Hong Kong English

Hong Kong English is sometimes used to refer to the accent and characteristics of English spoken by some of the ethnic Chinese residents of Hong Kong. It is not a mixed, creole or pidgin language, nor a dialect of English. It is only a variant of English with some local influence. In some aspects it may be related to Chinglish.

English is an official language in Hong Kong but for most of the population who are ethnic Chinese, it is a second language acquired from school education. It is taught from kindergarten, and depending on the geographical location, English is most likely to be deferred over Chinese. Especially in the New Territories, many students have still not yet learned English at the age of 10. For some lucky students when they take the Secondary School Placement test and can attend their first choice school, English learning will be rendered by most students as difficult. English is the medium of instruction for a few primary schools, many secondary schools (termed EMI (English as Medium of Instruction) schools) and most courses in the local universities. It is widely used in business activities. Its official status is equal with Chinese.

Proficiency in the language depends on the education level and exposure of the speakers and the following only characterizes some common features and mistakes of "Hong Kong English". Such characteristics have usually been found among speakers who have some secondary education. People with higher education or those who have graduated from élite secondary schools basically speak an acquired form of English modeled on British English, with some possible American influences. And the mispronunciations of english that result in HK english are mostly found in the less-than-well-educated local people, among them even including some white-collars, and university students, particularly in engineering or science major. Some school teachers at primary schools may not be able to recognise the differences in pronunciation. Some secondary schools or colleges teach American English as their medium of instruction.

The accent of spoken English in Hong Kong, perhaps, originates from the "tung sheng" (通勝), in which it is possible to find one or two pages containing lots of direct transliteration of English into Cantonese words, for example, "dinner" would be transliterated into the Chinese words "甸那", pronounced "din na".

Spoken English

Accent of spoken English

Main article: phonemic differentiation.

British influences

Like English English, Hong Kong English is non-rhotic, which means 'r' is not pronounced except before a vowel.
'wh' read as 'w', as in English English.

Common mispronunciations

beginning 'r' read as 'w' sound. (the word 'read' is a good example.)
'r' in other positions may be read as 'w' or 'l' . (eg. 'error' as E-WA, the famous 'flied lice' and 'frame', respectively.)
beginning 'v' read as 'w' sound. (eg. 'Vector' and 'Aston Villa')
other 'v' becomes 'w' or 'f' mostly with a consensus yet no obvious pattern. (eg. 'f' in 'favour', second 'v' in 'Volvo' and either 'f' or 'w' in 'develop' depending on the speaker.)
beginning 'ch' read as 'ts' (i.e. German 'z').
beginning 'j' and soft 'g' read as 'dz' (e.g., Gigi pronounced as "zhi-zhi").
ending 'ge' read as 'ch'.
'th' read as 'd' (as in them) or 'f' (as in thick) sound. ('th' sound is not used in Cantonese)
beginning 'n' and 'l' often confused (these two sounds are becoming allophones for younger speakers of Cantonese)
'r' and 'l' in positions other than the beginning are also often confused. (Breakfast becomes BLEG-FUSS for some, 'bleach' and 'breach' both become 'beach')
ending 'l' (IPA: [ɫ]) often pronounced as 'w', as in Polish. This /w/ is sometimes strengthened and becomes like /o/ (e.g., sale becomes SAY-o)
ending 't' pronounced as 'ts' (i.e. German 'z')
Differences or omission in ending sounds. (as the ending consonants are always voiceless and unreleased (glotallized) in Cantonese with the exception of 'm', 'n' and 'ng', similar to Basel German)
Exaggeration of certain final consonants, for example 's' (to /si/) and 'd' sounds of past-tense form of verbs (to [tət̚]).
multi-syllable words might sometimes be wrongly stressed, since Chinese is tonal and largely monosyllabic.
producing the 'w', 'h' or 'l' sounds in words like Greenwich, Bonham, Beckham, Salisbury. This is reflected in the transliteration of the words, for example, Beckham is transliterated as 碧咸 (pronounced as "bik haam").
producing the "ces" sound in Leicester or Gloucester.
some letters are spoken with phonemes used in Cantonese, such as 'e' as 'YEE', 'f' becomes 'E-fu', 'h' becomes 'IG-chyu', 'l' becomes 'E-lo', 'q' becomes 'KIW', 'r' becomes 'AA-lo', 'w' becomes 'DUB-bee-you', 'x' becomes 'IG-si',
The same is true for some for 'g' becoming 'DZEE', 'j' becoming 'DZAY' and 'v' becoming 'WEE'. (The reasons were mentioned above.)
Merging of /æ/ and /ɛ/ to /ɛ/. eg. 'bad' and 'bed', 'mass' and 'mess'.
Omission of entire syllables in longer words. ('Difference' become DIFF-ENS, 'temperature' becomes TEM-PI-CHUR.)
Difficulties in pronouncing certain syllables: 'salesman' become 'sellsman', 'round' becomes 'WAANG'. (Without the ending consonant pronounced and occasionally with an ending 'd'.)
Merging the contrast of voiceless / voiced consonants with aspirated / unaspirated if there is any contrast exists in Cantonese. The stop [p] becomes [pʰ] and [b] becomes [p]; [t] becomes [tʰ] and [d] becomes [t]; [k] becomes [kʰ] and [g] becomes [k].
Merging voiceless / voiced consonants into voiceless if no contrast in aspirated / unaspirated in Cantonese. Both [f] and [v] become [f]; both [z] and [s] become [s]; both [tʃ] and [dʒ] become [tʃ] ; both [ʃ] and [ʒ] become [ʃ]; both [θ] and [ð] become [θ] ( difficulty in pronouncing [θ] too).
The letter “z” is generally pronounced as [jiˈsɛt̚], a corrupted version (due to various of the above-mentioned reasons) of a very archaic pronunciation /ɪˈzæd/; the correct pronunciations, /zɛd/ and /zi:/, are not understood by some.

