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One Country, Two Cultures and Three Languages1:

Sociolinguistic Conditions and Language Education in Hong Kong*

Daniel W.C. So

*B. Asker (ed.) Teaching Language & Culture:Building Hong Kong on Education. H K: Longman,1998

Britain exercised governance over the Hong Kong Island in 1842. The territorial spread of its governance was to be extended further later, first to the Kowloon Peninsula (south of Boundary Street) in 1860, and then to the land between Boundary Street and the Shenzhen River, as well as to a total of 235 neighbouring islands (together these new acquisitions are called The New Territories) in 1898. The 155 years between 1842 and 1997 saw an extraordinarily difficult period of China’s history. For the most part of China, frequent and regular turmoil punctuated this period. For those Chinese people living in the neighbouring areas of Hong Kong, many of them found it expedient to take advantage of the proximity of this spot of relative tranquillity and came here to sit out the turmoil at home. To the great majority of these migrants, including those who eventually decided to settle here, they had not left their country; they simply ran away from one regime which could not offer adequate protection of their life and property to another that could by moving from one spot to another spot of this ancient land of theirs. Even after 1949 when most of the migrants came to stay and accepted the nationality of their offspring to be British, there has been little confusion among the local Chinese population as to which country that they are from and truly belong.2 For the generations of migrants who came to Hong Kong before and/or after 1949, they may hold British passports, they may not think of China often and in fact may know not much about it, but if and when asked by third parties on informal occasions whether they are English or Chinese, the answer will invariably be Chinese or Hong Kong Chinese.3

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Frank Welsh opines that “Present day Hong Kong shows little sign of a colonial presence, and even less of a colonial past” (1993:3). To make his case, he refers to, among other things, the dwarfing of the Government House and of the other near-by, colonial buildings by the skyscrapers that encircle them today, and the lack of presence of personnel of British extraction in the disciplinary forces. However, for a lack of colonial presence, his fellowmen usually refer to something else that appear to be more vexing and starling to them: the small number of Hong Kong Chinese who manage to speak their language well. Given the social spread of English in places like The Philippines, Puerto Rico, The Republic of Singapore, The West Indies etc. which share Hong Kong’s historical-political backgrounds to a very large extent, the small number of fluent English-speaking Chinese in Hong Kong requires an explanation. Although the historical factors and socio-cultural dynamics that account for such a situation are probably quite obvious to the people of Hong Kong, others new to this city could find it quite puzzling and even frustrating. For example, it may be such frustrations that in 1989 led Roy Harris to give his inaugural lecture from the Chair of English Language the provocative title “The Worst English in the World” which referred not only to the English abilities of the Hong Kong people in general, but also to his students at the Hong Kong University. Lest anyone should think that the level of English among Hong Kong’s top students took a turn for the worse only in recent years, it has to be pointed out that about a quarter of a century ago, Lord (1974:4) was quite alarmed by the fact that out of a total of 228 students in the Faculty of Arts of Hong Kong University who took a diagnostic test of their English skills, between 24 and 71 per cent of them required remedial assistance in one form or another to enhance their proficiency in English in order to function in the English-medium environment of the university. If one pushed further back in time to look for a golden period of good English achievements among the local elite, s/he would be disappointed; what s/he would find are: In 1916 Legislator Lau Chu Pak (劉鑄伯)

expressed his concern about the English standards of Chinese students in a speech at the Legislative Council (see Cheng 1949:83, Sweeting 1990:346). And in 1878 in his dispatch to the Secretary of State for the Colonies, Sir John Pope Hennessy indicated his disappointment of not being able to identify a single English-speaking student out of a class of 150 at Central School, the government’s flag-ship school of the day (quoted in Sweeting 1990:232). Even if it is assumed that students at the Hong Kong

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University between the Pre-War years and the 1960s all had a firm grip on the language, the numbers involved were minuscule vis-a-vis the size of the population at the time. Before the Second World War, the entire student (full-time) population at the university was between 400 and 500; in 1946 it dropped to 52 and in 1971 it was about 2,846 (Mellor 1980, inter alia; Education Department, Annual Summary 1972/73). Whereas the population of Hong Kong in 1941, 1951 and 1971 was respectively 1,639,337 (Estimated by the Air-raid Wards), 2,015,300 and 3,936,630 (Census & Statistics Department 1993). Indeed, if there were a time during which there ever existed a large body of English talent among the local population, it probably existed only in some people’s minds. One significant, obvious but often over-looked factor that to a very large extent determines the sociolinguistic profile of Hong Kong of today is the character of the demography in Hong Kong. In 1842 Hong Kong Island might be said to be largely a barren rock, but the population of the New Territories was already relatively large and long established. Archaeological finds indicate that there could be human settlements in the territory as early as 6000 B.C. although it is not certain if these settlements were of a transient or permanent nature. Historical records show that military garrisons were placed in Tunmen(屯門) circa 733 A.D. as part of the efforts of the Tang dynasty(唐朝) to defend the coastal regions against

pirates. Whereas large-scale, permanent settlements by Han Chinese in the territory probably began in late South-Song dynasty (南宋) in the 1270s as they fled from Central

China to the South to stay away from the invading ‘barbarians’ from the North. It was around and since this time that the ancestors of the Five Clans of The New Territories--the Tangs/Dengs (鄧氏)4 of Kamtin/Jintian (錦田), The Mans/Wens(文氏) of Suntin/Xintian (新田), the Liaos/Lius(廖氏) of Sheungshui/Shangshui (上水), The Pangs/Pengs( 彭 氏 ) of Fanling/Fenling ( 粉 嶺 ) and The Hous(侯氏 ) of Hosheung-heung/Heshang-xiang (河上鄉 )-- came to establish themselves in the territory. These clans formed the nucleus of the so-called Puntis(Locals)/Bendis (本地)

and in the process many of the aborigines in the territory were driven away and some of them formed part of today’s boat-dwelling population, locally known as Tanga/Danjia (蜑家). Many of these boat-dwelling people were also Hoklos/Helaos (鶴佬) who migrated to Hong Kong from Haifeng (海豐) and Lufeng (陸豐); they speak a variety of the Minnan ( 閩南 ) languages. Some other boat-dwelling people came from Swatow/Shantou (汕頭) and its neighbouring areas; they speak a variety of the Chaoshan (潮汕) languages.

