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| Languages of Hong Kong | |
|---|---|
 English and Chinese signage onQueen's Road | |
| Official | ChineseEnglsih |
| Main | Hong Kong Cantonese,Hong Kong English |
| Minority | Hakka,Southern Min (Hokkien,Teochew,Haklau),Mandarin,Shanghainese |
| Immigrant | Filipino,Thai,Vietnamese,Indonesian,Japanese,Korean,Hindi,Urdu,Punjabi |
| Foreign | French,German |
| Signed | Hong Kong Sign Language |
| Keyboard layout | |
During theBritish colonial era, English was the sole official language until 1974. Today, theBasic Law of Hong Kong states thatEnglish andChinese are the twoofficial languages ofHong Kong.[1] All roads and government signs are bilingual, and both languages are used in academia, business and the courts, as well as in most government materials today.According to the2021 Hong Kong census, 93.7% of the population aged 5 or above could speak Cantonese, 58.7% could speak English, and 54.2% could speak Mandarin; in terms of usual spoken language, 88.2% of the population aged 5 and over spoke Cantonese, 4.6% spoke English and 2.3% spoke Mandarin.[2]
| Demographics and culture of Hong Kong |
|---|
| Demographics |
| Culture |
| Other Hong Kong topics |
| Languages | percent | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cantonese (official) | 88.2% | |||
| English (official) | 4.6% | |||
| Mandarin (official) | 2.3% | |||
| Other Chinese varieties | 2.8% | |||
| Other languages | 2.1% | |||
| Language | Year | percent | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cantonese | 1996 | 95.2% | −0.6% | |
| 2016 | 94.6% | |||
| English | 1996 | 38.1% | +15% | |
| 2016 | 53.1% | |||
| Mandarin | 1996 | 25.3% | +23.3% | |
| 2016 | 48.6% | |||
English was the sole official language of Hong Kong from 1883 to 1974. Only after demonstrations and petitions from Hong Kong people demanding equal status for Chinese[5][better source needed] did the language become official in Hong Kong from 1974 onward. Annex I of the 1984Sino-British Joint Declaration provided that English may be used in addition to Chinese for official purposes in the future Hong Kong Special Administrative Region. In March 1987, theOfficial Languages Ordinance was amended to require all new legislation to be enacted bilingually in both English and Chinese. In 1990, the Hong Kong Basic Law affirmed English's co-official language status with Chinese afterthe 1997 handover. No variety of Chinese has been specified to be official in Hong Kong; though it is usually understood to be spoken Cantonese andwritten vernacular Chinese.[6]
As a result of immigration into Hong Kong from Guangdong, Cantonese is the dominant Chinese variant spoken in the territory with smaller numbers of speakers of other dialects. There are also numerous Chinese languages spoken by the native peoples of theNew Territories, many of which are mutually unintelligible.
The written language used in official and formal settings iswritten vernacular Chinese inTraditional Chinese characters. The local name for written Chinese is 書面語 (Jyutping:syu1 min6-2jyu5;lit. 'Written language'), in contrast to 口語 (Jyutping:hau2jyu5;lit. 'Spoken language'), i.e. Cantonese.[7] This form of written Chinese must be distinguished from written Cantonese on the one hand and fromPutonghua, the standard language/national variety ofMainland China, on the other. Thus it has also been calledHong Kong-style Chinese (Chinese:港式中文;pinyin:gǎngshì zhōngwén) to distinguish it from Putonghua. Although texts in Hong Kong-style Chinese are read inCantonese phonology, its grammar and lexicon are largely derived from the Mandarin-based Modern Standard Chinese. Consequently, people proficient in other varieties of Standard Chinese, likeBeijing Mandarin orTaiwanese Mandarin, are able to understand it at least in writing.
