Hong Kong English is sometimes used to refer to the accent and characteristics of English spoken by some of the ethnic Chinese residents of Hong Kong. It is not a mixed, creole or pidgin language, nor a dialect of English. It is only a variant of English with some local influence. It is also a dialect of Chinglish. This is a list of varieties of the English language. ... African American Vernacular English (AAVE), known colloquially as Ebonics, also called Black English, Black Vernacular or Black English Vernacular, is a dialect and ethnolect of American English. ... American English is the form of the English language used mostly in the United States of America. ... Australian English is the form of the English language used in Australia. ... Bermudian English is the variety of English spoken in Bermuda, a British overseas territory in the North Atlantic. ... British English is a term primarily used by people outside the UK to refer to the form of the English language spoken in the British Isles. ... Canadian English is the form of English used in Canada, spoken as a first or second language by over 25 million Canadians (as recorded in the 2001 census [1]). Canadian English spelling is a mixture of American and British, but Canadian speech is much closer to American English, with some... Caribbean English is a dialect of the English language spoken in the Caribbean. ... Commonwealth English is intended as a collective term for the perceived standard English language used in the Commonwealth of Nations1, applying in theory to Australian English, British English, Caribbean English, Canadian English, Hiberno-English (Irish English)2, Hong Kong English, Indian English (includes Pakistani English), New Zealand English, and South... English English is the version of the English language spoken in England. ... Hawaiian English is the standard of the English language as used in the State of Hawaii, and is — along with the Hawaiian language — an official language of the state. ... Wikipedia does not have an article with this exact name. ... Highland English is the variety of Gaelic influenced Scottish English spoken in the Scottish Highlands. ... Indian English is a catch-all phrase for the dialects or varieties of English spoken widely in India (by about 11% of the population, according to the 1991 census) and the Indian subcontinent in general, but also by Desis. ... International English is the concept of the English language as a global means of communication in numerous dialects, and the movement towards an international standard for the language. ... Jamaican English or Jamaican Standard English is a dialect of English encompassing in a very unique way, parts and mergers of both American English and British English dialects. ... Liberian English is the form of English spoken in the African country of Liberia. ... Malawian English is the English language as spoken in Malawi. ... Manglish is the version of the English language as spoken in Malaysia and shares substantial linguistic similarities with Singlish in Singapore. ... Mid Ulster English (Ulster Anglo-Irish) is the dialect of most people in Ulster, including those in the two main cities. ... Newfoundland English is a dialect of English specific to the province of Newfoundland and Labrador, distinct from Canadian English. ... New Zealand English is the dialect of English spoken in New Zealand, occasionally referred to within New Zealand as Newzild. ... Philippine English refers to the English language as it is used in the Philippines, where it is one of two official languages, the other being Filipino, which is based on Tagalog. ... Diagram showing the geographical locations of selected languages and dialects of the British Isles. ... Singlish, a portmanteau of the words Singaporean and English, is the English-based creole spoken colloquially in Singapore. ... South African English is a dialect of the dialect of English spoken in South Africa and to some extent, in neighbouring countries with a large number of Anglo Africans living in them, such as Namibia and Zimbabwe. ... Standard English is a general term for a form of written and spoken English that is considered the model for educated people. ... Welsh English refers to the dialects of English spoken in Wales by Welsh people. ... Accents mark speakers as a member of a group by their pronunciation of the standard language. ... The English language is a West Germanic language that originates in England. ... A mixed language is a language that arises when two languages are in contact and there is a high degree of bilingualism among speakers. ... The term Creole is used with different meanings in different contexts, which can generate confusion. ... A Pidgin, or contact language, is the name given to any language created, usually spontaneously, out of a mixture of other languages as a means of communication between speakers of different tongues. ... A dialect (from the Greek word διάλεκτος, dialektos) is a variety of a language used by people from a particular geographic area. ... An example of written Chinglish on a signpost. ...

English is an official language in Hong Kong but for most of the population who are ethnic Chinese, it is a second language acquired from school education. It is taught from kindergarten, and is the medium of instruction for a few primary schools, many secondary schools and most courses in the local universities. It is widely used in business activities. Its official status is equal with Chinese. An official language is something that is given a unique status in the countries, states, and other territories. ... Kindergarten (German for garden for children) is a name used in many parts of the world for the first stages of a childs classroom education. ... Medium of instruction is the language that is used in teaching. ... Primary or elementary education consist of the first years of formal, structured education that occurs during childhood. ... Japanese high school students in uniform High school, or Secondary school, is the last segment of compulsory education in Australia, Canada, Hong Kong, Japan, Malaysia, New Zealand, South Korea, Singapore, Taiwan (Republic of China) (only junior high school) and the United States. ... The following is a list of universities in Hong Kong: Government-funded Degree-granting Institute The Chinese University of Hong Kong City University of Hong Kong Hong Kong Baptist University Hong Kong Institute of Education - dedicated solely to teacher education Hong Kong Polytechnic University The Hong Kong University of Science... Business refers to at least three closely related commercial topics. ... Look up Activity in Wiktionary, the free dictionary Activity may refer to— in chemistry, the effective concentration of an ion or other solute for the purposes of chemical reactions and other mass action. ...

