Hong Kong English:
A stillborn variety?
T E R E N C E T. T. PA N G
Does Hong Kong have an English of its own or was it a
prospect that failed to thrive?
IS THERE such a thing as a ‘language variety’,
and, if there is, what criteria are there for
establishing the existence of a particular vari-
ety in a particular place? Most approaches tend
to focus on both the features exhibited by local
users of the language and any standards
imposed by experts and by tertiary institutions,
paying less attention to such sociological con-
siderations as diglossia, language attitudes,
and speaker identities.
Traditionally, ‘Hong Kong English’ has been
regarded as non-existent (cf. Luke and
Richards, 1982), or commentators have
argued that there has been no motivation for
the ‘indigenization’ of English in the territory
(cf. Tay, 1991:327), or, more recently, that
‘English has a minimal social or cultural role
to play in the lives of the vast majority of the
territory’s Chinese community’ (Evans,
2000:191). However, in a recent issue of
World Englishes (19:3) as well as in the vol-
ume Hong Kong English: Autonomy and cre-
ativity (Bolton, ed., 2002b) it has been argued
that Hong Kong English does exist (cf. Bolton;
Chan; Hung; Gisborne; Benson; and Bolton &
Lim: all 2000). In addition, in McArthur’s
Oxford Guide to World English (2002), certain
features of ‘Hong Kong English’ are explicated
in detail, making interesting reading.
Kachru (1983) notes that certain conditions
exist in the acculturation and localization of
transplanted varieties of English. In the devel-
opment of a non-native transplanted variety in
particular, I would suggest that a distinction
be made between localization and indigeniza-
tion. By localization, I mean that a language
variety develops its own characteristics in such
aspects as phonology, syntax, lexis and gram-
mar (cf. McArthur, 2002). By indigenization, I
12 English Today 74, Vol. 19, No. 2 (April 2003). Printed in the United Kingdom © 2003 Cambridge University Press
mean the acceptance by the local community
of the existence of a local variety of a lan-
guage in wide use in day-to-day communica-
tion.
Kachru also draws a distinction between
‘performance variety’ and ‘institutionalized
variety’. The first term refers to varieties used
as foreign languages, as with Iranian English
and Japanese English, in which the modifiers
refer to geographical and national perfor-
mance characteristics. The varieties are used in
highly restricted contexts like those of tourism,
commerce and other international transac-
tions. Institutionalized varieties, on the other
hand, are well established within a territory
and used for many different social functions.
TERENCE T. T. PANG is an assistant professor in
the English Department of Lingnan University,
Hong Kong. He started out as a historian, but
during his M.Phil. research at the History
Department of the University of Hong Kong
digressed into applied linguistics during his
research into the compilation of local gazetteers of
the Qing Dynasty in China. He also has an M.A.
(Distinction) in TESL at the City University of Hong
Kong and a Ph.D. from the University of
Technology, Sydney, Australia. His research
interests are multi- and inter-disciplinary. His
recent publications include a chapter in Ann John’s
‘Genre in the Classroom’, a research monograph,
‘The Daya Bay Nuclear Power Plant debate: Social
drama and hegemonic struggle’, published by the
Asian Business History Centre, the University of
Queensland, and an article on early colonial
language education in Hong Kong in ‘Australian
Language Matters’. His other interests include
critical applied linguistics, self-access learning and
language testing.
DOI: 10.1017/S0266078403002037
 In many cases, a transplanted variety of
English, such as Singaporean or Indian Eng-
lish, is not only institutionalized but both
localized and indigenized. In other cases,
however, a variety may be localized, display-
ing characteristics of its own, like English spo-
ken in Japan, but is not indigenized, the locals
denying that there is such a variety as ‘Japan-
ese English’. Here, the crucial factor is motiva-
tion. The community at large has to acknowl-
edge that (many of) its members speak a
distinctive variety of English which has
departed from assumed Inner Circle ‘native-
speaker’ norms. Indigenization is impossible
when a community denies the existence of a
local variety of English and continues to seek
exonormative reference and reassurance. In
this regard, Kachru notes (1983:39):
A variety may exist, but unless it is recognized
and accepted as a model it does not acquire a
status. A large majority of the non-native
speakers of institutionalised varieties of English
use a local variety of English, but when told so,
they are hesitant to accept the fact.
This is very much the case in Hong Kong.
