : 3 subjects. Mandarin and Taishan : 2 subjects.
Mandarin and Xinhui : 1 subject. Mandarin and Shanghai : 1 subject. Mandarin and Zhongshan : 1 subject. Mandarin and Zhongshan, Hakka, Shiqi : 1 subject.
Speaks Cantonese at home and has some knowledge of a dialect other than Mandarin : 11 subjects. Taishan and Xinhui : 2 subjects. Speaks both Cantonese and some other dialect at home : 3 subjects. Cantonese and Hakka : 1 subject Cantonese and Mandarin : 1 subject.
Speaks a dialect other than Cantonese at home Hoklo : 1 subject. These dialects are listed below in the order of the frequency in which they were reported on the questionnaries :. Results from this survey can be viewed as a complement to the Census figures. Since the sociolinguistic sample population was predominantly Hong Kong-born, it comes at no surprise that almost half the sample speaks only Cantonese at home and has no knowledge of any other Chinese dialect. The other half of the sample reports knowledge of 13 Chinese dialects.
In the fol-. Although about half of the subjects indicated knowledge of other dialects, they do not employ the dialects at home but speak Cantonese instead.
Out of the study's 75 subjects, only one claimed on the questionnaire that a dialect other than Cantonese - Hoklo in this case - was spoken at home ; three subjects reported that in addition to Cantonese another dialect, viz. On the basis of information provided on the questionnaire by the subjects, there appear to be four sources for learning to speak another dialect : 1 being born in the area where the dialect is spoken ; 2 learning it from either one or both parents who had been born in the dialect area ; 3 spending time during one's childhood in the dialect area ; and 4 learning it from films in the special case of Mandarin.
The subject who said he speaks both Cantonese and Hakka at home was born in Bao'an, a Hakka- speak ing area, and moved to Hong Kong at the age of 9. According to T'sou : 4 , many of the Hakkas residing in the New Territories have immigrated from Bao'an which is just over the border from the New Territories. The Hakkas regard themselves as a distinct ethnolinguis- tic group, and Hakka clans in the New Territories can trace their genealogies back several hundred years.
I observed that my middle-aged landlord who said his family had been in that area for over three hundred years only spoke Cantonese to his children. My impression was that young people in the village only spoke Cantonese, but I heard Hakka dialect spoken by hawkers in the outdoor markets of Taipo. Of five subjects who claimed knowledge of Hoklo, one subject indicated that he spoke it at home with his family instead of Cantonese, and the other four subjects spoke Cantonese at home.
All five of these subjects were born and raised on Lamma Island which lies a short. During while conducting my sociolinguistic study in Hong Kong, I lived on Lamma in the village of Yungshuewan. After becoming acquainted with several young people, I interviewed them for my study. According to these subjects, their parents immigrated in the early ' s from the Hoi-Lukfung area Hoifung and Lukfung which is in the Min-speaking eastern part of Guangdong Figure 2.
These people had originally been fishermen but took up farming after immigrating to Lamma. Five subjects who said they could speak Dongguan, Taishan, or Zhongshan dialect indicated on their questionnaires that one or both parents had been born in one of these respective districts. One young woman aged 28 in the study indicated on the questionnaire that she speaks both Mandarin and Cantonese as home languages. She said she grew up speaking both Cantonese and Mandarin because her parents used both dialects when speaking to their children : if they thought the children did not understand what they had said in Mandarin, they would repeat in Cantonese.
She now speaks both Mandarin and Cantonese with her Hong Kong-born husband whose family originally came from Guangdong. One subject who was born in Hong Kong said his parents sent him to school in Dongguan for several years and he learned the dialect while living there.
Another subject also born in Hong Kong said her family moved to Taishan when she was quite young and she returned to live in Hong Kong at age The subject who mentioned knowledge of Guangxi dialect probably means a variety of Cantonese dialect spoken in Guangxi. The high number of subjects who report being able to speak Mandarin can possibly be attributed to their contact with this dialect primarily at the movies - films from Taiwan and China are usually not dubbed into Cantonese but left in the original Mandarin.
Some subjects said that the way they had learned Mandarin was from hearing it spoken in movies. Some subjects may also have had contact with Mandarin in school. A very few schools teach it as a subject and a few schools use it as a classroom language of instruction for students from Mandarin- speaking areas of China. A few teachers in post-secondary schools, e. With the closing years of the 20th Century finally catching up with the Colony, radical linguistic changes appear to be in store for the Hong Kong Cantonese speech community of the 21st Century.
The challenge to the prestige position Cantonese now enjoys in Hong Kong naturally comes from Putonghua. The impact of Hong Kong's return to China in upon the speech community seems predictable now, namely, that Putonghua will displace English to become Hong Kong's new language of political power as well as its official, prestige language which the new government authorities will expect the people of Hong Kong to learn to speak Language can function as a political symbol.
