Hong Kong Cantonese

Hong Kong Cantonese
香港粵語; 港式廣東話; 香港話
Native to	Hong Kong, Macau and some Overseas Communities
Region	the Pearl River Delta
Language family	Sino-Tibetan Chinese Yue Yuehai Hong Kong Cantonese
Writing system	Written Cantonese Cantonese Braille
Official status
Official language in	Hong Kong  Macau
Regulated by	Official Language Division[1] Civil Service Bureau Government of Hong Kong
Language codes
ISO 639-3	–
ISO 639-6	xgng
Linguist list	yue-yue
	yue-can
Glottolog	None
Chinese name
Traditional Chinese	香港粵語
Simplified Chinese	香港粤语
Transcriptions Standard Mandarin Hanyu Pinyin Xiānggǎng yuèyǔ Yue: Cantonese Jyutping Hoeng1 gong2 jyut6 jyu5 Yale Romanization Hēung góng yuht yúh
Hong Kong-style Cantonese
Traditional Chinese	港式粵語
Transcriptions Yue: Cantonese Jyutping Gong2 sik1 jyut6 jyu5 Yale Romanization Góng sīk yuht yúh
Hong Kong Cantonese
Traditional Chinese	香港廣東話
Transcriptions Yue: Cantonese Jyutping Hoeng1 gong2 gwong2 dung1 waa2 Yale Romanization Hēung góng gwóng dūng wá
Hong Kong Guangzhou-dialect
Traditional Chinese	香港廣州話
Transcriptions Yue: Cantonese Jyutping Hoeng1 gong2 gwong2 zau1 waa2 Yale Romanization Hēung góng gwóng jāu wá

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Hong Kong Cantonese (Chinese: 香港粵語) is a form of Yue Chinese commonly spoken in Hong Kong. Although the Hong Kong Chinese largely identify this variant of Chinese with the term "Cantonese" (廣東話), a variety of publications in Mainland China describe the variant as Hong Kong speech (香港話). There are slight differences between the pronunciation used in Hong Kong Cantonese and that of the Cantonese spoken in the neighbouring Chinese province of Guangdong, where Cantonese (based on the Guangzhou dialect) is a lingua franca. Over the years, Hong Kong Cantonese has also absorbed foreign terms and developed a large set of Hong Kong-specific terms. These differences from the Canton norm are the result of British rule between 1841 and 1997, as well as the closure of the Hong Kong-China border immediately after the establishment of the People's Republic of China in 1949.

History

Before the arrival of British settlers in 1842, the inhabitants of Hong Kong mainly spoke the Dongguan-Bao'an (Tungkun–Poon) dialect of Yue, as well as Hakka, Teochew, and the Tanka dialect of Yue Chinese. These dialects are all remarkably different from Cantonese. After the British acquired Hong Kong Island, Kowloon Peninsula, and the New Territories from the Qing between 1841 (officially 1842) and 1898, large numbers of merchants and workers came to Hong Kong from the city of Canton, the centre of Cantonese. Cantonese became the dominant spoken language in Hong Kong. The frequent migration between Hong Kong and other Cantonese-speaking areas did not cease up until 1949, when the Communists took over Mainland China. During this period, the Cantonese spoken in Hong Kong was very similar to that in Canton.

In 1949, the year that the People's Republic of China was established, Hong Kong saw a large influx of refugees from different areas of mainland China. The Hong Kong Government closed the border to halt the influx, but illegal immigration from Mainland China into Hong Kong continued. Because of this, the correspondence between language and ethnicity may generally be true though not absolute, as many Chinese who speak Hong Kong Cantonese may come from other areas of China, especially Shanghai or non-Cantonese regions of Guangdong where Hakka and Teochew prevail. Movement, communication, and relations between Hong Kong and mainland China became very limited, and consequently the evolution of Cantonese in Hong Kong diverged from that in the rest of Guangdong. In Mainland China, the use of Mandarin as the language of official use and education was enforced. In Hong Kong, Cantonese is the medium of instruction in schools, along with written English and written Chinese. And because of the long exposure to English during the colonial period, large number of English words were loaned into Hong Kong Cantonese, e.g. "巴士" (/páːsǐː/), literally, "bus". Hong Kong people even started to calque English constructions, for example, "噉 (咁) 都唔 make sense" (literally, "it still does not make sense.") . Therefore, the vocabularies of Cantonese in Mainland China and Hong Kong differed.