There are indeed well-documented features of
Hong Kong English, but locals prefer to
believe that they are not speaking a local vari-
ety and consider that some of the features of
local usage are errors. Kachru comments: ‘In
the development of non-native models two
processes seem to work simultaneously: the
attitudinal process, and the linguistic process’
(1983:39). The attitudinal process is crucial to
indigenization while the linguistic process is
crucial to localization. The absence of indige-
nization may not imply that the community
possesses a general negative predisposition
towards English. Instead, sometimes it is rev-
erence for a native-speaker variety that hin-
ders indigenization.
In this paper I argue that English in Hong
Kong has been localized to a large extent but
is not (yet) indigenized. I will touch on the
evidence for localization only briefly as this
has been thoroughly explored in recent litera-
ture (cf. Bolton, 2002a). My concern here is
the reasons for the non-indigenization of Eng-
lish in Hong Kong.
Evidence for the existence of Hong
Kong English
Various criteria have been advanced for the
existence of a language variety. To the linguist,
HONG KONG ENGLISH: A STILLBORN VARIETY?
the presence of distinctive phonological, gram-
matical, syntactic and lexical features is an
undeniable fact, but to unwilling locals this is
hardly a convincing argument, as these may be
considered interlanguage features, both in the
sense of errors and as displaying mother-
tongue (mostly Cantonese) influences that fall
short of target-language norms. Indeed, Platt
reported in 1982 that English spoken in Hong
Kong was considered a learner’s language,
varying according to an individual’s develop-
ment rather than his or her place in a ‘lectal
continuum’. While outside observers can read-
ily point out distinctive features of a local vari-
ety of English, speakers of that variety may still
deny its existence (or validity). While they are
quick to point out that Singaporeans possess a
distinctive accent, very few people in Hong
Kong would openly acknowledge that Hong
Kong people also speak with a distinctive local
accent.
I will now briefly outline evidence for the
localization and indigenization of English in
Hong Kong, drawing upon two sources:
Bolton (2002b) and Kachru (1983). On the
one hand, Bolton adopts the criteria advanced
by Butler (1997) for the existence of a variety
of world English:
1 a standard and recognizable accent
2 a distinctive vocabulary to express key fea-
tures of the physical and social environment
3 a distinctive history
4 creative writing, ‘written without apology’
5 reference works, such as dictionaries, etc.
On the other hand, Kachru (1983) has postu-
lated that institutionalized varieties are charac-
terized by:
A the length of time in use
B the extension of their use
C the emotional attachment of L2 users to par-
ticular varieties
D their functional importance
E their sociolinguistic status
Kachru draws a distinction between perfor-
mance varieties and institutionalized varieties
of English. The former refers to varieties used
as foreign languages: for example, the identifi-
cation modifiers in Iranian English or Japanese
English refer to geographical or national per-
formance characteristics. Such varieties are
used in highly restricted contexts like those of
tourism, commerce and other international
transactions. Institutionalized varieties, on the
13
other hand, are those that are well established
and used for many different social functions.
Bolton’s strongest argument is that a Hong
Kong accent exists, and a substantial number
of respondents to a survey (cf. Bolton & Kwok,
1990) indicated a preference for the accent.
Despite the rather small sample sizes of both
that survey and a later study by Hung (2002),
the existence of a distinctive Hong Kong
accent is undeniable. Similarly convincing is
the existence of distinctive items of Hong
Kong vocabulary, which consists of such
transliterations from Chinese as bak choy and
such local terms as almond cream.
Somewhat less convincing is the claim made
for the existence of a local English literary
scene. Most of the works cited by Bolton
(2002b) and Bolton & Lim (2002) are for inter-
national rather than local consumption. Bolton
& Lim note that ‘English language writers rep-
resented here… are cosmopolitan….’ (p. 305).
They also note that Timothy Mo’s Monkey King
‘is a vividly imagined representation of Hong
Kong social community in the 1950s’ and that
Louise Ho and Agnes Lam’s poetry appeal to an
international English language tradition’, fea-
tures which may not greatly interest local peo-
ple, especially the majority which favours Can-
tonese as the medium for artistic expression
and literary creativity.
Halliday (1998) notes that ‘Chinese is a lan-
guage that has long been used as a medium of
literature and technology [and] there is no
need to move into another language just in
order to become an educated citizen’ (p. 31).
Unless therefore the literature is appropriated
by the locals and acknowledged as part of
their literary tradition, the existence of a few
literary works pertaining to local cultural and
social scenes does not validate the existence of
a local variety of English, especially when the
works are not written in the local language
variety, abundantly displaying its syntactic,
grammatical and lexical features.
