Why are the younger generation resisting “formal Chinese” in daily usage?

From our interviews, the younger generation (students and junior working class) generally reflected a negative impression on mainland terms as well as formal Cantonese writing regarding daily usage.

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Mainland terms

Except for the mainland terms that are not their “active vocabulary” or those they don’t understand at all, many youths avoid such “mainland terms” in their daily usage. Despite such terms often being referred to the “formal”, “standard” Chinese, many don’t feel the need to refer to things in a formal way in daily conversations. Some even disagree with those being the “standard”, pointing out that many of those terms originate from Mandarin, which has a shorter history than Cantonese. With growing influences from China, there is a growing infiltration of these mainland terms into our daily life, such as in restaurants, shops, official websites, etc. This further deter the younger generation to use such terms, due to their strong sense of Hongkongese identity and their strong will against mainland “washout”.

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Close-to-formal Cantonese writing

Youngsters mostly find it odd to write in a close-to-formal way whilst having a casual communication on phone or on social media, since this is not the normal way they talk. Deliberately type in a close-to-formal way makes the conversation sound unnatural. They reflected that such form of writing is often tied with being “old-fashioned” and even “mainland-like”. Conversationally, when referring to certain items, the English names are preferably used for convenience, usually cause the Cantonese equivalents sound clumsy. For instances, “Google” would be referred to by its English name instead of the direct phonetic translation in Cantonese; “tablet” is preferred over its long (four-syllabled) Cantonese translation.