LANGUAGE IN INDIA

THE CHINESE LANGUAGES: A NEW LEXICOGRAPHICAL PERSPECTIVE FROM HONG KONG
Jacqueline Lam Kam-mei, Ph.D.

1. ABSTRACT

People in Hong Kong live in a unique language environment. On one hand, the community is essentially Chinese: we speak, read and write in Chinese in our daily life. On the other hand, we need to maintain a high standard of English to ensure the city's global economic competitiveness. Our Government's language education policy is to enable our people to be biliterate (in written Chinese and English) and trilingual (in spoken English, Cantonese and Putonghua).

Continuous efforts have been made to enhance the language proficiency of both our students and our working population. These include the development of appropriate standards-referenced assessment to gauge the progress of language learners and a learner-centred direction for on-going local curriculum reform. In this paper, however, I argue that the language proficiency of Hong Kong people will be strengthened by a set of Bi-Tri (biliterate and trilingual) dictionaries: basic, intermediate and advanced. The role and functions of such a range of dictionaries in enhancing the use of the Chinese languages in particular will be addressed. The effectiveness of such an endeavour will also be examined.

2. CHINESE - THE HONG KONG PERSPECTIVE

As a native of Hong Kong, I have always known that Chinese is not a homogeneous language. In addition to Cantonese, my native tongue, it is not uncommon to hear people around me speaking at least Hakka(ese), Fujian(ese), and Shanghainese. And, in the past last eight years or so, more and more people around me have been speaking the national language, usually called Putonghua in the People's Republic and Mandarin elsewhere, and especially in Taiwan.

The Chinese languages (or, as they are more generally known, the Chinese standard language and a range of often mutually unintelligible dialects) are the languages of the Han people, the majority ethnic group of China, in both the People's Republic of China and the Republic of China (Taiwan). To date, these languages are spoken by over a billion people. Majority of Chinese speakers lives in China proper (over 980 million), in Taiwan (around 19 million), and in Hong Kong (over 7 million).

3. THE CHINESE LANGUAGES

Traditionally, Chinese is seen as having seven major language-cum-dialect groups: Mandarin, Cantonese, Hakka, Xiang, Fujian, Gan, and Wu. I argue here, however, that they are languages rather than dialect groups, because they each tend to contain regional variants and it is the mutual unintelligibility of such varieties and sub-varieties that provides the main ground for classifying them as separate languages rather than dialect variations within a single language. Although the Chinese system of writing contains a single set of characters, spoken varieties of Chinese differ in grammar, vocabulary, and, in many cases, pronunciation.

The Chinese languages together with Tibetan and many other languages of South and Southeast Asia, belong to the wider Sino-Tibetan language family. In addition to a distinctive tonal phonology and core vocabulary, these Chinese languages of the Han people are monosyllabic and uninflected.

4. THE COMPLEXITY

In order to indicate differences in meaning between words that are similar in sound, tone languages generally assign to their words a distinctive relative pitch contour: high, low, rising, falling. This contrasts greatly with most other languages worldwide.

According to the Contemporary Han Chinese Dictionary (1986-90), there are around 56,000 Chinese characters. Only around 3,500 are needed to write Modern Chinese (cf. Chen, 1999:137), and in any case about 40 percent of the 56,000 are character variants.

Currently, a simplified writing system is used in mainland China, whereas traditional script is used in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and overseas. This simplified system differs from the traditional system in two ways: the number of strokes per character has been reduced and many characters have been eliminated as surplus to requirements (cf. 'The Chinese languages' retrieved from the WWW on 21 Sept., 2004).

5. THE HONG KONG GOVERNMENT'S EXPECTATIONS REGARDING ITS CITIZENS' ACQUISITION OF CHINESE

The language environment in Hong Kong is unique. Our community is essentially Chinese. We speak, read and write in kinds of Chinese in our daily lives. If Hong Kong is to maintain its economic competitive edge as an international business, financial and trading centre, its working force needs to achieve and sustain a high standard of English.

