Hong Kong English

Hong Kong English or Honglish is a variety of the English language native to Hong Kong. The variant is either a learner interlanguage or emergent variant, primarily a result of Hong Kong's British colonial history and the influence of native Hong Kong Cantonese speakers.

Background

English is one of two official languages in Hong Kong — the other being Cantonese — and is used in academia, business and the courts, as well as in most government materials. Major businesses routinely issue important material in both Chinese and English, and all road and government signs are bilingual.
Since the Handover, English in Hong Kong remains primarily a second language, in contrast to Singapore where English has been shifting toward being a first language. The falling English proficiency of local English language teachers has come under criticism. The proportion of the Hong Kong population who report using English as their "usual spoken language" increased from 2.8% in 2006 to 4.3% in 2016, while 51.1%, 63.5% and 65.6% respectively, reported being able to speak, write and read the language.

Status

The existence of Hong Kong English as a distinct variety of the English language is still a matter of debate among many scholars.

Evidence suggesting an established variant

In the literature examining the existence of Hong Kong English as a distinct variety, scholars have sought evidence of expression of the variant which may be classified according to the following criteria:

Standard and recognisable accent; research has demonstrated the existence of, and local preference for, a local Hong Kong English accent
Distinctive vocabulary; local media, such as newspapers, clearly show a shared common vocabulary used among English speakers in Hong Kong
History; a continuous link can be drawn between Hong Kong English and early pidgin forms used to communicate between traders in Canton before the establishment of Hong Kong as a colony.
Literature using the variant; there is a growing corpus of literature produced in English which is meant for local consumption.
Reference works; reference texts describing Hong Kong English are beginning to emerge, such as A Dictionary of Hong Kong English: Words from the Fragrant Harbor

Using these criteria, scholars have said that Hong Kong English possesses the attributes of a distinct variety. Hong Kong English is featured as a separate entity in the Oxford Guide to World English, under the sub-heading of "East Asia". Hong Kong English is also included as a separate variety of English within the International Corpus of English, with a dedicated local research team collecting data to describe the usage of English in Hong Kong.

Evidence suggesting the variant is not established

It has also been argued that there is no such thing as Hong Kong English and the predominance of recent works discuss Hong Kong phonology in terms of erroneous deviation from varieties such as British and American English. In one co-authored work describing a study conducted of five Hong Kong speakers of English, it was concluded, controversially, as they conceded, that HKE was at most an emergent variety and perhaps no more than a "learner interlanguage". In the Dynamic Model of Postcolonial Englishes, it has been classified as in the third phase, that of Nativisation, but more recently it has been shown that many young people are happy to identify themselves as speakers of Hong Kong English, so it may be regarded as progressing into the fourth phase, that of Endonormative Stabilisation. Furthermore, by the criteria identified in the above section, scholars have noted that there is very little literature produced in English which is meant for local consumption.

Intelligibility and recognition

It has been demonstrated that English spoken in Hong Kong is highly intelligible to listeners from elsewhere, which helps explain why an increasing number of people are happy to be identified as speakers of this variety. However, it has been noted that language use is highly politicised and compartmentalised in Hong Kong, where the two official languages are seen as having different and distinct uses. Indeed, it has been argued that even English language teachers in Hong Kong would refuse to acknowledge the local variant of English within a classroom setting, opting instead for more "standard" variations.
It has also been argued that the lack of recognition of Hong Kong English as a variety on par with other Asian varieties, such as Indian English or Singapore English, is due to a lack of research.

Pronunciation

As a result of the colonial legacy, the pronunciation of Hong Kong English was assumed to be originally based on British English. However, nowadays, there are new features of pronunciation derived from American English, and the influence of American English has emerged. Furthermore, there seem to be some innovative developments that are unique to Hong Kong English, such as a split in the realisation of /v/ as or . Some of the more salient features are listed below.

Segments

tends to be, so this is,
tends to be, so whether is.
may be or, so event may have while even has. It seems that occurs at the start of a stressed syllable while occurs at the start of an unstressed syllable.
There is alternation between and , and the same speaker may alternate with words such as light and night, and both loud and number may have either or at the start.
Words with final add long vowel ; Joyce, for instance, becomes Joysee.
In final consonant clusters, just as with many other varieties of English, there is a tendency for simplification, so the plosive at the end of words such as think and camp is often omitted. Deletion of coronal plosives and from word-final clusters has been reported to occur in about 76% of tokens, though this frequency is a little less if the function words and and just are excluded from the analysis.
L-vocalisation is common, so dark in the coda of a syllable is often pronounced as, and fill may be while tell is, just as in London English. After back rounded vowels is often omitted, so school is and wall is.
Like many accents in Britain, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa, Hong Kong English is non-rhotic, so is only pronounced before a vowel. However, with the growing influence of American English, many young people in Hong Kong now pronounce the in the coda of a syllable.
There is often little distinction between the non-close front vowels, and, so bat and bet may be pronounced the same.
Long and short vowels are generally merged, particularly involving the close vowels and as well as and .
Vowel reduction is often avoided in function words, so a full vowel occurs in words such as and and to as well as the first syllable of content words such as accept and patrol.
Intonation
Multi-syllable words are often differently stressed. For example, while the word latte is pronounced in most variants of the English language, it is usually pronounced in Hong Kong English, with the second syllable stressed instead of the first.
Omission of entire "r-" syllables in longer words; difference becomes, and temperature becomes.
Words beginning with the unstressed syllable con- are generally pronounced with its stressed form with a lower pitch, e.g. connection, consent, condition. Words beginning with the stressed syllable com- e.g. competition, common and compromise are pronounced.
The schwa tends to be pronounced as in final closed syllables; ticket is pronounced, and carpet is pronounced.
The suffix -age is generally pronounced ; message is pronounced, package is pronounced etc.
There is less vowel reduction in unstressed syllables, and some variation in the placement of stress. For example, chocolate may be pronounced, as distinct from in other varieties of English.
Compared to other varieties of English, there is less difference between stressed and unstressed syllables. In most varieties of English, unstressed syllables are reduced, taking less time. This difference is smaller in Hong Kong English.
Others
In Cantonese, there is no structure of diphthong+consonant. As a result, becomes, becomes, becomes, becomes, becomes, becomes, becomes, becomes etc.
* For the case, or, the ending consonant is generally omitted, resulting in.
Many Chinese will speak a foreign language with the same characteristic monosyllabic staccato of spoken Chinese, with varying degrees of the natural liaisons between syllables that natives employ. In a similar vein, they often pronounce syllables as if words were transliterated into Cantonese: Cameron is pronounced as based on its transliteration; basic is pronounced as.
Exaggeration of certain final consonants, for example to and sounds of the past-tense form of verbs to.
Differences or omission in ending sounds, as the ending consonants are always voiceless and unreleased in Cantonese with the exceptions of, and, similar to Basel German.
Pronouncing the silent, sounds in words like Green-wich, Bon-ham, Chat-ham, Beck-ham are often reflected in the transliteration of the words; for example, Beckham is transliterated .
Merging the contrast of voiceless/voiced consonants with aspirated/unaspirated if any contrast exists in Cantonese. This is because English voiceless consonants are most often aspirated, whereas the voiced ones are always unaspirated and devoiced. The stop stays as but becomes ; stays as but becomes ; stays as but becomes ; becomes and becomes .
Merging voiceless/voiced consonants into voiceless if there is no contrast in aspirated/unaspirated in Cantonese. Both and become ; both and become ; both and become ; the only exception might be that and are never confused, due to difficulty in pronouncing and : many pronounce as, and as.
Confusion between homographs, e.g. the noun resume and the verb resume.