English grammar

Confuse or drop articles like "the" and "a"
Confusion with verb tenses and agreement of singular or plural nouns, as they have no direct equivalence in Cantonese grammar. (By extension, the correct use of "is" and "are".)
Difficulties with numbers larger than ten thousand. In Chinese, 10 thousand is read as one myriad, 100 thousand as 10 myriad, one million as 100 myriad, etc. Chinese speakers often pause before saying big numbers in English because of the need for mental conversion. (English speakers of Chinese often experience similar problems when saying large numbers in Chinese.)
Difficulties with fractions. eg. "three over four" becomes "four over three" and "nine times out of ten" becomes "ten times out of nine". Primarily because the equivalent of the word "of" in Chinese functions more like "'s" in English. (Such that the words before and after the word "of" swap places.) Such that "Chairman of the board" becomes "Board's chairman" and so "nine out of ten" is "ten times's nine" (sic) and "three out of four" is "four parts's three" (sic). And the numbers become easily confused.
A similar reason means that descriptions of degree of discount are also often confused. Instead of a "twenty percent discount", the Chinese way of saying the same thing is roughly translated as an "eight tenths discount". (A discount where you pay eight tenths.) As such, it is common place for a "10% discount" to be mistaken described as a "90% discount". (Thankfully, this happens in speech far more often than in shops, primarily due to the double-conversion in a small amount of time.)
Difficulties with correct usage of pronouns as their Cantonese equivalent are genderless (common only speakers of other Chinese dialects as well, for the same reason.)
Found difficulties in distinguish the use of preposition. For example, when describing time, there is some confusion of the prepositions "on", "in" and "at", like "on Monday", "in February" and "at 12 o'clock".

Written English

This is the entrance of the shopping mall "New World Centre" in Hong Kong. Note the spelling of the word "Centre" (instead of "Center").

A screen showing financial news at The Center, an office complex in Central. Note the American spelling of the name of the complex.

British English is taught in primary and secondary schools, but American English spellings (e.g. verbs ending in -ise/-ize, nouns ending in -er/-re, -our/-or) are also commonly used due to influence from, for example, English-language television programs from the United States. However, the norm is to use the suffixes -our and -re, but -ize.

ICQ English

In some informal situations, notably in Internet usage among locals, final particles or interjections of Cantonese origin such as ar, la, lu, ma and wor'—many of these being “flavouring particles”—are used at the ends of English sentences. The use of these interjections is often referred locally as “ICQ English”; examples of such:

"u doing wt ar?" (”What are you doing?”— “u doing wt” is a direct word-for-word translation of the Cantonese statement corresponding to “you are doing”, and “ar” /a₃₃/ is the Cantonese question marker to convert the statement into a question)
"I've eaten dinner lu" (“I've had dinner”—“lu” /lu₃₃/ indicates a perfect aspect and makes the sentence more informal)
"I go la, bye" (“I'm leaving, bye!”—“la” /la₃₃/ indicates intent and makes the sentence more informal)

The use of “ICQ English” has long been considered a serious problem by local English teachers, as it is quite common to find students writing sentences like "me too wor" for students of lower English standards. It should be noted, however, that the use of such “ICQ English” is quite common even among individuals who are well educated in English in informal occasions, to express some kind of regional intimacy and show their Cantonese-speaking identity.

In addition to the desire to express intimacy and identity, there are a number of other reasons for the existence of “ICQ” English:

It is easier to type English word than to input Chinese characters when the intent is to either communicate in spoken Cantonese or to refer to Cantonese words
Some computers (or particular pieces of software) might not be able to display Chinese characters.

Proficiency of English teachers

Some people criticise the language proficiency of some local non-native English teachers. In response, the local education bureau required English teachers without English-language undergraduate degrees to pass an assessment called the "LPAT", to ensure the quality of their English standard, and those who did not pass the assessment would not be able to teach English any more. Such assessment screened quite a number of in-service English teachers, and some of them decided to retire instead.

Hong Kong Specific English Vocabulary

Some words are found in Hong Kong which are not well used in the rest of the English-speaking world.

A 'godown' is a warehouse — this word is of Indian origin
A 'shroff' is a payment kiosk, like those found in multi-storey car parks, again of Indian origin. Shroffs are also commonly seen in mainland China, especially in buildings financed by Hong Kong companies.
A 'Tai-Pan' is a business executive of a large corporation
'Punti' has become a commonly-used word in the law courts of Hong Kong; it is a transliteration of Cantonese 'Boon Dei' meaning 'local'. When a defendant is using 'Punti' in court, he is electing to use Cantonese, instead of English, as the language of trial. The reason for not referring directly to "Cantonese" is that the word "Cantonese" can mean any dialect spoken in the Guangdong (Canton) province; also, the Cantonese spoken in Guangzhou (Canton) is actually a bit different both in accent and vocabulary than that spoken in Hong Kong.
A 'chop' is a seal or stamp; again of Indian origin; also used in Singapore English, and a standard, if technical, word in mainstream American and Commonwealth English
A 'praya' is seashore or seafront — this word is from Portuguese praia.
A 'garoupa' is a grouper, a group of ocean fish such as the Epinephelus Spp., common in Hong Kong — this is from Portuguese, too.
'Hong Kong foot' (not considered correct English even in Hong Kong) refers to the athlete's foot; it is a literal translation of the Chinese term '香港腳' (Xianggang jiao or Heunggong geuk)