Hong Kong English
Hong Kong English is sometimes used to refer to the accent and characteristics of English spoken by some of the ethnic Chinese residents of Hong Kong. It is not a mixed, creole or pidgin language, nor a dialect of English. It is only a variant of English with some local influence. It is also a dialect of Chinglish.
English is an official language in Hong Kong but for most of the population who are ethnic Chinese, it is a second language acquired from school education. It is taught from kindergarten, and is the medium of instruction for a few primary schools, many secondary schools and most courses in the local universities. It is widely used in business activities. Its official status is equal with Chinese.
Proficiency in the language depends on the education level and exposure of the speakers and the following only characterizes some common features and mistakes of "Hong Kong English". Such characteristics have usually been found among speakers who have some secondary education. People with higher education or those who have graduated from élite secondary schools basically speak an acquired form of English modeled on British English, with some possible American influences. Some school teachers at primary schools may not able be to recognise the differences in pronunciation. Some secondary schools or colleges teach American English as their medium of instruction.
The accent of spoken English in Hong Kong, perhaps, originates from the "tung sheng" (通勝), in which it is possible to find one or two pages containing lots of direct transliteration of English into Cantonese words, for example, "dinner" would be transliterated into the chinese words "甸那", pronounced "din na".
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Spoken English
Accent of spoken English
- Main article: phonemic differentiation.
- beginning 'r' read as 'w' sound. (the word 'read' is a good example.)
- Like British English, Hong Kong English is also non-rhotic, which means 'r' is not pronounced except before a vowel.
- 'r' in other positions may be read as 'w' or 'l' or entirely omitted. (eg. 'error' as E-WA, the famous 'flied lice' and 'frame', respectively.)
- beginning 'v' read as 'w' sound. (eg. 'Aston Villa')
- other 'v' becomes 'w' or 'f' mostly with a consensus yet no obvious pattern. (eg. 'f' in 'favour', second 'v' in 'Volvo' and either 'f' or 'w' in 'develop' depending on the speaker.)
- beginning 'ch' read as 'ts' (i.e. German 'z').
- beginning 'j' read as 'dz'.
- ending 'ge' read as 'ch'.
- 'wh' read as 'w' sound.
- 'th' read as 'd' (as in them) or 'f' (as in thick) sound. ('th' sound is not used in Cantonese)
- beginning 'n' and 'l' 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. (Breakfast becomes BLEG-FUSS for some, 'bleach' and 'breach' both become 'beach')
- ending 'l' pronounced as 'ou' sound as letter 'o' in 'echo' (sale becomes SAY-o)
- ending 't' pronounced as 'ts' (i.e. German 'z')
- Differences or omission in ending sounds. (as the ending consonants are always voiceless (glottal stop) in Cantonese with the exception of 'm', 'n' and 'ng', simliar to Basel German)
- Exaggeration of ending 'd' sound of past-tense form of verbs.
- multi-syllable words might sometimes be wrongly stressed, since Chinese is tonal and largely monosyllabic.
- producing the 'w', 'h' or 'l' sounds in words like Greenwich, Bonham, Beckham, Salisbury.
- producing the "ces" sound in Leicester or Gloucester.
- some alphabets are spoken with phonemes in Cantonese, such as 'e' as 'YEE', 'f' becomes 'E-fu', 'h' becomes 'IG-chyu', 'l' becomes 'E-lo', 'q' becomes 'KIW', 'r' becomes 'AA-lo', 'w' becomes 'DUB-bee-you', 'x' becomes 'IG-si', 'z' becomes 'yee-ZED'.
- The same is true for some for 'g' becoming 'DZEE', 'j' becoming 'DZAY' and 'v' becoming 'WEE'. (The reasons were mentioned above.)
- Merging of certain 'a' and 'e' sounds, which becomes the schwa sound most of the time. eg. 'bad' and 'bed', 'mass' and 'mess'.
- Merging or interchangeability of 's' and 'z' sound.
- Omission of entire syllables in longer words. ('Difference' become DIFF-ENS, 'temperature' becomes TEM-PI-CHUR.)
- Difficulties in pronouncing certain syllables: 'salesman' become 'sellsman', 'round' becomes 'WAANG'. (Without the ending consonant pronounced and ccassionally with an ending 'd'.)
Grammar of spoken English
- Confuse or drop articles like "the" and "a"
- Confusion with verb tenses and agreement of singular or plural nouns, as they have no direct equivalence in Cantonese grammar. (By extension, the correct use of "is" and "are".)
- Difficulties with numbers larger than ten thousand. In Chinese, 10 thousand is read as one myriad, 100 thousand as 10 myriad, one million as 100 myriad, etc. Chinese speakers often pause before saying big numbers in English because of the need for mental conversion. (English speakers of Chinese often experience similar problem when saying large numbers in Chinese.)
- Difficulties with fractions. eg. "three over four" becomes "four over three" and "nine times out of ten" becomes "ten times out of nine". Primarily because the equivalent of the word "of" in Chinese functions more like "'s" in English. (Such that the words before and after the word "of" swap places.) Such that "Chairman of the board" becomes "Board's chairman" and so "nine out of ten" is "ten times's nine" (sic) and "three out of four" is "four parts's three" (sic). And the numbers become easily confused.
- A similar reason means that descriptions of degree of discount are also often confused. Instead of a "twenty percent discount", the Chinese way of saying the same thing is roughly translated as an "eight tenths discount". (A discount where you pay eight tenths.) As such, it is common place for a "10% discount" to be mistaken described as a "90% discount". (Thankfully, this happens in speech far more often than in shops, primarily due to the double-conversion in a small amount of time.)
- Difficulties with correct usage of pronouns as their Cantonese equivalent are genderless.
Written English
British English is taught in primary and secondary schools, but American English spellings (e.g. verbs ending in -ise/-ize, nouns ending in -er/-re, -our/-or) are also commonly used due to influence from, for example, English TV programs from the US. However, the norm is to use the suffixes -our, -re but -ize.
In some informal occasions, notably in internet usage among locals, final particle or interjections of Cantonese origin such as ar, la, loh, ma and wor' may be used at the ending of sentences. These interjections are often referred locally as ICQ English, such as "ng chi dou wor" ("[I] don't know"); "mud che"/"mud yei ar" ("What's the matter?"); "hai wor" ("Oh yes"); "lei up mud?" ("What did you say?/What do you mean?"); "chi sin la" ("[You are]Crazy"); "lei zhou mud ar?" ("What are you doing?/What's the matter with you?"). This has always been considered a big problem by local English teachers. It is quite common to find students writing sentences like "ngo dou haei wor." ("Same for me") for students of lower English standards. It should be noted, however, that the use of such ICQ English is quite common even among individuals who are well educated in English.
Ironically, quite a few Hong Kong English teachers are of poor English Standard.
Hong Kong Vocabulary
Some words are found in Hong Kong which are not well used in the rest of the English speaking world.
- 'Godown' means a warehouse - this word is of Indian origin
- 'Shroff' means a paying kiosk, such as that found in a multi-storey car park, again of Indian origin
- 'Tai-Pan' is a business executive of a large corporation
- 'Punti' has become a commonly used word in Hong Kong law courts; it is a sound transliteration of Cantonese 'Boon Dei' meaning 'local'. When a defendant is using 'Punti' in court, that means he elects to use Cantonese as the language in trial instead of English.
- 'Chop' means a seal or a stamp; again of Indian origin
- 'Praya' means seashore or seafront - this word is from Portuguese praia.