Proficiency in the language depends on the education level and exposure of the speakers and the following only characterizes some common features and mistakes of "Hong Kong English". Such characteristics have usually been found among speakers who have some secondary education. People with higher education or those who have graduated from élite secondary schools basically speak an acquired form of English modeled on British English, with some possible American influences. Some school teachers at primary schools may not able be to recognise the differences in pronunciation. Some secondary schools or colleges teach American English as their medium of instruction. The word characteristic has several meanings: In mathematics, see characteristic (algebra) characteristic function characteristic subgroup Euler characteristic method of characteristics In genetics, see characteristic (genetics). ... A loudspeaker is a device which converts an electrical signal into sound. ... Secondary can mean: An ordinal adjective indicating Second or second hand, see Primary The secondary in American football refers to the group of (usually four) defensive backs. ... Higher education is education provided by universities and other institutions that award academic degrees, such as university colleges, and liberal arts colleges. ... Look up Graduate in Wiktionary, the free dictionary The word graduate can mean any of several things. ... In sociology as in general usage, the élite (the elect, from French) is a relatively small dominant group within a larger society, which enjoys a privileged status which is upheld by individuals of lower social status within the structure of a group. ... Japanese high school students in uniform Secondary education is a period of education which, in most contemporary educational systems of the world, follows directly after primary education, and which may be followed by tertiary, post-secondary, or higher education (e. ... The English language is a West Germanic language that originates in England. ... British English is a term primarily used by people outside the UK to refer to the form of the English language spoken in the British Isles. ...

The accent of spoken English in Hong Kong, perhaps, originates from the "tung sheng" (通勝), in which it is possible to find one or two pages containing lots of direct transliteration of English into Cantonese words, for example, "dinner" would be transliterated into the chinese words "甸那", pronounced "din na".

Spoken English

Accent of spoken English

Main article: phonemic differentiation.

• beginning 'r' read as 'w' sound. (the word 'read' is a good example.)
• Like English English, Hong Kong English is also non-rhotic, which means 'r' is not pronounced except before a vowel.
• 'r' in other positions may be read as 'w' or 'l' or entirely omitted. (eg. 'error' as E-WA, the famous 'flied lice' and 'frame', respectively.)
• beginning 'v' read as 'w' sound. (eg. 'Aston Villa')
• other 'v' becomes 'w' or 'f' mostly with a consensus yet no obvious pattern. (eg. 'f' in 'favour', second 'v' in 'Volvo' and either 'f' or 'w' in 'develop' depending on the speaker.)
• beginning 'ch' read as 'ts' (i.e. German 'z').
• beginning 'j' read as 'dz'.
• ending 'ge' read as 'ch'.
• 'wh' read as 'w' sound.
• 'th' read as 'd' (as in them) or 'f' (as in thick) sound. ('th' sound is not used in Cantonese)
• beginning 'n' and 'l' often confused (these two sounds are becoming allophones for younger speakers of Cantonese)
• 'r' and 'l' in positions other than the beginning are also often confused. (Breakfast becomes BLEG-FUSS for some, 'bleach' and 'breach' both become 'beach')
• ending 'l' pronounced as 'ou' sound as letter 'o' in 'echo' (sale becomes SAY-o)
• ending 't' pronounced as 'ts' (i.e. German 'z')
• Differences or omission in ending sounds. (as the ending consonants are always voiceless (glottal stop) in Cantonese with the exception of 'm', 'n' and 'ng', simliar to Basel German)
• Exaggeration of ending 'd' sound of past-tense form of verbs.
• multi-syllable words might sometimes be wrongly stressed, since Chinese is tonal and largely monosyllabic.
• producing the 'w', 'h' or 'l' sounds in words like Greenwich, Bonham, Beckham, Salisbury.
• producing the "ces" sound in Leicester or Gloucester.
• some alphabets are spoken with phonemes in Cantonese, such as 'e' as 'YEE', 'f' becomes 'E-fu', 'h' becomes 'IG-chyu', 'l' becomes 'E-lo', 'q' becomes 'KIW', 'r' becomes 'AA-lo', 'w' becomes 'DUB-bee-you', 'x' becomes 'IG-si', 'z' becomes 'yee-ZED'.
• The same is true for some for 'g' becoming 'DZEE', 'j' becoming 'DZAY' and 'v' becoming 'WEE'. (The reasons were mentioned above.)
• Merging of certain 'a' and 'e' sounds, which becomes the schwa sound most of the time. eg. 'bad' and 'bed', 'mass' and 'mess'.
• Merging or interchangeability of 's' and 'z' sound.
• Omission of entire syllables in longer words. ('Difference' become DIFF-ENS, 'temperature' becomes TEM-PI-CHUR.)
• Difficulties in pronouncing certain syllables: 'salesman' become 'sellsman', 'round' becomes 'WAANG'. (Without the ending consonant pronounced and ccassionally with an ending 'd'.)
• Replacement of the contrast of voiceless / voiced consonants with aspirated / unaspirated if there is any contrast exists in Cantonese. [p] becomes [pʰ] and [b] becomes [p]; [t] becomes [tʰ] and [d] becomes [t]; [k] becomes [kʰ] and [g] becomes [k].
• Merging voiceless / voiced consonants into voiceless if no contrast in aspirated / unaspirated in Cantonese. Both [f] and [v] become [f]; both [z] and [s] become [s]; both [tʃ] and [dʒ] become [tʃ] ; both [ʃ] and [ʒ] become [ʃ]; both [θ] and [ð] become [θ] ( difficulty in pronouncing [θ] too).