Moreover, the pronunciation of Cantonese changed while the change either did not occur in mainland China or took place much slower. For example, merging of initial /n/ into /l/ and the deletion of /ŋ/ were observed. Due to the limited communication between Hong Kong and mainland China, these changes only had a limited effect in mainland China at that time. As a result, the pronunciation of Cantonese between Hong Kong and mainland China varied, and so native speakers may note the difference when listening to Hong Kong Cantonese and mainland China Cantonese. Hong Kong-based Cantonese can be found in Hong Kong popular culture such as Hong Kong films and Hong Kong pop music (Cantopop). Hong Kong people who have emigrated to other countries have brought Hong Kong Cantonese to other parts of the world.

Pronunciation

In modern-day Hong Kong, many native speakers are unable to distinguish between certain phoneme pairs, causing them to merge one sound into another. Although this is often considered substandard and is frequently denounced as "lazy sound" (懶音), the phenomenon is becoming more widespread and is influencing other Cantonese-speaking regions. Contrary to popular opinion, some of these changes are not recent. The loss of the velar nasal (/ŋ/) was documented by Williams (1856), and the substitution of the liquid nasal (/l/) for the nasal initial (/n/) was documented by Cowles (1914).

List of observed shifts:^[2]

• Merging of /n/ initial into /l/ initial.
• Merging of /ŋ/ initial into null initial.
• Merging of /kʷ/ and /kʷʰ/ initials into /k/ and /kʰ/ when followed by /ɔː/. Note that /ʷ/ is the only glide (介音) in Cantonese.
• Merging of /ŋ/ and /k/ codas into /n/ and /t/ codas respectively, eliminating contrast between these pairs of finals (except after /e/ and /o/): /aːn/-/aːŋ/, /aːt/-/aːk/, /ɐn/-/ɐŋ/, /ɐt/-/ɐk/, /ɔːn/-/ɔːŋ/ and /ɔːt/-/ɔːk/.
• Merging of the two syllabic nasals, /ŋ̩/ into /m̩/, eliminating the contrast of sounds between 吳 (surname Ng) and 唔 (not).
• Merging of the rising tones (陰上 2nd and 陽上 5th).^[3]

Today in Hong Kong, people still make an effort to avoid these sound merges in serious broadcasts and in education. Older people often do not exhibit these shifts in their speech, but some do. With the sound changes, the name of Hong Kong's Hang Seng Bank (香港恆生銀行), /hœ́ːŋ kɔ̌ːŋ hɐ̏ŋ sɐ́ŋ ŋɐ̏n hɔ̏ːŋ/, becomes /hœ́ːn kɔ̌ːn hɐ̏n sɐ́n ɐ̏n hɔ̏ːn/, sounding like Hon' Kon' itchy body (痕身 /hɐ̏n sɐ́n/) 'un cold (UN寒 /ɐ̏n hɔ̏ːn/) . The name of Cantonese itself (廣東話, "Guangdong speech") would be /kʷɔ̌ːŋ tʊ́ŋ wǎː/ without the merger, whereas /kɔ̌ːŋ tʊ́ŋ wǎː/ (sounding like "講東話": "speak eastern speech") and /kɔ̌ːn tʊ́ŋ wǎː/ (sounding like "趕東話" : "chase away eastern speech") are overwhelmingly popular.^[4]

The shift affects the way some Hong Kong people speak other languages as well. This is especially evident in the pronunciation of certain English names: "Nicole" pronounce [lekˈkou̯], "Nancy" pronounce [ˈlɛnsi] etc. A very common example of the mixing of (/n/) and (/l/) is that of the word 你, meaning "you." Even though the standard pronunciation should be (/nei/), the word is often pronounced (/lei/), which is a surname,李, or the word 理, meaning theory. The merger of (/n/) and (/l/) also affects the choice of characters when the Cantonese media transliterate foreign names.

Prescriptivists who try to correct these "lazy sounds" often end up introducing hypercorrections. For instance, while attempting to ensure that people pronounce the initial /ŋ/, they may introduce it into words which have historically had a null-initial. One common example is that of the word 愛, meaning "love." Even though the standard pronunciation would be /ɔ̄ːi/, but the word is often pronounced /ŋɔ̄ːi/.

In recent years, a number of Hong Kong secondary schools have tried to reverse this change by making the learning of Cantonese Pinyin part of the school Chinese curriculum.

