Tag: Language Contact

by Christy Chow

English is one of the official languages in Hong Kong, which is significantly used in the Government, business sector and educational sector. It is not uncommon to see the bilingual road and government signs along the street. Hong Kong had been a colony of Britain and was under British rule from 1841. Before the handover of Hong Kong From Britain to China, Hong Kong had been immersing in an English environment in which using English for communication became gradually common. However, due to the influence of native Cantonese speaker, people in Hong Kong developed a unique accent when speaking English. 

According to the study of Swell (2012), there are a few consonantal features in Hong Kong English. In this blog, some of the major features will be explained briefly to introduce Hong Kong English. 

1) [n] / [l] conflation

The use of [l] in place of [n] is rather more common than the inverse, and it may be associated with the recent changes in Cantonese in which there is progressive use of traditional words that began with [n] to [l]. For example, in Hong Kong English, people may pronounce the word ‘l’eed instead of ‘n’eed, ‘l’ever instead of ‘n’ever. 

2) TH-

This is a very typical type of accent characteristic of Hong Kong English. It has been extensively observed that the voiceless TH is occasionally pronounced as [f] in Hong Kong English. Furthermore, this observation is observed under different situations such as the pronunciation of voiceless TH in initial, medial and final position. For instance, in initial position, very often Hong Kong people pronounce ‘think’ /θɪŋk/ as /fɪŋk/. Seemingly, for ‘thank’, people often pronounce it as /fæŋk/ instead of /θæŋk/. While for the medial position, it is also uncommon to see people pronounce ‘something’ (/ˈsʌm.θɪŋ/) as ‘someting’ (/ˈsʌm.tɪŋ /), in which the voiceless TH is pronounced as [t] sound. Lastly, in the final position, there are also words that we normally pronounced them wrongly. Take ‘youth’ as an example, we often mispronounce the -TH as [f] instead of [θ]. 

3) Final consonant cluster

There is a trend in Hong Kong in the simplification of final consonant clusters, specifically with the exclusion of final consonant. However, we should note that this is not only the characteristic of Hong Kong English but also a universal feature of spoken English. And in fact, Hong Kong English speakers actually omit the [t] in word phrase less often than speakers from other countries. For example, we can take a look at the words with a word-final plosive, [t], [d] or [k]. In word phrases such as ‘most of’, ‘friend and’ and ‘think it’s’, the [t], [d] and [k] in respective word phrase are deleted. One noticeable feature is that in the word phrase ‘kind of’, the [d] is omitted nearly in every case. 

4) Initial consonant cluster

People in Hong Kong often confused between the pronunciation of [l] and [r]. Indeed, when [r] is the second sound in a consonant cluster, in most instances the [r] would be pronounced as [l]. For example, the word crowded /ˈkraʊ.dɪd/ is often pronounced as /klaʊdId/, and please /pli:z/ as /pi:z/. While on the other hand, there is also a replacement or omission of [r] and [l] in some words. As in the word ‘applied’, people pronounce it as /əˈpaɪd/ instead of /əˈplaɪd/. Another example is that ‘primary’ is pronounced as /ˈpaɪ.mər.i/ instead of /ˈpraɪ.mər.i/.

5) L-vocalization or deletion

This is the most common characteristic of Hong Kong English. Most of the time, Hong Kong people pronounce the words such as ‘will’ from /wɪl/ to /wɪu/ and ‘oral’ from /ˈɔː.rəl/ to /ˈɔː.rəu/, that is a use of vowel which is an l-vocalization. Besides l-vocalization, there is also l-deletion rather than replacement after a back vowel. For instance, ‘call’ is pronounced as /kɔ/ instead of /kɔːl/ and ‘cool’ is pronounced as /ku/ instead of /kuːl/. Vocalization of [l] is actually really common like Singapore also has this kind of problem. 

To conclude, the characteristics of Hong Kong English accents are obvious. If you go to another country and speak English, people would probably think you are a Hongkonger! However, what we need to know is that there is always variation between things, so as languages. English can be spoken with a Hong Kong accent or it can be spoken professionally when you are in a formal situation. It depends on the context of history or culture. More importantly, Hong Kong accent makes us identify us as a Hongkonger!

References

Deterding, D., Wong, J., & Kirkpatrick, A. (2008). The pronunciation of Hong Kong English. English World-Wide, 29(2), 148-175.

Sewell, A. (2012). The Hong Kong English accent: Variation and acceptability. Hong Kong Journal of Applied Linguistics, 13(2), 1-21.