robert s. bauer
THE HONG KONG CANTONESE SPEECH COMMUNITY
1. Introduction
Among the half-dozen or so regional minority Chinese dialect families, Cantonese today ranks as the second-most important dialect family after Mandarin/Putonghua. Cantonese has achieved this position of prominence solely because of its connection with the British Crown Colony of Hong Kong. The phenomenal growth of Hong Kong into a populous, modern, prosperous, highly-urbanized, educated, and internationally-influentiel community has raised the status of Cantonese to that of a prestige language in the eyes of Hong Kong Cantonese-speakers who make up over 90 % of the territory's population of 5.3 million people. For Hong Kong's ethnic-Chinese community, Cantonese functions as the community's standard form of speech, its lingua franca, and its predominant mother tongue(1). Unlike speech communities in Taiwan and China
(1) Lord (1983 : 10) observes : "Only in Hong Kong does Cantonese remain a local standard ; though it is a standard without standardization and very few people give a damn about it." In talking to Hong Kong Cantonese-speakers about what is standard Cantonese, I have found that the typical attitude of the speaker born and raised in Hong Kong is that standard Cantonese is whatever he or she speaks. Cantonese functions as a lingua franca in Hong Kong among people who share no common first language. Most speakers of other Chinese dialects must learn to speak Cantonese in order to participate in the social system. In addition, other
Cah. Ling. Asie Orientale Vol. XIII â1 Juin 1984, pp. 57-90.
