English-speaking Hong Kong hit by chorus of ‘Kongish’

“If your parents know that you will need to defer graduation, their hearts will be very sad. Retrospect, when you were a baby, especially you were sick, your mother father took care of you whole night. Do you still remember?”

A snapshot of the heartfelt missive – apparently genuine – was posted on the Kongish Daily Facebook page, which called for “pity sky-down teacher’s heart”, a literal translation of a Chinese phrase expressing sympathy and admiration for teachers’ efforts.

The page chronicles and celebrates what it calls “Kongish” – the colloquial English used by Hong Kongers. Kongish, it insists, is very different from the erstwhile Chinglish – a hybrid of English and Chinese.

Instead, it is “Hong Kong English for Hong Kong people”, with literal translations of Cantonese lingo. Kongish speakers will urge you to “add oil” if they think you’re in need of encouragement. Or to “pay bill real hon zi” if they suspect you won’t keep a promise. “What spring are you upping?” is an impolite inquiry of what you are up to.

Like Singapore’s Singlish, it’s mostly unintelligible to outsiders and even locals not familiar with English or the latest Cantonese slang.

But Kongish has struck a chord among Hong Kongers, at a time when the young especially are keen to highlight the city’s uniqueness  against the backdrop of mainland China. The dialect’s dedicated  Facebook page has garnered 31,000 “likes” since it was started four months ago. Its surging popularity comes amid widespread complaints here that English standards are dropping fast.

 

Falling standards? 

A recent flurry of studies has ignited concern over whether a place dubbed “Asia’s World City” understands and is understood by a world in which the global lingua franca remains English. Doubts have been voiced about the accuracy of surveys like the recent one done by commercial education provider Education First, which ranked Hong Kong 33rd worldwide, down from 12th just four years ago, but was based on a self-selecting group of test-takers online.

Nevertheless other studies suggest there are good reasons to be concerned. The Hong Kong Examinations and Assessment Authority for instance, noted that many candidates prefer to get by in “Chinglish” and have “limited [English] vocabulary”.

Meanwhile the University of Hong Kong found that the ability of those it surveyed to code-switch – from the local lingo to a standardised form of English – was patchy. Just 6 per cent of respondents were found to speak English well and 1.5 per cent had a “native-like” command of the language, according to its assessments. About 27 per cent had “a broad functional proficiency” in oral communication.

The number with “high-level proficiency, it concluded, is still relatively small, which hampers … executive-level communication in business and government”.

Two weeks ago Hong Kong Education Secretary Eddie Ng acknowledged “there is room for improvement”. He added that his bureau was studying boosting an “important” tool to improve standards – the hiring of native-speaking English teachers, currently present in over 80 per cent of the city’s government schools.

The Education Bureau said this could mean adding an extra teacher in every school. No timeline was given.

However, while anecdotes of falling English standards abound, there is no clear evidence this is the case: Results of standardised primary and secondary school tests show no discernible drop, at least in recent years, notes Dr Andrew Sewell of Lingnan University’s English department.

What is more likely is that, as English use spreads beyond the elites, it is being spoken and written according to less-than-perfect standards – hence the rise of Chinglish and now Kongish.

So forget native speaking standards, says Sewell. What the government should be focusing on is proficiency in terms of real-world communication ability.

What is clear is that the issue of language in Hong Kong is an emotive – and politicised – one. The former British colony has long branded its proficiency in English as a distinct advantage in the region. After the 1997 handover, English has remained an official language here alongside Chinese (both Cantonese and Mandarin).

Given its status as a financial hub, language proficiency remains a “a critical economic policy issue”, as the Hong Kong University researchers note. But beyond that, the city is also a community with “strong feelings of language loyalty”.

This means that perceptions of falling English standards often set off alarm bells about so-called infiltration of mainland influence in the city and the diluted identity of Hong Kong in the post-colonial era.

Conversely, critics – including in mainland state media – will point to it as evidence of the city’s faltering competitiveness.

In that sense, any conversation of language in Hong Kong is never just about that, notes Sewell.