Hong Kong written Chinese is the register used in government documents, serious literature and the formal sections of printed media. It is a local variation of Standard Chinese and has many special features in its lexicon, syntax and discourse. These features come from three distinctive sources: English, Cantonese and innovation. The main concern of this paper is which features come from English and how they are adopted.
It is shown that Hong Kong written Chinese has a large number of English loan words, both localized and semi-localized ones, and quite a few calque forms from English. Some of its lexical items have undergone semantic shift under the influence of English or Cantonese. The most interesting characteristic of Hong Kong written Chinese is that a number of its words have changed their syntactic behavior due to English influence and a few syntactic structures are apparently adopted from English. This particular form of written Chinese thus provides an excellent case to study the impact of bilingualism and multilingualism on language use and language change induced by language contact.
2018. Cantonese as written language in Hong Kong. Global Chinese 4:1 ► pp. 103 ff.
Li, David C. S.
2017. The Hong Kong Language Context. In Multilingual Hong Kong: Languages, Literacies and Identities [Multilingual Education, 19], ► pp. 1 ff.
Li, David C. S.
2017. Issues in Language Policy and Planning: Summary and Recommendations. In Multilingual Hong Kong: Languages, Literacies and Identities [Multilingual Education, 19], ► pp. 271 ff.
Li, David C. S.
2017. Language Contact: Sociolinguistic Context and Linguistic Outcomes. In Multilingual Hong Kong: Languages, Literacies and Identities [Multilingual Education, 19], ► pp. 21 ff.
Li, David C. S.
2017. Challenges in Acquiring Standard Written Chinese and Putonghua. In Multilingual Hong Kong: Languages, Literacies and Identities [Multilingual Education, 19], ► pp. 71 ff.
Li, David C. S.
2022. Trilingual and biliterate language education policy in Hong Kong: past, present and future. Asian-Pacific Journal of Second and Foreign Language Education 7:1
Li, David C. S. & Wong Tak-sum
2024. Phonetic loan, graphic borrowing, and script-mixing: key to the vitality of written Cantonese in Hong Kong. Multilingua 0:0
Li, David C. S., Cathy S. P. Wong, Wai Mun Leung & Sam T. S. Wong
2016. Facilitation of transference: The case of monosyllabic salience in Hong Kong Cantonese. Linguistics 54:1 ► pp. 1 ff.
Tam, Hugo Wing-Yu & Samuel C. S. Tsang
2023. Towards a reconceptualisation of the Cantonese lexicon in contemporary Hong Kong: classificatory possibilities and their implications for the local Chinese-as-an-additional-language curriculum. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism 26:4 ► pp. 428 ff.
Zhang, Xinzhi
2020. Effects of Freedom Restoration, Language Variety, and Issue Type on Psychological Reactance. Health Communication 35:11 ► pp. 1316 ff.
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