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Among the other major ethnic groups which followed the footsteps of the Bendis to Hong Kong were: the Hakkas/Kejias (客家) from Heyuan (河源), Meixian (梅縣); most of

them came during the Qing dynasty (Blake 1981:10). The Minnan people from Xiamen (廈門); most of them came after 1949 and between 1957 and 1962 (Guldin 1977: 79). The Teochows/Chaozhous from Chaozhou (潮州); many of them came after 1945 (Sparks

1978: 24). In the census taken three years after British governance was extended to the entire territory, it was found that there were 300,660 people residing in urban Hong Kong of whom 280,564 were Chinese. In addition, it was estimated that another 100,000 people mostly of Chinese extraction were residing in The New Territories (Quoted in Endacott 1973: 276). At the turn of last century, there is much evidence indicating that the major languages spoken in Hong Kong were: among the residents of The New Territories, the language of the walled-villages (the so-called Weitou-hua [圍頭話]) which is a variety of the Yue language (粵語), and Kejia. Among the city dwellers, Cantonese/Guangfu-hua (廣府話), Szeyap/siyi-hua (四邑), Minnan-hua, and Chaozhou-hua were spoken. Among the boat

dwellers, the language spoken was loosely called Danjia-hua wherein varieties of the Yue, Chaoshan and Minnan languages could be found. Therefore, it is evident that for the first half of the Twentieth Century, there was an observable degree of multilingualism in Hong Kong with Cantonese being the language spoken by the urban majority. A perceptive observer will find it intriguing that why at the dawn of the twentieth century, the language spoken in Canton, which in terms of travel distance is some 180 kilometers away, would have already become the language spoken by the majority of the urban population of Hong Kong; why is it not, for example, the language of the Baoan (寶安) county just across the border?

The answer to this question is that in those days in this part of the world, movement, especially bulk movement, over land by traditional means was inconvenient and unsafe. However, in the 1840s, there were already regular ferry links between the two cities; in 1912, rail links between the two cities were also established. These modern means of transport facilities enabled people of all age and sex

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to travel in large numbers between the two cities in relative comfort and safety. By the same token, the large presence in Hong Kong of people from Siyi, which are vis-a-vis Hong Kong on the other side of the Pearl River estuary and are further away from Hong Kong than Canton in terms of overland travel distance, was the result of the fact that many of them came to Hong Kong via Macao by sea. There was regular, heavy sea traffic between Macao and Hong Kong as early as the 1860s because of the coolie trade (see Haviland 1962). However people living in the counties between Canton and Hong Kong, and those to the North and northeast of Hong Kong had to take the risk and face the hazards of bulk travel by traditional means overland if they decided to come to Hong Kong. Accordingly, in the early days the major sources of the growth of the urban population of Hong Kong were cities like Canton, Xiamen, and townships like Nanhai (南海), Panyu (番禺), Shunde (順德), (The so-called Sanyi [三 邑] , i.e. The Three

Counties, which are near Canton where the people speak a language very close to Cantonese); Xinhui (新會), Kaiping (開平), Nanping (南平), Taishan (台山), (They

together constitute Siyi i.e. The Four Counties), and Shantou rather than the rural areas north and northeast of Hong Kong. (Table 1 refers) This situation has remained largely the same, except that after 1949, Shanghai was added to the list. Table 1: Percentage distribution of Population by ‘Place of Origin’

Place of Origin 1966 1971 1981

Hong Kong 6.7 4.7 2.5

CHINA: Guangzhou, Macao & adjacent places 48.0 52.7 49.3

Siyi 19.3 17.4 16.3 Chaozhou 10.9 9.9 11.4

Elsewhere in Guangdong 6.0 6.4 9.4 Elsewhere in China 7.7 7.2 9.1

sub-total 98.6 93.6 95.5

Others 1.4 6.4 4.5

Total 100 100 100

Sources: Census & Statistics Dept. Hong Kong: Report on the 1966 By-Census; The 1971 Census: Basic Tables; Hong Kong 1981 Census: Main Report. Vol 1.