There is also a written language based on the vocabulary and grammar of spoken Cantonese known aswritten Cantonese. Although the"biliterate and trilingual" policy [zh] implies an absence of support for written Cantonese, it has gained popularity in news media where entertainment and local news are related. Written Cantonese is unintelligible to non-Cantonese speakers and is considered nonstandard by some educators despite its widespread usage in Hong Kong.[8] Some have also credited written Cantonese for solving the challenges that standard written Chinese had faced in popular culture. As a written language, Cantonese became more popular with the boom of the Cantonese-language Hong Kong entertainment industry in the 1980s. Movie subtitles, magazines, popular literature, and comics have been published in written Cantonese. The publication of theGovernment Common Character Set (GCCS) in 1995 and theHong Kong Supplementary Character Set (HKSCS) in 1999 by the Information Technology Services Department further helped with standardizing the Chinese character set used for writing Cantonese.[9]
Simplified Chinese is seen in some posters, leaflets, flyers and signs in the tourist areas, but hold limited-to-no legal authority.
The primary vernacular language of Hong Kong isstandard Cantonese,[10] spoken by 88.9% of the population. It is used in all areas of daily life, government, and administration. A few closely related dialects to standard Cantonese continue to be spoken in Hong Kong. Most notable is theWeitou dialect (圍頭話), which is mostly spoken by the older generation living inwalled villages in New Territories. Additionally, theTanka people (Chinese:蜑家人, 疍家人, 水上人) from the fishingvillages on outlying islands speak their own variant of Cantonese. However, this dialect is now largely limited to those middle aged and above.Taishanese came from migrants. The language can still be found in some areas in Hong Kong where migrants concentrated, such asSai Wan.[citation needed]
When Hong Kong was a colony of theUnited Kingdom,Mandarin Chinese was not widely used in Hong Kong. With the establishment of theRepublic of China in 1912, educational materials were imported into the then British colony and schools teaching Modern Standard Chinese, the official language of the Republic, were established there as well. Yet, due to the British colonial government favouring English over Chinese for most of its rule, there was not much official effort to further regulate the language.[6]
Since the1997 handover, the huge increase in inbound tourism from the mainland has led to much more widespread use of Mandarin, particularly in tourism-related commerce, though little impact has been seen in locally based commerce or public services.[citation needed]
In addition, the large number ofsoeng1 fei1 (雙非) children (children born in Hong Kong whose parents are both from the Mainland) has increased the number of Mandarin-speaking people, particularly in districts close to the border, such that Mandarin-speaking children make up large proportions or even the majority of primary-school students in those districts, causing the beginnings of alanguage shift in those areas.[citation needed]
Hakka is indigenous to many villages in theNew Territories and withinHakka communities in Hong Kong. Nowadays, outside these rural villages and older populations, younger Hakka Chinese populations communicate primarily in Cantonese.[11][12]
Hokkien (especiallyQuanzhou Hokkien),Teochew, andHaklau are theSouthern Min varieties commonly found in Hong Kong. However, their usage is largely limited to the migrant families from the around the 20th century or so, especially thecold war era after thecommunist takeover of China in 1949, to the 21st century, such as middle aged descendants of immigrants from native Chinese regions of these variants, specifically forHaklau speakers fromSwabue,Teochew speakers from theTeoswa region (such asChaozhou,Chaoyang, etc.) of SoutheastGuangdong, andHokkien speakers fromSouthernFujian (such asQuanzhou,Xiamen,Zhangzhou) andcold war-era returnee migrants fromSoutheast Asia, such as thePhilippines,Indonesia,Malaysia,Singapore, etc. since many of them migrated out to the aforementioned Southeast Asian countries during the late 20th century before theHandover of Hong Kong but some also remained or came back to Hong Kong, especially aroundNorth Point and nearby areas.[13]
Shanghainese, orWu Chinese in general, was commonly spoken by migrants who escaped Shanghai after thecommunist takeover of China in 1949. Their descendants assimilated into mainstream Cantonese-speaking society. However there is still a sizeable immigrant community after thereform and opening up in 1978, and about 1.1% of the population speaks Shanghainese according to a 2016 census.[14]
English is a 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 thePRC by theUnited Kingdom in 1997, English remains one of theofficial languages of Hong Kong as enshrined in theBasic Law.
