THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN HONG KONG.   Term Paper ID:29239 Click to get this paper

Essay Subject: Study of English language usage.... More...

7 Pages / 1575 Words 7 sources, 14 Citations, APA Format $28.00 Return to List of Papers

Paper Abstract: Study of English language usage. Chinese and English as official co-languages. Hong Kong's trilingual and biliterate population. Pre-Colonial Hong Kong and the development of "Pidgin" English. Britain's goals in Colonial Hong Kong and rise of the area as a world port where many languages were spoken. Paper Introduction: History of English Language in Hong Kong Introduction In 1990, Hong Kong was selected as one of the 15 centers around the world to have its English language studied. As explained on its cultural website, The International Corpus of English (ICE) explains that its goal is similar to the other centers -- collecting material for comparative studies of English worldwide. This is because in Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) Chinese and English are official co-languages. “Census figures indicate that English is spoken by a total of 38.1% of the approx. population, of whom some 3.1% regard English as their 'usual' language, while 34.9% claim to speak English as 'another' language” (ICE-HK, Online). Those Text of the Paper: The entire text of the paper is shown below. However, the text is somewhat scrambled. We want to give you as much information as we possibly can about our papers and essays, but we cannot give them away for free. In the text below you will find that while disordered, many of the phrases are essentially intact. From this text you will be able to get a solid sense of the writing style, the concepts addressed, and the sources used in the research paper. In the 181 s and 182 s, when the East India Company was at its peakof power, there were a dozen or more young men from England studyingChinese in the Canton factories. Cambridge, MA:MIT Press. 126). Post Colonial Hong Kong The trend in this period has been refinement, and a concentratedeffort at learning "proper English." The ICE-HK suggests that the keysituation here is really a phonological situation, since Hong Kong Englishspeakers often share a number of localized features of a Hong Kong accent. This was the period that most linguists refer to as "Pidgin" when theChinese were learning to speak a language of commerce that was partChinese, part Portuguese, and part English. Bolton, K. Although arriving later, the British dominated trade, the ports, theculture, the people and the language. 117-14 ).London : Cambridge University Press. Chinese rulers also banned foreignersfrom learning the Chinese language in fear of their potential badinfluences. J. Chomsky, N. This led to the rapid rise of HongKong as a world port, and also brought many other languages into the brewincluding Russian, French, Germany, and Japanese. There are numerous linguisticdefinitions and theories concerning the Pidgin English, and the strongestthread of research suggests that it was an amalgam language that was anattempt for the residents of the "hongs" (closed enclaves, even morerestrictive than a ghetto) to communicate on an informal basis (Boyle,198 ). In DellHymes (ed.), Pidginization and creolization of language (pp. They translated Chinese novels and plays,and even the Chinese legal code, so they could assess the equity of thegovernment's rules more carefully" (Bolton, 2 , 156). Pre Colonial Hong Kong According to the ICE-HK special report Hong Kong English has a history that traces its origins to the Canton 'jargon' of the opium trade, and its development through various stages of the British colonial period from 1842-1997. .dispensing with the difficult,redundant, and unusual elements of language" (Chomsky, 1965). Mehrotra, R. This has not always been thecase. The Qing Dynasty emperor Kangxiopened trade relations with the East India Company and gave permission tobuild certain offices and warehouses outside Guangzhou. population, ofwhom some 3.1% regard English as their 'usual' language, while 34.9% claimto speak English as 'another' language" (ICE-HK, Online). The pattern and process of simplification of Indian Pidgin Englishvocabulary are generally similar to those of other English-based pidgins.These include reduction in the number of parts of speech, shortening of theforms of words, reduplication (Mehrotra, 1997), hybridization, assignmentof multiple new meanings to common words, unusual collocations, andcoinages. Chomsky tells us that by definition "pidgin" is a reduced andsimplified language, as is also the case with baby talk and is oftenconsidered a form of "verbal shorthand. . (2 ). The International Corpus of English (ICE) onlineat http://www.hku.hk/english/research/icehk/overview.htm The International Corpus of English (ICE) online at http://www.hku.hk/english/research/icehk/overview.htm With respect to form, a pidgin is characterized byreduction in pronunciation and other phonological features, grammar, andvocabulary, while with regard to function or use it is characterized bytalking about "less topics, or in fewer contexts, to indicate fewer socialrelations, etc." (Samarin, 1971, p. Those who speak Chinese in the HKSAR tend to favor Cantonese (88%).According to the ICE-HK, "Since 1995, the official language policy of theHong Kong government has been that of educating a 'trilingual' (Cantonese,Putonghua, English) and 'biliterate' (Chinese and English) population" (ICE-HK, online). Bolton says this: "Language might seem [like] aproblem, since in all of Canton and the foreign hongs [a grouping ofoffices and factories]there is no Chinese who can read or write in Englishor other European languages, and only a few Westerners who know enoughChinese to write with even partial elegance. On the other hand, there was no restriction on the Chineselearning English. This is because in Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR)Chinese and English are official co-languages. Silent and substantive pidginization. Although Cantonese serves as the lingua franca for most Chinesepeople, English is the most widely used in government, law, and education."In the private sector, English is still regarded as the primary 'languageof business', particularly at the written level. 