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Between 1949 and the early 1980s, there is evidence indicating that within the Chinese population, including those living in The New Territories, there was a process of reduction of multilingualism and more and more people speak Cantonese as their usual language. It is commonly observed that the children of non-Cantonese-speaking parents mostly picked up the language of their Cantonese-speaking peers as the usual language; many of them eventually lost the ability to speak fluently the languages of their parents albeit many of them retained the listening skills at varying levels of ability. Such experiences are borne out by the census data collected in the 1960s and 1990s as shown in Table 2.5 Table 2: % distribution of Population by ‘Usual Language Spoken’

Language 1961 1966 1991 1996

Cantonese粵語 79.0 81.4 88.7 88.7 Fukien閩南 6.3 6.5 1.9 1.9 Hakka客家 4.9 3.3 1.6 1.2 Si Yi四邑 4.4 3.1 0.4 0.3

Chiu Chau潮州 --- --- 1.4 1.1 Putonghua普通話 1.0 --- 1.1 1.1 Shanghainese上海 2.6 --- 0.7 0.5

English英語 1.2 0.8 2.2 3.1 Others其他 0.6 3.1 2.0 0.5

Total (%) 100 100 100 100

Sources: Barnett, K.M.A. Report on the 1961 Census. Hong Kong: Government Printer, 1961/62. Census & Statistics Dept. Hong Kong: Report on the 1966 By-Census. Hong Kong 1991 Census: Main Report. Vol 1. Hong Kong 1996 Population By-Census: Summary Results.

Evidently, many factors are involved in driving up the share of native-speakers of Cantonese from under four-fifth to about nine-tenth of the population during the forty years following 1949. One obvious factor is the size of the Cantonese-speaking population. Another important factor is probably the universalization of vernacular primary education.

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Before the Second World War, the provision of vernacular primary education was largely undertaken by dedicated individual educators and/or voluntary agencies of various backgrounds. This was a result of the colonial administration’s measures to devote most of its resources allocated to education, which was already by no means generous, to promote English-medium education (see Fu 1975:38-77). The consequence of this policy was that vernacular primary education was accessible to very few members of the appropriate age group, a situation that caught the critical attention of HMI Burney (1935) who called for a re-examination of the priorities of the educational spending of the government especially in respect of the provision of vernacular primary education for the population at large. Before the War, for those few children in The New Territories who were luckily enough to receive an education, the majority of them attended village schools and often received their instruction in either Weitou-hua or Kejia-hua. In the urban area, Cantonese was used in most schools. However, for some of the children from non-Cantonese speaking homes, it was not uncommon for them to attend schools run by their ethnic fraternity associations and were instructed in their respective native tongues. In those days, the exposure of young people from non-Cantonese speaking homes to Cantonese was not as extensive and intensive as it is today. After the War, partly as a response to The Burney Report and mostly out of socio-political considerations, the provision of vernacular primary education became one of the tasks given top priority by the government. The number of places in primary day schools increased from 53,518 in 1946 to nearly 170,000 in 1953, and then to 548,195 in 1963. Which means by 1963, the participation rate in primary education of the age group of 6-11 years (inclusive) reached 95 per cent (Hong Kong Government. Annual Reviews, various issues). In 1971 universal free primary education was introduced. It is believed that the 1,385 primary schools in operation in Hong Kong in 1971 (Education Department, Annual Summary 1972/73), the majority of which were government-funded, became, among other things, a melting pot of various local, ethnic cultures. Unlike schools run by private, piecemeal efforts, government funding came to vernacular primary education with codes of practice as well. In most of these schools, the practice of using Cantonese--i.e. the language spoken in the provincial capital of Guangdong (廣東) and the standard variety of the Yue language--as the verbal medium of

instruction became the norm. This gave rise to a powerful Cantonese-speaking domain in Hong Kong after the War. For the past fifty years, whether or not you spoke Weitou-hua

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in the walled villages, or Kejia-hua in Taipo/Dapu (大埔 ), or Siyi-hua in Shamshuipo/Shenshui-bu(深水土步), or Chaozhou-hua in Kowloon City, or Minnan-hua in North Point (北角) or Shanghai-hua in Tsimshatsui (尖沙嘴), when the children of

Hong Kong went to school, which most people of the appropriate age did during this period, they all spoke in Cantonese there. There was finally a common spot of convergence for the off-spring of all the ethnic groups in Hong Kong and the linguistic consequence was that Cantonese gained further sociolinguistic dominance as it becomes the usual, preferred language of the post-War generations. Nowadays, census data indicate that between 95 and 96 per cent of the local population speak it either as their mother-tongue or as their additional language. The third factor that contributes to the dominance of Cantonese is the closing of the borders between Hong Kong and The People’s Republic of China after 1949. Since that year, the people in Hong Kong came to realize that the traditional practice of treating Hong Kong as a temporary refuge had come to an end. Unless they made further movements like emigrating overseas, otherwise they had to call Hong Kong home. And for those who did not find sufficient motivation to speak the language of the land initially, many of them speak it eventually after 1949. 6 With the passage of the Official Languages Ordinance in 1974 and the implementation of the policy of localization in most parts of the public service especially since the early 1980s, 7 the sociolinguistic range of Cantonese in Hong Kong is complete: from swearing to reciting poetry, from gossiping to giving lectures in the halls of learning, from disputes between spouses to debates in the Legislative Council, Cantonese can readily be used. Apart from Putonghua, Cantonese is another Han-Chinese language which has a fully developed, spoken High variety, a feature shared by few, if any, of the other Han-Chinese languages today.8 In sociolinguistic studies of Hong Kong, attempts have been made to develop a dichotomy wherein Cantonese is taken to be the language of solidarity and English the language of power (for example, Cheung 1984). Many people are also subscribed to the view that English is the most important language in Hong Kong. Such views may be valid in the pre-War years. However, in the past several decades, especially for Hong Kong residents of Chinese extraction, it would be at their own peril if they do not speak Cantonese. In addition to being a symbol of solidarity, it has become a language of power in Hong Kong as a result of the sheer number of its speakers. If one speaks the language, s/he is in touch with more than 90 per cent of the population; if one does not

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speak it, s/he will be to a very large extent cut off from more than 90 per cent of the population. The magnitude of the loss of opportunity cost so accrued for the latter group is tremendous. It is not a coincidence that many of the leading local businessmen who came from non-Cantonese speaking places speak the language, albeit at varying levels of fluency as shown in Table 3.