As far as the historical dimension is con-
cerned, it all depends on whether it is a his-
tory of localization, of the imposition of
native-speaker norms, or of pidginization or
creolization. Localization in fact occurred
early in language contact: even before Hong
Kong was ceded to Britain, a pidgin had devel-
oped along the China coast. However, soon
after the British took over, efforts were made
to promote an exonormative standard. Thus,
the Inspector of Schools’ Report for 1879 specif-
14
ically proposed the teaching of ‘good English’
to counterbalance the effects of pidgin (Bick-
ley, 2002:216). As a result of such a goal, and
despite a long history of using the language
freely in local ways, people may not recognize
the local variety as legitimate. Recent years
have seen the re-emergence of a quasi-creole
caused by extensive mixing of English lexis in
a Cantonese base (Pennington, 1994). These
forces have all been unfavourable to the local-
ization of English in Hong Kong.
There is still no standard reference work on
Hong Kong English, but Bolton, Hung & Nelson
are compiling a computer database of English
in Hong Kong (cf. Bolton, 2002b). Local teach-
ers, however, given their extremely strong exo-
normative preference, would probably discour-
age their students from using any reference
works on Hong Kong English that might be
based on a work of reference associated with
this database (cf. Tsui & Bunton, 2002).
Eager to advance the notion that Hong Kong
English is a legitimate variety, Bolton (2002b)
argues that Hong Kong is not a monolingual,
but rather a multilingual society, citing the
drastic expansion in the number of people who
possessed some knowledge of the English lan-
guage in the 1980s and 1990s, the common
use of written English in office work, and,
according to a survey by Bacon-Shone and
Bolton (1998), the common use of an English
name, the use of English in writing cheques
(many people having relatives in an English-
speaking country), and the common use of
code-mixing in various conversations. While
not querying the sampling method, I would say
that such data still does not point to the fact
that English has become a common lingua
franca in Hong Kong, as it has in Singapore.
An indicator of localization, and to a certain
extent of indigenization, is that subvarieties
develop within a variety, i.e. there are a num-
ber of registers for different purposes in differ-
ent contexts. However Luke & Richards (1982)
remark: ‘There is no equivalent of the mesolec-
tal or basilectal speech styles found, for exam-
ple, in Singapore… since there is no equivalent
range of English speech varieties in regular use
by Hong Kong Chinese’ (pp. 55–6). However,
as noted by Bolton & Lim (2002), the local
humorist Nury Vittachi distinguishes two vari-
eties of English in Hong Kong – ‘Chinglish’,
being ‘a form of Standard English riddled with
errors in need of eradication, and “Hong Kong
English”, with its unique usages that mark the
ENGLISH TODAY 74 April 2003
English of the place’ (p. 307). There is little
subvariation and, like many, Vittachi also
prefers an exonormative standard for Hong
Kong.
Factors crucial to indigenization are items
B, C, D, and E on Kachru’s list. Emotional
attachment is the number one factor. If a vari-
ety is not regarded as substandard and
acquires a legitimate status, then it is certainly
indigenized. Other indicators are that the local
variety is used extensively, in both functional
terms and frequency of use. If the people
speak the variety more than any other lan-
guage or as much as another language, then it
has certainly acquired currency. If people use
it not only for instrumental or regulative func-
tions but also for integrative functions like
phatic communion, then it is certainly
accepted as a common variety. I will now turn
to the status and functions of different lan-
guages in Hong Kong, in an attempt to show
why English is not – yet – used extensively
enough as a local language.
Triglossia
Unlike Singapore, where English has from
very early days been an inter-ethnic lingua
franca for a multi-racial society (cf. Chew,
1999), English in Hong Kong has first been the
language of the governing race, and therefore
of law and administration, then the language
of international trade and finance. Boyle
(1997:176) argues that the colonial govern-
ment did not need to impose English in Hong
Kong, as ‘Hong Kong Chinese have always
wanted English’. As early as 1865, a rapid
attrition rate was recorded at the prime gov-
ernment school, Central School (now Queen’s
College) as ‘there is such a demand for Eng-
lish-speaking Chinese that many of the boys
leave as soon as they can perform the duties of
compositors or copying clerks’ (Report on Edu-
cation for the Year 1865). Stokes (1962) notes:
‘[A]n unfortunate result of the “cash value” of
learning English was a rapid turnover of stu-
dents, a frequent cause of complaint by the
headmaster… . In 1870 twenty-nine of the
thirty-six boys in Class 1… left before the end
of the year’ (p.24).
