Hong Kong English: Encyclopedia II - Hong Kong English - Spoken English

Hong Kong English - Spoken English

Hong Kong English - Accent of spoken English

British influences

• Like English English, Hong Kong English is non-rhotic, which means 'r' is not pronounced except before a vowel.
• 'wh' read as 'w', as in English English.

Common mispronunciations

• beginning 'r' read as 'w' sound. (the word 'read' is a good example.)
• 'r' in other positions may be read as 'w' or 'l' . (eg. 'error' as E-WA, the famous 'flied lice' and 'frame', respectively.)
• beginning 'v' read as 'w' sound. (eg. 'Vector' and 'Aston Villa')
• other 'v' becomes 'w' or 'f' mostly with a consensus yet no obvious pattern. (eg. 'f' in 'favour', second 'v' in 'Volvo' and either 'f' or 'w' in 'develop' depending on the speaker.)
• beginning 'ch' read as 'ts' (i.e. German 'z').
• beginning 'j' and soft 'g' read as 'dz' (e.g., Gigi pronounced as "zhi-zhi").
• ending 'ge' read as 'ch'.
• 'th' read as 'd' (as in them) or 'f' (as in thick) sound. ('th' sound is not used in Cantonese)
• beginning 'n' and 'l' often confused (these two sounds are becoming allophones for younger speakers of Cantonese)
• 'r' and 'l' in positions other than the beginning are also often confused. (Breakfast becomes BLEG-FUSS for some, 'bleach' and 'breach' both become 'beach')
• ending 'l' (IPA: [ɫ]) often pronounced as 'w', as in Polish. This /w/ is sometimes strengthened and becomes like /o/ (e.g., sale becomes SAY-o)
• ending 't' pronounced as 'ts' (i.e. German 'z')
• Differences or omission in ending sounds. (as the ending consonants are always voiceless and unreleased (glotallized) in Cantonese with the exception of 'm', 'n' and 'ng', similar to Basel German)
• Exaggeration of certain final consonants, for example 's' (to /si/) and 'd' sounds of past-tense form of verbs (to [tət̚]).
• multi-syllable words might sometimes be wrongly stressed, since Chinese is tonal and largely monosyllabic.
• producing the 'w', 'h' or 'l' sounds in words like Greenwich, Bonham, Beckham, Salisbury. This is reflected in the transliteration of the words, for example, Beckham is transliterated as 碧咸 (pronounced as "bik haam").
• producing the "ces" sound in Leicester or Gloucester.
• some letters are spoken with phonemes used in Cantonese, such as 'e' as 'YEE', 'f' becomes 'E-fu', 'h' becomes 'IG-chyu', 'l' becomes 'E-lo', 'q' becomes 'KIW', 'r' becomes 'AA-lo', 'w' becomes 'DUB-bee-you', 'x' becomes 'IG-si',
• The same is true for some for 'g' becoming 'DZEE', 'j' becoming 'DZAY' and 'v' becoming 'WEE'. (The reasons were mentioned above.)
• Merging of /æ/ and /ɛ/ to /ɛ/. eg. 'bad' and 'bed', 'mass' and 'mess'.
• Omission of entire syllables in longer words. ('Difference' become DIFF-ENS, 'temperature' becomes TEM-PI-CHUR.)
• Difficulties in pronouncing certain syllables: 'salesman' become 'sellsman', 'round' becomes 'WAANG'. (Without the ending consonant pronounced and occasionally with an ending 'd'.)
• Merging the contrast of voiceless / voiced consonants with aspirated / unaspirated if there is any contrast exists in Cantonese. The stop [p] becomes [pʰ] and [b] becomes [p]; [t] becomes [tʰ] and [d] becomes [t]; [k] becomes [kʰ] and [g] becomes [k].
• Merging voiceless / voiced consonants into voiceless if no contrast in aspirated / unaspirated in Cantonese. Both [f] and [v] become [f]; both [z] and [s] become [s]; both [tʃ] and [dʒ] become [tʃ] ; both [ʃ] and [ʒ] become [ʃ]; both [θ] and [ð] become [θ] ( difficulty in pronouncing [θ] too).
• The letter “z” is generally pronounced as [jiˈsɛt̚], a corrupted version (due to various of the above-mentioned reasons) of a very archaic pronunciation /ɪˈzæd/; the correct pronunciations, /zɛd/ and /zi:/, are not understood by some.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Spoken English", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki