Instruct: Given a question, retrieve relevant documents that answer the question.
Query: Do they speak Cantonese in Hong Kong?
Filipinos haven't settled long enough in Hong Kong to have a large number who know Cantonese fluently, unlike some of the other ethnic minorities such as the Pakistanis and the Indians who often speak Cantonese as well as their Chinese neighbours. This is because most Filipino workers are transients who do not intend to settle in Hong Kong—each year, a large number of these leave Hong Kong permanently, to be replaced by a different set of Filipinos who have to learn Cantonese from the beginning.
Shanghainese is not mutually intelligible with any language or dialect of Mandarin. It is around 50% intelligible (with 28.9% lexical similarity) with the Mandarin, heard in Beijing. Modern Shanghainese, however, has been heavily influenced by modern Mandarin and other Chinese languages, such as Cantonese. That makes the Shanghainese spoken by young people in the city different, sometimes significantly, from that spoken by the older population and also that inserting Mandarin, Cantonese or both into Shanghainese sentences during everyday conversation is very common, at least for young people. Like most subdivisions of Chinese, it is easier for a local speaker to understand Mandarin than it is for a Mandarin speaker to understand the local language.
In southern China (not including Hong Kong and Macau), where the difference between Standard Chinese and local dialects is particularly pronounced, well-educated Chinese are generally fluent in Standard Chinese, and most people have at least a good passive knowledge of it, in addition to being native speakers of the local dialect. The choice of dialect varies based on the social situation. Standard Chinese is usually considered more formal and is required when speaking to a person who does not understand the local dialect. The local dialect (be it non-Standard Chinese or non-Mandarin altogether) is generally considered more intimate and is used among close family members and friends and in everyday conversation within the local area. Chinese speakers will frequently code switch between Standard Chinese and the local dialect. Parents will generally speak to their children in dialect, and the relationship between dialect and Mandarin appears to be mostly stable; even a diglossia.
People native to urban Beijing speak the Beijing dialect, which belongs to the Mandarin subdivision of spoken Chinese. This speech is the basis for "putonghua", the standard spoken language used in mainland China and Taiwan, and one of the four official languages of Singapore. Rural areas of Beijing Municipality have their own dialects akin to those of Hebei province, which surrounds Beijing Municipality.
The Hakka (), sometimes Hakka Han, are Han Chinese people whose ancestral homes are chiefly in the Hakka-speaking provincial areas of Guangdong, Fujian, Jiangxi, Guangxi, Sichuan, Hunan, Zhejiang, Hainan and Guizhou. The Chinese characters for "Hakka" () literally mean "guest families". Unlike other Han Chinese groups, the Hakkas are not named after a geographical region, e.g. a province, county or city, in China.
Four major Chinese-speech groups are represented in Indonesia: [[Hokkien]] (Southern Min; Min Nan), [[Mandarin Chinese|Mandarin]], [[Hakka Chinese|Hakka]] and [[Cantonese]]. In addition to these, the [[Teochew people]] speak [[Teochew dialect|their own dialect]] that has some degree of [[mutual intelligibility]] with [[Hokkien]]. Distinctions between the two, however, are accentuated outside of their regions of origin. There were an estimated 2.2 million [[native speaker]]s of various Chinese varieties in Indonesia in 1982: 1,300,000 speakers of [[Southern Min]] varieties (including [[Hokkien]] and [[Teochew dialect|Teochew]]); 640,000 [[Hakka]] speakers; 460,000 [[Mandarin Chinese|Mandarin]] speakers; 180,000 Cantonese speakers; and 20,000 speakers of the [[Eastern Min]] varieties (including [[Fuzhou dialect]]). Additionally, an estimated 20,000 spoke different dialects of the [[Indonesian language]].
The Fuzhou immigrants often speak Mandarin along with their Fuzhou dialect and while all of the other Mandarin speakers were settling in and creating a more Mandarin-Speaking Chinatown or Mandarin Town (國語埠) in Flushing's Chinatown, and an even smaller one in Elmhurst all in Queens because they could not relate to the traditional Cantonese dominance in Manhattan's Chinatown, the Fuzhou immigrants were the only exceptional Non-Cantonese Chinese group to largely settle in Manhattan's Chinatown. This is due to the Mandarin speaking enclaves being too middle class and expensive and since many Fuzhou immigrants came without immigration paperwork and forced into low paying jobs, Manhattan's Chinatown was the only place for them to be around other Chinese people and receive affordable housing despite Manhattan's Chinatown's traditional Cantonese dominance that lasted until the 1990s
Over time the newcomers adopted the term "Hakka" to refer to themselves, not least due to the migratory tendencies inherent in their own culture. However, because the term also covers Hakka speakers (in the same way that Punti covered several people speaking different tongues), and because the Han Chinese registered as Guest Families who migrated may not have been Hakka speakers, and because of intermarriages among Hakka and Punti members (which showed that relations between the two were very good at times), identification as Hakka was largely a matter of self-selection. Through studies of both Cantonese and Hakka genealogies, some Hakka and Punti people with the same surnames claim the same ancestors, although their descendants strongly identify with one group to the exclusion of the other.
