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Hong Kong's three languages, and why the signs read oddly
Hong Kong has two official languages, Chinese and English, and a formula for the spoken side usually given as 两文三语 — two written languages and three spoken ones: written Chinese and English, spoken Cantonese, English and Mandarin. That is why the MTR announces every station three times and why 阿明's joke about the length of the announcements is a real complaint. The written situation is the interesting part. Formal Hong Kong Chinese is standard written Chinese in traditional characters, grammatically the same as a Beijing newspaper. But its vocabulary diverged during the century when Hong Kong was a British colony and the mainland was not: English borrowings came in through Cantonese and stayed, mainland coinages of the 1950s onwards never arrived, and a parallel set of everyday words resulted. 巴士 from bus, 的士 from taxi, 士多 from store, 多士 from toast, 三文治 from sandwich. Alongside that sits written Cantonese from lesson 80, used in tabloids, comics, advertising and social media, which is a different thing again. English in Hong Kong is not decoration. It remains a language of law, business, higher education and government, road signs and building names are bilingual, and a great many professionals work in it daily. It is also the reason a visitor with no Chinese at all can function in Hong Kong in a way they cannot in Guangzhou an hour away — which is worth knowing and also worth resisting, because using the Chinese you have will be received well. Mandarin's position has changed markedly. It was a minority skill in the 1990s and is now widely spoken, taught in schools and used with mainland visitors and colleagues, though for most residents it remains a second or third language rather than a comfortable one. Speaking Mandarin in Hong Kong is entirely normal and will be answered in Mandarin; it is also worth knowing that language choice can carry social meaning here in a way it does not in Chengdu, for reasons lesson 86 goes into, so a visitor does well to follow whatever the other person opens with. Practically, three things. Get an 八达通 at the airport. The MTR is fast, cheap, clean and signposted in English, and 入闸 and 出闸 are the two words on the gates. And Hong Kong's escalators and walkways have a standing side, which people mind about — stand right, walk left, and do not block the 扶手.