Table 3: A Sample of Leading Hong Kong Businessmen Who Speak Cantonese as an Additional Language

Name Mother-tongue is the language of :

(Former) Head of:

Louis L.Y.Cha 查良鏞 Hangzhou杭州 (Ming Pao Holdings Ltd.) K.S. Li 李嘉誠 Chi Chau 潮州 Cheung Kong (Holdings) Ltd. P.Y. Lim 林百欣 Chiu Chau潮州 Lai Sun Garment Co. Ltd. Y.K. Pao包玉剛 Wenzhou溫州 (World Wide Shipping Group) Run Run Shaw 邵逸夫 Shanghai 上海 TVB Ltd. C. H. Tung董建華 Shanghai 上海 Orient Overseas Holdings K.C. Woo吳光正 Shanghai 上海 Wharf (Holdings) Ltd.

There is no intention to question the solidarity value of Cantonese. However, the dichotomy may be dated now and may have under-estimated the significance of Cantonese in Hong Kong in the post-1949 years. Also, when over 95 per cent of the population in Hong Kong speak the language, its use comes naturally and often is taken as a given except for the few occasions when a bilingual Chinese wants to make a symbolic statement by switching from Cantonese to English or Putonghua. Actually, nowadays, Chaozhou-hua, Kejia-hou, Minnan-hua, Siyi-hua, Putonghua or the English-in-Cantonese Mix (the native tongue of the local educated class) are used more often as group/solidarity markers in Hong Kong than Cantonese. In summary, although attempts have been made to demonstrate that places like The Philippines, Puerto Rico, The Republic of Singapore, The West Indies etc. have succeeded in what Hong Kong has failed, namely achieving extensive social spread of English among the local population, it should be clear by now that at least in the

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respect of the English learning environment, Hong Kong is quite different from these places. The degree of multilingualism is much smaller here and as to be further elaborated below, for most part of its history, the opportunity and need of the majority of the Hong Kong people to use English to communicate were low. To account for the low level of individual bilingualism in Hong Kong, Luke & Richard (1982:53) observe that there is a relatively high degree of social distance between the Chinese community and the mostly English-speaking expatriate community in Hong Kong, and each of these communities is characterized by a high degree of enclosure.9 Indeed, even today, interaction between these two communities has remained minimal: Hong Kong has always been a city with two identifiable and separate communities as well as two co-ordinate and distinct cultures. 10 As mentioned earlier, prior to Britain’s application of governance over the entire Hong Kong, there existed in the territory a Chinese community of considerable size and a culture of relatively high sophistication. After 1842, a largely English-speaking expatriate community was also gradually formed in the territory, although various records indicate that the size of this community has never exceeded four percent of the total population. In many ways, the high degree of social distance between the two communities is not hard to be understood. After all, the meeting of these two communities and cultures started on a wrong footing and came about under the most unfortunate circumstances. These backgrounds were further compounded by misguided government measures introduced in the early phase of the introduction of British rule, such as public flogging of Chinese people convicted of minor offences (Norton-Kyshe 1898:92) and territorial segregation by race. Other stumbling blocks were the disparity in the degree of modernity achieved between the two communities which was unfortunately taken by many expatriates as an indication of the innate inferiority of the Chinese, and the strong sense of status and class among many members of the British group. Also, it goes without saying that for a larger part of the period, most members of both communities were ignorant of each other’s language and culture, an ignorance furthered compounded by a heavy dosage of their respective ethnocentrism.

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The high degree of social distance has been aggravated by a corresponding high degree of enclosure, which is the result of the success of both groups in community-building (see Hayes 1975). As a result of this success, each group has to a very large extent found ways and means to fulfill their socio-cultural needs. For example, the expatriates have their St. John’s Cathedral, the Chinese have their Man Mo Temple/Wenwu-miao (文武廟); the former have their Cricket Club, Golf Club, Hong Kong Club, Yacht Club etc., the latter have their clans associations (宗親會), ethnic fraternity associations (同鄉會), neighborhood associations (街坊會 ) etc. The same can be said in the areas of

entertainment, the media, shopping, medical & other essential services as well as cultural, leisure-spending activities where institutions have been developed to deliver what is required in either Chinese or English: what have come into existence are two co-ordinate and distinct cultures evolving in parallel; two identifiable and separate communities co-existing in peace. The links between these two communities have been provided by a small class of bilingual brokers. Before the War, most of them were the Parsees, Indians, Portuguese, Eurasians and Chinese compradors. After the War, the role has been gradually assumed by local members of the educated class. It appears the number of these brokers was quite small before the War, probably no more than a few thousand at the most. After the War, their number has been growing and their role has expanded as well (see So 1984, chapters 3 & 4). And through all these times, they remained middlemen and most of them were never accepted by the expatriate community. On the other hand, it may also be accurate to say that at least for the educated Chinese, most of them have never held a genuine interest to become “one of them”. The above may have provided the necessary context for the examination of some of the findings of a questionnaire survey of the language experience of the middle-management personnel at three commercial concerns11 conducted by this writer between 1991 and 199312. The study population was defined by the head of the training or personnel department of the respective firms. The study comprises two parts. In the first part, about 400 questionnaires were sent to members of the entire study population and as shown in Table 4A, 347 respondents (86.75%) returned our questionnaires. In the second part, another 42 members of the study population chosen by the head of the training or personnel department of the respective firms participated in a follow-up questionnaire survey of their language experience over the period of a week selected by the respondents themselves. 13

