Hong Kong English - Background

Background

English is one of the official languages in Hong Kong, and is used widely in the Government, academic circles, business and the courts. All road and government signs are bilingual and English is as equally valid as Chinese on legal and business standings.

In contrast to multi-cultural Singapore where English is the first language of 70% of ethnic Chinese and 25% of Malays and Indians, Hong Kong's population is 95% ethnic Chinese (Cantonese, Fukienese, Teochew, Fukchow, Hakka) and is a predominantly Cantonese-speaking society. Most shops located in districts seldom visited by foreign visitors have signs in Chinese only, and, in locally owned enterprises, written communications are in English with all other work conducted in Chinese.

Under this backdrop most Hongkongers regard English as a foreign language, used primarily for formal communications, particularly in writing. There is little exposure to the English language, this is increasingly even more so since the transfer of the sovereignty of Hong Kong in 1997. Since that year, the government has been pushing very hard to make sure that government-funded Chinese-as-a-medium-of-instruction (CMI) schools use English only to teach English language as a subject, and not as the medium of instruction for other subjects; English-as-a-medium-of-instruction (EMI) schools are not subjected to such limitation. Only a handful of other government primary and secondary schools are now allowed to use English as the medium of instruction in Hong Kong such as the English Schools Foundation and Toher international schools (whereas many independent fee-charging schools continue to use the English as the medium of instruction). An educational reform in 2010 loosened this restriction on CMI schools. Nonetheless, being able to use English fluently is uncommon.

People with higher, past experience of living in English-speaking countries, or who constantly interact with Hong Kong's English-speaking expatriate communities, generally speak an acquired form of English. Accent and spelling preference may vary from person to person, depending on the people they have interacted with and the country they have studied in. For most ordinary local Hongkongers however, the English spoken is generally typical of foreign language learners: Cantonese-influenced pronunciation with some acquired Received Pronunciation characteristics, and with vocabularies and sentence structure generally more formal than those of native speakers. For instance, contractions and slang are not used, and many idioms are alien to Hongkongers as they do not pertain to English-speaking countries' cultures.

The falling English proficiency of local English teachers has come under criticism. In response, the Education Bureau has required English teachers without English language undergraduate degrees to submit to an assessment, called "LPAT", to ensure that their English was of sufficiently high calibre. Those failing LPAT are no longer permitted to teach English. Unless hired by the government, even native English speakers were to undergo LPAT screening. Few opted to retire to avoid the LPAT process, while others failed the test.