Hong Kong has ten universities within its territory. The University of Hong Kong was founded as the city's first institute of higher education during the early colonial period in 1911. The Chinese University of Hong Kong was established in 1963 to fill the need for a university that taught using Chinese as its primary language of instruction. Along with the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology and City University of Hong Kong, these universities are ranked among the best in Asia. The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong Baptist University, Lingnan University, Education University of Hong Kong, Open University of Hong Kong, and Hong Kong Shue Yan University were all established in subsequent years.
Chinese, also known as Sinitic, is a branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family consisting of hundreds of local language varieties or dialects, many of which are not mutually intelligible. The differences are similar to those within the Romance languages, with variation particularly strong in the more mountainous southeast. A widely quoted classification divides these varieties into seven groups: Mandarin, Wu, Min, Xiang, Gan, Hakka and Yue, though a more recent classification splits some of these to obtain ten groups, and some varieties remain unclassified.
The Beijing dialect (), also known as Pekingese, is the prestige dialect of Mandarin spoken in the urban area of Beijing, China. It is the phonological basis of Standard Chinese, which is the official language in the People's Republic of China and Republic of China and one of the official languages in Singapore.
After the independence of Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) in Africa in 1980 and British Honduras (now Belize) in Central America in 1981, the last major colony that remained was Hong Kong, with a population of over 5 million. With 1997 approaching, the United Kingdom and China negotiated the Sino-British Joint Declaration, which led to the whole of Hong Kong becoming a "special administrative region" of China in 1997, subject to various conditions intended to guarantee the preservation of Hong Kong's capitalist economy and its way of life under British rule for at least 50 years after the handover. George Town in the Cayman Islands has consequently become the largest city in the Overseas Territories.
Singapore Bazaar Malay, also known as Bazaar Malay, Pasar Malay, or Market Malay, is a Malay-lexified pidgin, which is spoken in Singapore. Tamil and Hokkien contributed to the development of Bazaar Malay, with Hokkien being the dominant substrate language of Bazaar Malay, with Malay being the lexifier language. However, there are many input languages spoken by immigrants that also contributed to the development of Bazaar Malay, including languages spoken by Malays, Chinese, Indians, Eurasians, and Europeans. Singapore Bazaar Malay emerged along with the opening of Singapore's free trade port in 1819, to overcome barriers in communication and business transactions. Since Singapore have four official languages (English, Mandarin, Malay, and Tamil), Singapore Bazaar Malay not only is a lingua franca in interethnic communication, it is also used in intra-group communication. Singapore Bazaar Malay is mostly spoken by elders and middle-aged workers today, but its language status is declining due to education policies and language campaigns with less than 10,000 speakers.
The Longdu dialect is the most widespread dialect of the Zhongshan Min (Chungsan Min) language division within Southern Min Chinese. Native Speakers originated from towns of Dachong (Taichung) and Shaxi, Guangdong (Saakai) (formerly known as Longdu area) in Zhongshan (Chungsan) in the Pearl River Delta of Guangdong. Despite its close proximity, Longdu is not very closely related to the surrounding dialects in the region, which belong to the Yue group. As such, Longdu forms a "dialect island" of Min speakers (two other Min enclaves exist in Zhongshan, Sanxiang and Nanlang). Its native speakers generally understand Cantonese, but not vice versa.
The varieties of Chinese are usually described by native speakers as dialects of a single Chinese language, but linguists note that they are as diverse as a language family. The internal diversity of Chinese has been likened to that of the Romance languages, but may be even more varied. There are between 7 and 13 main regional groups of Chinese (depending on classification scheme), of which the most spoken by far is Mandarin (about 960 million, e.g. Southwestern Mandarin), followed by Wu (80 million, e.g. Shanghainese), Min (70 million, e.g. Southern Min), Yue (60 million, e.g. Cantonese), etc. Most of these groups are mutually unintelligible, and even dialect groups within Min Chinese may not be mutually intelligible. Some, however, like Xiang and certain Southwest Mandarin dialects, may share common terms and a certain degree of intelligibility. All varieties of Chinese are tonal and analytic.
As the last two of these features indicate, this language was a koiné based on dialects spoken in the Nanjing area, though not identical to any single dialect. This form remained prestigious long after the capital moved to Beijing in 1421, though the speech of the new capital emerged as a rival standard. As late as 1815, Robert Morrison based the first English–Chinese dictionary on this koiné as the standard of the time, though he conceded that the Beijing dialect was gaining in influence. By the middle of the 19th century, the Beijing dialect had become dominant and was essential for any business with the imperial court.
Approximately 242 languages are spoken in the country, but only four have the status of national languages: Kituba ("Kikongo ya leta"), Lingala, Tshiluba, and Swahili. Although some people speak these regional, or trade languages as first languages, most of the population speak them as a second language after their own tribal language. Lingala was the official language of the colonial army, the "Force Publique", under Belgian colonial rule, and remains to this day the predominant language in the armed forces. Since the recent rebellions, a good part of the army in the East also uses Swahili where it is prevalent.