One high-. However, with the transitional period of Hong Kong's impending change in status now already underway, attention is already being focused on the Putonghua issue. Urban Councillor Elsie Elliott, an expatriate government representative, has recommended that the Hong Kong government recognize Putonghua as Hong Kong's official language as a concrete step for preparing the people for reunification with the China mainland in Chan : In addition, two years ago a report on Hong Kong educational system commissioned by the government had modestly proposed " This proposal has yet to be enacted, however For the moment at least, the presence of Putonghua in Hong Kong is still limited - the televised minute morning-news summary, an hour or so of Putonghua programming per day on Radio Hong Kong the government station , YMCA classes in Putonghua,.
Local interest in learning to speak Putonghua focuses mainly on the practical benefits it gives the individual trading with China's business representatives or travelling within China. Recently, a local English-language newspaper reported that the number of Hong Kong people studying Putonghua in formal language programmes has increased substantially in the last few years.
At the Chinese University of Hong Kong, for example, 1, students were enrolled in Putonghua classes in the fall semester of which was more than three times the number studying the language in Wei : 6. The economic and political advantages of knowing Putonghua are already apparent to some people. The newspaper article mentioned above quoted one young man in Hong Kong as saying that the was studying Putonghua because "I want to be a respectable communist party cadre who can speak proper Chinese The importance of Putonghua can be expected to soar in the years to come and eventually eclipse Cantonese which will be reduced to the regional dialect status it now has in the PRC.
While the Cantonese language itself will not vanish from Hong Kong, what will be the fate of the pop song with Cantonese lyrics, the Cantonese television-soap opera, live stage drama performed in Cantonese, the Cantonese-speaker's knowledge of Cantonese reading pronunciation, and written Cantonese?
These linguistic traditions may not suddenly and completely fade from the community, but in the Hong Kong of the 21st Century dominated by Putonghua they will not be able to flourish as they do now. My motivation for writing this paper has been the feeling that a special relationship exists between Hong Kong and Cantonese which makes this speech community unique among Chinese speech communities ; however, because this relationship seems certain not to last beyond this Century, it therefore compellingly invites the attention of the sociolinguist.
In addition, I would like to shed light on a subject which seems to occupy a dark corner in the field of sociolinguistics with its bias for Western languages, namely, the Chinese speech community.
Two widely-used textbooks, Trudgill's Sociol-Cngubstics , an Introduction an Hudson's Socioli-nguistics , have surprisingly little to say about Chinese dialects even though they hold as much interest for the sociolinguistic as do European languages.
Joining observations on sociolinguistic phenomena from a typolo- gically-distinct language group such as Chinese with those made on European languages not only broadens the range of languages the field encompasses but also deepens our understanding of sociolinguistic universals. Cracking the Chinese Puzzles. Hong Kong : Stock- flows Co. D for two in Cantonese. Journal of Chinese Linguistics. University of California-Berkeley Ph. CHAN, Albert. British will have limited presence. South China Morning Post.
If you plan to do business in China or with a Chinese-speaking company, then Mandarin is definitely the way to go. If, however, you plan to settle in Hong Kong, then it would be worth it to pick up Cantonese. A Guide to Doing Business in China. Cantonese is by far the more challenging of the two languages, particularly for a beginning Chinese language learner. This is because there are more tones used in Cantonese Cantonese uses up to nine tones, whereas Mandarin only uses four.
Getting the tone right is vital in ensuring that the word has the meaning you intend. Whether it's Mandarin or Cantonese, LinguaLinx works with companies around the world to help localize translations to your customers so you deliver the right message at the right time. Here's our recommendations for how to hire the right Translator for your business. Did you know that today April 20th is Chinese Language Day? In , the United Nations created language days for each of their six official….
Korean language translation is a very important part of doing business in East Asia. The youths out to save Hong Kong's unique opera. China's old art of Peking Opera. Mandarin classes for babies launched. For some young people in Hong Kong, speaking Mandarin is somewhat taboo. Read more about Hong Kong since the handover:. Why Britain returned Hong Kong to China Golden geese and democracy 'infections' - did predictions come true? Language of success. This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser.
Cantonese v Mandarin: What's the difference? Language battle. Mandarin, also known as Putonghua, is seen as the key to success by many Hong Kong parents.
Cantonese and Mandarin: which came first? Image source, AFP. A man at a protest expressing support for Cantonese. Government bias? Image source, EPA. The young people out to save Hong Kong's unique opera Have Hong Kong's youth lost hope in the future? Dying language? An advert promoting a Cantonese Opera house in Hong Kong. Related Topics. China Hong Kong Language. Published 3 April Published 19 January Published 29 April
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