Hong Kong English

For more background on this topic, see languages of Hong Kong.

Hong Kong English refers to the accent and characteristics of English spoken by Hong Kong residents. It often refers to the second language spoken by the Cantonese-speaking population of Hong Kong, but it could also be the first language spoken by the resident British community, the Eurasians and local-born South Asians.

Hong Kong English is not a mixed, creole or pidgin language, nor a dialect of English. It is only a variant of English with some local influence.

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. Many Hong Kong Eurasians (mostly of British-Chinese or Macanese origins) or Hong Kong-born South Asians speak it as a first language. It is taught from kindergarten, and depending on the geographical location, English is most likely to be deferred over Chinese. English is the medium of instruction for only a handful of primary schools, some secondary schools (termed EMI (English as Medium of Instruction) schools) and most courses in the local universities. It is widely used in business activities. Its official status is the same as 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 modelled on British English, with some possible American influences. Local people who are not very well educated are the people with the tendency to speak English with a heavy Hong Kong accent, while those who are better educated tend to have less of an accent. Some school teachers at primary schools may not be able to recognise the differences in pronunciation.

While Hong Kong English refers to the second language spoken by the Hong Kong Cantonese, it may be related to Chinglish. As with many other kinds of local language variants or dialects, Hong Kong English is often thought of as a low standard of English among the local populace. The more educated people in the city tend to speak standard British, sometimes American English, or more commonly some mixture of both.

The older Cantonese accent of spoken English in Hong Kong, which is seldomly used nowadays, perhaps, originates from the "Tung shing" (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".

Spoken English

Accent of spoken English

Main article: phonemic differentiation.

Reasons contributing to Hong Kong English pronunciation

Hong Kong residents who have never learnt English overseas largely acquire their English speaking skills from teachers in secondary and primary schools, who usually also have a heavy Hong Kong English accent. Moreover, Cantonese, not English, is the vernacular tongue spoken in everyday life in Hong Kong, and as a result most Hong Kong people tend to speak Cantonese better than English. This lack of practice in speaking standard English, coupled with a general inavailability of English teachers speaking in a standard English accent, leads to the prevalence of Cantonese-influenced accents in Hong Kong English. Even Hong Kong students studying overseas may find it difficult to practise speaking proper English because they always find friends who are from Hong Kong, so they keep speaking Cantonese instead of English. After they have returned to Hong Kong from abroad, their English-speaking skills are often almost the same as before they have left Hong Kong.

British influences

Like British English, Hong Kong English is non-rhotic, which means 'r' is not pronounced except before a vowel.
'wh' read as 'w', as in British English.

Common mispronunciations

beginning 'r' read as 'w' sound. (the word 'read' is a good example.)
'r' in other positions may be read as 'w' or 'l' . (eg. 'error' as E-WA, the famous 'flied lice' and 'frame', respectively.)
beginning 'v' read as 'w' sound. (eg. 'Vector' and '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' and soft 'g' read as 'dz' (e.g., Gigi pronounced as "zhi-zhi").
ending 'ge' read as 'ch'.
'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')
l-vocalization is common: ending 'l' (IPA: ) often pronounced as 'w', as in Polish, e.g. "bell" --> /bew/, "milk" --> /mjwk/. This is sometimes strengthened and becomes like (e.g., 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 and unreleased (glotallized) in Cantonese with the exception of 'm', 'n' and 'ng', similar to Basel German)
Exaggeration of certain final consonants, for example 's' (to /si/) and 'd' sounds of past-tense form of verbs (to ^*).
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. This is reflected in the transliteration of the words, for example, Beckham is transliterated as 碧咸 (pronounced as /bik-ha:m/).
producing the "ces" sound in Leicester or Gloucester.
some letters are spoken with phonemes used in Cantonese, such as 'e' as 'YEE', 'f' becomes 'E-fu', 'h' becomes 'IG-chue', 'l' becomes 'E-lo', 'q' becomes 'KIU', 'r' becomes 'AA-lo', 's' becomes 'ES-si', 'w' becomes 'DUB-bee-you', 'x' becomes 'IG-si'. Most confusingly the letter 'z' is read as 'EE-zed' which is parsed by native English speakers as 'ez'.
The same is true for some for 'g' becoming 'DZEE', 'j' becoming 'DZAY' and 'v' becoming 'WEE'. (The reasons were mentioned above.)
Merging of and to . eg. 'bad' and 'bed', 'mass' and 'mess'.
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 occasionally with an ending 'd'.)
Merging the contrast of voiceless / voiced consonants with aspirated / unaspirated if there is any contrast exists in Cantonese. The stop becomes ^*" target="_blank" >becomes ^*" target="_blank" >becomes ^*" target="_blank" >becomes ^*" target="_blank" >becomes ^*" target="_blank" >becomes [k.
Merging voiceless / voiced consonants into voiceless if no contrast in aspirated / unaspirated in Cantonese. Both and ^*;" target="_blank" >both ^*" target="_blank" >become ^*" target="_blank" >and ^*" target="_blank" >; both ^*" target="_blank" >become ^*" target="_blank" >and ^*" target="_blank" >( difficulty in pronouncing [θ too).
The letter “z” is generally pronounced as , a corrupted version (due to various of the above-mentioned reasons) of a very archaic pronunciation ; the correct pronunciations, and , are not understood by some.

