Филологические науки/9. Этно-, социо- и психолигвистика

Tatarnikova I., Guo Yi

Taurida National University (Simferopol), Ukraine

The linguistic profile of Hong Kong and

the English language use

Chinese and English, the most spoken languages at the present day, with English being nearest to an international language, are called plurocentric on account of their having more than one standard. The coexistence of such standards with the spectrum of their varieties on the territory of multilingual Hong Kong presents a very interesting challenge to linguists studying different types of bilingualism [7], diglossia and language interference. Moreover, such a research is sure to contribute to the further development of the theory of language variation.

At the present time in Hong Kong, a former British Crown Colony, which in 1997 got the status of a Special Administrative Region (SAR) of the People’s Republic of China, the overall population constitutes about 7 million people. About 95% of Hong Kong's population is of Chinese descent, the majority of which are Cantonese or from ethnic groups such as Hakka and Teochew.

Since the 1997 handover, new groups of mainland China immigrants have arrived. The usage of Mandarin (Putonghua), the official language of mainland China, which serves there as a lingua franca among different ethic groups, and Republic of China (Taiwan), has also increased. The integration with mainland economy led to a demand in Mandarin speakers. The remaining 5% of the population is composed of non-ethnic Chinese forming a highly visible group despite their smaller numbers, namely Indians, Pakistanis and Nepalese, Vietnamese, Filipinos, Indonesians. There are also a number of Europeans, Americans, Australians, Canadians, Japanese, and Koreans working in Hong Kong's commercial and financial sector.

Under the Hong Kong Basic Law of April 4, 1990 both English, which was the primary language in the Crown Colony, and Chinese (Cantonese) have been declared official languages. The estimation of the number of speakers shows that Cantonese, a Chinese language originating from Guangdong province to the north of Hong Kong, is spoken by most of the population, while English is widely understood and is spoken by more than one-third of the residents of Hong Kong. According to the 1996 Hong Kong Government by-census, some 3.1% regard English as their 'usual' language with 34.9% claiming to speak English as 'another' language.

The results of the polls also show that for most of the population of Hong Kong who are ethnic Chinese, English is a second language acquired from school education. It is taught from kindergarten, and depending on the geographical location, English is most likely to be deferred over Chinese. In Hong Kong English is the medium of instruction for only a handful of primary schools, some secondary schools which are termed EMI (English as Medium of Instruction) schools and most courses in all the local universities.

The observations of the English language performance of the residents of Hong Kong who have higher education shows that they speak an acquired form of English modelled on Received Pronunciation, with American English influences, but proficiency also depends on the individual language environments.

In Chinese sociolinguistic literature the term “Hong Kong English” is sometimes employed in reference to English used by Hong Kong Cantonese-speaking residents who have some secondary education. This localised form of English bearing the reflection of the impact of the Cantonese accent is often thought of as a low standard of English among the local populace.

The other varieties of English spoken in Hong Kong which are indicative of little or no exposure to the English standard, with inaccurate pronunciation, misspellings, errors in grammar, and a peculiar usage of expressions being the most conspicuous features, are united under the title “Chinglish” and are held in lower prestige that Hong Kong English. These varieties are monofunctional and their usage is restricted to informal spheres of communication.

The growing needs for English to be used in the sphere of university education, business, law, mass media, popular entertainments, communication with visitors from other Asian areas are indicative of the necessity to reconsider the role of English in the educational policy of Hong Kong along the guidelines of what should be taught and how it should be taught taken in conjunction with the vexing issue of medium of instruction in Hong Kong’s education system.

There is no unanimity of opinion among scholars concerning the linguistic status of English used in Hong Kong. Judging by the descriptions presented by some researchers [1; 2; 9] it is possible to conclude that Hong Kong English is a local language variant exhibiting distinctive language patterns and neologisms (i.e. localised vocabulary). The other view, which is quite opposite, is that the usage of English in Hong Kong represents collections of written and spoken ‘errors’ which tend to be committed by Hong Kong Cantonese users of English [3; 10].

The first viewpoint is further supported by the linguistic evidence [6; 8] testifying to the existence within Hong Kong English of separate speech varieties which differ from each other depending on the degree of their deviation from what might be called the accepted local standard. The fact that proficiency in the language depends on the education level and exposure of the speakers, gives grounds for thinking that the above-mentioned speech varieties of Hong Kong English might be considered to be socially marked.

In any case, nowadays due to socio-political changes there is no denying the presence of shifts in the balance of linguistic influence and power among Cantonese, Putonghua and English in Hong Kong. The impact of Cantonese and Putonghua on English is conspicuous on the three levels of the language structure, namely: phonetic, grammatical and lexical levels through the so-called the first language interference. It must be the aim of researchers to determine which of the impact deviations from the British English standard are systematic and occur irrespective of the social status of the speaker and the level of his/her education attainment. The results obtained taken in conjunction with their axiological aspects, i.e. value judgments concerning the scope of language attitudes of Hong Kong residents to the above-mentioned local ‘deviations’ might assist in addressing the problem of extracting a bundle of such linguistic features which will make it possible to speak about the existence of the local English language standard in Hong Kong. One of the pros in favour of the existence of such a local standard is availability in English of borrowings denoting local realities [1; 5].

The other way “traffic” is mainly explicit through the existence and extensive usage in Hong Kong Chinese of English borrowed words [4] with concomitant differences in their sound-form (i.e. adaptation to the phonological peculiarities of the first language) and the scope of meanings.

On analogy with other local forms of English spoken world-wide the pronunciation peculiarities of English in Hong Kong are the first thing that catches the eye and are most indicative of linguistic interference on behalf of Cantonese [10].

Thus the results of investigation of Hong Kong English pronunciation show that, like British English, it is non-rhotic, which means that ‘r’ is not pronounced except before a vowel, and ‘wh’ is pronounced as ‘w’. Among the other peculiarities of Hong Kong pronunciation the following distinctive features may be mentioned.

Depending on the character of relations diaphones may be simple when the correlation is established between one phoneme of the first language and one phoneme of the second language (e.g. initial ‘r’ is pronounced as ‘w’), or complex when one phoneme of the first language is a part of diaphone relationship with several phonemes of the second language (e.g. ‘r’ in medial or final positions is pronounced as ‘w’ or ‘l’; ‘th’ is read as ‘d’ or ‘f’), or vice versa (e.g. initial ‘r’ and initial ‘v’ are read as ‘w’).

In Hong Kong English the differentiation of some phonemes is sometimes not sufficient enough (e.g. initial ‘n’ and ‘l’ are often confused [these two sounds are becoming allophones for younger speakers of Cantonese]; ‘r’ and ‘l’ in positions other than the beginning are also often confused). Hong Kong English is also marked by (a) merging the contrast of voiceless/voiced consonants with aspirated/unaspirated if there is any such contrast in Cantonese; (b) merging voiceless/voiced consonants into voiceless if there is no contrast in aspirated/unaspirated in Cantonese.

Multi-syllable words might sometimes be wrongly stressed, since Chinese is tonal and largely monosyllabic. This peculiarity of Chinese accounts for the omission of entire syllables in English longer words.

The above-presented data shows that conducting further auditory analysis of the phonemes of English spoken in Hong Kong, which is to be supplemented with the comparison with their British English counterparts, appears to be very important because it will help to extract both common-core elements and variant-specific features that will be decisive in determining the linguistic status of Hong Kong English.

Literature:

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2. Bolton K., Kwok H. The dynamics of the Hong Kong accent: social identity and sociolinguistic description // Journal of Asian Pacific Communication, 1990. - Vol. 1. - № 1. – P. 147-172.

3. Bunton D., Boyle J., Boyle E. Common written and spoken English errors in Hong Kong. – Hong Kong: Longman (Far East), 1992. – 219 p.

4. Chan M., Kwok H. A study of lexical borrowing from English in Hong Kong Chinese. – Hong Kong: Centre for Asian Studies, University of Hong Kong, 1982. - 147 p.

5. Chan M., Kwok H. The impact of English on Hong Kong Chinese // Viereck W., Bald W.-D. (Eds.) English in contact with other languages: Studies in honour of Broder Carstensen on the occasion of his 60^th birthday. – Budapest: Akademiai Kiado, 1986. – P. 407-431.

6. Cheng C.-C. Chinese varieties of English // Kachru B. (Ed.) The other tongue: English across cultures. Urbana (Ill.): Univ. of Illinois Press, 1982. – P. 125-139.

7. Hunter D. Bilingualism and Hong Kong English // The Educationalist, 1974. – Vol. 5. – P. 15-18.

8. King R. Standards of English in Hong Kong // Cheung Y.-S., Wiersma G., Hung J. (Eds.) The teaching of English in Hong Kong. – Hong Kong: Eagle Press, 1981. – P. 1-4.

9. Platt J. English in Singapore, Malaysia and Hong Kong // Bailey R., Gorlach M. (Eds.) English as a world language. – Ann Arbor: Univ. of Michigan Press, 1982.

10. Webster M., Ward A., Craig K. Language errors due to the first language interference (Cantonese) produced by Hong Kong students of English // ILE Journal, 1987. – Vol. 3. – P. 63-81.