Talking About Languages With Hong Kongers

Hong Kong is a Special Administrative Region of the People’s Republic of China, and has a long, interesting, and complex language history. Located in the south, most people in Hong Kong has Cantonese as their mother tongue, but as Hong Kong is a former colony of Britain, many also have a close relationship to English. As Hong Kong and Mainland China keep growing closer after the handover in 1997, the government is pushing for a trilingual and biliterate population in Hong Kong.

In this podcast, Eirik Slinning Karlsen has a chat about languages in Hong Kong with the leader of the Hong Kong Committee in Norway Jessica Chiu and freelance writer Damon Chan, two Hong Kongers living in Norway. They touch upon topics such as the relationship between different languages in Hong Kong, language and identity, and how language has been used during the Hong Kong protests.

Thanks to Soundtænk for the production of this podcast.

About Eirik Slinning Karlsen

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Eirik Slinning Karlsen is a student enrolled in the Chinese Society and Politics Master’s degree program at the University of Oslo. His main interest is sociolinguistics, and he is currently writing about the use and perception of Putonghua among Cantonese native speakers in Hong Kong in his upcoming master thesis.

By Eirik Slinning Karlsen

Published Feb. 6, 2020 8:54 AM - Last modified Mar. 15, 2024 2:04 PM