A similar trend is happening in Canada and the US but it may take longer.

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.

Tried the same thing for HK taxis… Did not understand a word of either Mandarin or English. :/

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.

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”

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.