Hakka Americans (客家美國人 or 客裔美國人), also called American Hakka, are Han people in the United States of Hakka origin, mostly from present-day Guangdong and Fujian, China, and Taiwan. Many Hakka Americans have connections to Hakka diaspora in Jamaica, the Caribbean, South East Asia, Latin America, and South America. The Han characters for Hakka (客家) literally mean "guest families". Unlike other Han ethnic groups, the Hakkas are not named after a geographical region, e.g. a province, county or city. The Hakkas usually identify with people who speak the Hakka language or share at least some Hakka ancestry. The earliest Hakka immigrants to what is now the United States mostly went to Hawaii, starting when the Kingdom of Hawaii was an independent sovereign state. After the lifting of the Chinese Exclusion Act by the passage of the Magnuson Act in 1943, the Hakka began to come to the US from Taiwan and to a lesser extent Hong Kong, Southeast Asia, Jamaica and the Caribbean.
With more than 10 million inhabitants, Kinshasa is the second largest francophone city in the world after Paris. It is the capital of the most populous francophone country in the world, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where an estimated 24 million people (40% of the total population) can speak French (essentially as a second language). Contrary to Abidjan where French is the first language of a large part of the population, in Kinshasa French is only a second language, and its status of "lingua franca" is shared with Lingala. Kinshasa French also differs from other African French variants, for it has some Belgian French influences, due to colonisation. People of different African mother tongues living in Kinshasa usually speak Lingala to communicate with each other in the street, but French is the language of businesses, administrations, schools, newspapers and televisions. French is also the predominant written language.
Throughout the Imperial Japanese occupation, Hong Kong was ruled as a detained terrain and was subjected to martial law. Headed by General Rensuke Isogai, the Imperial Japanese established their administration and commanding post at the Peninsula Hotel in Kowloon. The military government, composed of the departments of politics, civilian, economy, judiciary, and navy, enacted stringent regulations and established executive bureaus to have power over all residents of Hong Kong. They also set up the puppet Chinese Representative Council and Chinese Cooperative Council consisting of local leading Chinese and Eurasian community leaders. On top of Governor Mark Young, 7,000 British soldiers and civilians were kept in prisoner-of-war or internment camps, such as Sham Shui Po Prisoner Camp and Stanley Internment Camp. Famine, malnourishment and sickness were pervasive. Severe cases of malnutrition among inmates occurred in the Stanley Internment Camp in 1945. Moreover, the Imperial Japanese military government blockaded Victoria Harbour and controlled warehouses.
China is a largely-homogenous society; over 90 percent of its population has historically been Han Chinese. Some of the country's ethnic groups are distinguishable by physical appearance and relatively-low intermarriage rates. Others have married Han Chinese and resemble them. A growing number of ethnic minorities are fluent at a native level in Mandarin Chinese. Children sometimes receive ethnic-minority status at birth if one of their parents belongs to an ethnic minority, even if their ancestry is predominantly Han Chinese. Pockets of immigrants and foreign residents exist in some cities.
Regarding the demographics of university students, Zhang Bingjie, a journalist student at Shue Yan University in Hong Kong said:
Hong Kong drifters who come to Hong Kong for higher education and speak broken Cantonese or do not speak Cantonese often feel isolated when they cannot communicate well with Hong Kong students and society. This can result in a small social circle with non-local classmates and makes it difficult to integrate into Hong Kong's mainstream. Due to cultural and institutional differences, social friction has been increasing over the past few years.
Under the Basic Law of Hong Kong, Mandarin was made an official language along with Cantonese and English. On paper, the three languages were given equal status, in reality Mandarin is increasingly given more importance. In recent years, Mandarin has been increasingly used in Hong Kong, this has led to fears of Cantonese being replaced. In May 2018, The Education Bureau of Hong Kong stated that Cantonese is a dialect, thus cannot be considered a mother tongue language. This caused an uproar in Hong Kong, as it was seen as downgrading Cantonese in favour of Mandarin, as the majority of Hong Kong people speak Cantonese as their first language.
Cantonese English, locally referred to as Chinglish, in theory, refers to the accent and characteristics of English spoken by native Hong Kongers and other Cantonese people. Overall, it is primarily spoken by native Hong Kong language (Cantonese) speakers. Therefore, although it is called "Hong Kong English", it is not only spoken in Hong Kong. People who come from Macau, Guangzhou, or whose first language is Cantonese speak it.
Language differences also play a major role in separating Hong Kong identity from mainland Chinese identity. While Mandarin is the official variety of Chinese in Mainland China, the regionally traditional Cantonese variant has long been used in Hong Kong. The increasing presence of Mandarin-speakers in the territory since 1997, and expectations of mainland Chinese for Hong Kong residents to speak Mandarin, has caused conflicts and defensive measures by citizens to protect Cantonese against the encroachment of Mandarin. Such actions include stigmatizing Mandarin as a language of communism, while Cantonese is perceived as a language of democracy; reflecting the political differences between Hong Kong and China. This political linguistic view has also spread among Overseas Chinese communities, the majority of which are historically Cantonese-speaking.