LCOM3001 LANGUAGE AND COMMUNICATION PROJECT
CANTONESE IN HONG KONG
Let's Up Something
“Kongish ng hai [is not] exac7ly Chinglish ... But actcholly, Kongish hai[is] more creative, more flexible, and more functional ge variety.”
Kongish, emerged as a language of protest
Kongish Daily
Types of Writing
In Hong Kong Cantonese, there are a variety of communication via written text. In this interview, we asked the subjects to read three paragraphs that were structured differently.
The one featured in the video is Paragraph A which is written in 'Kongish'. This way of writing contains no Cantonese characters, combined with English terms and is written using the alphabet. For example: 'Tung mai take notes jot dai d important points mentioned ahhh'.
What's so special about Cantonese in Hong Kong?
There are Cantonese speakers in other places like Singapore, Malaysia, and Mainland China...
While there are many other Cantonese speakers in other parts of the world, the particular variety of Cantonese in Hong Kong is one of a kind and is nowhere found otherwise. To illustrate the differences, we did a small research to compare the Cantonese lexicon (vocabulary) items commonly used conversationally in Hong Kong and in mainland China, as shown in the video below:
Preservation and Promotion of Cantonese in Hong Kong via Social Media
LCOM3001 2017 Semester 2
“Lunch today ho mm ho?” Perhaps you’ve seen something like this on the internet, or even, your own daily texts. Like all languages, the Cantonese language in Hong Kong is constantly changing and has developed its own very kind of variety not seen anywhere else, especially with the younger generation having a variety of outlets, namely social media, in which to express their creativity and thoughts. Though this freedom of expression is commendable, there are those who claim that this ‘type’ of Cantonese is in fact a threat to what is the ‘official’ or ‘proper’ way of speaking/ writing. In fact the education bureau is trying to promote Mandarin teaching as a means of ‘reforming’ Chinese education.
So the question stands, can the internet, namely social media platforms, be a utility for Cantonese speakers in Hong Kong to try to preserve and promote their heritage language against the pressure, criticism and “threats”?