Linguistic Characteristics of English in Hong Kong: A Corpus-Based Study

English has a global presence, but as the language becomes increasingly spoken worldwide, its diverse, complex, and multifaceted nature has not yet been fully understood. Under the paradigm of Global English, its innovative use is being acknowledged, particularly in regions where English is not the primary language. The multilingualitic nature of Hong Kong has led the traditionally coded forms and meanings of English to be transformed into a different and localized version that has its own distinct linguistic features and cultural significance. Investigations into these aspects are therefore required.

Based on online code-mixing translanguaging practices, a language database consisting of 53,680 words was constructed by extracting posts from local Hong Kong media that adapted local news stories in a creative linguistic manner. The innovative English used in Hong Kong includes a mix of alphabetic Cantonese, English, phonetic markers, and emojis. The linguistic data obtained from this self-created corpus were used as the basis for analysis, while the CLOB corpus, which is a Brown family British English corpus, was used as a reference. A keyword list with high frequency and keyness was identified using the software AntConc. Due to the influence of their first language, speakers of this local variety were found to insert Cantonese lexical items into grammatically acceptable English sentences. This innovative use of English can be categorized as Romanized Cantonese, in addition to unconventional or “invented” English.

By identifying these new trends in language evolution and variation and examining the distinct features of this localized version of English, this study contributes to the knowledge of this specific cultural environment. It encourages confident and flexible English use in the international community and reveals the fluidity of one’s language use.