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Table 4A: A Profile of the Respondents in the Study of the Language Experience of Middle-Management Personnel at Three Firms in Hong Kong (N=347)

Sex

Age

Educational Qualifications

Employer

M : 74.5%

F : 25.5%

31 - 35 : 27.1% 36 - 40 : 25.4% 26 - 30 : 22.4% 41 - 45 : 13.7%

> 45 : 5.8% 21 - 25 : 5.2% < 21 : 0.3%

Diploma : 30% Secondary : 26.8%

Matriculation : 19.7% Degree : 18.2%

Post-graduate : 3.2% Others :1.5%

Secondary-4 & below : 0.6%

Bank : 51.6%

Outboard motor firm:

22.2%

Electronics firm : 26.2%

Table 4B: Language used in Communication within the Firm (N=347)

How often the language is used

Cantonese (%)

Oral English (%)

Putonghua (%)

Written Chinese (%)

Written English (%)

Not used 0.3 28.1 71.3 5.1 3.4 Rarely used 1.2 34.9 12.0 17.4 11.7

Occasionally used nil 15.4 4.7 9.3 7.4 Often used 10.1 5.5 0.7 16.1 19.8

Very often used 1.5 13.4 3.3 15.1 25.0 Used all the time 86.9 2.7 1.3 35.0 32.7

N.A. nil nil 6.7 1.9 nil Total (%) 100 100 100 100 100

Table 4C Language used in Communication with Sources External to the Firm (N=347)

How often the

language is used

Cantonese (%)

Oral English (%)

Putonghua (%)

Written Chinese

(%)

Written English

(%) Not used nil 3.0 20.7 17.1 0.9

Rarely used 0.3 32.9 35.2 29.0 1.7 Occasionally used 1.2 24.2 17.6 15.0 2.3

Often used 5.6 24.8 3.1 7.2 22.4 Very often used 21.7 10.3 18.1 15.0 13.1 Used all the time 70.7 4.2 0.5 15.6 55.7

N.A. 0.6 0.6 4.7 1.2 3.8 Total (%) 100 100 100 100 100

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Table 4D: Language of the Media chosen for Spending Leisure (N=347)

Cantonese Putonghua Chinese English Others Total (%)

Newspaper 1.1% N.A. 82.6 15.8 0.55 100 (n=322/374)

Periodicals nil N.A. 66.8 32.2 1.0 100 (n=164/199)

TV 64.7 nil N.A. 35.1 0.2 100 (n=321/464)

Radio 82.0 nil N.A. 9.6 8.4 100 (n=206/239)

N=Number of respondents. n=The first figure refers to the number of respondents responded to the item and the second figure refers to the number of ‘a’ registered. The calculation of the percentage is based on the second figure. The three sampled firms do not constitute a cross section of the commercial sector of Hong Kong, and the middle and upper management at these firms was predominantly Chinese (only one of the three firms was managed by an English-speaking CEO). The presence of expatriates at these firms was very small. Therefore they may be a microcosm of only that segment of our private sector managed by Chinese personnel. Nonetheless, the diglossic (雙語分用) conditions summarized in the Tables 4A-4F stand

out quite clearly and these conditions are known to be widespread in Hong Kong in general and in the private sector in particular. For example, when asked to rate on a scale of 0 to 5 with 0 meaning ‘not used at all’ and 5 meaning ‘used all the time’, how often each of the liangwen-sanyu (兩文三語, the two written codes and the three spoken

languages) is used at work, the responses indicate that across the domains investigated there is a largely complementary distribution of Cantonese and spoken English on the one hand, and of written Chinese and written English on the other hand. In other words, verbal communication is mostly conducted in Cantonese in both internal and external communication. Whereas when it comes to putting pen to paper to deal with important businesses meant for external destinations, English is invariably used as shown in Table 4F. Also, important documents originated from sources external to the firms are mostly written in English.

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Table 4E: Language used at Home (N=347)

Usual language(s) used at home* Number of Choices Cantonese 344

English 22 A Chinese language other than Cantonese or Putonghua 14

Putonghua 9 Others 1

Total Number of Choices 390

*There are five options for this item and the respondents may pick more than one choices. Table 4F : Language used for Important Communications14 with Sources either outside or inside the Firm over an One-Week Period (Follow-up survey: N=42)

Type The total number of

communications registered by respondents

Cantonese English Putonghua Chinese

Phone conversations

477 405 (84.9%)

56 (11.7)

16 (3.3)

N.A.

Documents from internal source

read*

142 nil 78 (54.9)

N.A. 64 (45.1)

Documents from external source

read

285 nil 276 (96.8)

N.A. 9 (3.2)

Documents written for

internal destinations*

136 nil 66 (48.5)

N.A. 70 (51.5)

Documents written for

external destinations

173 nil 165 (95.4)

N.A. 8 (4.6)

Total 1213 405 (33.4)

641 (52.8)

16 (1.3)

151 (12.4)

*It is understood that some of these internal communications may eventually be sent to destinations external to the firm. Figures in brackets are row percentages.