Pang (forthcoming) observes: “The social
capital of the English language was readily
grasped by the Chinese families. The parents,
mostly traders, wanted their boys to learn
English not for scholarship but ‘to carry on
HONG KONG ENGLISH: A STILLBORN VARIETY?
their business or start new ones’” (Cheng, no
date, cited in Stokes, 1962:32). Today, believ-
ing that English standards are falling in local
schools, the number of parents sending their
children overseas for an English-speaking edu-
cation has been rising. According to Commis-
sioner of Education Fanny Law, the percent-
age of local Chinese students attending
international schools in Hong Kong has also
risen from 6.8% in 1997 to 11.1% in 2001.
Hong Kong’s status as an international finan-
cial centre reinforces the belief in the impor-
tance of speaking and writing English of an
internationally acceptable standard.
The sociolinguistic situation in Hong Kong
decides that most young people tend to regard
English as important on the one hand, but will
not use it in daily life on the other (cf. Penning-
ton, 1994). Many language surveys have indi-
cated that English is regarded as a ‘high’ lan-
guage, and Axler, Yang and Steven (1998)
report a questionnaire survey conducted in 1993
that secondary students no longer felt their Chi-
nese identity threatened by the use of English.
Instead, they regarded English as the mark of an
educated person, and believed that the use of
English was one of the most crucial factors in
Hong Kong’s prosperity and development.
Paradoxically, it is exactly this positive
value attached to the English language that
hinders its indigenization. The local people
have always also wanted to keep standards
very high, refusing to admit the existence of
features like a local accent or to treat certain
local usages as normal or grammatical. Such
an attitude is especially true for the gatekeep-
ers of language standards, i.e. language teach-
ers (cf. Tsui & Bunton, 2002). The instrumen-
tal and regulative functions played by English
in Hong Kong, coupled with its high social sta-
tus, means that the reference of the language
remains exonormative (i.e., an external stan-
dard based on a native speaker variety like
RP), not endonormative.
The triglossic situation means that different
languages perform different social, cultural
and economic functions. English remains weak
in terms of interpersonal functions. Unlike the
situation in Singapore (where Chinese, Malays
and Indians constitute substantial numbers in
the population, necessitating a lingua franca),
over 95% of Hong Kong people speak Can-
tonese, which is often sprinkled with words
from English, Putonghua and other languages.
It is used in most arenas, including classrooms
15
(about three-quarters of secondary schools),
law courts, cinemas (most films are Can-
tonese), karaoke bars (Canto-pop is more pop-
ular than English or Putonghua songs), and
television (90% of viewers prefer the local
Cantonese channels). Only 114 secondary
schools in the Hong Kong Special Administra-
tive Region (HK SAR) have been allowed to
use English as the medium of instruction while
the rest, about 300, use Chinese for subjects
other than the English language (Evans,
2000).
Apart from random inter-ethnic communi-
cation like that involving expatriates, and
between locals and their Filipino domestic
helpers, the lingua franca in Hong Kong
remains Cantonese, as evident in the conver-
sation between local Chinese, South Asians,
Thais, Indonesians and Nepalese. The Can-
tonese-speaking population actually find it
embarrassing to speak to one another in Eng-
lish (Pennington, 1994). However, Putonghua
is emerging as the language of tourism, acade-
mic exchange with universities in China, and
government: Hong Kong people have been
writing Chinese in this variety for more than a
century.
The high status of English was both the
result of former colonial policy and persistent
demand for it as social capital by the local
community. Lin (1996) argues that the pre-
1997 government’s policies in civil service
recruitment and professional accreditation
promoted the rise of English as a dominant
linguistic resource with socioeconomic impli-
cations. In addition, Pennington (1994:87)
observes that the status of English is that of an
auxiliary or secondary language. She explains
the phenomenon as follows:
Given the history of British dominion over
Hong Kong and the fact that the English-
speaking and Cantonese-speaking populations
of Hong Kong are mostly quite separate
communities in terms of work, play, and
residence, the social distance between the
English and the Cantonese speech
communities and “the strict functional
separation between English and Cantonese”
(Lin, 1990, p. 5) are not surprising.
Considering these facts, the status of English
as an auxiliary or secondary language in Hong
Kong has probably been the reality for some
time (p. 87).
The limited use of English, especially the spo-
ken form, means that the emergence of a local
16
variety is most likely a slow and painstaking
process.
