Báo cáo toán học: " The status of Cantonese in the education policy of Hong Kong" pot

Department of Chinese, The HongKong Institute of Education, Hong Kong Abstract After the handover of Hong Kong to China, a first-ever policy of“bi-literacy andtri-lingualism” was put for

Department of Chinese, The Hong

Kong Institute of Education, Hong

Kong

Abstract

After the handover of Hong Kong to China, a first-ever policy of“bi-literacy andtri-lingualism” was put forward by the Special Administrative Region Government.Under the trilingual policy, Cantonese, the most dominant local language, equallyshares the official status with Putonghua and English only in name but not in spirit,

as neither the promotion nor the funding approaches on Cantonese match its legalstatus This paper reviews the status of Cantonese in Hong Kong under this policywith respect to the levels of government, education and curriculum, considers theconsequences of neglecting Cantonese in the school curriculum, and discusses theimportance of large-scale surveys for language policymaking

Keywords: the status of Cantonese,“bi-literacy and tri-lingualism” policy, languagesurvey, Cantonese language education

Background

The adjustment of the language policy is a common phenomenon in post-colonialsocieties It always results in raising the status of the regional vernacular, but the lan-guage of the ex-colonist still maintains a very strong influence on certain domains.Taking Singapore as an example, English became the dominant language in the work-place and families, and the local dialects were suppressed It led to the degrading ofboth English and Chinese proficiency levels according to scholars’ evaluation (Goh2009a, b) This interesting situation urges us to seriously consider the impact of theabsence of mother tongue in education policy on the society Hong Kong is a city with

a similar language situation to Singapore, and it is worth evaluating the success ofHong Kong’s language policy in education

Cantonese is the most commonly spoken language in Hong Kong In most of theBritish colonial era, the sole official language was English, and Chinese was made a co-official language of Hong Kong only in as late as 1974 By“Chinese” it was understood

to be Modern Standard Chinese as the written form and Cantonese as the spokenform in the context of Hong Kong, and there was no specific mention of the legalposition of Cantonese After Hong Kong’s handover to China in 1997, the languagepolicy of“bi-literacy and tri-lingualism” was conceived and implemented by the Gov-ernment of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (hereafter SAR Govern-ment).“Bi-literacy” refers to written Chinese and English while “tri-lingualism” refers

to spoken Cantonese, English and Putonghua It is noteworthy that the policy iseracy” rather than “tri-literacy’ The term “Bi-literacy” does not distinguish between the

“bi-lit-© 2012 Lee and Leung; licensee Springer This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in

various different forms of written Chinese (e.g traditional and simplified characters;

Cantonese vocabulary and syntax) It is indisputable that the legal status of Cantonese

was then firmly established for the first time officially According to the census carried

out by the SAR Government in 2001, 89.2% of the population (about 5.72 million

peo-ple) used Cantonese as their main daily language in a wide range of domains, such as

interactions with family members, friends and colleagues, shopping and dining out,

movies and television programmes, workplace meetings, court inquests, Legislative

Council debates, the medium of instruction at schools, and government press releases

Hence, it is certainly not exaggerating to classify Cantonese as a major language used

on a daily basis in Hong Kong

Importantly, sociolinguists remind us that a society’s language policy does not alwaysmatch its demographics or daily language use as reflected in the census, but it often

serves certain political and economic purposes (Spolsky 2004; Wright 2004; Guo 2004;

Xu 2007), for instance, the promotion of Japanese in the Japanese occupied Korea and

Taiwan in the first half of the 20th century, and the French influences in modern

Nigeria and Morocco For Hong Kong, an international metropolitan city as well as

one of the central administrative regions of China, the importance of English and

Putonghua in Hong Kong is unquestionable Indeed, the implementation of English

and Putonghua is crucial to keeping Hong Kong going in this ever changing and highly

globalized world, and the key to avoiding Hong Kong from being left behind However,

Cantonese as the most frequently used language should also be paid attention to for

not only the local communication purpose, but also the regional cultural and

identity-building reasons Cantonese develops according to the particular needs of the people

of Hong Kong, who share a way of life and culture, and it is clear that Cantonese is

strongly intertwined with Hong Kong’s sociocultural characteristics and identity Thus,

there will be cultural implication or social deprivation if the importance of Cantonese

is undermined

Nevertheless, if we take an in-depth investigation of the position of Cantonese inHong Kong’s official language policy at the levels of government, education and curri-

culum, it is found that neither the promotion nor the funding approaches on

Canto-nese match its legal status Under the past policy of mother-tongue teaching,