English grammar

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 problems 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". This occurs 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). Eg: "Chairman of the board" becomes "Board's chairman", "nine out of ten" becomes "ten times's nine" (sic), "three out of four" becomes "four parts's three" (sic). Because of this the values of the numbers are often confused.
A similar error results in descriptions of degree of discount often being 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 mistakenly described as a "90% discount". Thankfully, this happens in speech far more often than in shops, primarily because the double-conversion happens very quickly.
Difficulties with correct usage of personal pronouns as their Cantonese equivalents are genderless (common to speakers of other Chinese dialects as well for the same reason).
Difficulties in distinguishing the use of prepositions. For example, when describing time, there is some confusion of the prepositions "on", "in" and "at", like "on Monday", "in February" and "at 12 o'clock".
Difficulties in distinguishing the gender of animals. For example, cow is used exclusively to refer all form of cattle, even ox is more appropriate.
Difficulties in answering with "yes" or "no". For example, Ask "Do you like biology?" Answer "No!" Ask "No?" Answer "Yes." When the correct answer to the second question is "no".(In Cantonese, "yes" represents an agreement, "no" represents a disagreement, whilst in English "yes" represents a positive answer, "no" represents a negative answer.)
Ask "Do you have any books that I can borrow?" Answer "Have", a direct translation.
"There is/are" becomes "there has/have", a direct translation.
Difficulties in distinguishing "lend" and "borrow", as it is the same word in Cantonese. "Borrow" is nearly used in all cases.
Saying "eat soup" as "drink soup", "take medicine" as "eat medicine", etc.

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-language television programmes from the United States. However, the norm is to use the suffixes -our and -re, but -ize.

Instant Messaging / SMS English

In some informal situations, notably in Internet usage among locals, final particles or interjections of Cantonese origin such as ar, la, lu, ma and wor'—many of these being “flavouring particles”—are used at the ends of English sentences. The use of these interjections is often referred locally as “IM English”; examples of such:

"u doing wt ar/ah?" (”What are you doing?”— “u doing wt” is a direct word-for-word translation of the Cantonese statement corresponding to “you are doing”, and “ar” is the Cantonese question marker to convert the statement into a question)
"I've eaten dinner lu" (“I've had dinner”—“lu” indicates a perfect aspect and makes the sentence more informal)
"I go la/lah, bye" (“I'm leaving, bye!”—“la” indicates intent and makes the sentence more informal)

The use of “IM English” has long been considered a serious problem by local English teachers, as it is quite common to find students writing sentences like "me too woh" for students of lower English standards. It should be noted, however, that the use of such “IM English” is quite common even among individuals who are well educated in English in informal occasions, to express some kind of regional intimacy and show their Cantonese-speaking identity.

In addition to the desire to express intimacy and identity, there are a number of other reasons for the existence of “IM” English:

It is often easier to type English words than to input Chinese characters when the intent is to either communicate in spoken Cantonese or to refer to Cantonese words
Some computers (or particular pieces of software) might not be able to display Chinese characters.

Proficiency of English teachers

Some people criticise the language proficiency of some local non-native English teachers. In response, the local education bureau required English teachers without English language undergraduate degrees to pass an assessment called the "LPAT" to ensure that their English is of a sufficiently high standard, and those who did not pass the assessment would not be able to teach English any more. This included English teachers who are native speakers, except for those hired by the government. A high number of native English speakers have failed the test. Such assessment screened quite a number of in-service English teachers, and some of them decided to retire instead.

Hong Kong Specific English Vocabulary

Some words in Hong Kong English are not well used in the rest of the English-speaking world, indeed they are not even universally accepted within Hong Kong. Most of these words are of Anglo-Indian or Portuguese/Macanese origins, reflecting Hong Kong's historical connections with other British possessions in Asia and Macau.

A 'chop' is a seal or stamp; again of Anglo-Indian origin; also used in Singapore English, and a standard, if technical, word in American English and Commonwealth English.
'Hong Kong foot' (not considered correct English even in Hong Kong) refers to athlete's foot; it is a literal translation of the Chinese term '香港腳' (Xianggang jiao or Heunggong geuk)
'Punti' has become a commonly-used word in the law courts of Hong Kong; it is a transliteration of Cantonese 'Boon Dei' meaning 'local'. When a defendant is using 'Punti' in court, he is electing to use Cantonese, instead of English, as the language of trial. The reason for not referring directly to "Cantonese" is that the word "Cantonese" can mean any dialect spoken in the Guangdong (Canton) province; also, the Cantonese spoken in Guangzhou (Canton) is actually a bit different both in accent and vocabulary from that spoken in Hong Kong.
A 'Tai-Pan' (or 'taipan') is a business executive of a large corporation
A 'garoupa' is a grouper, a group of ocean fish such as the Epinephelus Spp., common in Hong Kong (from Portuguese).
A 'godown' is a warehouse (from Malay) also used in Singapore English.
A 'nullah' is a concrete-lined channel designed to allow rapid run off of storm water from high ground (from Anglo-Indian).
A 'praya' is seashore or seafront (from Portuguese) praia.
A 'shroff' is a payment kiosk, typically found in government offices or multi-storey carparks, again of Anglo-Indian origin. Shroffs are also commonly seen in mainland China, especially in buildings financed by Hong Kong companies.
An 'amah' is a live-in servant (from Macanese).
A 'joss stick' is an incense stick typically burnt in a Chinese temple (from Portuguese deus, which means God).

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