HK Girl Talk

HK Girl Talk – by Jin Wong – is a blog of the author's randomness and her being fascinated by all the interesting cultural phenomena in Hong Kong and China.

Category Archives: Language

Why Does Mandarin Win Out Cantonese as the Standard Spoken Version of Chinese?

4 Comments Posted by on May 28, 2012

This is a question raised by people all over the world. As one may observe that most Chinese people living in foreign countries speak Cantonese more than Mandarin, and the history of Cantonese is actually longer than that of Mandarin. So why does Mandarin win out and Cantonese as the standard spoken version of Chinese? Easier to [...]

Language ,

Absurdly Translated Signs in “Chinglish”

13 Comments Posted by on November 11, 2011

Have you ever cringed at the bad English of Hong Kong and China? It is pretty hard to avoid. It seems like the real challenge for Chinese writers is not their lack of vocabulary (in fact, many English phrases can be expressed in simple, Chinese words), but errors caused by direct translation out of cultural [...]

Language

Q&A Wednesday: What Are the Weird English Names of Chinese People?

45 Comments Posted by on October 26, 2011

No matter it is Hong Kong, China or Taiwan, Chinese people seems to have very weird English names. Mainland Chinese, in particular, have very weird English names. Sometimes, a lot of people think that they get an English name just the the sake of having it, or perhaps the country is being invaded by western [...]

Language, Q&A Wednesday

Confusion about Cantonese, Mandarin, Traditional and Simplified Chinese

12 Comments Posted by on June 11, 2011

I’ve been asked a lot that how do Cantonese-speakers write. Before you get to know the answer, you need to understand that there are two systems of language Hong Kong people use in their daily life – spoken language (Cantonese) and written language (Traditional Chinese). So: Hong Kong people speak in Cantonese (this is a [...]

Language , , , ,

Why Hong Kong People Hate Speaking Mandarin to Non-Chinese Speakers?

114 Comments Posted by on June 7, 2011

I constantly see the scenes of Hong Kong people showing dislikes of non-Chinese speakers speaking to them in Mandarin (also known as Putonghua) rather than Cantonese. What Hong Kong people would do is to reply those foreigners in Cantonese, but never Mandarin. Because they think that: 1. “Hey, I can speak English, why the hell [...]

Culture, Language , ,