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The use of Chinese for internal written communication is higher than expected (Tables 4B & 4F refer) and it is believed that for firms with a larger presence of expatriates, its use may be lower. Whereas the use of Putonghua was minimal during the period of the study.Another significant finding is the largely complementary distribution of Chinese and English in informal (home & leisure) and formal (work) domains as shown in Tables 4D and 4E. The survey findings confirm that the use of English is restricted to a few but significant domains and given its function and status in the commercial sector worldwide, there are good reasons to believe that its use in these domains will continue in the future. If this projection is held to be valid, then the sociolinguistic compartmentalization indicated in the survey should be a cause for concern for the education planners of the SAR government who appear to aspire to cultivate in future an educated class with firm grips on liangwen-sanyu (see Antony Leung’s speech titled 〈新時代香港教育的要求和挑戰〉(The Demands and Challenges of Education for Hong Kong in a New Era) 9 May

1997). The reason is, from general observations and empirical findings such as those quoted above, the sociolinguistic ecology in Hong Kong is not conducive to the development of individual bilingualism, let alone bilingualism in the mode of liangwen-sanyu. In fact, we are looking at a sociolinguistic ecology wherein one will find it quite difficult to promote the social spread of Putonghua, and quite easy to lose the present degree of spread of English. This unfavourable learning environment marked by a lack of exposure to the languages concerned is borne out by a finding of the Education Commission Language Proficiency Perception Survey co-led by this writer in 1994, as shown in Table 5. When those student respondents who indicated that they had difficulties learning English &/or Putonghua were asked to pick from a list of factors that might hinder their language learning; for English and Putonghua, the item ‘Few opportunities of use after school’ was the one that was chosen by the largest number of respondents.15

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Table 5 : Number of Student Respondents who have difficulties learning English &/or Putonghua and picked “Few opportunities of use after class” as one of the Hindering Factor in the Language Proficiency Perception Survey 199416

Language

Respondents (Primary-5) Respondents (Secondary-1)

Respondents (Secondary-5)

English 573 (57.4%) 761 (70.8) 979 (91.1)

Putonghua 340 (70.3) 303 (76.0) 115 (53.9)

Table 6 : Number of Students who leave Hong Kong to study in an English-speaking Country & Number of First Year (Full-time) Degree Students in Local Tertiary Institutions CountryYear England

USA

Canada

Australia

First Year

Degree Places 1994 3222 4555 2787 3108 14,500 1991 4428 5866 4541 3590 10,086 1980 4255 2765 3589 155 2612 1975 1348 2601 3909 139 2151 1970 833 2871 1600 128 1430 1965 1161 1031 539 267 1046

Sources: Education Department. Annual Summaries. Various issues. Hong Kong Government. Annual Review. Various Issues. *The figures are derived from the number of visas issued by the consulates of respective countries to applicants who study not just degree but a variety of programmes. **The figures of 1980 and before are derived from data reported in the sources; the others are “Full-time Equivalents” of degree places, i.e. notional numbers provided by “Higher Education 1991-2001: an interim report” of University & Polytechnic Grants Committee of Hong Kong, November 1993. *** The figures of 1980 and before refer to Hong Kong University and Chinese University of Hong Kong only, the others refer to all UPGC/UGC institutions.

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When those student respondents who indicated that they had difficulties learning English &/or Putonghau were asked to pick from a list of factors that might hinder their language learning of English and Putonghua, the item ‘Few opportunities of use after school’ was the one that was chosen by the largest number of respondents.17 Liangwen-sanyu is quite a sophisticated form of individual bilingualism. Given what is said above, it is obvious that most of the young people of Hong Kong will not acquire it as infants; they will have to achieve it in school. By demographic backgrounds Hong Kong is a largely monolingual society; it is only through a twist in history and by design that a degree of individual bilingualism is in evidence in our society. Hitherto, the schools have been a principal part of this design (see So 1992) and remain the major vehicle for spreading individual bilingualism in Hong Kong. If we are not obsessed with “the moon” (i.e. what people like Harris op. cit. think standards of English in Hong Kong should be) and look at the “six pence” that we now have, we will see individual bilingualism has in fact been spreading at a relatively fast pace in the past fifty years as shown in Table 6. Even if the schools have not done enough, they have at least contributed to that fact that between 1965 and 1994, in conjunction with the expansion of educational opportunities, there was an increase of 700 per cent in the number of people who gained access to English-medium education of one form of another at various levels, especially the tertiary level. If, because of socio-economic and political factors, this present form of individual bilingualism is to be enriched further to the level of Liangwen-sanyu, schools must be given the necessary resources for them to fulfill the mission. Given the sociolinguistic conditions aforementioned, it is indeed a very challenging mission, to say the least. As shown in Tables 7A and 7B, which summarize the (norm-referenced) results of students in the Chinese and English subjects in the Hong Kong Certification of Education Examination in 1993 and the Hong Kong Advanced Level Examination in 1995, it can be seen that balanced bilingualism is not one of their characteristics and the number of students who have developed a firm grip of both standard Chinese and English to enable themselves to have obtained Grade C or above in these two language subjects in these examinations is low.18

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Table 7A :Hong Kong Certificate of Education Grade Combination Statistics for Chinese Language & English Language Population : All Day School Candidates (1993) Chinese Language / English Language (Syl. B)

English Chinese

Grade A / B / C (High)

Grade D / E (Mid)

Grade F (Low)

Grade A / B / C 4007 6.2% 8093 12.5% 347 0.5%

Grade D / E 1310 2.0% 20269 31.2% 7058 10.9%

Grade F 33 0.1% 4462 6.9% 19345 29.8%

Source: Hong Kong Examinations Authority Table 7B : Hong Kong Advanced Level Examination Grade Combination Statistics for Chinese Language & Culture and Use of English Population : All Day School Candidates (1995) Chinese Language & Culture/Use of English

English Chinese

Grade A / B / C (High)