Cantonese was only a medium of instruction in CMI (Chinese as Medium of

Instruc-tion) schools instead of a learning subject Students were required to attend oral and

listening assessments of Cantonese, in the examinations of both the higher school level

(secondary school: the Advanced-Level Examination, the Hong Kong Diploma of

Sec-ondary Education) and the lower level (primary school: the Territory-wide System

Assessment) (HKEAA 2009) In addition, Territory-wide System Assessment has been

a newly launched examination in recent years and the Oral and Listening examination

in Cantonese was also a new attempt These components in the examination system

may imply that the Education Bureau still treated Cantonese as an important medium

of instruction, or one may even argue Cantonese was not so well-regarded in the

examination system before 1997 but has been given weight in recent years However,

there is apparently no systematic arrangement in the school curriculum to teach

stu-dents the basic knowledge and daily applications of Cantonese

In addition, there was very little mention of Cantonese teaching including nese syntax, phonetics and pragmatics with regard to the relevant aspects of Chinese

Canto-subject in the Hong Kong Certificate of Education Examination (HKCEE), a

standar-dized examination after the completion of five years of secondary education Strictly

speaking, it is a common belief that the emphases on the three languages are based

on reality because those three kinds of oral expressions have their irreplaceable

func-tions as means of communication in different occasions However, as a matter of fact

it is quite demanding to expect every individual in the society to be biliterate and

trilingual, i.e., to be conversant with written Chinese and English, and be able to

speak fluent Cantonese, Putonghua and English (Lee and Leung 2010) To make

good use of social resources for practical needs, there is no doubt that enough

con-cern must be paid to “the most frequently used language” in both non-workplace

and workplace situations before the implementation of the language policy of

“bi-lit-eracy and tri-lingualism”

In order to get a better understanding of the actual language situation in Hong Kong,

we carried out a survey between June and August 2009 in Hong Kong Island, Kowloon

and New Territories using a random sampling method A total of 1004 people with

different occupations were interviewed in regard to their language use in

non-work-place and worknon-work-place situations The statistics show that despite the uniqueness of

Eng-lish in some work-related circumstances, Cantonese is the language most frequently

used To put it simply, all the statistics point to the fact that Cantonese is the most

common language in Hong Kong, whether in non-workplace or workplace situations

In view of this, it is advisable for the related governmental departments to provide apackage of effective language measures to schools to strengthen the basic learning of

Cantonese, which is the mother language or first language of Hong Kong’s majority

(89.2%) Likewise, it must be realized that the current teaching materials being used in

the formal curriculum do not reflect the reality of the actual linguistic experience

Thus, to help students perform and learn better, it is preferable that the teaching

materials should include target-oriented training with the focus on our daily life The

language use of those common types of occupation should also be included in the

cur-riculum design

The following section is a brief review of the status of Cantonese in Hong Kong fromthe levels of government, education and curriculum and relevant documents will be

quoted Section 3 outlines the actual language situation in Hong Kong using the results

of selected surveys by the Hong Kong SAR Government, academic specialists and our

research team Section 4 points out that the current approaches on Cantonese

promo-tion do not match its legal status or its actual use in both workplace and

non-work-place situations, and provides some corresponding suggestions in the hope that the

development of Cantonese teaching will not go in the opposite direction

The Position of Cantonese in the Current Education Policy

Cantonese has gained its legal status under the “biliterate and trilingual” policy since

1997 To find out whether the actual position of Cantonese is equivalent to its legal

status in the existing policy and whether enough resources have been put in for public

promotion, we can take an in-depth look at the levels of government, education and

curriculum These three levels do not exist independently but are interdependent In

this section the adoption of the “biliterate and trilingual” policy by the SAR

Govern-ment after the handover will be reviewed first

2.1 At the Governmental Level

In Hong Kong, the Policy Address (PA) is an annual ritual for the Chief Executive to

present a programme of policies and his vision for the coming year It is a combination

of general themes and specific issues, detailing what challenges are confronting Hong

Kong and what the proposed solutions are In the 1997 Policy Address, the Chief

Executive of the Hong Kong SAR Tung Chee-Hwa adopted the first-ever “biliterate

and trilingual” policy to enable Hong Kong residents to become biliterate in written

Chinese and English, and trilingual in spoken Cantonese, Putonghua and English The

statements are as follows (emphasis ours):

