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	Pearl River Delta
Ethnicity	Hong Kong people Macau people
Language family	Sino-Tibetan Sinitic Yue Yuehai Cantonese 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
Linguasphere	79-AAA-mac
Chinese name
Traditional Chinese	香港粵語
Simplified Chinese	香港粤语
showTranscriptions Standard Mandarin Hanyu Pinyin Xiānggǎng yuèyǔ Yue: Cantonese Yale Romanization Hēung góng yuht yúh Jyutping Hoeng1 gong2 jyut6 jyu5
Hong Kong-style Cantonese
Traditional Chinese	港式粵語
showTranscriptions Yue: Cantonese Yale Romanization Góng sīk yuht yúh Jyutping Gong2 sik1 jyut6 jyu5
Hong Kong-Guangdong dialect
Traditional Chinese	香港廣東話
showTranscriptions Yue: Cantonese Yale Romanization Hēung góng gwóng dūng wá Jyutping Hoeng1 gong2 gwong2 dung1 waa2
Hong Kong-Guangzhou dialect
Traditional Chinese	香港廣州話
showTranscriptions Yue: Cantonese Yale Romanization Hēung góng gwóng jāu wá Jyutping Hoeng1 gong2 gwong2 zau1 waa2

Hong Kong Cantonese is a dialect of the Cantonese language of the Sino-Tibetan family. It is the native and de facto standard language of Hong Kong.^[2][3][4] A similar dialect is also spoken in Macau.

Although Hong Kongers refer to the language as "Cantonese" (廣東話), publications in mainland China describe the variant as Hong Kong dialect (香港話), due to the differences between the pronunciation used in Hong Kong Cantonese and that of the Cantonese spoken in neighbouring Guangdong Province where Cantonese (based on the Guangzhou dialect) is a lingua franca.

Over the years, Hong Kong Cantonese has also absorbed foreign terminology and developed a large set of Hong Kong-specific terms. Code-switching with English is also common. These are the result of British rule between 1841 and 1997, as well as the closure of the Hong Kong–mainland China border immediately after the establishment of the People's Republic of China in 1949.

History[]

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Before the arrival of British settlers in 1842, the inhabitants of Hong Kong mainly spoke the Dongguan-Bao'an (Tungkun–Po'on) and Tanka dialects of Yue,^{[citation needed]} as well as Hakka and Teochew. These languages and dialects are all remarkably different from Guangzhou Cantonese.

After the British acquired Hong Kong Island, Kowloon Peninsula and the New Territories from the Qing in 1841 (officially 1842) and 1898, large numbers^[quantify] of merchants and workers came to Hong Kong from the city of Canton, the main centre of Cantonese. Cantonese became the dominant spoken language in Hong Kong. The extensive migration from mainland Cantonese-speaking areas to Hong Kong continued 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 mainland China, prompting the Hong Kong Government to close its border.^{[citation needed]} Illegal immigration from mainland China into Hong Kong nevertheless continued.

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 of Guangzhou. In mainland China, the use of Mandarin as the official language and in education was enforced. In Hong Kong, Cantonese is the medium of instruction in schools, along with written English and written Chinese.

Because of the long exposure to English during the colonial period, a large number of English words were loaned into Hong Kong Cantonese, e.g. "巴士" (/páːsǐː/), literally, "bus". Therefore, the vocabularies of Cantonese in mainland China and Hong Kong substantially differed. Moreover, the pronunciation of Cantonese changed while the change either did not occur in mainland China or took place much more slowly. For example, merging of initial /n/ into /l/ and the deletion of /ŋ/ were observed.

Phonology[]

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:^[5]

• 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).^[6]

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/, literally Hong Kong Constant Growth Bank, becomes /hœ́ːn kɔ̌ːn hɐ̏n sɐ́n ɐ̏n hɔ̏ːn/, sounding like Hon' Kon' itchy body 'un cold (痕身un寒). 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": "say eastern speech") and /kɔ̌ːn tʊ́ŋ wǎː/ (sounding like "趕東話" : "chase away eastern speech") are overwhelmingly popular.^[7]

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 the surname 李, or the word 理, meaning theory. The merger of (/n/) and (/l/) also affects the choice of characters when the Cantonese media transliterates foreign names.^{[citation needed]}

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/. A similar phenomenon occurs in various Mandarin dialects (e.g. Southwestern Mandarin).^[8]

Unique phrases and expressions[]

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Hong Kong Cantonese has developed a number of phrases and expressions that are unique to the context of Hong Kong. Examples are:

Loanwords[]

Life in Hong Kong is characterised by the blending of southern Chinese with other Asian and Western cultures, as well as the city's position as a major international business centre. In turn, Hong Kong influences have 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.^{[citation needed]}

Imported loanwords[]

Selected loanwords^[9] are shown below.

From English[]