Such accents as mentioned above is especially significant in engineering field, that when people tried to talk with local technical supports, or listening to local lectures in Computing, they always have to tolerate with people speaking these sorts of "accents". Phonemic differentiation is the phenomenon of a phoneme in a language splitting into two phonemes over time, a process known as a phonemic split. ... English English is the version of the English language spoken in England. ... English pronunciation is divided into two main accent groups, the rhotic and the non-rhotic, depending on when the phoneme (the letter r, equivalent to Greek rho) is pronounced. ... In phonetics, an allophone is one of several similar phones that belong to the same phoneme. ... Standard Cantonese refers to the most prestigious dialect of Cantonese (Yue), a vernacular variety of spoken Chinese. ... See also consonance in music. ... Phoneticians define phonation as use of the laryngeal system to generate an audible source of acoustic energy, i. ... The glottal stop or voiceless glottal plosive is a type of consonantal sound, used in many spoken languages. ... Basel German or Baseldytsch (also Baseldütsch, Baseldeutsch) is the dialect of the city of Basel, Switzerland. ... A syllable (ancient Greek: συλλαβή) is a unit of speech that is made up of a syllable nucleus (most often a vowel) with one or more optional phones (single sounds or phonetic segments). Syllables are often considered the phonological building blocks of words. ... Words has several meanings: words in Unix. ... This article or section uses Ruby annotation. ... A syllable (Ancient Greek: ) is a unit of speech that is made up of a syllable nucleus (most often a vowel) with one or more optional phones (single sounds or phonetic segments). Syllables are often considered the phonological building blocks of words. ... Phoneticians define phonation as use of the laryngeal system to generate an audible source of acoustic energy, i. ... Phoneticians define phonation as use of the laryngeal system to generate an audible source of acoustic energy, i. ... In phonetics, aspiration is the strong burst of air that accompanies the release of some stop consonants. ... In phonetics, aspiration is the strong burst of air that accompanies the release of some stop consonants. ...

Grammar of spoken English

• Confuse or drop articles like "the" and "a"
• Confusion with verb tenses and agreement of singular or plural nouns, as they have no direct equivalence in Cantonese grammar. (By extension, the correct use of "is" and "are".)
• Difficulties with numbers larger than ten thousand. In Chinese, 10 thousand is read as one myriad, 100 thousand as 10 myriad, one million as 100 myriad, etc. Chinese speakers often pause before saying big numbers in English because of the need for mental conversion. (English speakers of Chinese often experience similar problem when saying large numbers in Chinese.)
• Difficulties with fractions. eg. "three over four" becomes "four over three" and "nine times out of ten" becomes "ten times out of nine". Primarily because the equivalent of the word "of" in Chinese functions more like "'s" in English. (Such that the words before and after the word "of" swap places.) Such that "Chairman of the board" becomes "Board's chairman" and so "nine out of ten" is "ten times's nine" (sic) and "three out of four" is "four parts's three" (sic). And the numbers become easily confused.
• A similar reason means that descriptions of degree of discount are also often confused. Instead of a "twenty percent discount", the Chinese way of saying the same thing is roughly translated as an "eight tenths discount". (A discount where you pay eight tenths.) As such, it is common place for a "10% discount" to be mistaken described as a "90% discount". (Thankfully, this happens in speech far more often than in shops, primarily due to the double-conversion in a small amount of time.)
• Difficulties with correct usage of pronouns as their Cantonese equivalent are genderless.
• Found difficulties in distinguish the use of preposition. For example, when describing time, there is some confusion of the prepositions "on", "in" and "at", like "on Monday", "in February" and "at 12 o'clock".