84 Confidence and competence in the use of Chinese and English are essential if

we are to maintain our competitive edge in the world The Education CommissionReport No.6 has already laid down a framework to achieve our goal for secondaryschool graduates to be proficient in writing English and Chinese and able to com-municate confidently in Cantonese, English and Putonghua (1997 PA)

Actually back in March 1996, the Education Commission already considered that thepolicy of mother-tongue education should be reaffirmed and that a public education

programme regarding the rationale of mother-tongue teaching should be strengthened

(Education Commission, HKSAR 1996) After the handover, the biliterate and trilingual

policy was promoted as a language-in-education policy for the very first time Since

then in the thirteen years from 1998 to 2010, the SAR Government has continued to

emphasize the importance of “biliterate and trilingual” policy for another three times

in the annual addresses:

69 It is the SAR Government’s goal to train our people to be truly biliterate andtrilingual (1999 PA)

46 It is our policy to promote bi-literacy and tri-lingualism Hong Kong is a mopolitan city, and it needs to promote the wider use of basic English As part ofChina, Hong Kong people should also learn to speak fluent Putonghua This willfacilitate effective communication and business exchanges with the Mainland

cos-(2001 PA)

90 Hong Kong’s development is geared towards the provision of quality services tothe Mainland and the rest of the world To achieve this, we must upgrade our bili-terate and trilingual proficiency (2005 PA)

That is to say, it is widely recognized that the“biliterate and trilingual” policy is one

of the goals to be achieved by the government after the handover Hong Kong people,

regardless of their job natures and education levels, are therefore expected to be

bilite-rate in written Chinese and English, and trilingual in spoken Cantonese, Putonghua

and English It is also noticeable that in the Policy Address, the “biliterate and

trilin-gual” policy and the job market in Hong Kong are closely linked together In other

words, this is an employment-oriented policy which is in response to the language

needs of the working market Under the trilingual policy, Cantonese equally shares the

important status with Putonghua and English at face value To promote the language

policy efficiently, the SAR Government even began to implement the Chinese-medium

instruction policy (or known as “mother tongue” education) in junior secondary

schools between September 1998 and August 2010

The importance of the implementation of Chinese-medium instruction policy wasalso emphasized in the Policy Address for three consecutive times from 1997 to 1999

This shows that however controversial the policy was, the SAR Government was

deter-mined to go for it

85 Greater use of mother tongue teaching will help raise the standard of teaching

in non-language subjects It also allows more time to be given to specialised ing of English and Chinese so that all language standards may be raised (1997 PA)

teach-97 We remain fully committed to the promotion of mother-tongue teaching First,because expert opinion worldwide is that students learn best in their mother-ton-gue Secondly, we are committed to improving the ability of our students to useChinese and English (1998 PA)

71 Mother-tongue teaching was introduced to help students learn more effectively

(1999 PA)

Besides the statements, there was no clear definition of “mother tongue” officially;

however, “mother tongue” is believed to be equivalent to Cantonese from the context

and its way of expression In the “Report on Review of Medium of Instruction for

Sec-ondary Schools and SecSec-ondary School Places Allocation” delivered by the Education

Commission (EC) in 2005, a noteworthy claim was made which serves as an indirect

“Cantonese teaching”, although the authority has never used this term But, in reality,

the position and role of Cantonese teaching are not as clear as they should be What

“mother tongue” means remains ill-defined Consequently, teachers are left to interpret

whatever “mother tongue teaching” means to them in their context Even though the

society strongly demands the promotion of English teaching, it is indisputable, with a

strong theoretical basis, that Cantonese, being the mother tongue (or the first

lan-guage) of most Hong Kong people, is regarded as the most effective language in

teach-ing However, when it comes to Cantonese and Putonghua, some educators and

language experts believe that under the “one country” principle, the promotion of

