by Amber Liu
As we all know, language can represent culture. It is related to historical backgrounds and common experiences, and these aspects, in reverse, create their own words as culture. (Robert, 2018). Because of political issues, we can not ignore the linguistic distinctions between Hong Kong and Mainland China. Nowadays, Hong Kong people speak both Cantonese and English while people in Mainland China mainly speak Chinese in their daily life. In this post, I would like to focus on the different ways historical culture influences language between Hong Kong and mainland China.
Watch a short video on Hong Kong’s history here
The reason why Hong Kong became a special administrative region is it became a colony in the 19th century. In short, during that time, China was a weak country that could not resist the invasion. After being lost to the United Kingdom in First and Second Opium War, three important treaties were signed, which changed Hong Kong’s history, including language. These treaties are named the Treaty of Nanking (1842), the Treaty of Peking(1860) and the Second Convention of Peking(1898). In addition, in the three treaties mentioned above, Hong Kong Island and the Kowloon Peninsula was ceded while the New Territories was leased for 99 years respectively.
Picture credit: https://Baidu.com
Because of these historical factors, after that, the condition of Hong Kong began to change. For the language aspect, because HK was taken over by the UK, English was widely used in HK during that time, which lasted more than 150 years. However, HK was attached to Guangdong Province originally and Cantonese was their own language. After becoming a colony, English was widely used in Hong Kong and after HK was returned to China, there was a big dispute about whether schools should use English or not to educate students. I think there is no doubt that as time goes by, time has made trail on languages. At present, Hong Kong people speak both Cantonese and English. In addition, code-mixing is also a remarkable phenomenon in HK. People tend to use a soft way, combing Cantonese and English when they are speaking because most people master both languages.
Picture credit: Author’s own
Politics is another factor that affects the languages of Hong Kong and Chinese. For mainland China, the government ruled that the only official language is Mandarin, which is a representation of authority. Therefore, although there are over 80 kinds of dialects, in formal occasions, everyone should listen to or speak Mandarin. For Hong Kong, after the handover to China, the government of mainland China and Hong Kong advocated “Bi-literacy and Tri-lingual,” which means that people should write English and Chinese(literacy) and speak English, Cantonese and Mandarin (lingual). What’s more, literacy also includes two kinds of Chinese: traditional Chinese and Simplified Chinese. The effects were quite good. More and more people are familiar with simplified Chinese and most schools opened Mandarin courses so that most of youth people can use Mandarin to do daily communication. In my view, not only communicating in the university but also shopping in different plaza, people can really speak Mandarin fluently. Overall, these are situations that how politics influence language in mainland China and Hong Kong.
Picture credit: https://Baidu.com
Overall, in this blog post, I have focused on the historical and political culture that influences language between Hong Kong and mainland China. As a student from mainland China, in my view, history and politics do have significant effect on the languages, assisting HK to become an international region, not only for finance but also for other aspects. In my life, I can feel that different historical and political situations affect languages in different ways significantly.
References
Brent, S. (2018). How language reflects culture& affects meaning. Retrieved from https://study.com/academy/lesson/how-language-reflects-culture-affects-meaning.html.
Language Culture and Society in Hong Kong (and beyond) 