ManyHong Kong peopleuse both Cantonese and English, or "code-switch", in the same sentence when speaking. For example, "唓，都唔 make sense!" ("Wow, it does not make sense!"). The code-switching can freely mix English words and Chinese grammar, for instance "你 un唔 understand?" ("Do you understand?") which follows the Chinese grammar syntax 'verb - not - verb' to ask "Do you(verb)?".
Some code-switched words are used so often that they have becomeloanwords in Cantonese,[15] for example,
In addition, immigrants and expatriates from the West and other Asian countries have contributed much to Hong Kong's linguistic and demographic diversity. The geographical element of this diversity can be seen in the Hong Kong language maps, which shows oral languages from the 2011 Census, and oral and written languages from the 2016 Census.[16] Statistics for the 27 self-reported spoken languages/dialects reported in the 2011 Census, can be found in the report: Language Use, Proficiency and Attitudes in Hong Kong[17] and for the spoken and written languages in the 2016 By-Census in the report: The Contribution of Minority Languages and Dialects to Hong Kong’s Linguistic Landscape.[18]
In 2006, there were at least 44,744 persons of South Asian descent living in Hong Kong.[19] Signboards written inHindi orUrdu can be seen, and conversation in South Asian languages includingNepali,Sindhi andPunjabi, as well as Urdu, Hindi and Tamil can be heard.
Hong Kong has twoNepalese newspapers,The Everest and theSunrise Weekly Hong Kong. In 2004, theHome Affairs Bureau and Metro PlusAM 1044 jointly launched radio showsHong Kong-Pak Tonight inUrdu andHamro Sagarmatha inNepalese.[20]
The history of Indians in Hong Kong can be traced back to the early days of British Hong Kong. When the Union flag of the United Kingdom was hoisted on 26 January 1841, there were around 2,700 Indian troops that participated, and they played an important role in the development of Hong Kong in the early days. The most prominent contributions were the founding of theUniversity of Hong Kong (HKU), the Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation (HSBC) and the Star Ferry.
Although nearly all of the Indian people who live in Hong Kong speak and write Indian English, some have maintained the usage of Hindi as a second language.
There are over 25,000Japanese people in Hong Kong, so it is not uncommon to hearJapanese conversations. More than 10,000 people in Hong Kong had taken theJLPT in 2005.[21] Hong Kong-basedR by R Production produces a television travel show set in Japan, which, as of April 2016, is broadcast onViuTV. However, the language is often misused.[22]
Japanese culture, especially the popular culture, has been popular in Hong Kong for decades. Hong Kong people occasionally replaceChinese characters with Japanesekanji. In addition, the Companies Registry also permits thehiraganaの ‘no’ in Chinese business names that are registered in Hong Kong.[23] The hiragana の is usually used in place of the Chinese character之 (Jyutping:zi1;Sidney Lau:ji1) and is read as such in Hong Kong. In fact,Aji Ichiban has adopted の in their company name (優の良品).
The Japaneseshinjitaikanji駅,eki, has been used to substitute站 (Jyutping:zaam6;Sidney Lau:jaam6) (both 站 and 駅 mean "station" in their respective languages), as in Nu Front (東角駅), a shopping mall for Hong Kong youngsters inCauseway Bay. There are also some private estates named with the kanji駅. The Japanese駅 is theshinjitai of the hanzi驛 (Jyutping:jik6;Sidney Lau:yik6). However, 驛 has fallen out of usage to站 in modern Cantonese and become obsolete. Therefore, it is not uncommon to mispronounce駅 as its phonetic compound尺 (Jyutping:cek3;Sidney Lau:chek3).