Putonghua, instead of Cantonese, ought to be the trend, as Putonghua is the official

language of China To put it simply, after the handover, the general use of government

funding on the promotion of the“biliterate and trilingual” policy sufficiently reflects

the mainstream view on the teaching language of the Hong Kong society Besides the

regular funding for school operations to maintain an adequate teaching standard, a

great part of the governmental funding goes to the Language Fund of the Standing

Committee on Language Education and Research (SCOLAR)Standing Committee on

Language Education and Research (SCOLAR) for language promotion SCOLAR was a

committee established in 1996 to advise the Government on language education issues

in general and on the use of the Language Fund, as well as to oversee various

Language Fund projects In particular, SCOLAR advises on the policy on the medium

of instruction and on the setting of language standards, including general goals for

lan-guage learning at different levels of education and specific lanlan-guage attainment targets at

each stage of education The Language Fund of SCOLAR was established to support

profi-ciency in the use of the Chinese (including spoken Putonghua) and English languages by

the people of Hong Kong, and to fund programmes, projects, researches, textbooks,

train-ing courses, language teachers and educationists, and educational institutions which

directly help the enhancement in the use of the Chinese and English languages in Hong

Kong (Legislative Council Panel on Education 2001; SCOLAR 2003a, b) The activities

funded by SCOLAR from 1998 to 2006 are highlighted as follows:

1998, 1999SCOLAR endorsed a $2.5 million budget for a three-year Summer Immersion Pro-gramme in Putonghua to support a total of 500 teachers (16 December)

2000SCOLAR endorsed a $50 million budget for Workplace English Campaign

(28 February)2002

SCOLAR spent $8 million for the promotion of Putonghua (7 March)

2003, 2004SCOLAR organised the Putonghua Festival to promote the learning and use ofPutonghua

2005SCOLAR presented the first-ever English Festival with seven lively English activitieswhich were run from September 2004 to June 2005

2006SCOLAR sponsored English teachers of primary schools to attend overseas immer-sion programmes (2 April)

At a superficial level, Cantonese obtained the same status as English and Putonghuaunder the trilingual policy, but unfortunately it can be seen from the funding items of

SCOLAR that the resources for the promotion of the spoken languages were largely

assigned only to English and Putonghua, and in particular billions of dollars have been

invested to promote English since the handover in 1997 (Poon 2010) It was not until

2007 that the situation of neglecting Cantonese was slightly changed (see section 2.2)

Concerning such a far-reaching language policy at the educational and curriculum

levels, more will be given in the next subsections

2.2 At the Educational Level

It is the governmental policy to promote bi-literacy and tri-lingualism in Hong Kong,

and thus Cantonese, English and Putonghua are of equal status in principle

Neverthe-less, when it comes to school teaching, Hong Kong society at large commonly believes

that English and Putonghua teaching are more important than Cantonese teaching even

if Cantonese is our mother tongue (or the first language) (Ming Pao 1997a, b) The

fol-lowings are some highlights of the official statements related to local language teaching

(emphasis ours), from which the orientation of Cantonese is nowhere to be found:

pos-Education Bureau

1999 The SAR Government promotes benchmarking workplace English

The Secretary for Education, Mr Michael Suen, announced that starting with theSecondary One level from the 2010-11 academic year, secondary schools may intro-duce different Medium of Instruction (MOI) arrangements to enrich students’ Eng-lish learning environment to suit their different needs

Standing Committee on Language Education and Research

2000SCOLAR set up the Putonghua Summer Immersion Course Subsidy Scheme in

2000 to subsidise teachers to attend Putonghua summer immersion courses in theMainland

2004SCOLAR set up the Professional Development Incentive Grant Scheme to encou-rage serving teachers of the English Language subjects to enhance their subjectknowledge and pedagogy

2006SCOLAR has organised overseas immersion programmes for serving primaryschool English teachers since the 2006/07 school year to enhance their English lan-guage proficiency level and enrich their experience in English language teaching

2007SCOLAR launches the Quality English Language Education at Pre-primary LevelProject in the 2007/08 school year to explore and develop more comprehensivemodels of quality English exposure of children at pre-primary level in Hong Kong

2007SCOLAR has introduced an Overseas Study Programme on English Language Edu-cation for Primary School Principals in Hong Kong since the 2007/08 school year

2008SCOLAR launched a support scheme in the 2008/09 school year to assist schoolswhich have determination to use Putonghua to teach Chinese Language Subjectthrough school-based on-site support by mainland professionals and local teacherswho are experienced in using Putonghua to teach Chinese Language Subject

(3 January)

Indeed, SCOLAR has organized large-scale language activities every year since 2002

to provide a diversified and fun-filled environment for students to learn Putonghua

and English and to create an atmosphere for the public to learn and use the two

lan-guages In contrast, the proportion of government funding in certain areas regarding

