Media

HKU Social Sciences Research Centre to announce
“Language use, proficiency and attitudes in Hong Kong” survey findings

21 Aug 2015

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.