Grade D / E (Mid)

Grade F (Low)

Grade A / B / C 1888 7.88% 2425 10.12% 122 0.51%

Grade D / E 1660 6.92% 11721 48.88% 2206 9.2%

Grade F 36 0.16% 1371 5.72% 780 3.25%

Source: Hong Kong Examinations Authority It is in this context that one wonders if the promotion of mother-tongue education and the proposed Firm Guidance on Secondary School’s Medium of Instruction recently put forward by the Department of Education are steps in the right direction.19 If the firm guidance is implemented as proposed, in a few years, it will establish a largely monolingual environment in our secondary schools, with about thirty per cent of the students receiving their education entirely in English and the rest entirely in Chinese.20 The proposal is well intentioned as it is a well-known fact that many English-medium

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secondary schools in Hong Kong do not have the necessary conditions to provide their students with a proper education in the medium. It is also conceded here that there are indeed schools for which the Chinese languages should be the sole mediums for the instruction of their students. However, given the larger, societal context delineated above, the solution to the over-selection of English-medium schools is not to exclude 70 per cent of the students from having their education in this medium but to provide additional resources to the schools to enable them to develop the necessary conditions to enrich the linguistic environment within the schools and to provide instruction in liangwen-sanyu to as many students as possible.21 Moreover, monolingual English-medium and Chinese-medium schools are not consistent with our aspiration to achieve liangwen-sanyu bilingualism at a large scale in Hong Kong, especially given its current sociolinguistic conditions. It is hard to conceive how liangwen-sanyu bilingualism in our society could be engendered if schools are precluded from engendering an environment of liangwen-sanyu on their campuses. By force of tradition, there will always be English-medium and Chinese-medium schools in Hong Kong. No matter how popular is the former, or how unpopular is the latter, the fact remains that the times that produced the dynamics that selected these schools are moving fast behind us. It is likely that the dynamics in the future will select neither Chinese-only Schools nor English-only Schools, but schools that are able to make flexible, sensible and appropriate use of Cantonese, Putonghua and English as mediums of instruction, as well as to provide our young people with an exposure to the cultures of China and of the West. Exposure to the two cultures and to the three languages are organically related. Maintenance of the peaceful co-existence of these two cultures and the promotion of these languages will to a large extent depend on the quality and intensity of this exposure. Accordingly we should think very hard about whether or not we really want to force schools to make a choice between Chinese and English. The fact is giving up English-medium instruction and resisting Putonghua-instruction is the easy option. But is it really an option that will help fulfill our language goals for the post-1997 generation? Lest it be misunderstood, there is no intention to dispute the efficacy of mother-tongue education in general. However, given the prevailing sociolinguistic conditions and the language agenda we set for ourselves, further thought should be given to the question of whether the mother-tongue should be part of our medium of instruction formula, or the

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formula itself. 22 The work of Macnamara has been understood in such a way in Hong Kong that it has been quoted in the local literature in support of either an elimination or postponement of English-medium secondary education. Therefore, it might be appropriate to conclude this paper with a quotation of his views on providing access to French-medium education for English-speaking children in Canada, which may clarify his stand on the issue (Macnamara, 1972: 9-10): Does a bilingual education involve costs in terms of academic standards? Many

studies suggest that it may unless special efforts are made. However, results from individual schools suggest that the frequently observed costs are not necessarily connected with bilingual education. For what it is worth, my opinion is that normal English-speaking children in Canada have so much to gain from knowing French that I should be prepared to risk certain deficits in order to give them such a knowledge. I would at the same time take every precaution to see that the costs were as low as possible, and even try to eliminate them altogether.

In the above, Macnamara has underscored the significance of the societal aspects of bilingual education. The instructional medium is only one of the many factors that have to be considered in educational planning, and it should not be considered in isolation, a point made eloquently by Bull (1964). Bilingual education is by definition a more sophisticated and therefore more expensive form of education. It requires justification. A Hong Kong with a bilingual educated class will require the presence of a large number of bilingual schools. In light of the experience of immersion programmes in North America, there are grounds to believe that many of the students in Hong Kong, who like their counterparts in the immersion programmes are members of the majority group, will have the necessary sociolinguistic capital to conduct part of their schooling in the mediums of English and Putonghua and to achieve higher standards in these languages without significant adverse effects on their academic and cultural development. Like many paradoxes in history, perhaps the best protection of “Two Systems” for Hong Kong lies in our continual commitment to “One Country”; the best guarantee for the preservation of our “way of living” is our mutual respect, understanding and tolerance of the other culture, and the most effective means to consolidate the social spread of our mother tongue and to safeguard mother-tongue education is to make bilingualism in education normative so that all the languages within liangwen-sanyu will have their

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assigned roles in the schools. Indeed who would find the prevalence of Cantonese disturbing if each and every one of us is able to use the other two languages and uses them well? ______________________________________________________________________ NOTES 1 The phrase ‘three languages’ refers loosely to Cantonese, Putonghua and English.

Which may be controversial as opinions of linguists are divided on whether the Han Chinese speak different dialects of the same language or in fact speak different languages. In this paper, the phrase ‘three languages’ is used to highlight the fact that the aforementioned languages are in practice mutually unintelligible, and in the linguistic experience of the great majority of the people of Hong Kong, they are learning three languages, the views of linguists notwithstanding.

2 Of course, emigration has been a constant feature of life in Hong Kong and each year

some families did opt to cut their links with this ancient land to a larger extent. For the past twenty years, it is estimated that the number of emigrants has stayed within a range from the lows of 0.4 per cent of the population to the record high of 1.2 per cent in 1994(Hong Kong 1996: 396).