The government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) of China has had a clear-cut language education policy since 1997. Its official website (May 2004) declares:

The Government's language education policy is to enable our people to be bi-literate (in written Chinese and English) and trilingual (in spoken English, Cantonese, and Putonghua). We are committed to this policy and making continuous efforts to enhance the language proficiency of both our students and our working population. ('Language proficiency,' 2004, paragraph 1)

6. DIFFERENT STANDARDS FOR WRITTEN AND SPOKEN CHINESE

We should at this point note that different standards apply to written and spoken Chinese. In terms of writing, the default position is that Hong Kong people need to read and write Chinese traditional characters proficiently. But there is now an unspoken expectation that they also need to read and write the simplified characters of the People's Republic as there are increasing social and economic interactions between Hong Kong and the mainland.

In speaking, the vast majority of Hong Kong people need to know at least two Chinese languages: their mother tongue Cantonese and, increasingly, the official national language of China, Putonghua, both in its spoken form and in its two written forms: characters and Hanyu Pinyin, a version of the roman alphabet taught to all mainland children before they in fact learn any characters.

7. EMPLOYERS' EXPECTATION OF MASTERY OF CHINESE

In Hong Kong, employers' requirements for Chinese proficiency generally echo the government's policy and can easily be identified in job advertisements as such in the daily South China Morning Post (SCMP), a major English newspaper in Hong Kong. Here are some examples from 30th September 2004:

1. 'Good command of both spoken & written English, Cantonese and Mandarin' (For a sales manager, H & F Partners, a jeweler)
2. 'Good command in English, Cantonese & Mandarin' (For a sales assistant, H & F Partners, a jeweler)
3. 'Fluent spoken and written English, Mandarin and Cantonese' (For a market development manager executive, Talentcystal Co. Ltd.)

8. SOCIETY'S EXPECTATION OF ONE'S MASTERY OF CHINESE

On the other hand, the community at large has, slowly and by and large unintentionally, put more pressure on people who do not read and speak Chinese. The officially bilingual environment under colonial rule has gradually but quietly changed into a more monolingual setting, a change of which most local Chinese may not even be aware. Non-Chinese-speaking residents have, however, been affected in various ways. Current debates in the SCMP's 'Letters to Editor' column highlight the situation. For example:

Roseanne Greenfield, a permanent Hong Kong resident, pointed out that 'she was prohibited by the government from fully participating in the 12 September Legislative Council election because she was not provided with essential materials in English' (SCMP 15th September, 2004).

The first response Ms. Greenfield received was entirely unsympathetic:

'I have a simple suggestion for her: learn Chinese. You should be ashamed of yourself' (Sam Cole, SCMP 18th September, 2004).

Such a reply might not be representative but it says a lot for a change in the general linguistic attitude in Hong Kong including among expatriates.

Another response was more humane, but in it the pressure on foreigners to learn Chinese is equally strong. In the SCMP of 24th September, 2004, Adam Gauna writes: 'Being small in numbers [as expats], we are vulnerable to political and other changes. Without Chinese, we will always be "foreigners" ... By learning Cantonese, expats will gain a more realistic and genuine experience of Hong Kong."

9. DIFFICULTIES FACED BY THE INTERNATIONAL LANGUAGE LEARNERS AND THE CHINESE

More and more foreigners feel the need to learn Chinese in Hong Kong but that does not change the fact that learning Chinese, no matter in what form [Cantonese or Putonghua; traditional or simplified characters] is not at all easy. Two replies in the Post to Roseanne Greenfield came from the same person and suggested desperation. In the SCMP 21st and 27th September, 2004, Dr David C. Anderson noted [quotations combined]: 'I came to Hong Kong 13 years ago [and] had a practical reason (talking to patients) to learn Cantonese… It is impossible to learn to speak Cantonese without a good ear… It is five times more difficult than learning a (non-tonal) European language… To compound matters, this has nothing to do with learning to read it, which necessitates memorizing by rote thousands of apparently unrelated pictograms ... My point is that it is difficult.'

It is indeed difficult, but we must point out that it is also immensely demanding for Chinese-born Hong Kong school learners. At this point, some may argue that, since Hong Kong is already part of China, if one is going to put serious effort into learning Chinese, it makes sense now for it to be in terms of Putonghua, its simplified characters, and pinyin. But we should not forget that most Hong Kong school children belong in a wider community that already speaks Cantonese, a vibrant and evolving tool of communication in Hong Kong, Macau, Guangdong, Southern Guangxi, the Zhuang Autonomous Region, parts of Hainan, and in many places abroad. We feel that, although ambitious and burdensome, the Hong Kong government's bi-tri language policy rightly addresses the needs of Hong Kong.