Cantonese is much lower Under these circumstances, the development concerning the

position of Cantonese in Hong Kong seems to be exactly in the opposite direction It

was not until 2007 that the situation changed to a small degree, when Cantonese

pro-nunciation was included for the first time in the scoring system in the Chinese

speak-ing test of HKCEE The Standspeak-ing Committee on Language Education and Research

thus started to promote proper Cantonese pronunciation in response to this change:

SCOLAR started the promotion of proper Cantonese pronunciation in 2007 with aseries of TV and radio programmes as well as school activities to encourage people

to pronounce words in Cantonese properly without“lazy articulation” for bettercommunication with other people (SCOLAR 2007)

Moreover, SCOLAR joined hands with the Association for the Promotion of ProperCantonese Pronunciation to organize the following activities to promote proper Canto-

nese pronunciation at school level:

(1) Proper Cantonese Pronunciation Ambassador in Schools Programme (2007/08school year)

(2) Proper Cantonese Pronunciation Day Camp (2008/09 school year)

It is evident that those were the first-ever sponsorships SCOLAR used on the tion of Cantonese since its establishment, despite the fact that it was limited to the

promo-pronunciation In view of this, Cantonese teaching has undoubtedly long been

neglected in the local education sector This inadequate approach led to the lack of

more rigorous and long-term planning of Cantonese teaching within the Chinese

lan-guage curriculum, in which teaching objectives, teaching methods and teaching

materi-als seem not to focus on the use and application of Cantonese in the society, nor the

linguistic characteristics of the language To further illustrate this point, we can refer

to the HKCEE assessments for reading, writing, speaking and listening in the senior

secondary Chinese subject as tabulated below:

From Table 1 it is obvious that Cantonese is involved only in the aspects of listeningand speaking in the senior secondary Chinese subject This is understandable because

Cantonese is used mainly as a spoken language rather than in writing Many Cantonese

words actually do not have a written form Some of the written Cantonese words are

indeed made up along the way and there are now different ways of making up the

writing of a Cantonese word In a number of cases, people even put in an English

word which is homophonous with a Cantonese word because of the absence of a

writ-ten form Writwrit-ten Cantonese can be considered a low form, as it never appears in

for-mal communication, for example, in Government publications, forfor-mal business writing,

and educational texts

A noticeable point here is that at schools where Chinese is the medium of tion (CMI), Cantonese is regarded as a medium of teaching and learning, but not itself

instruc-the teaching and learning objective (Education Department 1997) In general,

Canto-nese as a functional language in Hong Kong is not taught syntactically and

pragmati-cally at schools in spite of the fact that it is the major language of the majority of

Hong Kong population as well as the most frequently used language in the workplaces

(section 3.3)

2.3 At the Curriculum Level

To investigate the status of Cantonese in the current Chinese curriculum under the

biliterate and trilingual policy, we can further examine the involvement of Cantonese

in the four main aspects in the three most frequently used textbooks (Zhang 2011) for

the senior secondary Chinese language in Hong Kong schools The textbooks are as

follows:

(1) Keys New Senior Secondary Chinese Language (Keys Press 2009)(2) New Senior Secondary Chinese Language (New Edition) (Hong Kong EducationalPublishing 2005)

(3) Longman Senior Secondary Chinese Language (Longman Hong Kong Education2005)

Concerning the cultural diversity of Hong Kong as an international city, there aremany different language policies in education if one takes into consideration all the

international schools, ESF schools, etc This paper only focuses on those that follow

the EDB curriculum Table 2 shows the contents involving Cantonese in Form Four

textbooks as an example Similar to the HKCEE assessments, Cantonese is basically

involved in the aspects of listening and speaking This is not surprising because the

content design of the textbooks of the Chinese language is principally based on the

HKCEE grading criteria

Virtually, some Hong Kong people hold the point that training in the use of nese is unnecessary as it is their mother tongue (Lee and Leung 2010) According to a

Canto-survey (section 3.3) done by Lee and Leung in 2009, part of which is concerned with

the respondents’ attitudes towards languages used in Hong Kong, over 50% people

replied that if they had the resources, they desired to improve their language

profi-ciency in English or Putonghua, and that for Cantonese, being able to conduct the

Table 1 Cantonese Involvement in the Four Aspects

involvement Reading The main aim of this part is to evaluate candidates ’ ability of using a variety of

reading strategies, including comprehension, analysis, feeling and appreciation.

Not applicable Writing This part mainly assesses candidates on their ability in such areas as idea

construction, language expression and creativity.

