The Social Sciences Research Centre of the University of Hong Kong (HKU) carried out a language research project which involved a community-wide language survey from August 2014 to January 2015 and detailed analysis of language data from the 2011 Census of the HKSAR.
The results contribute to a much greater understanding of patterns of language acquisition, language use and multilingualism within the Hong Kong community and will contribute to a much fuller understanding of language acquisition, language use and multilingualism within the Hong Kong community.
Key results from this project include:
- The Hong Kong residents are becoming increasingly trilingual, as a strong majority of young people claim knowledge of all three of Hong Kong’s major spoken languages;
- The diverse multilingualism of Hong Kong society with at least 27 major and minor languages;
- Cantonese remains the key language for oral communication in Hong Kong;
- English remains an important language of the workplace, especially for written
- communication;
- Language maps that show groups of language speakers are distributed unevenly across the HKSAR;
- Important findings relating to the languages spoken by Hong Kong’s South Asian language speakers.
HKU Social Sciences Research Centre will hold a press conference to release the detailed survey findings. Details are as follows:
Date: August 24, 2015 (next Monday)
Time: 11:00 a.m.
Venue: Convocation Room (Room 218), 2/F, Main Building, The University of Hong Kong
Speakers:
Professor John Bacon-Shone, Director, Social Sciences Research Centre, The University of Hong Kong
Professor Kang Kwong Luke, Professor of Linguistics and Multilingual Studies, School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
Professor Kingsley Bolton, Professor of English Linguistics, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
For reply and enquiries, please contact Mr. Chiu Lam of HKU Social Sciences Research Centre at tel: 3917 1600 or e-mail: chiulam@ssrc.hku.hk.