Unique phrases and expressions

Due to Hong Kong's unique historical background, Hong Kong Cantonese has evolved differently from the Mandarin spoken in China, Taiwan and Singapore over the years. Hong Kong Cantonese has developed a number of phrases and expressions that are unique to the context of Hong Kong. These phrases and expressions usually make references to specific things that can only be found in Hong Kong or specific incidents that happened in Hong Kong. Here are a few examples:

Here, the former refers to Hong Kong's status as a British colony, where prisoners are detained on behalf of the Sovereign, and is similar to the English colloquial expression "guest of Her Majesty". The latter refers to the transfer of sovereignty of Hong Kong to China in 1997. The situations alluded to are both unique to Hong Kong.

Loanwords

Life in Hong Kong is characterised by the blending of Asian (southern Chinese in particular) and Western cultures, as well as the city's position as a major international business centre. In turn, Hong Kong influences have also spread widely into other cultures. As a result, a large number of loanwords are created in Hong Kong and then exported to Mainland China, Taiwan, Singapore, and Japan. Some of the loanwords have become even more popular than their Chinese counterparts, in Hong Kong as well as in their destination cultures.

Imported loanwords

Selected loanwords^[5] are shown below.

From English

From Japanese

From French

Exported loanwords

Into English

Into Mainland Chinese Mandarin

Into Taiwanese Mandarin

Into Japanese

Code-switching and loanword adaptation

Hong Kong Cantonese has a high number of foreign loanwords. Sometimes, the part of speech of the incorporated words are also changed, like "佢地好friend", translated into English as "they are very 'friend'", means "they are good friends". The word "friend" is changed from a noun into an adjective. In some examples, some new meanings of English words are even created. For example, "至yeah", literally "the most yeah", means "the trendiest". Originally, "yeah" means "yes/okay" in English, but it means "trendy" when being incorporated into Hong Kong Cantonese (see also "yeah baby" and "aww yeah"). Semantic change is common in loanwords; when foreign words are borrowed into Cantonese, polysyllabic words and monosyllabic words tend to become disyllabic, and the second syllable is in the Upper Rising tone (the second tone).

For example, "kon1 si2"  (coins), "sek6 kiu1" (security) and "ka1 si2" (cast). A few polysyllabic words become monosyllabic though, like "mon1" (monitor), literally means computer monitor. And some new Cantonese lexical items are created according to the morphology of Cantonese. For example, "laai1 記" from the word "library". Most of the disyllabic words and some of the monosyllabic words are incorporated as their original pronunciation, with some minor changes according to the Cantonese phonotactics.

Incorporating words from foreign languages into Cantonese is also acceptable by most Cantonese speakers. Hong Kong Cantonese speakers frequently code-mix although they can distinguish foreign words from Cantonese ones. For instance, "噉都唔 make sense", literally means "it doesn't make sense". After a Cantonese speaker decides to code-mix a foreign word in a Cantonese sentence, syntactical rules of Cantonese will be followed. For instance, "sure" (肯定) can be used like "你 su¹ 唔 su¹ aa³?" (are you sure?) as if it were its Cantonese counterpart "你肯唔肯定?", using the A-not-A question construction. In some circumstances, code-mixing is preferable because it can simplify sentences. In the case of some technological terms, code-mixing becomes very hard to avoid.

For example, Hong Kong people find it difficult to say "你用個 mau¹-si² right-click嚟highlight啲字" ("You use the right-click of the mouse to highlight the words") in pure Cantonese. It is actually not surprising if a Hong Konger does not know how to express "mouse", "right-click" and "highlight" in Chinese. Code-mixing is almost unavoidable for some technical terms like "trial balance" in accounting and "benzene" in chemistry because of the use of English as the medium of instruction at the tertiary level and often the secondary level. Many people in Hong Kong do not know the Chinese names of many technical terms and as a result, it is expected that English names of the terms be used. This is also a headache for prescriptive linguists and Chinese teachers who advocate the use of pure Cantonese. Code-mixing is in general not a problem but it could impose a language barrier between Hong Kongers and Mainland Chinese as the former do not know the Chinese names of the terms while the latter, the English of the terms.

See also

• Bilingualism in Hong Kong
• Cantonese profanity
• Code-switching in Hong Kong
• Proper Cantonese pronunciation
• Comparison of national standards of Chinese
• Hong Kong English
• Varieties of Chinese

References

External links

• Learn Cantonese (with Cantonese-English / English-Cantonese Dictionary)
• Learn Chinese with Chinese Lyrics Now with Pinyin and sound files

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