Not applicable Listening Candidates are required to demonstrate their listening ability of distinguishing the

standpoints, opinions, oral skills and tone of the speakers.

The materials are recorded in Cantonese.

Speaking Candidates are examined on

their ability of oral presentation, communication and interaction.

Reading Aloud This subpart mainly assesses

candidates on their ability of reading texts aloud with appropriate pronunciations, tones and rhythms.

This part will

be conducted entirely in Cantonese.

Oral Communication

In this subpart, candidates are expected to demonstrate expression, interaction, communication skills in the discussions.

daily conversations is enough But we must realize that, as the linguists emphasize,

being able to speak and understand a language does not mean that one “knows about”

the language In addition to this, some of the educators even have the belief that

pro-moting English and Putonghua should be the right direction, and that Cantonese is

just a transitional medium of instruction Under these circumstances, the current

speaking training of Chinese subject always focuses on the basic ability and lacks

long-term planning When teaching objectives, teaching methods and teaching materials are

not in response to the pragmatic needs of the job market, there will be a negative

impact on the implementation of the trilingual policy Hence, we are convinced that

some relevant surveys should be carried out to lay the research foundation before the

implementation of any major education policy and the design of Chinese language

curriculum

In the next section, selected surveys carried out by different researchers on languageuse in Hong Kong will be presented; the survey in section 3.3 was conducted by our

research team in 2009 and is believed to be the most up-to-date one of its kind

The Language Situation of Hong Kong

3.1 Surveys by the Hong Kong SAR Government

In Hong Kong, there have been different kinds of surveys on language use every now

and then serving a multitude of purposes Among those surveys, the population census

by the Census and Statistics Department of the Hong Kong SAR Government is widely

recognized as the most representative The population census is a large-scale sample

enquiry of socio-economic characteristics of the population From 1961, it is

estab-lished practice in Hong Kong to conduct a population census (PC) every ten years and

a by-census (BC) in the middle of the intercensal period The sampling fraction is

approximately one-tenth and a scientific sampling scheme is adopted Following

Table 2 Cantonese Involvement in the Three Most Frequently Used Textbooks

are recorded

in Cantonese

• Cantonese pronunciations provided for new or difficult words, as well as for those which are easily pronounced

wrong.

• Separate lessons on speaking training for the purpose of correcting Cantonese pronunciations with the illustration of Cantonese phonological

rules.

Longman Limited Cantonese idioms are

introduced as reading topics

in the integrated part.

Nil The materials are recorded

this practice, the latest population by-census was conducted in mid-2006 and around

220 000 households in Hong Kong were enumerated According to the Census and

Statistics Department, the aim of conducting population censuses and by-censuses is:

to obtain up-to-date benchmark information on the socio-economic characteristics

of the population and on its geographical distribution They provide benchmarkdata for studying the direction and trend of population changes The data are keyinputs for making projections concerning population, household, labour force andemployment Population censuses/by-censuses differ from other general householdsample surveys in their sizable scale which enable them to provide statistics of highprecision, even for population sub-groups and small geographical areas Such infor-mation is vital to the Government for planning and policy formulation and impor-tant to the private sector for business and research purposes (page 2, Statement on

2006 Population By-census: Hong Kong, China)

Data collection of the population census is normally carried out by the “interviewer”

method Strictly selected field workers, most of which are school teachers and

post-secondary students, pay visits to the sampled households and question each individual

in such households to complete the questionnaires Apart from the “interviewer”

method, an online questionnaire was first introduced in 2006 for those households and

persons who opt for the choice of electronic data reporting Table 3 illustrates the

sta-tistics on language use in Hong Kong in 1991(PC), 1996(BC), 2001(PC), 2006(BC)

(Census and Statistics Department 1991, 1996, 2001, 2006)

We can get a better understanding of the number and percentage of local languageuse from the table These data are extremely useful for outlining a comprehensive pic-

ture of language distribution in Hong Kong for the last two decades Unfortunately,

such investigations do not consider how the contexts influence the use of languages

because “usual language” is not equivalent to “the only language that one can speak”

For example, the usual language of an interviewee can be Cantonese but in reality he

or she is also expected to use both Putonghua and English in certain scenarios

Obviously, it is a pity that the current design of population census fails to provide

more information for further analysis

3.2 Surveys by Academic Specialists

In contrast to population census, owing to limited resources the scales of research

pro-jects on language use led by academic specialists are not as large as the ones by the

Table 3 Population Aged 5 and Over by Usual Language (% of total)