I recently spent four days in Hong Kong as the final stop of a brief Southeast Asian trip, and as usual I found the language situation there somewhat mystifying. Hong Kong, as we know, has three official languages: Cantonese, Mandarin, and English. Because I don’t speak the former, I was reliant on the latter two to guide me through interactions with locals.
I was well aware that in the past ten years the prevalence of 普通话 has spread in Hong Kong, yet people tell me that the average native still feels more comfortable conversing in English. Feeling lazy, I used English exclusively during the first two days and communicated without undue difficulty.
I found the Hong Kongers to be neither polite nor rude, rather on par with people from any major metropolis. On the third day, however, I found myself in northern Kowloon looking around for a dim sum restaurant. I approached two people standing outside of a shop and asked in English if they could recommend someplace that was authentic and nice but reasonably inexpensive. They stood inert, neither ignoring nor adressing me, and feeling frustrated (and hungry) I repeated my question in Mandarin. Suddenly, their expressions changed and they smiled broadly, not only recommending a place nearby but even escorting me there.
From that point forward, I used Mandarin as my default language in the city. At once, I noticed that people were far more friendly and polite than before, and my opinion of the infamously proud Cantonese changed for the better. Even at immigration at the airport, a location not known for its effervescent employees, I was praised for my Mandarin and for scrawling my Kunming address in barely legible 简体字.
Now, those of you with extensive travel experience are surely nodding and saying, “Of course. It’s always better to try the local tongue overseas.” This is true, and even irascible Parisian waiters will smile if you order your breakfast in French. Being somewhat ignorant about Hong Kong in general, I wasn’t sure what the linguistic dynamic was there. Perhaps Hong Kongers preferred English both to show off their competency in the tongue (in comparison to their mainland cousins) or as a gentle rebuke against Beijing rule.
Yet as I discovered, knowing a bit of Mandarin actually smoothed things over, and those of you heading there in the future would be wise to wield your language skills even if you don’t necessarily have to.
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July 30, 2008
10:58 am
I usually use Mandarin on the English-speaking hawkers around Kowloon. It just confuses them.
I’ve had to use more Mandarin in Macau–though I found one place that understood neither English nor Mandarin, but spoke them fine…made for a rather bad lunch.
July 30, 2008
11:02 am
This certainly wasn’t true 10 years ago. I think there’s also differences between HK Island and North Kowloon (and the NT) - in my limited experience (because I speak Cantonese) people on HK Island are far more competent in English than Kowloon.
July 30, 2008
12:04 pm
I think it’s more to do with you being a Lao Wai being able to speak Mandarin Chinese. As you’ve probably noticed most expats in HK make very little effort to learn the local language (or to even understand the local culture for that matter).
July 30, 2008
12:22 pm
Wago,
That’s definitely true, and I should have mentioned that in my post.
July 30, 2008
12:49 pm
When I was there two years ago few understood Mandarin fluently. I found it much easier to make myself understood in English.
If I wanted to take the time to help people understand me both in Guangdong and HK I could use Mandarin, but often English was the way to get things done fast.
I think Cantonese is a much more beautiful language anyway. Wish it was easier to learn.
July 30, 2008
4:50 pm
I wonder if it will ever get to the point where the prevalence of Mandarin will cause Guangdongren concern that their language is in danger.
July 31, 2008
11:35 am
wonder if it will ever get to the point where the prevalence of Mandarin will cause Guangdongren concern that their language is in danger.
NEVER! Well, maybe in Shenzhen. But the presence of Cantonese is really deeply ingrained in Guangdong, parts of Guangxi, parts of Hainan and Hong Kong (not to mention San Francisco, New York, Singapore, Malaysia, Vietnam, Sydney, Manchester, London and parts of LA)
Plus everyone in Hong Kong’s mandarin sucks - I live here in Shanghai and my mandarin is mediocre at best (and some days much worse) and everyone says “you have much better mandarin than other people from Hong Kong”
July 31, 2008
6:52 pm
Hi,
I really enjoyed living in both Hong Kong and Beijing and I tried to immerse into the local culture as good as possible. I observed the following in case of the Hong Kong people, the further away they are from the Island the happier they are to use Mandarin. When you are in Kowloon or the New Territories, you would find a lot more people descending from Mandarin speakers, or a related dialect, one or two generations ago.
To my understanding, Hong Kong has a population of about seven million inhabitants. Since 1949, it grew from about half that population to its current size because many migrants came from the Mainland or from Vietnam in the course of the tumultuous state in their homeland. One thing that linguists observed with astonishment was that, on the one hand, immigrants picked up the local Cantonese (which itself evolved out of various Cantonese dialects) very quickly and immersed into the local culture. Maybe because of the prospects that in Hong Kong it was easier to make a fortune than on the Mainland at that time. Therefore, you had to be able to know how to strike deals in the local language, gestures and culture. On the other hand, I heard that the Cantonese in Hong Kong is mainly a spoken language, to find written pieces to teach kids at school about “Hong Kong Cantonese” seems to be very difficult. The language is present in every day culture, like comics, shops etc. that rather uses messages and this impacted also on the way of how newspapers are written and how schooling for kids in primary school is conducted. I guess because the “Hong Kong Cantonese” was influenced by absorbing so many other Chinese dialects and then those migrants learned it from the street, from trading and working. Hence, the roots of many people on the Kowloon side could descend from Mandarin speaking ancestors one or two generations ago.
On Hong Kong Island, the tone seems to be set by the multinational corporations and their expat employees, at least, they seem to give you the impression that with English on Hong Kong Island you can get further. Of course, many of the local kids who live on Hong Kong Island and if you want to live there you must have money, be British, or be very creative are probably Western educated. There, I often get the feeling that a Mandarin speaker, such as my wife from Northern China (whose English is perfect btw.) is more likely to be looked down upon than if she was away from Hong Kong Island.
The shops that exist there, however, have embraced the stagnating number of wealthy shoppers from the Mainland. In the service industry your Mandarin nowadays gets you further.
I love Hong Kong but apart from a nice walk over from Lan Kwai Fong to SoHo to my favourite club Yumla, I enjoy the Kowloon side more. I would love to learn more Cantonese but it is, as said here before quite a difficult language.
August 1, 2008
10:32 am
In 2003 when I visited from the Mainland into HK, I tried to talk to a metro person for help in English with no luck in the person understanding me; switched to Chinese and got everything I needed.
Tried the same thing for HK taxis… Did not understand a word of either Mandarin or English. :/
August 3, 2008
10:59 pm
Both myself and my housemate visited HK from the mainland (at different times). We both had the experience of having to use Mandarin when talking to the taxi drivers.
August 4, 2008
3:20 pm
Matt,
I lived in France as a kid and my French became so good that substitute teachers did not know I was a foreigner. I majored in French and studied there while in college. France (Paris, in particular) is the only country of which I am aware that does NOT appreciate foreigners speaking their language. Whenever I go to a foreign country, I try to learn a few words to wow the natives and it always works wonders. This is not true of France. Trust me.
August 4, 2008
5:01 pm
Everybody knows there’s no pleasing the French.
September 16, 2008
6:31 am
T., is it wishful thinking or you are trying to convince yourself? Cantonese speakers feel endangered by the growth of Mandarin in the world In Australia, they also said, Cantonese will always be on top. Now Mandarin has beaten Cantonese in the number of speakers in Australia, besides, Mandarin speakers are the young and the active part of the population. Simplified characters are becoming more common by the Chinese community, government and media.
A similar trend is happening in Canada and the US but it may take longer.