Koreans in Hong Kong only make up a small minority whileKorean culture has gained popularity since the early 2000s.Korean pop music was the first Korean media to enter Hong Kong's market. Since then, several Korean TV series such asDae Jang Geum have been broadcast to numerous audiences.[24] There are roughly 1,000 students that took Korean courses at theChinese University of Hong Kong each year, including undergraduates as well as professionals who enrolled in continuing education programs. Roughly 3,000 people have taken theTest of Proficiency in Korean since its introduction to Hong Kong in 2003.[25] Surveys and statistics from course enrolments have shown that nine-tenths of the students studying Korean in Hong Kong are female.[26]
In Hong Kong,French is the second most studied foreign language after Japanese. Many institutions in Hong Kong, likeAlliance française, provide French courses. Local universities, such as theUniversity of Hong Kong, theChinese University of Hong Kong andHong Kong Baptist University, offer programmes which aim at developing proficiency in French language and culture. The language was included as a subject in theHKCEE, but not inHKALE, the two former public exams that Hong Kong high school students take, with accordance to BritishInternational General Certificate of Secondary Education (IGCSE) standards. The IGCSE French syllabus used by theUniversity of Cambridge Local Examinations Syndicate (UCLES) is adopted in the examination. The only French book store,Librairie Parentheses, in Hong Kong is located onWellington Street,Central.[27]
Real estate developers in Hong Kong sometimes name their buildings in French, such asBel-Air,Les Saisons andBelle Mer. This kind offoreign branding is also used inboutiques andrestaurants. An example isYucca de Lac inMa Liu Shui. Sometimes only French elements such asarticles andprepositions are added to the name, as in the case of the restaurant chainCafé de Coral. Similar mixing of English and French can be seen on the menu ofDélifrance, a French-style restaurant chain in Hong Kong.
The number ofGerman speakers in Hong Kong is about 5 thousand, significant enough for the establishment of theGerman Swiss International School (Deutsch-Schweizerische Internationale Schule), which claims to number more than 1,000 students, atThe Peak ofHong Kong Island.[28] Many institutions in Hong Kong provide German courses. The most well-known one is theGoethe-Institut, which is located inWan Chai. After spending a certain period in learning German, students can take the German Test as a Foreign Language (Test Deutsch als Fremdsprache;TestDaF for short) and Start German A1-C2. There are currently two test centres for TestDaF in Hong Kong: the Goethe-Institut and theHong Kong Baptist University(HKBU). The latter one also offers a European Studies degree course of German Stream,Bachelor of Social Science in European Studies (German Stream), in parallel with the French stream. A minor programme of German is offered at the Language Centre of HKBU. TheHong Kong University offers a Major in German. TheChinese University of Hong Kong offers a Minor in German and popular summer courses. TheHong Kong University of Science and Technology offers German for science and technology.
Filipino (Tagalog) and otherPhilippine languages are used byFilipinos in Hong Kong, most of whom are employed asforeign domestic workers.
Newspapers and magazines in Filipino can also be easily found inCentral, Hong Kong. There are also a small number ofchurches in Hong Kong that havemasses orservices in Filipino, for example the afternoon masses provided by theSt. John's Cathedral in Central.
Indonesian is the common language for the significant number ofIndonesians working in Hong Kong, thoughJavanese is also widely spoken. Most are domestic workers; On their days off, they often gather atVictoria Park inCauseway Bay where Indonesian languages can be heard.[29]
Thai prevails among theThai population in Hong Kong, who mostly work as domestic workers. The Thai language is found in many shops and restaurants owned by Thais inKowloon City. A number of Thai movies have been imported since the early 2000s, such asThe Wheel in the medleyThree,Jan Dara, theIron Ladies,My Little Girl, andOng-Bak: Muay Thai Warrior andTom-Yum-Goong starringTony Jaa.
Vietnamese is used in Hong Kong among theethnic Chinese from Vietnam who had initially settled inVietnam and returned to Hong Kong. The language is also used by Vietnameserefugees who left their home during theVietnam War.
Arabic is used frequently among members ofMuslim communities in Hong Kong. Some Islamic organisations do teach the language as well, but the current status can best be described as developing.[30]
Hong Kong Sign Language is used by theDeaf community of Hong Kong; it is derived from the southern dialect ofChinese Sign Language, but is now an independent, mutually unintelligible language.[31]
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