Myriad is a classical Greek name for the number 104 = 10 000, or a group of 10 000 people, etc. ...

Written English

British English is taught in primary and secondary schools, but American English spellings (e.g. verbs ending in -ise/-ize, nouns ending in -er/-re, -our/-or) are also commonly used due to influence from, for example, English TV programs from the US. However, the norm is to use the suffixes -our, -re but -ize. British English is a term primarily used by people outside the UK to refer to the form of the English language spoken in the British Isles. ... American English is the form of the English language used mostly in the United States of America. ...

In some informal occasions, notably in internet usage among locals, final particle or interjections of Cantonese origin such as ar, la, loh, ma and wor' may be used at the ending of sentences. These interjections are often referred locally as ICQ English, such as "ng chi dou wor" ("[I] don't know"); "jo mud"/mud che"/"mud yei ar" ("What's the matter?"); "hai wor" ("Oh yes"); "lei up mud?" ("What did you say?/What do you mean?"); "chi sin la" ("[You are]Crazy"); "lei zhou mud ar?" ("What are you doing?/What's the matter with you?"). Some mix English words in conversation, like "u doing wt ar?" ("What are you doing?"); "u eat dinner mei?" (Have you had your dinner?"); "ngo ho hot ar" (I feel hot very much). This has always been considered a big problem by local English teachers. It is quite common to find students writing sentences like "ngo dou haei wor." ("Same for me") for students of lower English standards. It should be noted, however, that the use of such ICQ English is quite common even among individuals who are well educated in English. An interjection, sometimes called a filled pause, is a part of speech that usually has no grammatical connection to the rest of the sentence and simply expresses emotion on the part of the speaker, although most interjections have clear definitions. ... The origin of something (from the Latin origo, beginning) is where it came from, in the sense of a physical location or a metaphysical source. ... In linguistics, the sentence is a unit of language, characterised in most languages by the presence of a finite verb. ...

Ironically, quite a few Hong Kong English teachers were of poor English Standard. Therefore, the local education bureau required all English teachers to pass an assessment called "LPAT", to ensure the quality of their English standard. For those who did not pass the assessment, they were not able to teach English any more. Such assessment screened quite a number of in-service English teachers, and some of them decided to retire instead. The Language Proficiency Assessment for Teachers (LPAT) is an assessment examination for the language ability of Hong Kong teachers. ...

Hong Kong Vocabulary

Some words are found in Hong Kong which are not well used in the rest of the English speaking world.

• 'Godown' means a warehouse - this word is of Indian origin
• 'Shroff' means a paying kiosk, such as that found in a multi-storey car park, again of Indian origin. Shroffs are also commonly seen in mainland China, especially in parking houses built by people from Hong Kong
• 'Tai-Pan' is a business executive of a large corporation
• 'Punti' has become a commonly used word in Hong Kong law courts; it is a sound transliteration of Cantonese 'Boon Dei' meaning 'local'. When a defendant is using 'Punti' in court, that means he elects to use Cantonese as the language in trial instead of English.
• 'Chop' means a seal or a stamp; again of Indian origin
• 'Praya' means seashore or seafront - this word is from Portuguese praia.

A multi-storey car park is a building or part thereof which is designed specifically to be for vehicle parking and where there are a number of floors on which parking takes place. ... In this map of China, the light-coloured areas represent Mainland China, while yellow coloured area refers to Taiwan. ... A tai-pan (大班) was a foreign businessman doing business in China or Hong Kong in the 19th century. ... A Baiwen name chop; Read up-down-right-left; Ye Hao Min Ying (lit. ... There are plaes that have the name Praia (Portuguese for beach): In the Azores Praia (Azores), a parish in the district of Santa Cruz da Graciosa Related Praia do Almoxarife, a parish in the district of Horta Praia do Norte, a parish in the district of Horta Praia da Vitória...

See also

• Education in Hong Kong