3 For an indication of the robustness of the Chinese identity among the young people of

Hong Kong, please refer to Bond (1985). 4 When referring to local personalities and/or places etc., the Cantonese-based

romanized form will be listed first, followed by its Pinyin-based version and then the Chinese complex logographs. Thereafter, if the same person or place is referred to again, the Pinyin version is used. As for references to personalities, events, places etc in China other than Hong Kong, the Pinyin-based version is used.

5 This shift towards Cantonese among the other Chinese ethnic groups in Hong Kong

was first noted in T‘sou 1978. 6 Another major factor could be the increased access to Cantonese radio broadcasting

among the population at large especially between the early 1950s and 1970s. 7 For example, the percentage of posts at directorate-grade level occupied by staff

members on local (vs. overseas) terms increased from 19 per cent in 1970 to 59.7 per cent in 1990 (Miners 1995:94).

8 Another exception could be Minnan-hua but the views from informants on whether it

has a well developed H variety are conflicting. However, one should not be surprised if such a variety is indeed around as recent developments in Taiwan may have provided an ecology for its development and enrichment.

9 ‘Social distance’ (Schumann 1978) refers to situations where the different

communities in a society maintain separate life styles and value systems and where

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there is little interaction between the two groups. ‘Enclosure’ refers to the degree to which each community has separate social institutions, such as schools, clubs, trades, professions, churches etc.

10 This is of course a rather loose characterization of the situation. As mentioned in

the foregoing paragraphs, there have been numerous sub-groups and sub-cultures within the Chinese community, and so has been the case for the expatriate community (For example, see Lethbridge 1975).

11 They were a bank founded and operated by Hong Kong businessmen, an electronics

firm also founded and operated by Hong Kong businessmen and listed at The Hong Kong Stock Exchange, and the Hong Kong subsidiary of an American manufacturing firm of marine outboard motors.

12 The project was financed by a research grant provided by The Hong Kong

Polytechnic with logistic assistance provided by The Centre for Professional & Business English.

13 19 from the bank, 13 from the electronics firm and 10 from the manufacturing firm of

marine outboard motors. 14 By which is meant communications that may have consequences for the firm in terms

of either doing business and/or internal administration. 15 A sample of the other options are as follows: ‘Few opportunities to speak [the target

language] in class’, ‘Teachers [do not use] the [target language] to teach [content subjects]’, ‘Assignments not interesting’, ‘Discipline problems in class’, ‘Teachers use a mix of [target language and non-target language] to teach the [target language]’, ‘Not enough lessons per week/cycle’, ‘Contents of syllabuses irrelevant to students’ everyday life’, ‘[for primary-5 respondents] Pressure from the Academic Aptitude Tests’ etc..

16 A summary report of the findings of the survey is included in Part II of the 6th

Education Commission Report. 17 The grade C in English Language in Hong Kong Certificate of Education is regarded

as having achieved a standard comparable to a pass in English Language in the GCE O-Level Examination. Whereas grade C in Use of English in The Hong Kong Advanced Level Examination is regarded as having achieved a standard that would enable the student concerned to further his/her education in English. As for Chinese Language, comparable linkage is not yet available.

18 In March 1997, the Department of Education promulgated a Consultation Document

on Arrangements for Firm Guidance on Secondary School’s Medium of Instruction in which it proposes that in November 1997, the department will be issuing firm

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guidance on the type of medium to be used in secondary schools. The schools are expected to implement the guidance given from the 1998/99 school year. The proposals are as follows: (a) Chinese will be the basic Medium of Instruction for local public sector secondary schools. An individual school will not be allowed to operate both Chinese-medium and English-medium classes; (b) Subject to (c), all local public sector schools should, starting with their S1 intake for the 1998/99 school year, progressively adopt Chinese as the Medium of Instruction for all subjects except English Language and other approved commercial or technical subjects; and (c) Only schools with evidence of suitable student ability and teacher capability may apply to the Director of Education for special approval to use English as their Medium of Instruction.

19 As aforementioned, some exceptions are allowed. For example, “Certain

commercial or technical subjects (e.g. Typing, Accounting, and Textiles) prepare students for public examinations conducted only in English, or cannot yet find suitable Chinese textbooks on the market. For such subjects, schools may continue to use textbooks in English while adopting Chinese as the MOI.”

20 Two other points require a mention here. First, one major instrument used to

screen students into respectively Chinese-medium and English-medium streams is the Medium of Instruction Grouping Assessment (MIGA) which students take at their exit from primary education and which presumably provides the government with an indication of whether or not the language ability of the student concerned will enable him or her to profit from English-medium instruction. Indeed, if the same rationale and instrument were used in the early immersion programmes in North America, none of their students would have been able to get themselves admitted.

Second, for students in Hong Kong, the ability to learn in Putonghua and/or English has to be developed, and its development is a product of many interacting factors. For a few, the development is faster, for the majority, it comes later and for some, it may never come at all over the course of their secondary education. Accordingly if a student does not do well in English in an assessment taken at the entrance point of his/her secondary education, it does not follow that in the rest of the following five to seven years, s/he will not be able to reach the required levels to be benefitted from English-medium instruction. The same could be said for teachers and schools. The crux of the issue is whether or not it is advisable to confine the development of the expertise in second language instruction to a relatively small number of schools only.

21 It is not my intention to complicate the matter further, but the type of mother-tongue

education proposed by the Department of Education is by no means as authentic as it portrays it to be, for example, see So 1989.

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