CCGL 9024:
Life and Death of Languages
Identity Shift:
Although Hong Kong is a world-renowned metropolis as we claimed, biracial people still face a lot of challenges in such an advanced society, namely, social disconnection, language barrier or even stereotype. Here we will investigate how biracial people will react and overcome such problems when living in Hong Kong, a place with totally different culture and language to their home country.
Language shift
To commence with, some biracial people perceive that their home language (if not English) will not help them to survive in an extremely competitive society like Hong Kong. And they will adopt an action which we called “language shift”. Language shift is a process which people shifting from speaking their native language to dominant language as the primary means to communicate in the society.
How language shift proceed?
Rather than a sudden shift, the language transmission usually takes several generations. An interesting phenomenon called “three-generational pattern” was brought up by Daniel in his article “The Economic Wave”.
“……a parental generation was monolingual in their native language……the children tended to become bilingual in both native and dominant language. Where the parents were bilingual, the children tended to become monolingual in the dominant language……”1
Daniel suggests that language transmission will happen through at least three generation. Jethro, who live in Hong Kong for about 19 years, is a half British and half Pilipino. We luckily had an interview with her and she has similar experience to Daniel’s claim.
“I consider my mother tongue to be English, like I said I’m half philipino and half british but my mum never taught me and my sisters any Tagalog……”2
Jethro is believed belong to the last generation in the “three-generational pattern” phenomenon as she does not know her home language which is Tagalog while her parent does. Language shift, obviously, is one of Jethro’s family’s choices.
Why language shift?
In Daniel’s book “The Economic Wave” also mentioned why people choose to shift their language (usually from a minority language to a dominant language).
“…… appeared to voluntarily embrace the metropolitan language as a passport to social and economic advancement……”3
And the most common language that people most willing to shift is definitely English as English is widely used in different aspect. And it is believed that only English provide ways to access wonderful technology or a rising standard of living, especially in Hong Kong. Indeed, Jethro’s mother shares the same view.
“……but my mum never taught me and my sisters any Tagalog, I think that was a conscious decision she made because she wanted us to focus on English to get us further in life……”4
Indeed not merely biracial people will have such a thought, many of local Hong Kong people do so.
Identity crisis
Biracial people have at least two home countries (people have three when they are not living in their parent’s home countries but an entire new place to the whole family). Sometime, they just do not know where they belong to. Jethro would be an example for this.
“Like I mentioned earlier I’ve lived in Hong Kong for over 19 years, though I can’t say I can really identify myself as a hong konger……to be honest I don’t truly identify with any nationailty that I possess…..”5
Code-mixing/ code-switching
Biracial people usually know more than one language. Sometime they may tend to mix two or more language in their speech. Code mixing refers to a hybrid form of sentence while code switching refers to the speaker totally change from one grammatical system to another in conversation.
1. Daniel Nettle, “The Economic Wave”, Vanishing Voice: The Extinction of the world’s language (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 136.
2. Jethro, interview by Bethan Charles, April 11, 2015, interview 1.
3. Daniel Nettle, “The Economic Wave”, Vanishing Voice: The Extinction of the world’s language (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 138.
written by Alex Wai Lun Fung
Reference:
Image: The Demographic: Ethinic groups in Hong Kong, HKSAR home affairs department, http://www.had.gov.hk/rru/english/info/info_dem.html
1. Nettle, Daniel. “The Economic Wave”, Vanishing Voice: The Extinction of the world’s language. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000