10. THE CHINESE THAT YOUNG HONG KONG PEOPLE ARE LEARNING AT THE PRESENT TIME

To realize its ambitious language policy, the Education and Manpower Bureau (EMB) makes every effort to help our young people become competent in using Chinese. Currently, some 25% to 30% of the primary school curriculum is devoted to Chinese Language and this is the same for 17-21% of the secondary school curriculum. Putonghua has been a core subject for Primary 1 to Secondary 3 students since 1998 (cf. 'Language Education in Schools', 2004, paragraph 5). Such an arrangement may not however be able to cover our government's Chinese-language requirements, for at least two reasons.

First, the aim of the Chinese Language curricula is to help our young people read and write. Most of the materials are written in traditional (not simplified) characters and are taught in our mother tongue, Cantonese, which has a range of distinctive characters of its own, used in various daily newspapers and not covered in the school syllabus.

Second, when Putonghua is taught, it is associated with Hanyu Pinyin and may or may not be accompanied by simplified characters. Hong Kong young people however are not taught any Cantonese romanization to help them pronounce Cantonese words more accurately. Unfortunately, with more than 20 competing scholarly romanization systems for Cantonese, none of which are widely used, this is not easily organized. Hong Kong therefore badly needs a unified system that would serve the needs of both local students and foreign learners.

11. THE CREATION OF A BI-TRI DICTIONARY

In February 2002, I presented a paper at the international conference 'Translation and bilingual dictionaries' at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, co-authored with Tom McArthur and entitled 'Could there be a dictionary tailor-made for Hong Kong: both trilingual and biliterate?' (S.W. Chan ed., 2004: 119-128)

In it, we considered the need for, and the nature of, a biliterate and trilingual dictionary. Since then, three lexicographers have been working on the project, one for each language: Li Lan of Hong Kong Polytechnic University (Putonghua), Tom McArthur (English) and myself (Cantonese, coordination, and integration). To meet the ambitious language policy aims of the Hong Kong government, we envisage a range of dictionaries, beginning with the Bi-Tri Basic, on which work is currently proceeding, with an intermediate-level version that can be developed partly at the same time and partly once the first level is completed, and (if all goes well) a further more comprehensive and advanced dictionary at a later date.

Although most of the Hong Kong people we have talked to find the idea attractive and potentially useful in terms of language education, but have also found it hard - at least at first - to see how the three languages can be compactly display together. After all, presenting three languages side by side in both roman letters and Chinese characters (with three kinds of roman for English, Cantonese, and Putonghua, and two kinds of Chinese characters, traditional and simplified) is certainly a complicated endeavour.

In creating these products, the default language base has been English, because more work has been done on the teaching and learning of English as a second or foreign language than on any other language in the world, as a consequence of which it has a stronger learners' dictionary tradition than any other language.

Since Putonghua and its romanization (Hanyu Pinyin) have received considerable linguistic and lexicographical attention, we do not anticipate major problems in compiling the component that focuses on mainland China.

The most innovative element, however, has been the foregrounding and in effect 'equalizing' of Cantonese, on the basis that it is the key linguistic medium of Hong Kong, Macau and Guangdong. It is the mother tongue of the vast majority of Hong Kong people, is spoken by well over seven million people and it will certainly not die out, and should therefore serve as the anchor point for the majority of local Hong Kong users.

12. OUR AIMS

For the Bi-Tri Basic, our aim is to produce a paper product with the possibility of an electronic version in one or more delivery format, e.g. in a palm-held device or as a feature in mobile phones, using WAP and J2M2 technology. Hong Kong is after all a high-tech society.

The primary target users are lower-secondary school students in Hong Kong (Secondary 1 to 3, aged 13 to 16), almost all of whom are mother-tongue speakers of Cantonese who need a sound basic vocabulary in both English and Putonghua. They also need recognition and reading skills in the roman alphabet (for English), in Hanyu Pinyin (for Putonghua), and in a Jyutping-based romanization (for Cantonese).

