Multilingual Hong Kong: Languages, Literacies and Identities by David C. S. Li. Cham (review)

Mixed language use of Chinese and a foreign language is usually viewed negatively in mainland China and Taiwan. Perhaps the harshest critique of this linguistic habit is found in the well-received novel of Wei Cheng ‘Fortress Besieged’ by Qian Zhongshu, who compared the English words embedded in one’s Chinese speech to bits of meat stuck between one’s teeth. This mercilessly sarcastic criticism well demonstrates how insertion of English words in Chinese utterances is often stigmatized as showing off in either China or Taiwan. Hong Kong people, nonetheless, are blessed that they can be exempted from such judgment. Indeed, codemixing or translanguaging is not only commonly heard from TV channels, radio stations, or even on the streets, especially among college students, but the ability to switch between Chinese and English has been what is expected of the Hong Kong citizens, as exemplified by the Special Administrative Region’s language policy of biliteracy and trilingualism. This year celebrates the 20^th anniversary of Hong Kong’s renationalization to China, so David C. S. Li’s newly published Multilingual Hong Kong: Languages, Literacies and Identities came as a timely and insightful overview of the linguistic and educational situation of this formerly British-ruled metropolis.

Li’s book is structured into nine chapters. Chapter 1 introduces Hong Kong’s language context. Chapter 2 deals with language contact, focusing on sociolinguistic context and linguistic outcomes. Chapter 3 discusses Hong Kong people’s challenges in acquiring Standard Written Chinese and Putonghua, while Chapter 4 presents their challenges in acquiring English for academic purposes. Both chapter 5 and 7 explore Medium-of-Instruction (MoI) Debate, but the former address the issue of mother tongue education and the dual MoI streaming policy since 1998, whereas the latter considers a more recent topic: whether Chinese should be taught in Putonghua. Chapter 6 zooms in to Hong Kong’s biliteracy and trilingualism policy, displaying its problems, dilemmas and stakeholders’ views. Chapter 8 shifts to the minority Hong Kong citizens, ie. those of South Asian descent, taking into account how to meet their needs for Chinese literacy. The last chapter reviews issues in language policy and planning, offering a summary and useful recommendations.

The attitude taken in Qian’s novel first published 1947 might seem too much outdated in the mindset of the 21^st-century e-generations. Today, mixture of Cantonese and English elements (or even some Korean ones, as Li points out in Chapter 2) in one’s speech simply reflects a variegated taste in Hong Kong, as acceptable as one may sprinkle one’s spaghetti with ketchup, or perhaps season one’s risotto with wasabi here. As a matter of fact, English has not merely penetrated the everyday spoken Cantonese in phrases like keep 住健康 (keep zyu6 gin6hong1) ‘keep healthy’ or 手機 mon (sau2 gei1 mon¹) ‘cellphone monitor/screen’, thus making its appearance in local newspapers, TV commercials and movie subtitles as well, where colloquial written Cantonese is preferred, but it has also exerted its syntactic influence in Hong Kong Written Chinese. As Li observes, “the Anglicized clause structure […] 是時候 si6 si4hau6 […] is clearly a result of the high-frequency English structure ‘it is time (for someone) to do something’, especially in local Chinese media.” (p. 42) However, it would be wrong to assume that English is easily mastered in a society that boasts plurilingualism and multiculturalism. Why is Hongkongers’ English proficiency not proportionally improved despite the many years’ time and effort invested? In addition to the several salient typological differences between Chinese and English, outlined comprehensively in Li’s Chapter 4, another important factor he identifies is “a lack of a conducive English learning environment […], the conditions of the learning and use of English make it an untypical second language in Hong Kong, though not exactly a foreign language as in the rest of Greater China.” (pp. 140–1)

Although it is not rare to witness some Hong Kong...