LCOM3001 LANGUAGE AND COMMUNICATION PROJECT
CANTONESE IN HONG KONG
Mainland Chinese terms are emerging in public space and education curriculum i.e. textbooks in the context of Hong Kong. It is recognised in such official and commercial domains as a language with higher status. However, the local or standard Cantonese is seen as a dialect which is only legitimately used in our daily speech. It serves as an informal language which status is getting lower than Mainland Cantonese.
This phenomenon is coined by linguist Charles Ferguson as 'classical diglossia'.
Classical diglossia described the phenomena of linguistic hierarchy in a society, where a variety of High status (H) dominates a variety of Low status (L) in public and official domains, where the two varieties are ‘mutually intelligible’ (Myers-Scotton, 2006).
Research Results!
Tally of Correct Understandings of Mainland Cantonese Vocabulary items
Those mainland terms that most interviewers understood, commonly show up in our daily life as written Chinese. They are also what we use when we write in a formal occasion. On the other hand, the least understood terms, such as 公交, 激活, 程式 and 登陸, are more popularly used in Mainland China especially on the Internet. The following table shows the mistaken terms.
Because of uneven number of each age group, we categorised the ratios of correct answers into the follow age groups.
Generational Difference
The senior working class and university students share a similar ratio on their understanding of mainland Chinese terms. The senior working class including kindergarten and university teachers, expressed they tended to see those items when they worked or studied in China. For the university students, they saw those terms when they visited Mainland websites. Both groups thought these terms had been emerging in public spaces such as street signs, shops and news reports in Hong Kong.
What does it tell us then?
I used to see those mainland Chinese terms only in China, but more frequently found in Hong Kong in recent years.
Those mainland Chinese terms are appearing more often in textbooks for primary education, so kids think those are the “standard”. But sometimes, I think Cantonese is closer to the “original”, or old Chinese.
Now I am finding those terms (mainland Chinese terms) more often in shopping malls, which deliberately accommodate to the mainland tourists