Two further anticipated groups of users are adults from many backgrounds who, for various reasons, need to know at least the basics of one or more of the three languages and their scripts, and those non-locals who wish to speak a Chinese language without having to expend a disproportionate amount of time on learning Chinese characters before they can take on the spoken forms they primarily need.

13. THE ORGANIZATION OF ENTRIES

There are two sections in the elementary dictionary: the English-based section and the Chinese-based section. I will use four specimens to explain the organization of the entries.

The English-based section

The flow of information underlying each entry in this sample section consists of the English head word, its grammatical category, its British and American written variants (if any), its Chinese-character equivalents (traditional and simplified, as appropriate), the Hanyu Pinyin equivalent of the Chinese characters, the spoken Putonghua in both characters and Hanyu Pinyin (if necessary: shaded), the Cantonese romanization, and the spoken Cantonese in characters and in Cantonese romanization (if any: shaded according to its degree of informality/formality).

The Chinese-based section

The Chinese-based section is arranged according to the sequence of vowels emboldened at the top of the format of each entry. It is basically a matching section of the English-based section. And it consists of the Putonghua Hanyu Pinyin headword (shaded, when in colloquial Putonghua), its Chinese character equivalent, its Cantonese romanization; the spoken Cantonese in characters and in Cantonese romanization (if any: highlighted by shading), and its English equivalent.

This arrangement may seem massively complex to outside observers, but it is the result of a painstaking analysis of the current situation in Hong Kong and southern China. It co-ordinates kinds of knowledge that young Hong Kong people are expected to know or acquire at the secondary school level.

14. THE CHOICE OF VOCABULARY ITEMS

The vocabulary to be covered in the Bi-Tri Basic will be drawn from two main sources: one of them universal, the other special to Hong Kong. In its initial form it will be a fairly typical 'basic' word list for English augmented by matching, parallel, and other lexical material that the compilers decide is essential in the Chinese-language sections. Because more work has been done on restricted and specialized word lists in English than any other language, and because Tom McArthur has for years had a special interest in, and knowledge of, such word lists, the 'foundation' vocabulary list will be English. As the work proceeds, however, there will emerge three parallel matching lists: for English, Putonghua and Cantonese.

The core area of work on word lists for learners of English was done throughout the 20th century by a succession of researchers and compilers, beginning most notably with the ELT pioneers Harold Palmer in Japan and Michael West in Bengal. The latter's General Service List evolved from ground-breaking lists created in the 1930s and (as published by Longman) became a classic in the 1950-60s. Current descendants of West's original list include the defining vocabularies of various major present-day ELT dictionaries, notably the advanced and intermediate works published by Oxford, Longman, and Cambridge. Present-day lists of key vocabulary items in English, constructed within the tradition of Palmer and West, consist of some 2,000 to 4,000 words such as call, cat, come, cool, cut in their commoner senses and uses. The Bi-Tri Basic therefore draws on a long-established tradition.

While continuing and extending the Palmer and West tradition, the Bi-Tri Basic will, we trust, also respond both to the perceived needs and expectations of Hong Kong users and the lists that emerge for the two Chinese languages. At the moment the overall list can only be conceived in terms of English, but in due course there will be three parallel basic learners' lists, the words in each list serving to 'define' the words in the others.

The second source of English material is special to Hong Kong and the interests of its people, and will include such items as dumpling, ferry, high-rise, typhoon. This local material has been and will be culled from the SCMP and other reliable sources, and ties in with a set of themes (as an appendix) that will include local geography, travel, transport, food, restaurants, and education.

15. PRONUNCIATION, MUTUAL DEFINITION, AND INDEX

The default romanization system for Putonghua is Hanyu Pinyin and for Cantonese is a modified form of the Jyutping system, which has been developed and promoted by the Linguistic Society of Hong Kong. Its Jyutping Pronunciation Guide has been developed by a group of academics working in five different universities in Hong Kong over the past ten years. For the present purposes, no English phonetic pronunciation will be provided in the Bi-Tri Basic, so as to avoid using more symbols and contrasts than users can comfortably handle. They clearly already have enough to absorb.