However, in recent years, English has
assumed an additional interpersonal function:
a lot of electronic messages in ICQ are in Eng-
lish. The localization of English in ICQ signals
a form of appropriation of the language by the
community. Unlike the usual code-mixing in
conversations where the base is Cantonese, in
ICQ messages English is the base mixed with
Cantonese expressions and most notably with
interjectory particles. However, whether this
will contribute to the evolution of a local vari-
ety remains to be seen.
Conclusion
A certain linguistic purism permeates Hong
Kong society: a preference for centrist stan-
dards (the ‘high’ British or American vari-
eties), historical precedents (even archaic
forms, as in the case of some Cantonese pro-
nunciation), and resentment of any deviation
from the norm. This purism is also character-
ized by a constant lamentation that standards
are falling. Evans (2000) documents a series
of representative texts all pointing to falling
levels of English-language proficiency among
local students and workers. Starting with
Josiah Lau’s English for one minute on a Chi-
nese television channel some ten years ago,
TV programs and newspaper columns that
seek to teach correct grammar, proper expres-
sions and pronunciation in both English and
Chinese have been very popular.
The desire for grammar instruction is insa-
tiable. One of my M.A. students recently
attacked a Hong Kong textbook for its piece-
meal approach to teaching grammar: “Stu-
dents can never get the whole picture of Eng-
lish grammar. Students are always troubled by
questions like ‘What is the difference between
adjectives and adverbs?’, ‘How to use the
tenses correctly?’ etc.” (Hsu, 2002). Tsui &
Bunton (2002) note: “The exonormative atti-
tudes of Hong Kong’s English teachers, in
common with those of the government and
the business community, still show a prefer-
ence for Standard English in formal communi-
cation” (2002:75). The predominance of such
attitudes has resulted in policies like the “Eng-
lish in the Workplace” campaign, which gives
employees in the business sector the opportu-
nity to sit for overseas examinations like those
operated by UCLES (University of Cambridge
ENGLISH TODAY 74 April 2003
Local Examination Syndicate) and Pitman (cf.
Tsui & Bunton).
There is a high level of intolerance of non-
standard features, although the self-same fea-
tures continue in everyday use. In a survey in
a secondary school regarding the acceptance
of certain expressions such as “I am a sales”
(salesperson) and “May I have a cup of milk
tea”, most respondents realize that these are
non-standard forms, and the higher-form stu-
dents (perhaps owing to the pressure to use
standard forms in public examinations) are
inclined not to use them (cf. Chu, 2002). This
probably reflects the predominant attitude in
Hong Kong: “Yes, the non-standard forms are
commonly found, but I do not use them” –
although they do, of course.
I have argued in this paper that the mass of
Hong Kong people will not easily accept that a
distinctive Hong Kong English exists. The soci-
olinguistic situation in Hong Kong is increas-
ingly triglossic (in terms of Cantonese,
Putonghua, and English), each language serv-
ing distinct functions while a dominant ideol-
ogy of linguistic purism causes people to seek
for outside standards with regard to both Eng-
lish and Putonghua. I have also argued that
for a language variety to subsist, localization
is not enough. Indigenization is also neces-
sary, but Hong Kong teachers will not rely on
local norms in the classroom, even though ref-
erence works may be available in future.
An attitude of ambivalence towards lan-
guage and pragmatic norms is very obvious in
the community. On the one hand, linguistic
purism goes unchallenged. On the other, in
actual practice, people do use languages in var-
ious creative ways. Hong Kong people do not
prefer to appropriate the English language
through the ‘normal’ channels of localization
and indigenization. Instead, they appropriate
English into Cantonese through code-mixing,
code-switching, and the use of loanwords (cf.
Pennington, 1996 & 1998, and Li, 2002).
Although the linguistic culture of Hong Kong
tends to be conservative, the community is
dynamic, innovative and flexible in many dif-
ferent ways. Thus, while they insist on speak-
ing and writing Standard English (whatever
that may mean), and resist the development of
a local variety of English, they appropriate the
English language by absorbing it into their own
language through relexification (as evident in
the use of loan words), regrammatisation (as
evident in code-mixing) and rediscoursalisa-
HONG KONG ENGLISH: A STILLBORN VARIETY?
tion (as evident in code-switching). Such lan-
guage use is not only indicative of an inventive
and dynamic culture, but also various prag-
matic norms and conventions.
English survives in Hong Kong mainly as an
acrolect, not serving an integrationist func-
tion. However, a change is seeping in with
technological applications. Email and ICQ
English are both integrationist and basilectal,
with a lot of local features. Such appropriation
may eventually facilitate the indigenisation of
English in Hong Kong.

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