198 . Colonial Hong Kong The beginning of what is known as Colonial Hong Kong is usually tracedto the appointment of Sir Henry Pottinger as its first governor in August1841. Report One: (1998). They were limitedto trade only and could only live in certain areas and were forbidden frombringing arms, warships, or women. "Census figures indicatethat English is spoken by a total of 38.1% of the approx. References Boyle, J. R. (1997). These include the use of short-vowel equivalents to RP, distinct patterns of consonant 'substitution', as well as patterns of intonation most obviously accounted for by the substratum influence of Cantonese. As explained on its culturalwebsite, The International Corpus of English (ICE) explains that its goalis similar to the other centers -- collecting material for comparativestudies of English worldwide. History of English Language in Hong Kong Introduction In 199 , Hong Kong was selected as one of the 15 centers around theworld to have its English language studied. Aspects of the theory of syntax. TheICE-HK has identified 1 , words from this period, and a lexicalsampling includes "borrowings from South Asian languages including chit(for 'bill' or ' receipt'), nullah (an open drain or 'water-course'), andshroff ('cashier'); loanwords from Chinese such as bo lei (a variety oftea), dim sum (snacks served in local restaurants), gwailo (a 'ghost man'or foreigner), mafoo (a stable boy or groom), as well as such loan-translations as astronaut (a Hong Kong spouse semi-permanently in transitbetween the HKSAR and an emigré home in Canada or elsewhere), banana (a'westernised Chinese'), and shoe-shine (to curry favour or 'bootlick')"(Bolton, 2 , 144). In thisnew situation, there was a new balkanization. Where during the pre-Colonial times, foreigners were kept in hongs and forbidden to learn thelanguage, only a few select Chinese were allowed to learn the official,educated language. "Pidgin" itself comes from the word"business," via its intermediate mispronunciation "pidginess" (Bolton,2 ). One major outcome of the ICE-HK project will be a much more accurate and fine-grained analysis of the grammar of Hong Kong English than has hitherto been available ("Report 1," 1998, 447). The attack thatPottinger led on Nanjing defeated Chinese armies and led to the governmentturning Hong Kong over to the British. This language, according to Bolton, was a language shared "by nearlyall who live among the foreign hongs, a language known as 'Canton Jargon"or 'Pidgin English.' This serves to keep the differing communities intouch, by mixing words from Portuguese, Indian, English, and variousChinese dialects, and spelling them according to Chinese syntax, with rtransformed to l, and b to p. Of course, because ofits greater might and stronger greed, Britain maintained control. World Englishes 19.3: 265-285. (1971). Reduction aimsat simplification. Pottinger, by all accounts was a man of limited education, and lessthan a major interest in the languages, since his primary goals seemed tobe building up Britain's position, and establishing certain schools whereBritish youths could continue the Queen's learning. Generally, synonyms of a word are not to be found in IndianPidgin English (Bolton, 2 ). In informal domains,English often interfaces with Chinese through code-switching and code-mixing, both at the spoken and written level" (ICE-HK).Western influence in Hong Kong is usually traced to the beginning of the15th and 16th centuries due to the increased trade in Chinese products,such as silk and tea through the Silk Road that stretched from northwesternChina to eastern Europe. (1965). With reference to linguistic features, linguists have noted an evident distinctiveness at the levels of vocabulary and accent (ICE-HK Online). The sociolinguistics of Hong Kong and the space forHong Kong English. This resulted inan unexpected growth in pidgin English, which many speakers, includingAmericans, found much easier to use (almost like Esperanto of its day). Samarin, W. Reduplication in Indian Pidgin English.English Today, 13 (2), 49-59. Teaching English as communication to Mainland Chinese.English Language Teaching Journal 24, 4, 298-3 1. One of the ways in which reduction is generally achieved in pidgins isto do away with function words from categories: pronouns, verbs (mostlyauxiliary verbs), prepositions, articles, and conjunctions. Hong Kong was seen as a safe harbor and wasappealing to the Europeans who wanted their ships to be safe so that therecould be the beginnings of a trade enterprise between East and West.Besides several dialects of Chinese, the first essential language invasioncame from the Portuguese in roughly 1555 (Bolton, 2 ). At the grammatical level, the issue of localized 'features' is under- researched, although the use of phrasal verbs such as emphasis on, list out, return back, and the reclassification of mass nouns in examples like aircrafts, alphabets, equipments, seem firmly established in local usage (and also in other 'outer- circle' Asian varieties). If this paper is not what you are looking for, you can search again: Search for: or Click here to request an essay written just for you.