The neatest probable ultimate solution to the problem of pronunciation for all three languages would be to have spoken versions available on request in an electronic version, which could use either a male or a female voice, or both. As regards English pronunciation and its variations, American, British and Australian are all possible in principle, but British may well be the sole form, at least to begin with, because it is traditional in Hong Kong and remains the most fully described for language teaching purposes.

The words used in the three languages anywhere in the body of the dictionary constitute a mutually defining circle of words. That is, headwords are defined by means of other headwords, and at this level no definitions are required.

16. CONCLUSION

Although all the procedures described above create their own areas of difficulty and complexity, we hope to keep procedures in the Bi-Tri Basic as simple as possible - by no means a simple task. While stressing that we consider any project of the kind we propose here immensely valuable (perhaps even crucial) for language education in East Asia in the future, it is important to note that there can be no magic simplicity in any dictionary which seeks to address the needs of learners and users of, on the one hand, the English and Chinese writing systems and, on the other, spoken English, Putonghua/Mandarin, and Cantonese. We believe we have found the simplest possible Bi-Tri procedure within the complexity which Hong Kong students and others face, although we remain open to further possibilities and refinements. As a result, we need throughout the Bi-Tri wordbook (and especially in the brief biliterate introduction) to be as honest and direct as possible with the users, most of whom will already know just how much they are required to master, with or without aids of this kind.

REFERENCES

Anderson, D. C. (2004, September 21). Learn to read Chinese. South China Morning Post, A16 Leaders & Letters.

Anderson, D. C. (2004, September 27). Daunting language task. South China Morning Post, A12 Leaders & Letters.

Chen, P. (1999). Modern Chinese: History and Sociolinguistics . Cambridge: CUP.

Gauna, A. (2004, September 24). Reason to learn Chinese. South China Morning Post, A16 Leaders & Letters.

Greenfield, R. (2004, September 15). Disenfranchised! South China Morning Post, A14 Leaders & Letters.

'Key points'. Language proficiency and language education. (May 2004, paragraph 1). Retrieved on September 30, 2004 from .

Lam, J. & McArthur, T. (2004A) Could there be a dictionary tailor-made for Hong Kong: both trilingual and biliterate? In S.W. Chan (ed.), Translation and bilingual dictionaries. (Lexicographica Series Maior 119), Tübingen: M. Niemeyer, 119-128.

'Language Education in Schools: Language proficiency and language education.' (May 2004, paragraph 5). Retrieved on September 30, 2004 from .

West, M. (1953). A General Service List of English Words, Longman, London.

Sales and marketing appointments. (2004, September 30). South China Morning Post, p.1 Classified Post.

Sam, C. (2004, September 18). Learn Chinese. South China Morning Post, A12 Leaders & Letters.

The Chinese languages. (n.d.). Retrieved on September 21, 2004, from .

APPENDIX

THE NUMBER OF PEOPLE SPEAKING CHINESE

Approximately 95 percent of the population of China speaks kinds of Chinese natively. The other 5 percent 'minorities' speak such non-Chinese languages as Tibetan, Mongolian, Lolo, Miao and Tai). Substantial numbers of speakers of Chinese are also found throughout southeast Asia, notably in Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand. There are important Chinese-speaking communities found in many other parts of the world, especially in Europe, North and South America, and Hawaii.

THE SEVEN CHINESE LANGUAGE GROUPS

1. Mandarin spoken in the northern, central, and western regions of China
2. Cantonese spoken in Hong Kong, Guangdong, Southern Guangxi, Zhuang Autonomous Region, parts of Hainan, Macau and in many overseas settlements
3. Hakka spoken in Guangdong, southwestern Fujian, Jiangxi, Hunan, Yunnan, Guangxi, Guizhou, Sichuan, Hainan, Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, many overseas Chinese communities, and in pockets throughout Southeast Asia
4. Xiang/Hunanese spoken in the south central region, especially in Hunan
5. Min spoken in most of Fujian, large areas of Taiwan and Hainan, parts of Eastern Guangdong and the Leizhou Bandao Peninsula, and in areas of Southeast Asia
6. Gan spoken in Jiangxi, eastern Hunan, and southeastern Hubei
7. Wu spoken in Zhejiang, and southern areas of Jiangsu and Anhui, and sharing marginal mutual intelligibility with the Mandarin and Gan groups.

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